:00:00. > :00:00.Now BBC News it is time for meet the author.
:00:00. > :00:07.Many political memoirs seem rather routine and end up gathering
:00:08. > :00:12.He's just published volume three and the first two
:00:13. > :00:21.The Long and Winding Road covers his transition from trade
:00:22. > :00:23.union leader to Labour MP and, eventually, to Home Secretary.
:00:24. > :00:36.Unlike the earlier books, it's full of insights about politics
:00:37. > :00:39.from the perspective of someone who grew up without any
:00:40. > :00:42.And of course it raises many interesting questions
:00:43. > :00:59.Did you ever think it would stretch to three volumes?
:01:00. > :01:03.Because originally I just wanted to do the childhood memoir.
:01:04. > :01:05.I wanted to be the biographer of my mother, that's
:01:06. > :01:14.She died young, I, of course, was much younger.
:01:15. > :01:17.And kind of making her live again on the page and describing not just
:01:18. > :01:19.what she went through, but the context of that.
:01:20. > :01:23.And so I got to kind of 80,000 words and I'd only reached the age of 18.
:01:24. > :01:25.Then there was interest in the second volume.
:01:26. > :01:27.Then I recognised it would probably be...
:01:28. > :01:33.What's interesting about this, of course, is that it's the story
:01:34. > :01:35.of one life that led you to a very unexpected place.
:01:36. > :01:41.You didn't grow up believing you would ever have a public life.
:01:42. > :01:45.And, in a way, it's the story of a kind that is strangely more
:01:46. > :01:48.difficult to imagine now than it was in your own era.
:01:49. > :01:56.When people ask me, do I think a postman could ever make it
:01:57. > :01:59.into the House of Commons, I say it's less likely.
:02:00. > :02:03.Though we do have a taxi driver, a minor, a gas fitter and all that.
:02:04. > :02:04.It's an extraordinary observation, isn't it?
:02:05. > :02:10.I suppose the difference between me and people like David Blunkett,
:02:11. > :02:12.born blind, his father died when he was five.
:02:13. > :02:15.David Davis never knew his father, born on a council estate.
:02:16. > :02:22.University, I hope, will change higher education,
:02:23. > :02:25.it's not the be all and end all, but it has widened and it's no
:02:26. > :02:29.That will have the opportunity to change other people's lives.
:02:30. > :02:32.To have no qualifications whatsoever and to leave school at 15,
:02:33. > :02:35.which is not a good role model for kids today,
:02:36. > :02:38.as I keep telling them, and then to end up as Home
:02:39. > :02:53.As the reader goes to the story I think one of the things that
:02:54. > :02:56.will be striking is that you talk in many places in the book,
:02:57. > :02:59.as in previous warnings, it's very moving, about your experiences,
:03:00. > :03:01.All the oddities of your family setup.
:03:02. > :03:06.But you do it without any obvious feeling of a chip on the shoulder
:03:07. > :03:16.I think me and my sister, who grew up with me in those
:03:17. > :03:18.difficult circumstances, we haven't got any chips
:03:19. > :03:21.And that's really because I was lucky to have my sister
:03:22. > :03:26.I've had lots of letters and e-mails from people who went through far
:03:27. > :03:28.more difficult times than me and we have this wonderful
:03:29. > :03:30.social worker, Mr Pepper, who stopped us being separated
:03:31. > :03:35.If that had happened there might have been a lot
:03:36. > :03:37.of chips on my shoulder and my sister's shoulder.
:03:38. > :03:40.Really it's the story of someone who was very
:03:41. > :03:47.In a way that many of my colleagues in Parliament...
:03:48. > :03:53.They worked for years to try and get a constituency.
:03:54. > :03:55.It's clearly a story, we know this from the way
:03:56. > :03:57.the first volume sold, clearly a story that does
:03:58. > :04:03.Of course, in this volume, you reach the pinnacle of your time
:04:04. > :04:06.in politics as Home Secretary, one of the three great
:04:07. > :04:11.Of course that comes about at a terribly interesting
:04:12. > :04:17.moment, because it's a couple of years after the transition
:04:18. > :04:19.from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown and you are quite frank
:04:20. > :04:22.about the difficulty of that transition and maybe some
:04:23. > :04:24.of the mistakes that were made at the time.
:04:25. > :04:28.I want to get a sense of how it felt, and how it felt when Gordon
:04:29. > :04:31.took over from Tony was that it had all been handled badly, you know,
:04:32. > :04:34.the pressure on Tony to go when he was going to go anyway
:04:35. > :04:36.before the end of that parliamentary term.
:04:37. > :04:39.But then, to our amazement, the way Gordon caught
:04:40. > :04:40.the public imagination, and we were 15 points
:04:41. > :04:44.I remember, I say in the book, we were at Chequers
:04:45. > :04:47.at the end of the summer saying, this is amazing.
:04:48. > :04:48.What happened was Gordon's indecision about
:04:49. > :04:54.It's a wonder that all those advisers...
:04:55. > :05:01.A missed moment because his reputation for honesty,
:05:02. > :05:03.well-deserved incidentally, and thoroughness, and being more
:05:04. > :05:05.concerned about getting on with the job, you know,
:05:06. > :05:18.At the end of our conference, when we were still whatever,
:05:19. > :05:20.12, 13 points ahead, instead of either saying, we're
:05:21. > :05:23.going to have an election or we're not going to have an election...
:05:24. > :05:26.You think he should have done it, don't you?
:05:27. > :05:29.No, I don't think he should have had an election, I think he should have
:05:30. > :05:31.gone and said, look, for me personally maybe that
:05:32. > :05:34.would be a good thing but I don't think it's good
:05:35. > :05:40.I think for the good of the country I'm going to carry on.
:05:41. > :05:43.I'm not going to call a general election just because it would be
:05:44. > :05:44.politically advantageous for me and the Labour Party.
:05:45. > :05:47.This isn't a book about regrets, it's a book about enormous pride,
:05:48. > :05:54.and it's a book in which you talk about the texture of a life that
:05:55. > :05:56.took you from what I usually called humble beginnings to
:05:57. > :05:59.Just thinking of regrets, you were deeply involved
:06:00. > :06:02.in the referendum campaign, the European referendum campaign.
:06:03. > :06:08.Indeed, you were leading the labour pro-Europe policy.
:06:09. > :06:10.Do you regret not putting more into that?
:06:11. > :06:16.Given the view you take on the European question?
:06:17. > :06:19.I think we put everything we could into it.
:06:20. > :06:22.Of course, I wouldn't say we ran a perfect campaign, but we got 66%
:06:23. > :06:26.I think it should have been 74%, not 66%.
:06:27. > :06:35.The problem there was all Cameron's, from first to last.
:06:36. > :06:39.I don't know if there will be a future volume from you on politics
:06:40. > :06:41.or on yourself, but where do you think the current state
:06:42. > :06:52.Well, now that we've had Jeremy Corbyn's re-election again,
:06:53. > :06:59.What we can't afford is for Labour not being capable of winning
:07:00. > :07:03.an election, becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
:07:04. > :07:07.We've got to get Jeremy Corbyn that, for all kinds of reasons.
:07:08. > :07:15.For all kinds of reasons, I don't want to go back to a period
:07:16. > :07:18.that I described there, actually, I lived through it in the trade
:07:19. > :07:20.union movement, when our motto seemed to be "No compromise
:07:21. > :07:23.There is nothing new about what Jeremy
:07:24. > :07:31.I just think it doesn't take account of Britain in the modern world
:07:32. > :07:33.and doesn't take account of working people and the lives
:07:34. > :07:37.They are not the huddled masses of 1900.
:07:38. > :07:40.I think when in fact, if we get that right,
:07:41. > :07:42.I think there's an enormous opportunity for social,
:07:43. > :07:43.democratic socialism, in the 21st-century.
:07:44. > :07:47.Under him?
:07:48. > :07:52.In the sense that I don't want to lose another election.
:07:53. > :08:11.Hello there, during the first week of October we saw temperatures
:08:12. > :08:13.slightly above average for the time of year and as we head