A gifted multi-tasker and ardent football fan from trade union stock – it’s no wonder Jo Gibbons has rubbed shoulders with the sporting, professional and political elite. Now director of public affairs at the office of Tony Blair, she looks back on her career with Heather McGregor:

4am, 2 May 1997, Royal Festival Hall.

Inside, a party is raging, with hundreds of people celebrating a change of government and the imminent installation in Downing Street of the youngest Prime Minister since 1812. Outside, the temporary steps built to accommodate the press are crowded with hacks and photographers eager to catch a photograph of a celebrity or a prospective cabinet minister. They are being kept under control by the Labour Party press officer who drew the short straw for her shift that night – Jo Gibbons.

No dancing for her. She spent her time explaining to the media where they could find the loo. From the moment she was born, in 1963, Jo was destined for political service. The granddaughter of a German political activist whose trade union membership and communist sympathies had caused him to fall foul of the Nazis and flee to the UK, she probably never had any choice about what she would do, and she has no regrets. Her mother, their daughter, was a committed member of CND and Jo went along on marches in her pushchair. In 1974, 23 years before her night outside the Royal Festival Hall, she was out on the campaign trail with her grandfather, by then a UK parliamentary candidate, megaphone strapped to the roof of the car.

But it was at university where her political commitment became her future as well as her past. “My time at university gave me a career,” she acknowledges. “My degree in politics was almost a secondary outcome.”

Jo Gibbons grew up in Kent and went to Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School, in the heart of Ted Heath’s constituency. Even at school she was a natural spokesperson for her peers. “I always saw myself on the side of the underdog.” Arriving at the University of East Anglia, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to join the Labour club and become active in the student union. “After the first couple of meetings I knew that I wanted to be involved.”

It was a tough time to be a member of the Labour Party. The Conservatives were in government and riding high in the polls and Militant Tendency had infiltrated the Labour Party at several levels. Meetings were riven by argument rather than united in trying to change things. But Jo was undeterred and after graduation moved to London and took a full time post at the National Union of Students, then in the Holloway Road. She had intended to stay longer, but stood for election to a VP post against the hard-left incumbent, and lost.

“I was gutted,” she says. “In the run up to the election it had looked promising but, in the few days before, I realised that I was not going to make it.”

She picked herself up and took a position with the International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa. “I already sat on the Anti-Apartheid Executive so this was a great combination of career and voluntary activity.” Here she was handling the media, but on a strictly defensive basis, the organisation being shrouded in secrecy. “There was a whole floor of people behind locked doors, funding the trials of ANC leaders and supporting their families.” Even Jo herself had very little idea exactly what was being achieved and how, and like everyone else she learned much more long after she had left the organisation and Mandela had been released.

The Citizen’s Advice Bureau was her first ‘proper’, proactive communication role. “I was pretty green when I arrived, and learned a lot when I was there.” Who from? She worked alongside Jacqui Roach, who had previously worked for the Women’s Press, and learned the key disciplines of being a traditional press officer. “We wrote press releases. We faxed them. And then we followed them up by telephone.” Joining a trade union was a natural extension to her politically-orientated career. “I am at my happiest in the political/not for profit/voluntary sectors.” The MSF Union was a white collar union that had been formed from the merger of two others, and union membership at the time was not a fashionable activity. Did she find success in some of her repositioning work while she was there? “Among our members, yes,” she says. “We were trying to remind people that unions did not just represent the collective, they were they for the individual too, who could turn to us for help personally.” To the world at large? “Probably not.”

From here it was a natural step to go and work for the Labour Party at what would have been the most exciting time in its recent history. “I think all of my jobs have been, in their turn, a real privilege, but I was so, so lucky to have been there at that time.” She contrasts the run-up to the 1997 election, and its results, with “the dark days of 1992”. Surely 1983 and 1987 were just as dark? “They were recognised as being hopeless, but 1992 was different: we had a real feeling of hope. And then, on the night, it hit us that it had gone the wrong way.” Just like her NUS election attempt in 1987.

But by 1997, it was all different. “Tony Blair had made a real difference, the party was in the right place, we had got rid of Clause 4.” She, like many other in the Labour Party, realised that it was the only way to get elected. “Most people put themselves in the centre ground and that is where we needed to be.”

As dawn was breaking on that May morning in 1997, the Royal Festival Hall carousing ended and Jo made it back home to bed by 7am. Barely had her eyes shut than the phone rang and a friend was urging her to get up and come and welcome the new Prime Minister into Downing Street. So up she got and was there in SW1 to watch him arrive. “It was such a fantastic moment.” But all the Labour party workers were on contracts that finished three months after the election and, despite the elation of the 1997 success, Jo needed to find something else to do. As an avid football fan, the Football Association had obvious appeal.
She is, she sighs, a season ticket holder at Tottenham Hotspur. “It would be so much easier to support Manchester United”. (Then again, her Facebook profile picture, of her hugging David Ginola, must go some way to softening the blow.)

She learned a lot about football during her time at the FA working on the campaign to host the 2006 World Cup. Including? “There’s a lot of money in football – at all levels.” And communications was very similar to the campaign she had run on her days with the Labour Party (except there were 24 target constituencies among the FIFA executive, not 646). “It was also easier to be with the football media; you didn’t have to constantly work out what was on and off the record and watch your every word.” But ultimately her heart was much more in politics and she went to join Margaret Jay for three years.

Margaret was, in Jo’s words, “a class act”. They worked together on the reform of the Lords, with the Tories fighting them every step of the way. “It was a great moral cause, a piece of legislation hat was right at every level. There were no grounds for the legislature to be filled primarily with men who were only there because of their birth.”

By the time she had been there for three years, Jo realised that the private sector was the one area she had not worked in and would like experience of. She looked to join an agency, and freelanced for a while, including a stint at AS Biss. In the end she joined Edelman. “Tari Hibbert and Nigel Whittaker and John Mahoney were all there and it an exciting time to be part of the agency.”

Steve Docherty, now at Diageo, was a colleague. She learned a lot, and very quickly, from him – just as she had with Jacqui Roach back in the CAB days. “Both Steve and Jackie were very generous colleagues.” The Docherty/Gibbons double act was very effective. “We had complementary approaches to winning new
business. You could say he was the hunter and I was the gatherer.” It certainly seemed to work; Jo joined the Edelman board and to this day is so glad that she chose an agency rather than an in-house route. “I enjoyed the variety, and also learned about running a business at close hand.”

But when the Prime Minister calls for you, you don’t stop to pack, and in 2004 Jo went to work in Downing Street. Did she, as the papers reported at the time, go to replace Fiona Millar as Cherie’s press adviser? “No. Apart from my time working with Alan Milburn, I was there to manage visits and events for the Prime Minister.”

Julia Simpson, now head of communications at British Airways, worked with Jo at Number 10. “The great thing about Jo is she is a true strategic thinker who sees the big picture but is tactically fleet of foot,” she says. “She is one of the most dynamic people I have ever worked with.” Events and travel required multi-tasking on a scale even Jo could not have foreseen, but Julia says this was not an issue. “Jo with 20 balls in the air? No problem. They will all land perfectly.”

Alan Milburn was loaned Jo for a while, and seems to have appreciated it. “Jo is smart, highly motivated and has a natural flair for communication,” he says. “She’s a people person. And just who you want on your side – not just because she is totally dependable but because she is fiercely loyal. I certainly wouldn’t want to get on her wrong side! Put that together with her ability to make things happen and her clear  understanding of the big picture – and I couldn’t have wished for a better adviser than Jo.”

"Blair respected her. He knew she’d deliver and was completely loyal. She would argue her corner and usually get her way but if she didn’t she’d make it happen anyway. She has a charming way of hiding a fierce intellect in a velvet glove”

Jo herself admits that she has had the pick of the crop when it comes to the politicians that she has worked with. “Not everyone is in the same league as Alan, Margaret and Tony.” Together with three other of his close advisers, Jo was part of planning Tony’s professional life post-Downing Street, setting up a structure and effectively being part of a start up. She remains his chief strategic communications adviser, although the days of telling the press where the loo is are gone: “We have someone who handles the media day to day”. Her role looks across all his activities in the public and private sectors and makes sure that the messaging is consistent. And like her boss, her life has seen a radical change, too – 13 months ago she gave birth to a boy. “It’s just as well that I enjoy multi-tasking”

And what does Tony Blair think of Jo Gibbons, who has worked for him in one way or another so loyally and so effectively for such a long time? Julia Simpson provides some insight from their time in Downing Street: “I know Blair respected her judgment. He knew she would deliver and was completely loyal. He would also respect the fact that privately she would argue her corner usually get her way but if she didn’t would make it happen anyway. She has a charming way of hiding a  fierce intellect in a velvet glove. And she is gorgeous to boot!”

And when Communicate magazine asked the man himself, he had this to say:
“What you need around you is people who can deliver, and deliver within the context of wider strategic and political objectives without being asked. Jo is most definitely one of those.” A great compliment. And definitely one worth standing outside the Royal Festival Hall all night for.

Curriculum Vitae: Jo Gibbons
June 07-date director of corporate affairs, office of Tony Blair
2004-2007 director of events & visits, No.10 Downing Street
2001-2004 director of corporate and public affairs, Edelman
1998-2001 special adviser, Baroness Jay of Paddington/Leader of the House
of Lords & Minister for Women
1997-1998 press officer, the FA’s 2006 World Cup Campaign
1995-1997 press officer, Labour Party
1992-1995 press officer, MSF Union
1989-1992 press officer, National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux
1987-1989 press officer, International Defence & Aid Fund for Southern Africa
1985-1987 officer, National Union of Students
Education: University of East Anglia, BA (hons) Economic and Social Studies
2:2. Chislehurst & Sidcup Grammar School, 3 A-levels, 8 O-levels
Interests: Politics, film, skiing, travel. Season ticket holder - Spurs