sacked after a year, as Mr Blair used his first reshuffle to move them both out of his government. ‘And then I was out for the rest of his time in office,’ Dame Joan says.
After settling back into life on the back benches, she became involved in a series of campaigns. During her time in parliament she twice won the lottery for Private Members’ Bills and was able to introduce two laws, the first banning fly-tipping and the second a requirement on local authorities to introduce curbside recycling:
I ran the modernisation campaign to change the hours in the House, and then I set up, after 9/11, an organisation for Afghan women. I went twice to Afghanistan.
I saw through … laws on fly-tipping. The whole plan was opposed by the Tory government, but eventually I won them round and I got my bill. My recycling bill was opposed by the Labour government.
In 2003, Dame Joan watched aghast as Mr Blair and the Labour government [took Britain] into war in Iraq:
My own view, which proved to be the correct view, of course, was there would be no weapons of mass destruction. There were about three months when we knew how it would end, that we would go to war, and for those three months I couldn’t sleep. I was always, always, always anxious, at times quite distraught, and so angry and frustrated.
I also knew Tony had never travelled significantly before he became Prime Minister, he didn’t have a great knowledge of foreign affairs, and I just thought he would get bad advice and he wouldn’t be able to analyse it. I had this sense of absolute doom. And of course I was totally vindicated.
In 2007, with Blair’s departure from No. 10 and the arrival of Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, the phone call she had thought she would receive a decade earlier finally came:
When it finally happened, the real deal, Gordon was just amazing. He rang and said: ‘Given your interest, Hilary Benn [the new Environment Secretary] would like you to join his environment team.’
So that was terrific. I felt very comfortable as a minister. I became the Minister for Waste, apart from a lot of other things, and I also ended up doing … work on climate change, which was just becoming important.
I was used to travel, I was used to meeting people, I was used to making small talk, but also getting into serious negotiation, so I felt very much at ease with the whole life of a minister dealing with international concerns.
Eventually I was handling the Climate Change Bill. I ended up taking that through Parliament.
And then I ended up taking an energy bill – our last big energy bill – through the House.
So [with] these wonderful portfolios at the end of what was effectively a normal working life, I was getting the very best stimulus, the very best opportunities, I was using every skill I had, every brain cell. I worked 100 hours a week without any sort of real breaks.
As Mr Brown’s time in office drew to a close, Dame Joan was invited to join his top team. For her it was too little, too late. She turned him down, saying she wanted to focus on the Copenhagen climate change talks, which were at a crucial juncture.
To be absolutely honest, people don’t know this [but] I was offered a Cabinet job in the very last months. Somebody moved and it was put to me that I could have it.
I was a Minister of State, I had had an incredibly rewarding time, enormously enjoyed working with Ed Miliband [as Energy and Climate Change Minister] … and I really wanted to see that through.
I thought, for the sake of [being a] former Cabinet minister of ‘yeah she was in that funny department for about three months’ – why would I do that? I didn’t need it.
When the election came, Dame Joan lost her dream job as Mr Brown was booted out of office.
She says:
I never saw the bad side of Gordon. Of course I wouldn’t be as naive as to think it didn’t exist, but I didn’t suffer from it at all. On the contrary, he was very, very good with me.
He clearly
Liz Reinhardt, Steph Campbell