Ex-Minister who was tipped to replace Brown happy to leave race to others

ONE man is glad he will not be on the stage in Manchester late this afternoon, when Labour finally ends its four-month leadership campaign.

Three years ago Alan Johnson narrowly missed out on becoming Deputy Leader so he knows what the leadership hopefuls will be going through.

Whenever plotters circled around Gordon Brown at Number 10, Mr Johnson was tipped as the man who could step into the breach, although he never agitated for it himself.

But when Mr Brown finally quit Mr Johnson quickly ruled himself out and backed David Miliband.

He does not regret it for "a single moment", remarking how the contest "dragged on" for too long and how he hopes to make his contribution by standing for the shadow cabinet again.

"You've got to be really committed to 10, 15 years of front line politics and as I've already had 25 years of public life and 11 years as a Minister I wasn't ready to commit to that. I'd have been found out very quickly if I'd gone for the job without that kind of commitment. Thank God we've had a really good field of candidates."

Barring major shocks, one of the Miliband brothers – David, the Shadow Foreign Secretary or Ed, the Energy Secretary and Doncaster North MP – will become leader today.

Mr Johnson backed David because he is "the man with the vision" and has been willing to face up to facts. He believes him to be "head and shoulders the man for the job".

"It was a bad defeat," he says of the general election. "We have to win back people who voted Cons in the South and South East, we have to win back middle class people who deserted us for the Lib Dems and we have to win working class votes and restore the trust with our core supporters in heartlands like Yorkshire."

Despite accepting the scale of the defeat in May, the Hull West and Hessle MP says the party has emerged in reasonable shape.

"We haven't descended into a vitriol of the last time we were ejected from Government in '79, we've not fallen into the culture of betrayal," he says. "We have done a little bit of trashing our record but not much – it was a good record."

But all eyes will be on what happens next. Will the Miliband brotherly bond remain as strong as before Ed decided to stand against David? Will the Blair-Brown tensions be re-lived through David Miliband and Ed Balls, who emerged through the rival camps?

"We stand now, poised on the brink of a new era and I think it's a really important era because that's the end of the Blair-Brown era," says Mr Johnson, who insists that there has been no "collective sigh of relief" at returning to opposition.

"I think the party will be unforgiving of anyone who tried to return to the TB-GBs (the phrase given to clashes between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown]. Sometimes it was creative tension but often, as we're reading in the books. it was destructive."

One issue where he is critical of two of the leadership rivals – the two Eds – is on their attack on tuition fees in favour of a Graduate Tax, which would see them paying a percentage of income later on. As Education Secretary at the time, he was responsible for pushing through tuition fees, with the Government only narrowly surviving a huge parliamentary rebellion.

"I like the two lads dearly, but I can't understand why they are pushing the Graduate Tax and even going further in suggesting the introduction of tuition fees was one of the things we got wrong. It wasn't," he says.

"It was one of the things we got right. It was courageous to take the decision by a government that didn't have to do it but realised if undergraduates didn't make a contribution to their higher education – money that went directly to the universities not the Treasury – we wouldn't have the flourishing universities that we've got in Leeds and Hull and Sheffield."

He goes further: "I don't know whether the two Eds actually know what we put into practice, but it's a graduate tax without the down side. You pay back actually what you borrowed including your student loan, you pay it back when you're earning more than 15,000."

As for the coalition, its plans to overhaul the NHS by scrapping Primary Care Trusts and giving GPs powers to commission services concern him most. He is "absolutely astounded" by the proposals which he describes as "a leap into the dark". He said: "It is going to be a disaster for the NHS unless its changed and changed radically."

However, when it comes to looming public spending cuts, Mr Johnson urges caution from union leaders such as Bob Crow – who backs civil disobedience – and talk of the civil service union PCS and health service giant Unison planning strikes together. "There's always a couple of finger jabbers that everyone kind of applauds then ignores," says Mr Johnson. "The trade union movement is not Bob Crow."

He said the more considered approach of TUC leader Brendan Barber is a better approach.

"If the trade unions play this properly – this is a enormous challenge to them because of the threat to their members –they have to work with the Government, they have to argue with the government, they have to be persuaders not deniers and if they do it the Bob Crow way thereby lies a repeat of history in the 1970s.

"Yes, there will be some marches and rallies of course there will be. But the central goal they'll set out is to persuade the public they're on the public's side and working with the public to actually protect public services. And you don't do that by taking the knee jerk reaction to withdraw public services.So I think the strike weapon if used at all should be used very sparingly."

As for himself, he will be happy to stay in his current role, but insists he is "hardly going around picking jobs and being pompous about what I should do", before being elected to the shadow cabinet.

That nervous wait is for another day. Today, the anxious wait is for five other people to endure.

Alan Johnson on:

The election: "It was a defeat, a bad defeat and no one's hiding that."

Labour divisions: "I think the party will be unforgiving of anyone who tried to return to the TB-Gbs."

Not going for the leadership: "I'd have been found out very quickly if I'd gone for the job without that kind of commitment."

Tuition fees: "It was one of the things we got right."

Coalition plans for NHS reform: "This is a threat to the National Health Service, make no bones about this."

Tackling the coalition: "The Lib Dems are an easy target but they're not the ones we should be aiming at. We should be aiming at the Conservatives."

Bob Crow: "There's always a couple of finger jabbers that everyone kind of applauds then ignores. The trade union movement is not Bob Crow."

Strikes: "I think the strike weapon if used at all should be used very sparingly."

David Miliband: "David is the man with the vision."