Lord Jenkins of Hillhead: 'Blair sees the world too much as black and white. I see it more in varying shades of grey'

Politican and biographer

Political conversation doesn't come at a higher-octane – or more enjoyable – level than this. When Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, over an early-evening whisky, discusses the relationship between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair he does so as another highly successful Chancellor who wanted to be Prime Minister.

And when he takes issue with the invocation of Churchill by Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, in the context of Iraq, he does so as an eminent historian who wrote a hugely acclaimed biography of the wartime PM. "When I hear Donald Rumsfeld talking about Churchill I'm reminded of that remark of Lloyd Bentsen [to Dan Quayle, 'I knew Jack Kennedy, and you're no Jack Kennedy']. I spent a long time writing on Churchill and I can assure you, Mr Rumsfeld, you're no Winston Churchill."

After Suez – and Lord Jenkins sees Nasser as a better parallel than Hitler to President Saddam – Churchill remarked that he would never have "dared" to embark on the invasion. What's more, the best time for a pre-emptive strike against Hitler was after the Rhineland was remilitarised in 1936. But "Churchill was cautious about that. Because it's difficult for democracies to engage in pre-emptive strikes."

Lord Jenkins, who now looks back with some admiration at Harold Wilson's success in keeping Britain out of Vietnam, sees himself as a "moderate dove" on Iraq. The two cases are different, of course. He hopes that, unlike Vietnam, Iraq, if it happens, won't be drawn out, and that short of "an extraordinary act of incompetence" it won't be lost. "Where I have doubts is what happens in Iraq after a strike. It's rather hard to believe, not entirely excluding the Afghanistan experience, that if you have a change of regime, you will then all live happily ever after."

At once a long-time Atlanticist and a passionate pro-European, he thinks that for much of the past half-century "one of the greatest illusions of British government policy under both parties was that you must keep yourself pure and undefiled by Europe in order to be a happy bride to the Americans. Blair has done well in getting the Americans to go to the UN," he says. "I have never believed in the special relationship, which we've always been keener on than the Americans.

"But I do see a case for being a bridge, a sort of opening for Europe, and even now there is a certain advantage in keeping open the relatively narrow window of American interest in international opinion. That's the strongest case for Blair'spro-Americanism. What the whole Iraq episode explodes so far is that the idea that Blair is a nice man with a vacuous grin and no strong convictions. If anything, it shows that he has almost too strong convictions, he sees the world almost too much as black and white, too much in terms of good and evil. I see the world more in terms of varying shades of grey."

As the Liberal Democrat conference begins, Lord Jenkins is feeling benign towards both his party and its leader. He welcomes the keynote decentralising policy document by Chris Huhne, an MEP, especially as it echoes his own 1979 Dimbleby lecture, which laid the basis for the SDP and which also called for more decision-making to be devolved to parents, patients, residents and consumers. He is philosophical about the fact that the great first-term Lib-Lab project, of which he was a leading proponent, ended in a failure. "Paddy [Ashdown] was right to try that strategy and Charles is right to recognise that that period is over and to do so without plunging into any bitterness against Blair and the Labour government. Charles takes things with calmness and humour. There's quite a lot to be said for both qualities – and they're rather appealing to the electorate."

So, looking back, were he and Ashdown deceived by Blair? "I don't think for a moment he deliberately took us for a ride. A significant remark Paddy made to me was when he friendlily said of Blair, 'He always meant it when he said it'."

Mr Blair and Lord Jenkins had shared the view that the Lib-Lab split in the early years of the century had been "somewhere between a misfortune and a tragedy for the left in British politics" and made the 20th century largely Tory. Whether the Labour Party can reverse that in the 21st century on its own, he says, with a trace of scepticism, "remains to be seen". Mr Blair, he thinks, wanted the Lib-Lab project to succeed "but he's always been fairly cautious in domestic affairs".

Lord Jenkins sees here one of several intriguing parallels with Franklin D Roosevelt, about whom he is preparing a book for an American audience. But wasn't FDR the opposite, boldly ushering in the New Deal and hesitating to take America into the Second World War? Not so. "Given the hostility of the American people to coming in again to a European war, he didn't do too badly. And the New Deal was really a series of improvisations," he says. "First, they both have a great ability to enthuse those who come to see them for half an hour. They go out thinking the world is a better place and they are a more important person than they were when they went in. Both have been brilliant at that. Second, sometimes people misinterpret them because they seem to give more agreement to the proposition of the other person than is really the case. Third, they have a slight capacity to duplicate appointments of people to the same job – like Lord Birt. But none the less, Roosevelt stands as a massive mid- 20th-century figure. Blair hasn't got there yet but it wouldn't surprise me if he did."

It's pretty clear that Lord Jenkins believes British entry to the euro is one key to Blair achieving Rooseveltian greatness. "It will be a great mistake from his own point of view if he gets into a position in which he cannot do the euro in this parliament. It would destroy his self-confidence. I think he recognises it as a great long- term challenge. I don't know whether he's going to be able to do it now. The trouble with Iraq is that it has enormously deflected his attention."

Lord Jenkins is confident that Mr Blair is convinced euro-entry would be in the "national political and economic interest" but worries that "Mr Blair suddenly gets enthusiastic about it and then forgets about it for some time". Here he seizes on the entertaining analogy of a "boring" Catalan dance – "neither erotic nor spectacular" called the sardana in which the dancers hold hands and take one step forward, two steps back, two steps forward, one step back "My view is that Blair's fault [on the euro] is that he is constantly dancing the sardana."

How far, then, is Gordon Brown the main obstacle? Well, he says cautiously, he knows Mr Brown less well than he knows Mr Blair. "Gordon Brown is basically of pro-European orientation and he's a powerful figure. I believe – I'm not alone in this – that the five tests are rather a nonsense. I don't think they have great objective reality. But they have put Gordon Brown in a powerful position, for I don't think you can win a euro referendum with Brown skulking on the sidelines."

And Mr Brown's hopes for the premiership? "He's done well, admittedly in favourable circumstances, in maintaining a strong economy. Most senior politicians tend to be motivated by a good deal of personal ambition. They wouldn't be senior politicians if they weren't. So I don't bitterly criticise him for that."

But about his widely assumed passion to succeed Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Lord Jenkins adds: "He is a powerful Chancellor. He is by far the most powerful personality in the Government apart from Blair. And the Government is in one sense lucky to have two such powerful political figures.

"But if there is one lesson that history shows, it is that there is no slot less rewarding than that of becoming PM at the end of a long period of government by your own party. It nearly always leads to anti- climax – Rosebery after Gladstone; Chamberlain after Baldwin; Eden after Churchill; Alec Home after Macmillan; Major after Thatcher – and I wouldn't exempt Jim Callaghan after Wilson. It's an incredibly strong pattern. Tail end Charlie seems to me not to be a terribly rewarding position.

"I rather wanted to be PM, and I suppose I would have been a tail end Charlie if I had become it. Gordon Brown would do better – I don't underestimate his quality and his power – to settle for having been a dominating Chancellor of the Exchequer rather than for being a tail end Charlie."

Lord Jenkins knows a good deal about the destructive tensions between ideologically like-minded politicians. Giles Radice's gripping new book about the rivalry between Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Tony Crosland brilliantly shows how it damaged the Labour revisionist cause and prevented one of its standard bearers – Jenkins was the likeliest candidate – from becoming leader.

The Radice book says that, after becoming leader, Mr Blair pointedly asked Lord Jenkins to describe the deterioration of his relationship with Crosland after he outstripped him by being Chancellor in 1967. "Tony Crosland was an immensely close friend," Lord Jenkins says now, before pausing to correct himself. "No, I was an immensely close friend of his. He was the senior partner, that was the trouble. That's the parallel with Brown and Blair."

And it was partly on Europe – "the most destructive issue in British politics over the last 50 years in both parties" – that the three men differed. Neither of the other two was as passionately pro-European as was Lord Jenkins. Crosland – mainly – didn't care about the issue as much as he did and "Denis did move about a good deal. He's a most powerful and admirable figure, but I've said before that Denis carried relatively light ideological baggage on a heavy gun carriage. He didn't have deep convictions on the issue but you can't expect people to have deep convictions on every issue. There are some issues on which I don't have deep convictions."

But he clearly agrees with the central thesis of the "fair and generous" Radice book. "It is tolerably true that if we had managed to work together in perfect political amity, the social-democratic or right-of-centre element of the Labour Party would probably have remained dominant." He had been at once the junior of the three and "mainly through luck" the one most likely to succeed at the crucial time. "I absolutely understand how difficult they found that." That he wasn't able to dominate Crosland and Healey as Hugh Gaitskell had earlier dominated Douglas Jay and Frank Soskice was "as much a criticism of me as it is of them".

But then, Lord Jenkins is an inspiritingly undisappointed man. He does not, finally, "in the least regret the SDP adventure" from 1981-87. "One, we came near to spectacular success. That was worth the effort even though we did not quite achieve it. Two, I do not think that the Labour Party would have been dragged back from the wilder shores of lunacy without the shock of the SDP. I had higher hopes than that but at the lowest, we achieved that. He's never directly said that to me, but I doubt if Mr Blair would dissent strongly from that view."