The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (52 page)

TB at the PLP, PMQs and the Northern Ireland statement at which we were raising the bar on a ceasefire judgement [amid renewed violence in Belfast]. He did well at the PLP and at PMQs and we
were ending pretty well. IDS had not covered himself in glory with his reshuffle and as he came back from PMQs TB said ‘That is a dead man walking. We should be thinking when, not if, and who’s next.’ TB had chatted with JP about his own future and had said that if he went at the election, JP should go too so they could let in a new broom, and he was pretty much up for that.

We were picking up signs that Clare was at it over Iraq. TB called her in to say he did not want her messing around on Iraq. She said she would be supportive and that she was not out to cause trouble. Yeah, sure. At Richard [Wilson]’s main farewell, he [RW] told a story about Leo pulling on his trouser leg and saying ‘Alastair’. It was a nice enough do and I was tired. I also noticed there was not a single black face apart from his old driver. This was the never-changing Establishment.

Today the second of TB’s new monthly press conferences. He called me up to go over tricky areas, mainly Iraq, Ireland, unions. We had got Michael Barber lined up to do the press conference with TB to try to get some focus on public service delivery. On Iraq, he said he
didn’t really want a big fight on this unless he has to have it. TB ran up the stairs for the press conference so started out of breath. Michael Barber did well and it was interesting enough. Questions mainly Iraq and Ireland. Hopeless on the personal stuff, e.g. would the 21-year-old TB approve of the TB of today, and he just muttered about being less radical. Then he was off to Manchester [for the opening of the Commonwealth Games].

I had a long session with JP re August [recess] but we mainly talked about GB. I said TB was at the end of his tether and really didn’t know what to do about him. JP said he could see that and after Sunday’s dinner he understood better what I meant. GB just raged at him, at one point asked him the same question ten times. JP asked him afterwards why he behaved like that. He said he just got an outpouring of bitterness and anger and mistrust. ‘It really is like a lover spurned.’ JP said he saw his job as trying to make sure the party held together and came out stronger. He had told GB he would support him but not if he took on TB, and nor would the party, so he had to bide his time. He shared our view that GB was in part using the euro to do in Tony. He said if it was true that he spoke more to [Rupert] Murdoch about his thinking on the euro than he did to TB, it was an outrage. He told GB it was make your mind up time.

His assessment was that TB wanted to do the euro and get out. He didn’t really want a third term for himself but he did want it for the party, and that’s what JP wanted too. If TB and GB split the party they will not be forgiven and that’s why we have to do all we can to keep them together. But it was going to be difficult. I said I was glad that he had seen for himself what TB had to contend with in the face of this hatred. TB was growing almost immune to it. JP said I have to keep TB onside for an approach based on working together, and he had to work on GB. He said obviously some of these things are too sensitive for wider discussion, but he intended to get his own assessment of the two of them on their own intentions. Also, TB had to involve him and GB more on discussions of strategy.

I asked him about his own intentions. I said TB felt that if he went before the election maybe they should step down together and maybe that would make transition easier. He said that was probably right. He said he had been very angry when TB directly accused him of siding with GB. He said he will always be loyal to the leader because ‘that’s my job’. GB had said he would keep him on but ‘I’ll have to make a judgement. I can see how a clean break might be best.’ He said if GB waffled on about the fourth quartile of the economic tests then he would know he was messing about and he would say no. He intended to get to the bottom of GB’s euro intentions. He agreed with me that GB was probably panicking, that he was running out of time, but also he was worrying about the economy. ‘He took all the credit when credit was going, so now he worries that he gets the blame,’ he said. It was a good, friendly discussion and I think we both knew we would have to work together pretty well to keep the two of them in some kind of partnership.

TB called a couple of times from his visit to the Commonwealth Games. I watched the opening ceremony, which was excellent, and after all the bollocks in the media that Manchester would be a disaster, it was looking pretty good. TB raised his
grand projet
again. I said I don’t know why you keep asking me, because you’ve basically made up your mind. He said no, depends on a lot of things, and I really want you to think over the holiday about whether there is a way I can use it to strengthen myself.

We had a great start to the holiday, driving to Paris for the last day of the Tour de France and staying with John and Penny Holmes. It was a beautiful hot day and Grace was having a fantastic time in the garden with Bonny the dog, and just looked as happy as I had ever seen her. The cycling itself was less exciting than the stages, just a
procession, but there was a nice atmosphere. The first time I was really bothered was when we got to Pizay for our second overnight stop. The
Mail
were on to the story that Alastair Irvine [son of Derry Irvine] was in jail [for drugs offences in the US]. It had been hard enough for Derry just to deal with the fact of what had happened, but having to deal with these fuckers could make it worse. I did a conference call with Godric and Alan Percival [Lord Chancellor’s Department] and put together a statement and an outline strategy. Derry agreed to it. He said things had been pretty unbearable recently. I said I thought people would think it odd that they hadn’t gone out and he said he didn’t want to create a UK media circus around him. He was pretty clear that the only real route to rehabilitation was to stop taking drugs. The
Mail
did it big a couple of days later but the follow-up was relatively limited.

Philip and Georgia [Gould] joined us in Paris and on the drive down Philip typically left his passport at a service station. TB called as I was driving down to discuss Iraq. It was clearly going to be a problem and we were not on the pitch. We agreed that we should start to push out some of the Saddam material. He and CB went on their mini-break in Cumbria and she had a miscarriage. By now we were down in Puyméras, from where Fiona and I sorted out with the detectives how to get them in and out of hospital without anyone knowing. Keith Lowe and Charles Lindsay [detectives] did a great job, got them in, got them out the next day and as when Leo went in, the hospital didn’t leak.

TB sounded pretty down about it though he was philosophical. He said Cherie was feeling very low and sad. They were also worried that it would crank up the media interest in their holiday. We decided against actually putting something out and instead waited for calls from the press once they noticed what was going on, which they did when the kids went to France without TB and CB. We had a statement ready with the bare facts plus an appeal for them to be allowed a quiet holiday. Coverage was big, fairly sympathetic and once they got away the next day, they were basically just doing captions stories. The local French paper said that Britons had been ‘
stupéfaits
’ at the news of the pregnancy. The main news back home was two young girls who had gone missing.
⁴²

The Commonwealth Games had become a real success story but
Brendan [Foster] called me to say people would go apeshit when we ripped up the track at the end. The boys and I were pretty hooked to the European athletics. I was playing tennis most days with Calum but just as Rory was now way ahead of me on running, so he was way ahead of me on tennis. We had a little running drama for the holiday when Anne Messelink [holiday agent] called to say that a friend of hers had been approached by a
Sunday Times
journalist trying to find me. The next day, he appeared at the bar in the village and Eva, the bar owner, called me to warn me. She then set up a little network of people round the village who kept tabs on him and for the next two or three days I was able to dodge him. On the Friday morning, when I was out in Marseilles collecting Gail [Rebuck], the reporter arrived outside the house and later came back with a photographer. Fiona told them we did not want to be disturbed. I called [John] Witherow [
Sunday Times
editor] to ask what was going on and he said it was a piece about how New Labour was taking over the area and turning it into the new Tuscany. ‘It’s the price of fame. You do know you’re a bit of a fashion icon don’t you?’ I said I reckoned Murdoch was a lot more famous than I am and I bet they are not doorstepping his holiday.

TB was due to do a meeting and photocall with [Jean-Pierre] Raffarin [new French Prime Minister] after their lunch in Cahors on the 12th. The French wanted a real big-licks press conference but TB and I were worried we would simply end up with totally different positions on Iraq. Totally counterproductive. Neil [Kinnock] was very down on GB at the moment. He had told him that he was the only person in history who could say with almost total certainty that he would be the next PM and the only person who could stop him was himself. If people felt he was trying to shoehorn Tony out, there would be a real reaction against him. Neil had his own problems through the summer, namely a woman in Brussels from the court of auditors attacking him, making all sorts of allegations, which he was pushing back on.

I had a series of conversations with TB re the US. Bush had suggested that he go there for the September 11 commemorations and they have a discussion about Iraq around that. I was worried about it, felt that people would see through it and also it ran totally counter to the strategy we planned for September. We agreed to keep it on hold for now. There had been stories about how Robin was leading Cabinet moves against our position and when I told him TB said ‘Well, they can just calm down.’ I had to get a bit involved sorting the French re his meeting with Raffarin, which they wanted to do
bigger than we did. He felt that working with the French was a bit easier now that it was clear who was in charge, without the uncertainty of cohabitation.

I was running most days and one day Richard Eyre [theatre director], who was staying nearby, wanted to come out with me and we did about eight or ten miles, and at one point I thought he was going to pass out, and suggested we stop. Eventually, I ran ahead. We spent a lot of time with the Kinnocks as well as the Goulds and did a better job at avoiding political talk. Philip was very excited about a Milburn article in the
Spectator
which he felt took him into a higher league and showed some of the qualities that had got TB to the top, notably guts. Philip’s general view at the moment was that TB could come back really strong but he had to resist being spooked by GB. Neil felt GB was capable of throwing it all away, but did anyone really think Milburn was the answer? I doubted it. Hugh Hudson [film director] came over for a night and it seemed so, so long ago that he, Neil and I had worked on that election broadcast.
⁴³

Cherie called Fiona on the 17th and said TB’s dinner with Alan Milburn recently had had a profound effect on him. It was one thing to hear from me and Sally that GB was at it, but Milburn, given his experience as chief secretary, was another thing. He had given an assessment of how he [GB] operated in the Treasury – the secrecy, the divide and rule, the briefings. He felt TB needed to strengthen his team and he wanted to help him do it. Jack Straw was on a few times towards the end of the holiday as he was due to visit Powell in the US and we discussed whether to announce it, given it would be seen as a big Iraq thing. After a bit of toing and froing we decided not to. Jack was keen that we push the Yanks towards accepting that there had to be a UN mandate re Iraq but the noises from Cheney and Rumsfeld were very much focused on ‘do it whatever’. There were a number of articles in the States, e.g. from Jim Baker and Richard Holbrooke [senior US diplomat], voicing real caution. Philip came home a couple of days before us to do some groups on his first night back, which were dreadful, particularly on delivery. The end of the holiday was hit by some pretty bad weather which washed out the village fair, and although we had a nice time, I had not been sleeping that well.

First day back. Didn’t feel like going in. JP called from South Africa, wanting reassurance about how he had handled the summer, also saying I had to get some more passion into TB’s speech for the [Johannesburg] summit [on sustainable development] and only I could do it, and he was really worried that we wouldn’t get a proper agreement without TB doing the real hard negotiations towards the end. TB spoke to Bush. He had sent him a long note in late July and David Manning had been to see Condi. The next day he had been called in to see Bush himself. He had been pretty frank and made clear that this was very difficult for us. Equally TB’s note said we would have real public and party problems and things would be even worse in Europe. David’s worry was that there seemed to be no thought-through political or public information strategy and too many difficult unanswered questions. He also felt Condi was far too optimistic about the Middle East and prospects for progress. Their meeting had been earlier and David had said we needed to exhaust the UN route but in the ensuing weeks Rumsfeld and Cheney had both made what were seen as fairly belligerent speeches. David had put the case forcefully that they had to understand the difficulties of other countries. He believed that on the idea of an ultimatum the Russians, Chinese and even the French would support or acquiesce. David’s strong sense was that though they might go it alone, they didn’t want to. They valued TB’s advice. They needed to be persuaded on UN/ultimatum and on the need to do more re the Middle East. Bush felt that it was possible to see a quick collapse of the Iraqis. He had also talked up evidence of links with al-Qaeda, which our and US intelligence were not convinced of. We were pushing the idea of a tough, time-bound ultimatum. Bush had said he was ‘evangelical’ re getting rid of Saddam and was a ‘good vs evil guy’. He felt equally strongly about Korea. But David felt it was not a lost cause to push him down the UN ultimatum route. TB’s note had made clear our basic support but also said we had to be blunt about the difficulties. His note went through the need for an agreed strategy on six fronts – UN ultimatum route/evidence/MEPP/post-Saddam/Arab Muslim worlds/Afghanistan. Finally and fairly briefly he addressed the military plan and of the running start vs generated start, he preferred the latter.