Interview: Peter Wilby, New Statesman (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
AS Tony Blair prepares for a make-or-break 24 hours next week, the editor of Labour's traditional house journal is keen to offer some advice. "The time has come for Blair to go," Peter Wilby suggests bluntly from his cluttered New Statesman office. "It's pretty clear he was behind the decision to name David Kelly, and he hasn't told the whole truth about it, though I don't suppose you can blame him for someone's suicide. But when a Prime Minister has made such a catastrophic misjudgment on such an important thing as war, telling what proved to be lies and getting it so wrong, he really should leave the stage."
Wilby's increasingly strident anti-Blair polemics will be familiar to the 25,000 people who buy the New Statesman each week. But now, with the PM facing a crucial vote on top-up fees just hours before receiving the Hutton Report, its editor thinks his "Blair must go" campaign is ready for a wider audience.
"After a decent interval, I hope Blair will say, 'I think it's best to hand over to another,' acknowledging perhaps that he was wrong about weapons of mass destruction," he says with evident relish. " Alternatively, he can just say that his stomach ache has got worse."
The New Statesman and Number 10 have not seen eye to eye for a while. Since it was acquired eight years ago by Geoffrey Robinson, the former Paymaster-General, for £375,000, the Staggers has widely been seen as the voice of Gordon Brown's camp in its struggle against the Blairites. Periodic rumours surface that Blair's friends - typically the writer Robert Harris and Nick Butler, an executive at BP, Labour's favourite oil company - are close to buying the magazine, or that Wilby, editor for six years, is about to be sacked. While he survives, the former editor of The Independent on Sunday remains one of Blair's more outspoken critics.
Today, he is accusing Blair of " polluting the whole New Labour project" over Iraq, finding it quite extraordinary that Blair "has got away as easily as he has".
Although he actually supports top-up fees, he believes resentment over the war will lead plenty of Labour backbenchers to vote against Blair next week simply "to show their opposition to and disapproval of him. He just has to go." Gordon Brown, not surprisingly, is the man Wilby credits with the vision to take Labour forward.
Wilby, 59, grins when he shares information "from people quite close to Blair" that the PM has had enough. Still, he is apparently not influential enough to have met Blair in person since around 2001. Their last discussion, he says, was perfectly friendly - "he tried to convince me there's no spin in his government, I tried to convince him that public sector workers required better funding". Brown, on the other hand, often invites Wilby to social events; his wife, Sarah Macaulay, used to publicise the magazine. "But the idea that I take instructions from Gordon Brown is complete nonsense," he insists. "So is the idea that I take instructions from Geoffrey," who "only occasionally" passes comment on its contents.
Rumours that the magazine is up for sale, and that Wilby's days are numbered, have been circulating for as long as he has been editor. "If I took them seriously I'd have taken myself out and shot myself long ago," he says. "I just ignore them." He feels certain where the rumours start - most recently, press reports suggesting that Polly Toynbee and John Kampfner were among those in line for his job.
"From time to time, Number 10 tries to get me out and they start briefing against me," he says. "They're generally attempting to destabilise me, but I'm too old and have been around for too long for it to work." HOW does he know it comes from Number 10? "You learn to recognise it. Various things are said to my staff or my chairman that get back to me. One assumes Peter Mandelson's hand is behind it." On one occasion, he says, Tony Blair was personally involved in a plot to force Robinson to sell.
Robert Harris, who says he has no current interest in acquiring the magazine, laughs off any suggestion that Downing Street might care about what the New Statesman says. "The Daily Mail maybe, but this sounds like folie de grandeur," he says. "I should think Tony Blair is more concerned who the next Downing Street cat is than who the next editor of the New Statesman will be. I don't think the Statesman has recovered its authority since Anthony Howard was editor in the Seventies."
Howard, for his part, believes that Wilby "has made a very good editor" after his predecessor, Ian Hargreaves, "absolutely muffed it" by appealing to "policy wonks", but concedes, "I don't think as editor of the New Statesman you bring down governments."
Is there really still a need for the New Statesman? "Clearly 25,000 people think there is a need for a publication uncompromisingly to the left of New Labour, without being loony left," Wilby says. Besides, it continues to discover "new and fresh talent" such as Bee Wilson and Johann Hari, and runs reflective longer articles that otherwise would not be seen. The New Statesman, he says, is now making a small profit, which may be boosted if it succeeds in reclaiming money it paid out over John Major's 1993 libel action. The budget squeeze may explain Wilby's avowed appetite for "mischief " which he knows will draw free publicity (a category that may well include giving provocative interviews).
Does he really believe that Blair will quit? Wilby sits back. "Prime Ministers in office are very difficult to oust, but I'd hope that Blair at some stage during the year recognises the strength of the argument I've outlined. I'd have thought July." And what of Wilby's own future, the subject, too, of much speculation? "I shall step aside when the chairman wants me to," he says with a smile. "I won't have to be dragged away kicking and screaming."
(Evening Standard, January 21 2004)
AS Tony Blair prepares for a make-or-break 24 hours next week, the editor of Labour's traditional house journal is keen to offer some advice. "The time has come for Blair to go," Peter Wilby suggests bluntly from his cluttered New Statesman office. "It's pretty clear he was behind the decision to name David Kelly, and he hasn't told the whole truth about it, though I don't suppose you can blame him for someone's suicide. But when a Prime Minister has made such a catastrophic misjudgment on such an important thing as war, telling what proved to be lies and getting it so wrong, he really should leave the stage."
Wilby's increasingly strident anti-Blair polemics will be familiar to the 25,000 people who buy the New Statesman each week. But now, with the PM facing a crucial vote on top-up fees just hours before receiving the Hutton Report, its editor thinks his "Blair must go" campaign is ready for a wider audience.
"After a decent interval, I hope Blair will say, 'I think it's best to hand over to another,' acknowledging perhaps that he was wrong about weapons of mass destruction," he says with evident relish. " Alternatively, he can just say that his stomach ache has got worse."
The New Statesman and Number 10 have not seen eye to eye for a while. Since it was acquired eight years ago by Geoffrey Robinson, the former Paymaster-General, for £375,000, the Staggers has widely been seen as the voice of Gordon Brown's camp in its struggle against the Blairites. Periodic rumours surface that Blair's friends - typically the writer Robert Harris and Nick Butler, an executive at BP, Labour's favourite oil company - are close to buying the magazine, or that Wilby, editor for six years, is about to be sacked. While he survives, the former editor of The Independent on Sunday remains one of Blair's more outspoken critics.
Today, he is accusing Blair of " polluting the whole New Labour project" over Iraq, finding it quite extraordinary that Blair "has got away as easily as he has".
Although he actually supports top-up fees, he believes resentment over the war will lead plenty of Labour backbenchers to vote against Blair next week simply "to show their opposition to and disapproval of him. He just has to go." Gordon Brown, not surprisingly, is the man Wilby credits with the vision to take Labour forward.
Wilby, 59, grins when he shares information "from people quite close to Blair" that the PM has had enough. Still, he is apparently not influential enough to have met Blair in person since around 2001. Their last discussion, he says, was perfectly friendly - "he tried to convince me there's no spin in his government, I tried to convince him that public sector workers required better funding". Brown, on the other hand, often invites Wilby to social events; his wife, Sarah Macaulay, used to publicise the magazine. "But the idea that I take instructions from Gordon Brown is complete nonsense," he insists. "So is the idea that I take instructions from Geoffrey," who "only occasionally" passes comment on its contents.
Rumours that the magazine is up for sale, and that Wilby's days are numbered, have been circulating for as long as he has been editor. "If I took them seriously I'd have taken myself out and shot myself long ago," he says. "I just ignore them." He feels certain where the rumours start - most recently, press reports suggesting that Polly Toynbee and John Kampfner were among those in line for his job.
"From time to time, Number 10 tries to get me out and they start briefing against me," he says. "They're generally attempting to destabilise me, but I'm too old and have been around for too long for it to work." HOW does he know it comes from Number 10? "You learn to recognise it. Various things are said to my staff or my chairman that get back to me. One assumes Peter Mandelson's hand is behind it." On one occasion, he says, Tony Blair was personally involved in a plot to force Robinson to sell.
Robert Harris, who says he has no current interest in acquiring the magazine, laughs off any suggestion that Downing Street might care about what the New Statesman says. "The Daily Mail maybe, but this sounds like folie de grandeur," he says. "I should think Tony Blair is more concerned who the next Downing Street cat is than who the next editor of the New Statesman will be. I don't think the Statesman has recovered its authority since Anthony Howard was editor in the Seventies."
Howard, for his part, believes that Wilby "has made a very good editor" after his predecessor, Ian Hargreaves, "absolutely muffed it" by appealing to "policy wonks", but concedes, "I don't think as editor of the New Statesman you bring down governments."
Is there really still a need for the New Statesman? "Clearly 25,000 people think there is a need for a publication uncompromisingly to the left of New Labour, without being loony left," Wilby says. Besides, it continues to discover "new and fresh talent" such as Bee Wilson and Johann Hari, and runs reflective longer articles that otherwise would not be seen. The New Statesman, he says, is now making a small profit, which may be boosted if it succeeds in reclaiming money it paid out over John Major's 1993 libel action. The budget squeeze may explain Wilby's avowed appetite for "mischief " which he knows will draw free publicity (a category that may well include giving provocative interviews).
Does he really believe that Blair will quit? Wilby sits back. "Prime Ministers in office are very difficult to oust, but I'd hope that Blair at some stage during the year recognises the strength of the argument I've outlined. I'd have thought July." And what of Wilby's own future, the subject, too, of much speculation? "I shall step aside when the chairman wants me to," he says with a smile. "I won't have to be dragged away kicking and screaming."
(Evening Standard, January 21 2004)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, January 21, 2004
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