‘Too complacent’: how Blair’s advisers misjudged his disastrous WI speech | Labour
Newly released documents reveal key advisers to Tony Blair agonized over the writing of his infamous ill-fated speech to the Women’s Institute (WI), in which the then prime minister was heckled and slowly clapped in front of 10,000 members at Wembley Arena.
Despite the WI publicly warning that they were “wary of anything that smacks of capital P politics”, Blair’s aides criticized his first draft and bombarded it with additions to inject more policy.
Blair, fresh off paternity leave following the birth of his son Leo, believed the annual WI conference in 2000 provided an opportunity for a more personal and thoughtful conversation and to blend tradition and modernity in a way that appealed to middle England.
But communications chief Alastair Campbell wrote of the first draft: “The danger of Blair re-firing, re-focusing on all fronts and becoming Majoresque in some parts makes little sense.”
Specific lines that bothered Campbell included Blair saying he applauded the Tate Modern “even if I didn’t always understand it” and describing any suggestion to remove “the old-fashioned pomp and pageantry of the Queen’s speech to Parliament” as “an unnecessary act of destroying an old and beloved ceremony”.
Campbell wrote: “The Queen’s speech/Tate Modern events seem pretty hopeless and in places you sound more like a commentator than a political leader.” He called on Blair to tackle issues such as drugs, Sure Start, access to university and small business initiatives, adding that there was a “risk of appearing arrogant”. The conversation was “too casual and too casual” and “seemed like an attempt to distance yourself from yourself.”
Strategy and survey consultant Philip Gould felt that it “left the wrong taste”, felt “chatty but instead condescending” and lacked “energy, enthusiasm, dynamism and change”. The National Archives at Kew, west London.
Blair’s special adviser Peter Hyman thought this would “give the Conservatives a major propaganda victory”. “It probably might suit the audience, but I don’t think it satisfies the political moment we need to seize,” he wrote, adding that it could be interpreted as a “‘back to basics’ speech (Blair becomes Major).”
“I don’t think the ‘old-fashioned values’ message will ‘sink’ into Middle England or anyone else,” Hyman wrote.
On another note, Hyman said this could be interpreted as: “TB is dropping a cool image to appeal to seedy England (I don’t understand Tate, I love royal ceremonies.) Looks like we want the Telegraph vote, not just the meritocratic Murdoch vote.”
Political consultant Sally Morgan was “extremely uncomfortable with the notion of ‘old-fashioned values'” and believed it would be “very alien to most of our voters under 40 (if not older). We may be talking to middle England, but not all of them are late middle-aged or elderly”. He advised Blair “not to say ‘kitchen-bound women’ as most of your audience stays at home”.
As the redrafts were circulated, Blair’s special assistant Anji Hunter lamented the eventual elimination of royal matters, noting that the queen was “an exemplar of the WI values and indeed of ours, which is community and responsibility”.
A week before Blair was due to speak, Julian Braithwaite of the No 10 press office had met WI leaders to find out what they expected. He responded: “They were wary of anything that smacked of Capital P politics and were clearly sensitive to being patronised.”
After several rewrites, the result was met with jeers, jeers and slow handclaps from unappreciative WI audiences; many likened it to a party political broadcast, and the media called the final speech “an extraordinary error of political judgment.”
Looking back years later for a BBC documentary, Blair recalled: “I taught them a lesson, they gave me raspberries.”
