Standing Down by Rosa Prince Page A

began again: ‘If you have this sense of obligation to make the world better and create possibility for people, it can sometimes be quite inconvenient, because it’s always there.’
    In 1992 Dame Tessa got her revenge for Ilford North, overturning a tiny Conservative majority to be elected MP for Dulwich.
    Although she was thrilled to have won, the news was not so good for Labour elsewhere in the country, as John Major defied the odds to win the Tories’ fourth victory in a row:
    The next day we had a bus that went round the constituency to say thank you to people and it was clearly a discordant thing to have done because people’s faces were looking up not quite understanding what this bus-load of people that appeared to be celebrating was about.
    If election night was one of mixed emotions, arriving at the Commons on her first day was pure joy:
    I remember walking through with someone who was a very dear friend of mine, Bridget Prentice, who was the newly elected MP for Lewisham East, and we walked together through the door into the members’ entrance.
    We just stood there before we walked in and we linked arms. She’s Scottish and I grew up in Scotland, and we just said: ‘See us, hen!’ That was a lovely moment.
    Glenda [Jackson, the actor and MP for Hampstead & Kilburn] was elected at the same time and Glenda and I shared a room and we had to have some pretty heavy negotiation about her smoking.
    I felt in the early few months overwhelmed by it really, overawed by it, by the responsibility to the people I represent. I’ve always had that sense of profound connection to the people I represent.
    Despite her early nerves, within six months Dame Tessa began to feel restless and was determined to attract the attention of the party’s leadership.
    She made her mark in a debate just before Christmas of 1992. After spending a night touring a number of Accident and Emergency departments in London hospitals, she reported on what she had seen of one of the first NHS ‘winter crises’ to a rapt House of Commons.
    An early misstep – supporting the candidacy of Bryan Gould in the 1992 leadership election over the more left-wing John Smith – proved to be an unconsciously canny move when Mr Smith died unexpectedly and the modernising Tony Blair came to power.
    Although Dame Tessa denies being ambitious, she did want to get on, and was delighted to be offered a post in the shadow health team: ‘I didn’t come in and think, “Right, I’m going to be leader of the party, I’m going to be in the shadow Cabinet before anybody else.” I wanted to use this extraordinary platform that I had. That was essentially what drove me.’
    As the 1997 election approached, and with New Labour on course for a landslide, it was natural that Dame Tessa was hoping to become a minister:
    All the indications were that I was going to be a minister. I never quite believed it until it actually did happen.
    I remember election day in 1997 so well. The sun was shining, there was the most palpable sense of optimism. I remember going all round my constituency with a loud hailer and people waving and clapping their hands.
    It was a day of extraordinary optimism and hope and change and a future.
    The call from Mr Blair inviting her to join the government, however, did not come for four long days:
    It was my daughter’s birthday, so she had a horrible birthday because I was on the phone all the time. He was never very chatty in these moments, he said: ‘I’d like you to do public health, and Alan [Milburn, the future Health Secretary] is going to do the NHS and I’d like you to work closely together, and remember you’re modernisers.’
    The other truly wonderful thing was working with Frank Dobson [the Health Secretary]. Dear Frank. Frank had a team of modernisers and we all absolutely adored him.
    In those days we were so passionate about what we were doing. It was an amazing time, actually.
    I remember the day I opened my first red