We meet Ruth Kelly in the lobby of an obscure hotel in Pimlico, Central
London. It is only an hour after the reshuffle has begun, but she has
already had to give up her ministerial office, her red boxes, her notepaper
and her car. Her advisers have gone home for the weekend and she has spent
the past half hour trying to buy her mobile phone number from the Department
of Transport.
Her children are finding it hard to get used to their mother losing her
driver. “They knew him as part of the family. In fact, my daughter said to
me the other day, ‘What's going to happen to Brian? We like him'.” But after
11 years “on the treadmill” of politics, as she puts it, she is thriving on
her new-found freedom. “It's slightly thrilling. I have just come down from
Bolton. I got off the train at Euston and actually used my Oyster card - I
had to top it up,” she says. “It was fantastic, wonderful, liberating. I
suddenly knew that what I have done is right for me.”
There was an air of mystery surrounding Kelly's resignation. When her
departure was announced at 3am in a hotel lobby during the Labour Party
conference, no one knew whether she had jumped or been bumped off by the
Downing Street mafia. It was said that she had been unhappy about Gordon
Brown's leadership and there was speculation that she was part of a Blairite
coup involving her former boyfriend, David Miliband. It seemed incredible
that she could actually be standing down to spend more time with her family.
When she won her seat she was already pregnant with her first child; by the
time she became the youngest woman to join the Cabinet, she had four
children under the age of 10. She appeared effortlessly to juggle harp
lessons, piano practice and ballet with White Papers, government Bills and
election campaigns.
But as she begins to talk, it becomes apparent that she had been feeling
increasingly desperate that she wasn't seeing enough of her children. “My
eldest is 11 and the youngest is 5. It was as much about me as it was them.
I suddenly realised that if I blinked, they would have left. You can't turn
the clock back; they would have grown up.”
The children had kept asking her to spend more time with them. “When they are
young, they can't talk so they don't ask those questions. But as they get
older they start to notice that other people's mums meet them at the school
gates. They didn't say, ‘You have to give up your job'. They just said that
I wasn't there enough. I felt it, too.”
It wasn't a single event, more a slow realisation that there were different
ways of living life, she says. “When I was Education Secretary I published
four White Papers, prepared the manifesto and had a child aged 1. I wasn't
sleeping. When they are younger it is the sleep issue, but when they're
older they need you around more. I want to be able to chat to them about
what has happened in the day.”
Even when she was in the Cabinet she always tried to be there before the
children left for school in the morning. But, she says, “at any moment a
crisis could blow up and then my life could be turned upside-down for days,
if not weeks, on end. If I was doing anything of significance in the
department then I was leaving at 6am.” At one point - during a scandal over
suspected paedophiles in schools - her house was surrounded by photographers
for a fortnight. “The children found it exciting,” she says. But she began
to feel that work was intruding the whole time.
Although, as a politician, she had to visit lots of schools, it was always a
struggle to get to her children's events during the week. “I missed the
nativity play for my youngest last Christmas. I was stuck on the motorway
during the last parents' evening. I minded deeply that it was just my
husband going to things. It is different for a woman. I wanted to be at
things myself.”
She would try to get home in time to read bedtime stories but says: “It often
wasn't possible.” As a junior minister, she refused to take her red boxes
home but, she admits, when she joined the Cabinet, “that was no longer an
option”. She once did an interview while giving her baby a bath. “I've had
Gordon on the phone with a child crying outside the door. I had a 20-minute
conversation with Tony while walking back from the park with one of the
little ones in the pushchair.” It was, she says, a constant balancing act
but, unlike many women, she didn't feel that she was floundering on all
fronts.
“The children were very proud. They were always excited when I was in the
news. On the day that my resignation was announced they didn't know whether
it was more exciting that I was going to spend more time with them or that I
was on the front page of the free Crossrail newspaper that was being handed
out to every child in their school.” Her husband, Derek Gadd, a local
government official, has, she says, “made great sacrifices” to enable her to
pursue her career. He does all the cooking and food shopping. “Derek is
incredible, astonishing, I really look forward to spending time with him, he
deserves it. I can give him some support now,” she says.
They have relied on their nanny. “She comes in at 8am and leaves after 7pm.
She has been with us for eight years and often works weekends.”
Kelly is the disciplinarian in the household - as a minister she would check
the children's homework late at night after reading through her red boxes.
The day after she returned from the Labour Party conference, having
confirmed that she was about to resign, she was up at dawn overseeing music
practice. Her children attend the Guildhall School of Music on Saturdays, as
well as taking ballet, gym and drama classes.
After 11 years as an MP, she wasn't unhappy in her job. “Transport really
suited me, which is the paradox of the situation, but it was just trying to
be a good constituency MP and a Cabinet minister and a mum; it's a lot.”
It's harder, she believes, for women to be separated for long hours from
their children than for men.
“I have very strong maternal instincts; most women do, which makes it harder.
There's a really strong pull there. When I was selected as a candidate in
1996 I wasn't married, I didn't have children. I couldn't possibly have
foreseen what the future held.” Until the next election she will continue as
MP for Bolton West, but has no idea what she will do after that - although
she is not going to throw away all her suits, just in case.
“First, I want to enjoy being around more with the children. It's not quality
time, I want to hang out with them even if I am at the computer or pottering
around the house.” She won't miss the office politics or socialising. “I
have never attended an unnecessary reception in 11 years. I did go into the
tearoom, but I never hung around bars.”
She doesn't think that her male colleagues were sexist, but she does think
that women are treated more harshly by the press. “I became very
thick-skinned there was so much of it: my looks, my family, my age. I had no
time when my children were young to blow-dry my hair, I was getting through
each day. I had a huge amount of adrenalin during that time, but it's not
the life I would choose for myself for ever.”
The criticism of her decision to send her son to a private school specialising
in dyslexia did not bother her much. “I was convinced that I was doing the
right thing so I didn't care what anybody said.” She was, however, disturbed
to be attacked over her faith. A devout Roman Catholic, she confirms for the
first time that she is a member of Opus Dei, the sect that was popularised
in the book The Da Vinci Code. “I am a member of Opus Dei, it's just part of
my faith. It's a type of spirituality that is to me completely normal. Faith
isn't just about going to church on Sundays; it's about trying to live your
life to your best.”
Some followers of Opus Dei use “self-mortification” - including flagellation
or wearing a spiked garter - to remind themselves of the suffering of
Christ, but Kelly says: “I hadn't heard of those things until they were in
the papers. People should accept that politicians have faith.”
Although she opposes the Government's proposals on stem-cell research, she
says that this had nothing to do with her resignation because the
legislation is subject to a free vote. “People set up this big conflict
between reason and faith. I don't believe that it exists. I think that faith
is completely rational. The debate in Britain has become incredibly
secularised. Religion is seen as something a bit strange, in the margins.
Politics is much the poorer for that because you want people who believe in
things to go into politics.”
It may be because Kelly has retained an idealism about politics that she was
horrified by some of the briefings coming out of No 10 against ministers -
including her. It was a “Downing Street source” who told the BBC during the
Labour conference that she was about to leave the Cabinet, forcing her to
confirm earlier than she had intended that she was planning to stand down.
“There is a lack of co-ordination at No 10, and that has been a real problem,”
she says. “Negative briefing is really destructive. It damages the trust
that you need in politics.” Cabinet ministers have not, however, been
entirely positive themselves when speaking privately about Brown in recent
months. Kelly denies that she was part of a plot to get rid of the Prime
Minister. “Of course, I talk to my Cabinet colleagues, but I have always
been 100 per cent clear that my decision was for family reasons,” she adds.
David Miliband, with whom she had a relationship while at Oxford University,
is still a very good friend. Does she think that he blew his chances of
inheriting the crown at the conference last month? “Life is so unfair
sometimes. I don't think that, in the end, things will be determined by
bananas. David is a great talent. He is very clear-thinking, he has got a
clear vision of how Labour should develop, he has got good, progressive
ideas. I think that he is one of several people who has got what it takes to
be leader.”
At the moment, however, she thinks that Brown is the right man to be in
charge. “Gordon was an outstanding Chancellor and he has got the qualities
that we need now. The world has changed in the past fortnight. Gordon has
regained the permission of the electorate to be heard.”
The reshuffle that followed her resignation was, in her view, inspired. “It
was imaginative and creative and does a lot to balance the Cabinet. He has
brought people back together in a way that they can support the new Labour
project. No one is going to talk about Blairites and Brownites now.”
Kelly's main concern is that her party is going to go back to the old Labour
comfort zone. “We have to resist any urge to shift to the left. That's
fundamental to our survival as a political party. If we go to the left, we
will lose all credibility, we will lose relevance. The Labour Party has to
represent aspirational middle-class voters as well as our core voters.”
After 11 years fighting for her beliefs, she is not going to give up
completely, she just wants time to consider how to rebalance her life. “I've
managed to do more than I ever thought possible, but it's time to take a
step back,” she says. “I think that I'll take the river boat home.”
The juggling act
January 2005 Rejects calls to quit after confirming that she receives
'spiritual guidance' from the controversial sect Opus Dei
April 2005 Is hit by an egg thrown by a Fathers 4 Justice activist in
Bolton. The next year she is ‘egged' again as she leaves the court hearing
of the first protester
May 2006 Moves to post of Communities Secretary. Is criticised again
after reports that she is willing to exempt faith group adoption agencies
from placing children with same-sex couples
January 2007 Admits that she is moving her dyslexic son from a state
school to a £15,000-a-year specialist one
July 2007 Gordon Brown makes her Transport Secretary
November 2007 Apologises for spending her communications allowance on a
newsletter
July 2008 Does not attend Gordon Brown's key vote on embryology and IVF
September 24, 2008 Resigns to spend more time with her family
