PHILIP GOULD:POLITICAL ADVISER and pollster Philip Gould, Lord Gould of Brookwood, who has died of cancer aged 61, was instrumental in the rise of New Labour in Britain. He was among the closest and most valued advisers to Tony Blair during his years as leader of the opposition and British prime minister.
To those who accused Labour of being too readily influenced by the wealthy, the City, the conservatives and the celebrities, Gould was the answer. He kept the party in touch with the opinions of a much more representative segment of British society, the hard-working majority.
Gould was born in Beddington, south London and joined the party at the age of 15, while still a pupil at a secondary modern school near Woking in Surrey. Gould failed his 11-plus and left school at 16 with one O-level.
His experience in an education system that seemed to discourage ambition made him a passionate opponent of selection. It also left him determined to get the university education his teachers had said was not for pupils like him.
After five years in unfulfilling employment, during which time he was also to be found at many a 1960s political demonstration and rock concert, he returned to full-time education at East London College, Leytonstone, where he took four A-levels.
The opportunity to go to university was now open to him and his fascination with the political process was reflected in his choice of course. He went on to graduate with a BA in politics from Sussex University before securing a master’s in political theory at the London School of Economics.
At university he met Gail Rebuck, whom he married in 1985. After trying his hand in advertising, he added a degree from the London Business School to his curriculum vitae and founded his own political consultancy, Philip Gould Associates. Peter Mandelson, whom he had first met a year previously, was now Labour’s director of communications. He gave Gould his first consultancy contract and a significant political partnership was born.
At Mandelson’s request, Gould co-ordinated the Shadow Communications Agency, a network of professionals offering their advice free to a cash-strapped party. The left, more influential then than in recent years, hated the results, but the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock, desperate for power, supported the new, slicker, more voter-friendly approach to political communications. It came to be symbolised by the red rose.
Private opinion polling was nothing new, but the systematic use of focus groups – small, representative samples of a target section of the electorate brought together and questioned at length – was. By the time of the 1987 election, Gould was conducting both kinds of survey at least once a day.
He continued to work for Kinnock throughout the next five years. When Kinnock eventually resigned, Gould too was out in the cold. John Smith, who replaced Kinnock, had little time for Gould, Mandelson or the other self-proclaimed “modernisers”.
Gould wasn’t wanted in London but he was wanted in Little Rock, Arkansas, where Bill Clinton was on the road to the White House and wanted to learn from Labour’s experience. But when Gould returned to the UK and started to argue privately and publicly for the “Clintonisation” of Labour, he was told by Smith that he was being disruptive. Gould was frozen out by the leader’s office, but two of the party’s most senior figures were much more receptive to his ideas – Gordon Brown, the shadow chancellor, and the home affairs spokesman, Tony Blair.
Like many, he was shocked and saddened by Smith’s sudden death in May 1994, but in it he saw the opportunity finally to bring about a radical transformation of the party. Gould supported Blair from the outset, and started to bombard him with polling and focus group evidence and long memos, replete with strategic advice.
Blair won the leadership with ease, but Gould was there constantly to remind him that winning power in the country was still anything but certain.
Gould set up a new transatlantic agency with two Clinton advisers, Stan Greenberg and James Carville, and took time off only to complete his book, The Unfinished Revolution (1998), which became a bible for how to win elections. His critics, and he had many, believed his strategy amounted to little more than telling the voters what they wanted to hear.
Thanks to his marriage to Rebuck, who became the chief executive of Random House, he was a very wealthy man, although there was little evidence of that in his appearance or his manner. He could be scatty and disorganised.
His elevation to the peerage as Lord Gould of Brookwood in 2004 was in recognition of 20 years of service to the modernisation of Labour. Although he was rare among Blair’s team in keeping good relations with Brown, his influence diminished after the change of leadership in 2007.
As Brown defied his expectations and Labour’s popularity rose markedly, Gould became a strong advocate of an early election in the autumn of 2007. He was brought in secretly to help plan the “election that never was” and was appalled when it was called off at the last minute.
Although close to both Milibands, he again supported David in last year’s leadership election. With Ed Miliband’s election, he said the arc of New Labour had come to its end. The new leader would have to find his own way to the centre ground on which all elections are won.
Gould’s political loyalty was surpassed only by his loyalty to family and friends. To the wider public, he was largely unknown except, perhaps, by reputation. His role was to advise, not to perform. When he spoke publicly in recent months about his cancer and of finding himself in what he called “a different place”, one from which he could never go back, there was no hint of self-pity. He sought, as he always had, an understanding of the predicament and an analysis of how to respond to it.
Gail and their daughters, Georgia and Grace survive him.
Philip Gould,Lord Gould of Brookwood: born March 30th, 1950; died November 6th, 2011