Alan Johnson has a rareperspective on Westminster, in the very practical sense that his corner office affords some of the best views in town: the Abbey, parliament itself, Big Ben. While gothic grandeur fills the windows, the walls are plastered with pop memorabilia and personal paraphernalia: tributes, affectionate caricatures; a Who poster signed by Roger Daltrey; a Queens Park Rangers banner and, relegated to the top of abookcase, a ministerial red box from the Home Office.
This is the habitat of a man with better things to do with his time than politics, which is one reason why he is more popular than most politicians. Johnson stepped down from the front bench in 2011 (he was briefly and unhappily Ed Miliband’s shadow chancellor) and has, since then, coupled constituency duties in Hull with semi-celebrity status as a memoirist and TV pundit. He isn’t dressed for parliament when we meet. Tieless, in checked shirt and charcoal cardigan, he is casual but not careless. Itis a look that matches his backbench style: unflappable but not insouciant; with authority but no menace and, it once seemed, palpably relieved to be offthe front line.
But now, at 65, he’s there again as chairman of “Labour In”, his party’s campaign to keep Britain in the EU. Iwonder how much persuading he needed to rejoin the fray. “I’m as much on the frontline as I want to be, and it’s an issue I really care about. I was asked to do it, but I thought it would be difficult to stay out of the fight on this, given that I really …”
Johnson interrupts himself whenever he feels in danger of saying something that might sound too earnest. “Look, Iknow there’s a lot of hyperbole around here, but to me this is far more important than a general election.”
It takes a while for the passion to register because the delivery is so laid-back. Johnson talks about threats to the philosophical underpinnings of the postwar era, the need to remember those countries “where the soil ran red with blood” in the 20th century, and yet it all comes out with the easy-listening lilt of a Burt Bacharach number.
I think, but cannot be sure, that this mellow delivery is an advantage to the Remain cause. It could be a soothing balm against the inflammatory rhetoric of the more more fanatical Leavers. Butthe idealistic case for continental solidarity is a niche argument, cherished by people whose voters are in the bag. The hard part is persuading sceptics. Johnson accepts that hard-headed arguments about jobs and security willbe decisive, but he doesn’t want togive up on the deeper, founding principles of the European project. “I’m saying why Idecided to get involved. There will be alot more prose than poetry in this. But we mustn’t forget that, a lot of people, in particular a younger generation, don’t know that that’s one of the main reasons the European Union came into existence.”
Johnson stresses also that his mission is to mobilise Labour support. His operation is separate to Britain Stronger in Europe, the official Remain group, although his task is vital to that campaign. The Tories are split and orders have gone out from David Cameron that the Conservative party machine must stay out of the fray. Bluntly speaking, if the left stays home on 23 June, Britain leaves the EU.
And yet, while Labour MPs and activists are broadly united for Remain, the left is historically ambivalent about Europe. Johnson insists that the old Bennite tendency from the 1970s that denounced the European community as “a rich men’s club” is a shrunken force. “Squadrons of them have been coming over to our side. Battalions of them.” He recalls the critical intervention of Jacques Delors at the TUC in 1988, spelling out to union delegates the European facts of life: that solidarity across the Channel was the one remaining guarantee the British left had for the social protections that Thatcherism was otherwise determined to strip away. “I was there. You could hear the sound of scales falling from people’s eyes.” The argument still stands: Europe remains the backstop guarantee for workers’ rights that would vanish if Brexit were achieved on the terms preferred by a Tory-Ukip alliance. “The people who back the Leave campaign, many of them want Britain as a kind of offshore, free-market, race-to-the-bottom, anything-goes country. They have a problem with rights and protections for workers. But they don’t say it. Maybe we’ll drag it out of them.”
But in recent years the old schismatic European scar has been itching. There have been sceptical noises from the top of the big unions. Some ideologues inthe ranks would ditch the whole Brussels project as a “neoliberal” plot. Is Johnson confident organised labour will be on side? There is an uncharacteristic pause. “I’m confident because they tell me they will.” There is, I point out, adifference between notional support and campaigning muscle. Labour In needs boots on the ground, doesn’t it? “That’s why I hesitated in the last answer. That’s what they tell me. I want more than just commitment. To me this is …” Once again Johnson feels the need to apologise for something lofty he is about to say. “Now I promised I wouldn’t use this word, I hate it – but this is existential. The idea that the labour movement will come out of this better off if we leave Europe is just so bizarre and perverse. Of any group, they’re the ones with the most to lose. I would hope that the trade unions can be evangelical about this with their members, not just saying ‘we support this’, certainly not just standing on the sidelines, but really getting involved.”
Presumably that also means getting financially involved? “They need to gettheir chequebooks out as well, absolutely. All contributions gratefully received.” Does Labour In have the resources it needs to fight a national campaign? “No. Not yet.”
Resources are scarce, and the pro-European operation has to compete with other Labour campaigns – for the Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, local authorities, mayoral elections andother ballots in May. Some Labour MPs have voiced suspicion that Jeremy Corbyn’s attachment to a pro-EU position is tenuous, that his instincts are back with the Bennite Leaver class of ’75 – his pre-leadership voting record in parliament points that way. Aswith the unions, it is not yet clear that Corbyn’s conversion is robust, orthat he is going to bring his evangelical Agame to this fight.
“I don’t know Jeremy well enough to know which road he took to it, but ever since the Thursday after he was elected, and I met him we had a talk about this, I’ve known he’s committed to a Remain vote. He will be involved in the campaign. He will be doing rallies and speeches – and I hope the word evangelical springs to your mind when he makes those speeches.” That raises the matter of Corbyn’s personal support on the left. His election as Labour leader brought with it a surge of enthusiasm from people previously alienated from – indeed often hostile to – the party as it was when Johnson served in government. Their energy must still surely be harnessed. So maybe talk to Momentum, the organisation that styles itself as leading the charge to capitalise on Corbyn’s leadership win. “No.” The tone is still mild, but firm. “This is aLabour party campaign. I’m talking tothe Labour party.”
This is an unavoidable tightrope. Labour may be broadly united on Europe but it is painfully divided on almost everything else. For many Corbyn-sceptics, the pro-EU campaign is a kind of life-raft – a way to campaign without having to explicitly endorse the new leader’s sharp leftward turn on other matters. Johnson’s stewardship of thatvessel inevitably revives talk of the king over the water: the elder statesman with solid, working-class credentials; a former postman; atrade unionist, but one with centrist, New Labour sensibilities, who might be prevailed upon to lead the party on a healing journey back to electability …
He looks, for the first time, pained by the direction of the question before I have even posed it. Does he get fed up with people asking? “Yes, but I understand why you have to do it.” It does seem to come up a lot. He was cited as the man who should have run against Gordon Brown when Tony Blair stood down. He was lamented as the missing candidate in 2010. In November 2014, during a particularly rough patch for EdMiliband, there were whispers in parliament of a coup to make Johnson leader – regardless of whether he wanted it or not. He didn’t and doesn’t. “It’s not any ambition of mine … I don’t see how you can do it properly without the ambition. People talk about it as if it’s a negative. I don’t think it’s that. I’ve got nothing but admiration for people who want to do it.” He just isn’t one of them. Is Corbyn, I wonder? The current leader appeared for much of last year’s contest to be as surprised as anyone elseby his success. The polls since his victory make grim reading. Johnson is diplomatic. “Whoever was leading the party would be finding it difficult and whoever won that leadership election, the party would be watching very carefully to see how they were doing.”
But we’re also into the seventh year ofCameron’s premiership, the Tories aresplit down the middle on Europe, and austerity is taking its toll on public services and on people’s livelihoods. Labour is missing open goals daily. Johnson concedes that there must come a point when the performance of any leader needs an unsentimental audit. Hesuggests there is a tacitly recognised probation period: “Two years, two-and-a-half. We’re not going to stumble into adefeat when we can see it coming.”
But he also rehearses arguments against regicide he must have made in private many times before: “If anyone thinks stabbing the elected leader in theback and replacing him with some character who never even stood in the election, stepping over the dead body, putting on the crown and saying to the electorate: ‘Put us into government, we’re united.’ It’s just crazy.”
Anyone wanting further insight into past machinations around the Labour throne will “have to wait for the book,” provisionally titled The Long and Winding Road. This is his third volume of autobiography (all named after Beatles songs), which is due out in theautumn and covers his years in parliament. The first two parts dealt with a brutal childhood in slum housing in west London, some near-miss attempts to make it as a rock’n’roll star, life pounding the streets as a postman and elevation through the ranks of the Communication Workers Union. It is not surprising, having read the memoir, that Johnson has little appetite for coups. He comes across as remarkably lacking in political bloodlust or even tribal animus. He speaks fondly of friends and family who have been Tories. “I can’t assess and judge people on the way they’ve voted,” he tells me. Iwonder if this is going to be a factor in the EU referendum campaign. Whatever else people on the left think about David Cameron, he’s on the right side of this debate. Some may struggle with the concept, but don’t all pro-Europeans now have to get behind the prime minister? “The short answer to that is yes. We’re not being tribal; we’re focused on remaining in the EU.”
Winning for Team Europe really does seem bigger for Johnson than a general election. The closest he comes to personal barbs are comments reserved for the most prominent Tory pro-Leave campaigners: Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. He is scathing of the justice secretary’s claim that civil servants used European law to thwart decisions on daily basis (in 11 years as a minister he saw nothing of the sort). He dismisses the mayor of London’s complaints aboutBrussels-derived crisp flavour regulations as a retreat into the old straight-banana mythologies. “When Gove and Boris Johnson come in, you think, ‘Hey, there’s a new dimension tothis.’ And then you get that load of twaddle! They’re supposed to elevate the issue, and they diminish it.”
That suggests confidence that things will turn out right. “No. This could go either way. I’m confident we’ve got the best lyrics, but we’re still struggling to put them to a tune.” It is unusual for the head of a campaign to sound so diffident about the battle ahead, but this is the side of Johnson that both animates andfrustrates his admirers. There is aself-deprecation that tilts towards under-confidence: it is the hesitation about leadership, the combination of charm and modesty, that makes Labour MPs think he would be a winning candidate, but also makes him bat back their solicitations. Even now, as he prepares to lead his party’s charge in an epochal battle for Britain’s future, there is a note of self-criticism. The eurosceptic arguments, he says, went unchallenged for too long. “The trouble is we ceded the pitch to these people for years. Iinclude myself in that. We never made the case for Europe.” It is a downbeat ending. Fortunately, the last chapter of Johnson’s story hasn’t yet been written.
