Jack Straw, Labour’s ‘trust tsar’

On life after Blair, who ‘will go well before the next election’

For a man supposedly humiliated by his move last month from the Foreign Office, Jack Straw shows every sign of enjoying life. The new Leader of the House is following a path trodden by Geoffrey Howe and Robin Cook. Both men concede in their memoirs that they considered resigning before taking the junior post. Lord Howe even laments that his new staff was ‘no larger in total number than the private office alone in either of my previous jobs’.

While admitting to ‘culture shock’, Mr Straw takes a more stoical view. ‘You can’t do Foreign Secretary for ever,’ he says. ‘If you’ve been on duty for nine years [including his stint as Home Secretary] absolutely solidly night and day, Christmas, Boxing Day, the works, you have to stop at some stage. I would have preferred to have done it for a further year, but I was conscious of the fact that it was taking its toll.’

I ask if it is true that he had pneumonia earlier this year, and he is taken aback. ‘How did you know that? You’re the only journalist who’s asked me. I had pneumonia in February, managed to keep it quiet. I was poorly. I take a lot of effort with my health. I was away for a week, which is unheard of for me. It was horrible, it was absolutely horrible.’

In Mr Straw’s case, the office of Leader of the House has been considerably beefed up. He will be responsible for Lords reform and the promised overhaul of party funding, cleaning up the system and generally reinvigorating the polity. In short, the 59-year-old MP for Blackburn — the student firebrand turned elder statesman — has become New Labour’s ‘trust tsar’. High on his list of priorities is making the legislative process ‘more effective, which inevitably means giving more bite to Parliament’.