Although he remains committed to the New Labour agenda, John Hutton is standing down at the next election.
In an interview for this week's The House Magazine he revealed that he leaves Westminster with few regrets.
Politics wasn't something I ever thought I would do in my life. I had other ambitions. I wanted to be a lawyer, and to teach.
I was a member of all three political clubs when I was at Oxford, though it wasn't for terribly bona fide reasons: I was hoping to meet some nice girls.
I did a postgraduate degree at Oxford, and then became a law lecturer at what is now the University of Northumbria.
The polytechnics were bringing law to a much wider audience, and we weren't constrained in the way that the major universities were. I loved my time there.
What I saw in the North East in the early 1980s – mass unemployment and the ending of hope – changed my view on the world.
In hindsight, the Conservative government's task of economic restructuring was necessary, but the way it was done was pretty appalling.
People who tried to raise concerns were dismissed as not worth listening to, and the North East went through a very, very bad time – as bad as anything in living memory.
These people were suffering and felt completely disenfranchised, and that left a profound mark on me.
I became more and more active in the Labour Party, but I didn't very much like its leftward drift; our politics had become far too ideological and completely divorced from the day-to-day lives of most people.
I wanted to try and be part of the push towards the centre of political gravity.
In 1987 I stood in Penrith and the Borders against David Maclean – he gave me a good thrashing – and in 1989 I stood for the European Parliament and came very close to winning.
I got elected as MP for Barrow and Furness in 1992. If I hadn't been, then that would have been it; I would have said ‘fair dos' and returned to my academic career.
The new intake was exhilarated at winning, but it was a very difficult time for the party. Too much of our history has consisted of us blaming the electorate for not voting for us. They don't for a reason, and it took us a long time to work that out.
Neil Kinnock did the initial heavy lifting. He took on the far left and saw them off the premises. John Smith continued in that vein, but it moved into a different gear when Tony Blair became leader.
We rediscovered our connection with the British people, and in 1997 they voted for us in huge numbers.
I'll never forget meeting my constituents in the first few months after we were elected: they were so delighted and proud of the new government for the things it was doing and the leadership it was showing. Those were special times.
In October 1998 I was appointed to the government, and I stayed at the health department until 2005. We got the investment going into the NHS, and crucially we got the reform process under way.
I was the minister who took through the legislation on foundation hospitals.
All these people said it was the end of the NHS. That's rubbish. Some of my colleagues in the Labour Party find the concept of change in the public sector very difficult, but fundamentally you always have to see the interest of the patient, not the provider.
I only spent six months at the Cabinet Office, but I was happy to become work and pensions secretary after David Blunkett resigned. I was ready to run a big department, and the DWP is at the heart of a Labour government's whole social policy agenda.
I think we made progress in three important areas: reforming the welfare system, sorting out the pensions mess, and trying to resolve the perennial problems with the Child Support Agency.
I understand why Tony Blair stood down, but I would have preferred him to have stayed for the Parliament. I was very disappointed. I never had any plans whatsoever to contest the leadership, though it was very flattering to be mentioned.
I have nothing but praise for Gordon Brown and the way he set about doing his job as prime minister. He was very honourable and fair to me, and I was delighted and surprised to be asked to join his cabinet.
As business secretary my relations with the unions weren't brilliant. It wasn't personal, but I took a very different view from the TUC on just about everything.
Being defence secretary was my dream job, and the greatest privilege of my time as an MP. I left for personal reasons. I knew I wouldn't contest the next election.
I'd been clear about that with Gordon, and my strong view was that he needed ministers who would be able to campaign alongside him all the way up to a general election.
It would have been much worse if I had resigned next spring, and although I was very sad to go I felt it was the right time – and it was very much my decision.
I wasn't aware of any plot against the prime minister. No-one ever spoke to me about it, and if they had done I would have told them to grow up and get a grip.
We've chosen our leader and it's our job to support him. However difficult it is, and it is extremely difficult at the moment, we should always stick together and support each other. Sadly, the Labour Party doesn't always do that.
There's a shelf life to being a minister, and I knew my time would come to an end. You have to be comfortable with that, and understand there's more to life than politics. That way you'll be fine when you leave.
You do miss things, and I didn't do all the things I would like to, but I don't wake up in the morning and think what I would do differently if I did those jobs again.
I was looking forward to shaking up the whole system so we could get proper value for money in the way we spend defence resource. We don't have that at the moment and there's a major job to be done to sort that out.
I was also enjoying trying to provide some sort of input into the campaign in Afghanistan. It is at a critical period, and it is fundamental to our national security that we succeed.
Whatever it takes, it is our responsibility as a government to make sure our troops can complete their missions successfully and safely.
Politicians have to properly understand that their job is about policy and providing resources, not about trying to run the minutiae of a military campaign. It would be a great mistake to second-guess professional advice from the military.
The bond of trust between the uniformed forces and civil servants at the MoD has taken a knock and it would be stupid to pretend otherwise, but there isn't a person in the MoD who doesn't absolutely understand the importance of safety.
There have been individual failures, but it's quite wrong to cast aspersions over the entire MoD in the way that some people have done.
I feel tremendously blessed and privileged to have been a minister for so long, and I will always feel positive about my time in government.
I am going to write more about the First World War, as it's a period of intense interest for me, and I'll continue supporting the work of armed forces charities. I will also have to earn a living, like everyone else. I don't yet know what that will look like yet, but I'm working on it.
I'm working on the assumption that I am stepping down from frontline politics. The House of Lords is for others. I'm going to reconnect with my family and my wife.
We both enjoy music, theatre, and the countryside, and we're able to enjoy those now. Relaxing is not a problem for me. It was before, but it isn't now.
Hutton on… Blairism and New Labour
The Blair project – the New Labour project – is not a set manifesto: it's a compass point, a position.
There's no finishing line: particular policies will change from decade to decade. Blairism, New Labourism, is a rejection, in a fundamental sense, of ideology as the point where you find solutions to your problems.
You need a belief in people and values, but you need pragmatism about solutions – otherwise you inevitably repeat the failings of the past.
For me, New Labour was a centre of gravity, trying to anchor the Labour Party in the concerns of people today.
Hutton on… Labour lurching to the left
You hear people say that Labour needs to be more left-wing and true to its socialist origins, because that way we'll win the next election. No, that's how we'd lose it.
If we lose then you'll hear people on the Left say we lost because we were New Labour. That's complete rubbish too.
We'll lose if people don't think we're New Labour any more. People are not supporting the Tories because we're not left-wing enough. All this stuff about scrapping Trident and setting up a high-pay commission is a complete irrelevance.
It's the kneejerk politics associated with the Left. You won't find answers to today's problems by flicking through the mouldy old socialist textbooks of the 1920s.
Hutton on… winning the general election
We won't win the next general election by talking about all our achievements over the last 12 years – people want to know what we're going to do over the next five years.
We have to be clear about where we want to take the country – and very clear about setting out the differences between ourselves and the Tories.
People have to be absolutely sure that what we're saying now is relevant to their lives, and there's some work to be done there.
This interview appeared in this week's edition of The House Magazine, which is now available.
Interview by Sam Macrory.
Photography by Paul Heartfield.
