Europe needs to get real on defence; Britain needs to get real on Europe
13 February 2025
Philip Gould, the best listener in politics
-
Post
-
8 November 2011
With thanks to The Guardian for asking me to pen a tribute to Philip for today's paper, and thanks also for the headline, below is the piece I wrote. Yesterday was a pretty wretched day for his many friends, but the reactions of so many people to his passing were wonderful, and brought a lot of comfort to his family. The funeral will be held next Tuesday November 15 at 4pm, All Saints Margaret Street, London W1W 8JG. Family, friends and colleagues all welcome.
Donations in Philip's memory should be sent to the Royal Marsden Cancer
Charity, 6 Fulham Road, SW3 6JJ or online at www.royalmarsden.org/donate Funds raised will be held and used in his memory for the research and treatment of oesophageal cancer.
The outpouring of warmth and love for Philip Gould across the political websites and social networks on Monday was acknowledgement of his rare talent and remarkable personality. There were heartfelt tributes from Labour leaders and professional strategists across the spectrum; and heartfelt tears from Labour party staff and supporters who know what a contribution he made.
Often described as Tony Blair's favourite pollster, he was so much more than that. He was one of the big engines of a campaign machine that reversed a trend in which Labour's historical role was to provide occasional short periods in office so that an exhausted Tory party could get its breath back and return to power. But Philip was no machine character. His politics flowed from deep values and beliefs which became more spiritual with time. He came from a lower middle-class family, and he believed the political elite, including Labour in the wilderness years, had forgotten about lower middle-class families.
Rightly people have said he brought greater professionalism to Labour campaigns after Peter Mandelson hired him to advise the party under Neil Kinnock. Yet he could also be hopelessly disorganised, forever mislaying coats and bags, phones and passports, even our entire election plans. What he did best was ensure that the voice of ordinary, decent British families was always heard at the top table of British politics. That was the real purpose of focus groups. He saw them not as consumer-led public relations, but as profoundly democratic. Politicians have to lead, of course. But they also have to listen, and nobody was a better political listener than Philip.
His earliest memory was of padding round his garden planning election campaigns – aged six.
When he was 10, he asked his parents if they could forgo the family holiday so that he could watch the coverage of the US conventions. But despite being a political obsessive himself, he never lost sight of the views and values of those who were not.
Though best known for his focus groups, he involved himself in all aspects of election planning. He was also a brilliant analyser of speech drafts, always offering frank advice which forced Tony Blair and the speechwriting team to raise our game, like this entry in my diary for 27 September 1999: "Philip captured the lowest point around 2am Tuesday when he did a note which began 'this speech has seriously lost the plot. The main argument is nowhere. What has happened?'"
Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games. Philip was the ultimate team player and team builder; keeping spirits up; staying calm when others were falling out or falling apart; never losing sight of the big goals. Perhaps alone of the key New Labour figures, he made few, if any, enemies. He was a healer. Even in these past few weeks, he has been trying to heal some of the rifts and scars of the New Labour years.
And when he entered what he called "the death zone", in one of his last strategic acts, he turned his death into a campaign, the goals of which were to make his departure easier for his wife, Gail, and their daughters, Georgia and Grace; to help others by writing and talking about facing up to death – he was dictating for a book on this almost to the very end; and to update his political memoir, The Unfinished Revolution, with a powerful political message to Labour's next generation, to learn the right lessons from both victory and defeat. On a personal note, I never had a truer friend, nor more wonderful conversations than those we have had in recent months.
But inspiring though he has been in facing up to cancer, and humbling though it was to hold his hand on Sunday as, alive but unconscious, he moved towards death to the sound of his beloved Gregorian chants, it is not Philip Gould on his death bed that I will remember in years to come.
It is Philip Gould the friend who brought such love and support to my family, Philip Gould the positive life force who brought hope and energy to all he did, Philip Gould the strategist who tirelessly served every Labour leader from Neil Kinnock to Ed Miliband, and Philip Gould the man whose final words in his final interview were "have faith and try to change the world" … because that is what he did.
5 minute(s) read
Recent Posts
Lovely, warm and personal tribute. Philip Gould RIP.
Nouvel Ordre Mondial.
The elite has forgotten the middle class.
Contrary to common belief, the lunatics have not taken over the asylum. As FDR once stated, nothing in politics happens by accident.
Rising oil and food prices affect middle class.
Best way to raise the price of oil is talk of war in the Middle East. Best way to raise the price of food is quantitative easing by the Fed and concentration of land ownership.
The European Union, UN´s IMF and the European Central Bank (ECB) are all supranational creations of international bankers.
They now force austerity in Europe which only makes things worse. There is no growth, and no hope.
As Michael Hudson has stated, financial elite is staging a coup by debt.
After Italy, France will be the next country to lose its sovereignty. More nations will follow soon.
Italy´s debt is 120% of GDP. But this is not a big problem as much of debt is owned by Italians.
The real problem is that Italy does not have a lender of last resort. This is unforgiveable flaw in the euro.
ECB cannot buy Italian bonds indefinitely. Yields on Italian bonds are about hit 7%. The game will be over then.
We should not let global autocratic bureaucracies to directly dictate our affairs.
Banking elite controls media, political parties, intelligence agencies, stock markets and offices of government. It also controls CURRENCIES!
It controls central banks.
Greece is a small country – 2% of EU GDP. Had there been a will to solve its problems, it could have been done a long time a ago
Valery Giscard d´Estaing persuaded European leaders to allow Greece to join the EEC. He, by the way, wrote the constitution of the EU.
Goldman Sachs was paid $300m to hide the Greek government´s level of indebtness.
Globalists will now buy assets of countries like Greece for bargain prices.
United Nations will take over the failed European nations, but the real power will still be in the hands of bankers.
The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) in Basel, Switzerland, is the key to understanding how the world operates.
In order to understand the present and the future, we must first understand the past.
We must understand John Ruskin and his collectivism. We must realise that Cecil Rhodes was his student.
We must read The Open Conspiracy (1928) by H.G. Wells.
We must know who financed LSE. We must understand the difference between Marxism and gradualism of the Fabian Society.
We must also read Arnold Toynbee´s A Study of History.
Democracy and sovereignty are now at stake.
We must change the world for better – not for worse.
Ps. Not surprisingly IMF now wants to print and distribute special drawing rights (SDR).
.
Again, a heartfelt honest piece of writing. And thanks from this Guardian reader. The rest of my comments were yesterday’s.
Re-watching Philip Gould’s interview on Andrew Marr’s Sunday programme from a couple of months ago, on when he explains he knows the curtains are being drawn, I totally agree with him that Blair and Brown would realise in time and recover the brothership between them. The main problem caused between them was the media, and the outing of News International into public circles these days enforces the feeling of the pressure Blair and Brown were under, due to dysfuntional media on the whole, as we now are generally finding. Blair and Brown coped with it differently, Blair bottled it up, giving him no doubt ticker problems, and Brown by throwing a phone across the room. Maybe Blair should try some phone throwing – it might do him good.
Andrew Marr’s show clip here,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKbMzImJptE
I hope it’s a comfort to all who knew Philip Gould that although he’s died at a relatively young age and from a cancer that has as many natural causes (less serious complaints leading on to it) as it has external ones, he had time to reflect on what’s gone before and how much he’s achieved via true grit (2/3 degrees after failing the 11+).
He’d said he was glad to have evolved as he had in the few years since his diagnosis and I think there can be states of grace with or without religion.
Apparently Steve Jobs’s last words were on repeat ‘Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow’; we can hope.
In his recent TV interview his strength and the concept of the deathzone were inspiring. http://wp.me/p1WvzO-h
Can you enlighten me as to why PG ( as well as yourself) were happy to sit behind the politicians, and not get into parliament and thence into high office yourselves?
It is clear that you were both held in higher esteem within the party than the systemically disloyal GB.
Can you please advise, when PG “asked his parents if they could forgo the family holiday so that he could watch the coverage of the US conventions”, where he would have been watching such coverage? I can recall no such coverage at that time, within UK.
And by the way Alastair, calm down, Jimmy Adamson was 82, and I will be fooling myself if I could even reach that far. I remember him as Burnley’s manager, and his difficult time as Leeds manager, when Revie was still even then in the air.
Hard deaths taken, when seem not needed,
bite deeper when you feel life is suceeded.
Three score and ten we are taught promised,
and with any robbed from us, family kissed.
Kissed with rage, kissed with anger, just kissed,
but not again kissed one missed, stolen and just whisk, away.
With Joe Frazier leaving us also, how about some when Harry Carpenter meeting Alii – classic series of clips of how it was for those lads, the triumverate of Ali, Frazier and Foreman,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtCRaYi4meY
Read a few tributes to Philip Gould very moving. From reading two of your diaries, third to start, show the very close bonds made in the work undertaken by the Blair team. Nice to see the feelings of friendship in your writing and the frankness of illness upon those close to you and the support you have given them. Much support to others that learn from reading it and these tributes.
My sympathy to you, Philip’s family and all others that mourn Philips sad passing. Take care of all your Wellbeing. This support helps many others that read it too, Thanks.
This is hardly the place for such suspicion and questioning Richard (whichever one you are).
If it’s any comfort to you I know there was coverage of Pres Kennedy’s campaign. Just call me P for Precocious (or S for Sponge).
As it happens, the Beeb itself confirms what you fail to remember.
Now just shush Rich …
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15598511
.
“In 1960, BBC journalist Ludovic Kennedy travelled to
Levittown, Pennsylvania in advance of the Nixon-Kennedy election.
Reporting for Panorama, Kennedy’s on-the-scene accounts provided an
ideal perspective from which to measure the concerns of a fast-changing
nation.”
To be totally slightly, no doubt, off-topic, Yvette Cooper is starting to look as a heavy-duty minister of the future, even prospective future leader of the Labour Party, and even PM, Balls aside….
Her interview this morning on the beeb with Sian and the “other one”, Bill is it?, was excellent. Clip here,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15650757