identified with him until then. I kept out of camps. I was Labour rather than being this camp or that camp. I was never directly associated as a Blairite or a Brownite, although I was closer to Tony; I tried to be my own man.
The following seven years were Mr Straw’s most rewarding time in politics, as, continuing Blair’s mantra of ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, he saw off what he describes as the ‘pseudo-left’ view of law and order policies.
With a good three years to figure out what he wanted to do, when he got into government in 1997 he had the satisfaction of implementing his entire agenda before he was promoted to the Foreign Office in 2001:
That period was I think intellectually the most stimulating period I’ve ever spent in politics. For me it was intellectual liberation, we were able to talk about things that we hadn’t been able to talk about for years.
The Labour Party had been hobbled by this pseudo-left stuff about ‘you have to be nice to offenders’. [But] it does affect poor people, it affected us in our block, so push off.
Although he had expected to be made Home Secretary, he and his family were given a rude awakening to the full repercussions of what that meant on election night 1997 when ‘suddenly there were armed police in the garden’.
Those guards would remain with the family for the next thirteen years – a period that would involve highs and lows for his wife Alice and their two children, William and Charlotte.
One of the highs for the children was being taken along by their father when he was formally appointed to the post:
I went in the front door – you’re kept hanging around in the lobbies of Downing Street, pushed in little rooms as other people were dealt with. Then when [I saw] Tony, he said, ‘I’m going to make you Home Secretary.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much.’
He came out into that lobby and there were William and Charlotte and he said: ‘I’ve made your dad Home Secretary.’
[Charlotte] was fourteen, poor kid. It was a lot to cope with. [She] was at an inner London comprehensive school … and, just like that, Dad’s in an armoured vehicle with two large detectives and there are two big policemen with guns outside our house.
As Home Secretary, Mr Straw introduced ‘shed-loads of legislation on the ying and the yang side’, by which he means those laws welcome to the pseudo-left, such as the Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and those that were suitably ‘tough on crime’, including tackling anti-social behaviour and youth justice reform.
He is proud of getting the Terrorism Act onto the statute books before 9/11, of the RIPA law (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.
By 2001, after Labour’s second election victory, he was looking forward to pastures new. And was again completely shocked by what proved to be around the next corner:
I was ready to go. It was a fantastic job, being in the Home Office, but it was a very big job. I thought that I was going to take [John] Prescott’s job, to do planning, local government, transport and so on. And then when I got in to see Tony finally on election day in 2001 he said … ‘I’m making you Foreign Secretary.’ I said: ‘Oh f***.’
Ironically, given what was to come on 11 September, Mr Straw found his first few months in office ‘terribly quiet’. When 9/11 happened he was in his office chatting to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, about a deployment of troops to Macedonia. Within two years he had approved the despatch of troops to Afghanistan and, in a controversy that continues to this day, Iraq:
By that stage I’d been in the shadow Cabinet for ten years, I’d been in Cabinet for over four. You’d been tested. Not obviously on the same scale, but in the Home Office there had been crises, there had always been crises, and so you get on with it.
The troop deployment to Afghanistan at that stage was a limited
The following seven years were Mr Straw’s most rewarding time in politics, as, continuing Blair’s mantra of ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’, he saw off what he describes as the ‘pseudo-left’ view of law and order policies.
With a good three years to figure out what he wanted to do, when he got into government in 1997 he had the satisfaction of implementing his entire agenda before he was promoted to the Foreign Office in 2001:
That period was I think intellectually the most stimulating period I’ve ever spent in politics. For me it was intellectual liberation, we were able to talk about things that we hadn’t been able to talk about for years.
The Labour Party had been hobbled by this pseudo-left stuff about ‘you have to be nice to offenders’. [But] it does affect poor people, it affected us in our block, so push off.
Although he had expected to be made Home Secretary, he and his family were given a rude awakening to the full repercussions of what that meant on election night 1997 when ‘suddenly there were armed police in the garden’.
Those guards would remain with the family for the next thirteen years – a period that would involve highs and lows for his wife Alice and their two children, William and Charlotte.
One of the highs for the children was being taken along by their father when he was formally appointed to the post:
I went in the front door – you’re kept hanging around in the lobbies of Downing Street, pushed in little rooms as other people were dealt with. Then when [I saw] Tony, he said, ‘I’m going to make you Home Secretary.’ I said, ‘Thank you very much.’
He came out into that lobby and there were William and Charlotte and he said: ‘I’ve made your dad Home Secretary.’
[Charlotte] was fourteen, poor kid. It was a lot to cope with. [She] was at an inner London comprehensive school … and, just like that, Dad’s in an armoured vehicle with two large detectives and there are two big policemen with guns outside our house.
As Home Secretary, Mr Straw introduced ‘shed-loads of legislation on the ying and the yang side’, by which he means those laws welcome to the pseudo-left, such as the Human Rights Act and Freedom of Information Act, and those that were suitably ‘tough on crime’, including tackling anti-social behaviour and youth justice reform.
He is proud of getting the Terrorism Act onto the statute books before 9/11, of the RIPA law (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act) and the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry.
By 2001, after Labour’s second election victory, he was looking forward to pastures new. And was again completely shocked by what proved to be around the next corner:
I was ready to go. It was a fantastic job, being in the Home Office, but it was a very big job. I thought that I was going to take [John] Prescott’s job, to do planning, local government, transport and so on. And then when I got in to see Tony finally on election day in 2001 he said … ‘I’m making you Foreign Secretary.’ I said: ‘Oh f***.’
Ironically, given what was to come on 11 September, Mr Straw found his first few months in office ‘terribly quiet’. When 9/11 happened he was in his office chatting to Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, about a deployment of troops to Macedonia. Within two years he had approved the despatch of troops to Afghanistan and, in a controversy that continues to this day, Iraq:
By that stage I’d been in the shadow Cabinet for ten years, I’d been in Cabinet for over four. You’d been tested. Not obviously on the same scale, but in the Home Office there had been crises, there had always been crises, and so you get on with it.
The troop deployment to Afghanistan at that stage was a limited
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