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/ BARAK / 21 There was a part of politics for which I was naturally suited after my life in the army: to plan an operation, prepare and execute it. An ability to get the lie of the land, assess your own and your rivals’ strengths and vulnerabilities, and to win. And the “lie of the land” struck me as more encouraging than many Israeli commentators believed. When I became Labor leader, I didn’t expect Bibi to fall anytime soon. But I believed it was inevitable that at some point he’d have to make tough choices about the peace process, and I doubted his coalition with the more right-wing Orthodox parties would survive. I also took encouragement from the fact that the political winds in other developed democracies seemed to be blowing in our direction. Bill Clinton had won in the United States. In Britain, which had a parliamentary system much closer to Israel’s, Tony Blair, as leader of a party renamed as New Labor, had ended eighteen years of Conservative rule and swept to victory. Behind the scenes, I immediately made sure that, with financial help from Jean Frydman and other supporters, we began the practical work of learning from the experience of center-left parties in other countries. Within weeks of my election as Labor chairman, I used my acquaintance with a British Jewish businessman named Michael Levy to see what lessons our Labor party might learn from Tony Blair’s. Levy had been an early supporter of Blair and persuaded the Prime Minister to welcome me through the famous black door of Number 10 Downing Street. After chatting in the front hallway, the British Prime Minister led me into the back garden to discuss how he had refashioned his party and brought it back into government. In addition to modifying or abandoning rigidly left-wing positions that most British voters had rejected, he had created a formidable campaigning team under an ally and adviser named Peter Mandelson. When I asked Blair whether it would be possible to meet Mandelson, he said he couldn’t “give me Peter.” But he did put me in touch with Philip Gould, the polling expert and strategist who had partnered Mandelson in designing and running the election campaign. We met at Labor headquarters in Milbank Towers so Philip could show me the “war room” — modelled, in part, on Bill Clinton’s campaign operation — from which the victory had been planned and executed. It was a large, open-plan space, nothing like the warren of offices and conference rooms from which Labor in Israel operated. Pride of place went to an advanced computer system, the heart of a “rebuttal unit” which charted every statement from the Conservative Party so it could be answered, neutralized or used to adjust Labor’s own campaign. I was 307 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028155