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Blair 'fired up and hell-bent'

After the frothy diversion of the post-election Cabinet reshuffle, hyped up by the New Labour spin machine to such an extent that even The Rockall Times fell for it, filling up an entire front page article last week with platitudinous drivel about how "important" it was to have "a great team of big hitters working together on the front bench" and similar guff, the Prime Minister got down to allocating the really important posts in government at Chequers over the weekend.

As a distinguished commentator and close friend of Mr Blair has astutely observed, those wishful thinkers in parliament and the press who have written him off as a lame duck "are doing so very, very prematurely". The truth is that he's fired up as never before, hell-bent on driving through the unremittingly New Labour agenda set out for all to see in the manifesto and resoundingly endorsed at the ballot-box, even if he has to take unelected cronyism to new heights in his key appointments to do it. "You'd better just shut the fuc*k up and let him get on with it," the distinguished commentator, favourite squash partner and pre-eminent shower buddy of the Prime Minister Mr Alastair Campbell advised.

What's more, the armoury of presentational techniques wielded by Number 10, never less than impressive, has developed into a truly awesome capability after massive recent investment in weapons of bare-faced flattery and deceit. The third term will be blessedly free of those occasional glitches under pressure when an unfortunate detail of policy would leak from the Prime Minister's mouth before it had been fully thought through, provoking time-consuming confrontation and debate. He now presses all the right buttons with consummate ease, disarming the doubters with a promise to "listen and learn", as he fuses their deep desire for improvement in their daily lives with his own more altruistic yearnings, imparting a golden vision of a thoroughly modernised Britain circa 2012 basking in the warm afterglow of the third term, with each and every citizen enjoying unlimited opportunity to find their preferred niche in a remarkably stratified society offering an abundance of choice, from right down there in the underclass to the top of the meritocratic tree.

And for those in the upper to middle layers who know where to go and how to kick up a fuss the public services will bend over backwards to satisfy their every need. National Health for example will finally come of age, fulfilling at long last the promise of its founder Aneurin Bevan to provide free IVF treatment on demand for the over fifties with a built-in facelift for the proud mother-to-be, plus of course the standard medical packages available to all, including boob jobs, belly jobs, penis and clitoris jobs, vulva and anus jobs with any amount of enlargement or contraction to suit the lucky partner's preference, and lashings of KY jelly on the house for those couples going for the more adventurous resizing options. And all this achieved through root and branch transformation of a cranky old British institution into a formidably efficient public private partnership with a world-class board of directors and a 100 per cent performance record in meeting its target share price, delivering superbly on its core reponsibility to lavishly compensate an inspirational Chief Executive for taking the huge risk of giving up his Thursday afternoons at Morgan Stanley and coming down to Whitehall to pilot the pioneering UK health conglomerate through its first heady years in the cut and thrust of the FTSE 100.

These are sweeping reforms, but the nation signed up to them on 5 May, and they won't be steamrollered in over the heads of our elected representatives without proper scrutiny and debate, or so Number 10 in its infinite guile would have us believe. The Prime Minister's reassuring pronouncements were trotted out to a relieved public last Monday by a well-meaning, yet rather too reverential correspondent of an otherwise rock-solid bastion of critical reportage, who swallowed the Downing Street bait and spewed out huge great wodges of the most execrable bilge (much as it pains any journalist to query a colleague's work) in a cringeworthy report dictated practically word for word by Mr Blair from the podium. Regrettably, our reporter failed to detect the wicked grin on the Prime Minister's face as he cackled inwardly at what a spiffing wheeze it was to lead the media up the garden path with high-sounding nonsense about "open government" designed to conceal from them what he was really up to behind the scenes.

That priceless inside knowledge has always been the preserve of a small band of trusted acolytes, but thanks to my unexpected success at penetrating Mr Blair's inner circle over the course of a lively few days during the recent election campaign I now count myself among those privileged few.

It's a cruel irony that Tony's highly polished public façade conceals a genuine straight kind of guy whom the public would warm to if only they were given the chance. We hit it off from the word go, and by the time he hopped aboard his election bandwagon to hit the campaign trail just after breakfast some weeks ago we had earned each other's trust and respect to such an extent that his parting words had been "Dick, as soon as I've got this election thing out of the way and the dust has settled on the result I must have you down to Chequers."

...

"Charles, this is absolutely tremendous, how did you find these people?"

It was a relaxed afternoon in the cosy rear drawing room at Chequers, with tea just taken and the girls ushered out, leaving the Prime Minister and his intimate advisor undisturbed and able to get down to some of those tough decisions that would set the tone for the make or break third term. The French windows were closed against the unseasonal chill and the servants had lit a fire which crackled pleasantly in the background as Tony lounged in open-necked shirt, jeans and bare feet on the sofa opposite, casting his eye over one CV after another, dropped onto his chest with cheeky nonchalance from the outstretched fingers of his chief lieutenant in the Lords, who perched beside him on the luxurious sofa's broad velvet arm.

"Take this Gossain chap," the Prime Minister enthused, "a family GP who earned half a million pounds in value added services over five years before some hidebound bureaucrat put a stop to it. And think of the fortune he'd have built up by now if that interfering prat hadn't gone and poked his sodding nose into things that didn't concern him. Can you believe it!" Tony uttered a grunt of contempt for the forces of conservatism that had held such notorious sway in the Ealing, Hammersmith and Hounslow Health Authority during the mid-nineties when Dr Jagdeep Gossain had been paying his unexpected fleeting night-visits to bleary-eyed patients by the hundred in a private finance initiative that saw staggering sums injected by Gordon Brown into a path-breaking GP partnership in Fulham to service those fabulous expense claims.

As a privileged guest that afternoon and sole representative of the press I had a heavy responsibility to spin the Prime Minister's remarks in the right sort of way. I would hardly be invited again if I failed to counter the impression promulgated throughout much of the media of an aloof autocrat who's long since lost touch with the real-life struggles of ordinary people after too many years in the political stratosphere. It was my duty to point out that on the contrary he still shares with your average bloke in the street that most basic concern of all — the urge to get on in life and contribute to economic growth even if you have to tear up the rule book to do it.

The living embodiment of that laudable ambition, Lord Charles Ingram, who had graciously handed over his hard-won seat in the Commons to middle-aged also-ran Beverley Stodge, and taken instead the New Labour peerage that brings him closer to the epicentre of power, gave a grunt of satisfaction and placed an emphatic tick against the ethnic West London doctor — the latest colourful addition to a Number 10 Policy Unit that would shortly be wresting absolute control from the Cabinet in a precisely engineered summer coup, marking the end game of an eight-year long process of essential constitutional reform.

He riffled through his papers for the next candidate, and broke into a broad smile as he pulled a particularly glossy resumé from the pile. "Now this one's a bit special, Tony," he commented as the CV and full-size colour photo of Ms Joyti De-Laurey, 36, former PA to the chairman of Goldman Sachs, dropped into the Premier's eager hands.

Almost instantly Tony sprung into an upright posture, devouring the words on the page. "Oh yes!" he exclaimed. "Oh yes — Dick, just listen to this — 'Ms De-Laurey compiled a £4.3m fortune in eighteen months of assiduous hard graft, managing a panoply of bank accounts on behalf of her employers without even needing to be asked, and switching unproductive assets that were languishing in under-used offshore funds to a blue-chip account in North Cheam, Surrey to earn the highest possible revenue for herself ... when challenged she went on the attack, turning the tables on her negligent employers and putting them on trial.' What breathtaking gall that woman has! She's a goddess — Dick, look at her, look at those ample curves, what a role model for the Indian community!"

"And there's more," he eagerly continued. "'De-Laurey insisted she had done nothing wrong.' — too bloody right she hadn't! — 'She had merely seized an opportunity offered to her by her bosses.' — absolutely! That's the sense of civic responsibility we're trying to knock into the heads of those yobs on the council estates. 'She said it was a reward for the way she did her job and for her loyalty and discretion which were priceless'. So true, so true," Tony averred, his excitement somewhat dampened as he read of a unanimous verdict returned against her followed by punitive incarceration.

"Charles, you naughty boy," he admonished his new leader in the Upper House. "A bit special indeed! She's an absolute cracker, a phenomenon! We've simply got to get her on board. Now come here you modest little so and so, you gorgeous beast!" he declared, turning to Lord Ingram with outstretched arms.

Blushing red as a beetroot, his Lordship complied, sliding down off the arm of the sofa to be enfolded in the Prime Minister's ecstatic embrace and receive a full-blooded kiss on the lips.

Tony pulled away as a thought struck him. "What if we can't get her Charles? What a blow that would be to the mission. How much will it take? Do we have any peerages left?"

He couldn't rest easy until he knew, peppering his advisor with anxious queries.

"Do you think you can swing it Charles? When does she get out? God knows what other offers she's got to choose from."

Ingram did his best to reassure him. "There's no rush, Tony. Clarkie's on the case but he can't get her out before the summer recess at the earliest. You'll just have to be patient."

But Tony was a man obsessed. "She's critical to the project. Charles, I've got to have her. We've simply got to get her on board."

Those were anxious times on the sofa. The Prime Minister was a nervous wreck, unable to concentrate on any other appointments until the matter was settled. At last Lord Ingram gave in. "All right, Tony, I'll try and get it sorted right now, just to put your mind at rest." He pulled out his phone and put through a call to the Governor of Holloway.

Next week

Budding Mittals and burgeoning Hindujas. Asian enterprise dominates in Number 10's most dynamic Policy Unit to date.

Previously

• Blair rips open shirt on open government
• Wheels fall off Tony's election bandwagon
• Snap election prank provokes parliamentary pandemonium

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