John Rentoul: Romantic defeat led to deep and long friendship

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Blair confidante quits after 13 years to join BP

One of Tony Blair's outstanding assets as a politician is the loyalty he inspired in people he knew in his earlier life. Even as a raucous schoolboy rebel or a teenage rock promoter, his charm won out and he managed not to offend. Irritate, sometimes. But what is striking is the favourable impression he managed to leave behind at an age when most normal youths are at their most obnoxious.

Of all the relationships forged in his youth, the most enduring has been that with Anji Hunter, whom he first met when she was a rebellious 15-year-old about to be expelled from her Scottish boarding school and he was in the sixth form at his Scottish boarding school. They both stayed overnight at a party at the grand house of a mutual friend.

There was a romantic interest, as Mr Blair once lightly acknowledged – "It was my first defeat" – but they insist they never went out with each other. Instead, and especially when the friendship deepened at Oxford – Ms Hunter was sent to a girls' sixth-form college where she took her A-levels while Mr Blair studied for his law degree at St John's College – they have been more like brother and sister.

Ms Hunter was said to have been almost "protective" towards Mr Blair at Oxford: he went out with Suzie Parsons, another girl at the sixth-form college; she went out with Mark Ellen, the bass guitarist for the Ugly Rumours, the band for which Blair was lead singer.

She did not go to work for Mr Blair until 12 years later, when, having married and had children, she helped out in his office part-time after the 1987 election. Mr Blair was then just breaking into the visible part of the political spectrum, having been appointed Labour's spokesman on City and consumer affairs. Something clicked and, the following year, Mr Blair hired her as his adviser just before he was elected to the Shadow Cabinet and appointed Labour's energy spokesman.

It was no coincidence that Ms Hunter's arrival coincided with Mr Blair's increasingly disciplined self-presentation as a rising politician to be taken seriously. Gone were the overexcited and sometimes histrionic Commons performances exposing an unformed leftism. Gone was the barrister's briefcase embossed with his initials, ACLB.

She and Mr Blair seemed to understand the iconography of power: that the modern statesman never wears a coat or carries his own luggage. (Although he did, in a post-modern twist, carry it the other day on one of his travels). She arranged his itinerary, and decided who got to see him and who did not, but she was more than a mere gatekeeper. She was always a political adviser too, with a good understanding, not just of the electoral politics of Middle England but of media management. Because she never came across as a political hack – although she is politically committed – she could reach the parts of the press that most spin doctors could not reach.

Her struggle for a role in the Government carried echoes of Baroness Falkender's friction with the Civil Service under Harold Wilson, but Downing Street had changed dramatically since the Seventies, and she was part of the huge "special adviserdom" of political appointees that Mr Blair imported in 1997.

Mr Blair valued her advice, and persuaded her to stay when she considered leaving during his first term – an offer was said to have been made by Buckingham Palace, impressed by her handling of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. But her role as gatekeeper and personal fixer was inevitably squeezed by the formal civil service machinery supporting a prime minister.

John Rentoul is the author of 'Tony Blair: Prime Minister'; paperback edition published by Warner; price £9.99.