John Rentoul: Ugly building became symbol of ugly politics

The ugly green-glass-and-concrete tower looming over the Thames just upriver from Parliament was the physical embodiment of a new approach to politics. Despite the slick professionalism of Labour's 1987 and 1992 election campaigns, the modernisers around Tony Blair felt the party organisation was still too compartmentalised and too slow to respond to the pace of modern elections.

Although Peter Mandelson had transformed the campaign operation under Neil Kinnock, his was an "unfinished revolution" – the title of a long memo to Mr Blair from Mr Mandelson's ally Philip Gould in March 1995. The memo laid out the blueprint for a "unitary command structure leading directly to the leader". This required an election campaign war-room, a single large space modelled on Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, where decisions could be made instantly. Even before the 1997 landslide, however, the unitary command model had become a victim of its own success. The centralisers of New Labour were derided by Labour dissidents as the "Millbank tendency" – likening them to Militant's infiltrators.

After Labour won in 1997 Millbank's reputation increasingly became a liability. It became a nest of control freaks, who became paranoid about the party, and the source of a series of blunders over the selection of Labour candidates for First Secretary of Wales and Mayor of London.

As with the phrase "spin", the tag "Millbank" had become a self-defeating poison for which there was no known antidote. The more Millbank protested that it was open to ideas from party members, the more they assumed the consultation was fixed from the start.

Whether the move to new premises can shake off those old connotations will depend not just on David Triesman – whose attitude seems genuinely more pluralist than his predecessor's – but on Mr Blair himself, who has never really trusted the Labour Party.

John Rentoul's biography of Tony Blair is published by Warner Books.