The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (68 page)

We went through the draft script I had done yesterday, toning down some of the rhetoric. We had three aims. First an economic message about the potentially dire impact of the FBU winning; second, get up what we meant by modernisation, and third, process. TB was on pretty good form [at the press conference]. The economic message came over and for the first time we really got the modernisation proposals on the agenda. I called JP in the evening, after he had finished the [Labour] NEC awayday in North London. He had pretty much had it with Monks on this one, felt he had been gutless, but said he had found more support than he expected among the union guys on the NEC, including the RMT. I said we had started to turn things and we could turn things more quickly if we kept things focused on the modernisation agenda. He sounded happier, said he was thinking about doing the government evidence to Bain tomorrow to keep the modernisation message going and give a sense of what a modern Fire Service should look like. I had a meeting with Tessa on sport. On the [2012] Olympics bid, the sooner we made the decision the better. I also felt we should get Patrick Carter announced [as chairman of Sport England] soon.

Struggling to get a grip on Iraq co-ordination. There was definitely now something of a turf war between the FCO and the CIC operation, driven by John Williams’ [FCO] genuine and loyal belief that Jack was a key communicator. TB had definitely got fire into a better place. Before he left for his education speech in Birmingham, we agreed to take out all the stuff on top-up fees, which in the current atmosphere would just set off a different neuralgia, and the speech didn’t actually need it. I was taking a hands-on interest in story development on fire. We were starting to bank them up, e.g. a report on joint control rooms, as well as some of the specific modernisation issues, e.g. the shift system, second jobs. We got up more modernisation messages through the publication of our evidence to Bain. Anecdotally, we were being told support for the FBU was weakening. JP’s statement was OK but in questions he pointed up that twenty per cent were due to retire, which led to headlines about 10,000 job losses. But we were still in a far better position than before. TB called a couple of times, and said that you couldn’t keep dancing around the jobs issue forever but it was good in a way that JP blurted it out. Then to the FPA [Foreign Press Association] dinner. Clive Anderson [broadcaster and comedian] hosted it extremely well, though Jack’s speech didn’t quite hit the notes. We were shortlisted for press office
of the year though thankfully didn’t win. I quite enjoyed the event but I hate these late nights.

I was working pretty much full time on fire, trying to keep going on modernisation. PBR Cabinet was very dour, and I didn’t get the sense ministers were terribly impressed. We had a whole series of fire meetings over lunch. I stayed over at the House afterwards for the PBR. [Shadow Chancellor Michael] Howard’s response was pretty good. Fiona called to say that our cops had a piece of paper from Cheshire cops about someone who had gone to them warning that Carole Caplin’s partner was a fraudster. Peter Foster, the boyfriend, was apparently once involved in a tea scam in which he used Samantha Fox [former topless model who had dated Foster]. We saw TB later and of course he was in denial about it, said that her mother was marvellous. If Carole was now in cahoots with someone trying to set themselves up on the back of them [the Blairs], things could get tricky. Fiona said she had felt increasingly frozen out by Cherie and Carole, whose choice of men was a bit worrying, and yet all we ever heard from TB and CB was that she was marvellous.

Dreadful press for GB on the PBR. I wrote to Ed Balls, said we should have kept in much closer touch in the build-up and needed to keep in close touch re a strategy to improve on the very negative day one. We were winning back a lot of ground in the fire PR battle, but with the talks due tomorrow we needed a strong line. So after Cabinet, TB, JP and officials met and we agreed to a very tough line, namely no commitment for government cash, nothing to risk stability, money tied to modernisation. JP was still very sore, said that he would never forgive the way the TUC denounced him. We were worried that Bain was coming under a lot of TUC pressure and was heading closer to sixteen per cent over two years. TB told JP that we had to break them on this, not in a rub-your-face kind of way, but simply making clear they did not win anything for their strike action. He was still pissed off that that red fire engine issue was not being handled properly.
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TB spoke to Bain and was a bit concerned at his tone. We agreed to put out a tough statement at 4. TB had also been working on the
Europe speech, which was a big one, but lacked a fundamental driving point, was a bit too nerdy, and with everything else going on, unlikely to get much coverage. We were getting up the notion of joint [Fire Service] control rooms with JP doing a visit with Bob Ainsworth [Home Office minister] to Devizes.

The other thing taking up a fair bit of time through the day was the Peter Foster issue. TB had told Cherie that she and Carole had to go through it all with me and Fiona, but it was pretty clear they weren’t keen. Cabinet was mainly fire, with the general sense we were in better shape, NHS pay deal, and the bombing in Mombasa [Kenya], on which there would be the usual post-event finger pointing about what we knew of any threat.
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We then left for Cardiff with the speech almost done, and agreed we would get cameras in for the Welsh Labour Party fund-raiser. We flew down, got driven to the hotel, which was besieged by firefighters and supporters, making a phenomenal amount of noise with Klaxon horns. TB was worried he wouldn’t be heard, and the police had turned the venue into an island site, about as heavy a policing presence as I’d seen outside conference and summits. We were feeling a bit besieged. The speech was an OK piece of work
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but we ended up getting more coverage overseas than we did here, when we got more for TB’s piece in
Paris Match
saying happy birthday to Chirac.

As TB was speaking, I took a call from Ian Monk [PR consultant]. Ian had always been perfectly friendly, but my guard was pretty much up from the word go. He said that Carole, Foster and a lawyer had been to see him to get advice re their protection. I took the call from the stone staircase going down from the floor where TB was speaking, and could hear the applause for his speech at various points. Yet here I was, talking to a former hack turned PR about what was clearly going to be the next self-inflicted frenzy.

I did a two-page note for TB saying the Foster story was clearly going to become public and that we had to have defensive lines ready making clear that he had never met him and that it was not true, as he was saying, that he was their financial adviser. I said we had to
be very careful not to be thought to be, let alone seen to be, giving any advice to Foster. Monk had told me CB called Carole twice during his meeting with her. Fiona said Cherie had told her that she had not been able to get hold of her today and was really pissed off that we were being excluded, not least because neither of us trusted the people involved to grip it properly. TB called CB when we got back to the hotel and said it had to be gripped and Carole had to understand this was about us every bit as much as it was about her. As he understood it, the guy was a total conman, and dangerous. Monk had told me Foster [an Australian] had lost his deportation case and we had to hope he went. I could tell that after the initial insouciance of yesterday, TB was genuinely worried, though he was pretty soft with CB. Re GB, we agreed that if only we had a proper co-operative operation at every level, they would have got a far better media out of the PBR. On fire, the FBU were much more on the defensive, being forced to defend questionable working practices.

TB called before doing clips at a temporary fire station near Sedgefield. Richard Boucher [assistant secretary for public affairs, US State Department] was in town. On Iraq, even the State people were pretty clear they were going for it. On the Middle East, they were currently against a conference. Richard was clearly up for working together more closely, and it was almost as if he was trying to build alliances outside the government to improve the operations within it. I set out how I thought they could do quite simple things to do with Bush’s profile abroad. In the end most questions came back to the need for a broader agenda, and a strategy that clearly went beyond merely American interests.

Chirac called TB to offer February 4 as a summit date. TB’s birthday present and the
Paris Match
piece had obviously worked. Then a fire meeting to work out the next stage in communication terms, working up the idea of the MoD reviewing shift patrols, more public safety campaigns, more red fire engines. TB was angry because the squaddies were clear they needed more red fire engines. He was very clear that we had to get really heavy if they went for a second eight-day strike, that we would have to take the negotiations over, give them a take it or leave it deal, and if they left it, tough.

Had a very interesting discussion with TB about the nature of these jobs and friendship. He said he felt part of the problem of his life was that it’s not possible to make real new friendships once you get to a position like his. It meant that if you are already close to people, you
got even closer to them, both at work and outside work. So people like me, Sally, Anji [Hunter] and Kate [Garvey, events and visits team] he felt very, very close to, felt he could trust us. But even if he met new people that he liked, it was always difficult because in the end he was the prime minister, and that was bound to affect the way people think about him. Carole had come on the scene fairly early on, and they had both liked her. She was a bit wacky, fun and interesting. But don’t worry, he said, I do realise how dangerous this is. I said it came to something that we were worrying about a professional conman close to the heart of the whole bloody operation.

I was up through the night, vomiting several times. But I still had the Cobra paper on the fire dispute to finish, and took a couple of conference calls to get into really good shape. Then Gilchrist, who was not operating terribly well under pressure, made a big mistake, did a speech attacking us over Iraq and New Labour. I felt he was already losing a fair bit of support, and if the public thought he was actually out doing this as part of a general political kick, he would lose a lot of support across the spectrum. On Foster, the
Mail on Sunday
sent over more than twenty questions. We decided not to answer question by question and instead gave them a short statement making clear TB had never met Foster, he had never been to Number 10 or Chequers.

The real problem was over the flats.
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TB admitted to me he was always against the idea of a flat on political grounds, but also that until today he had no idea they had bought two. I felt people would just about understand a mother wanting to get a decent place to live for their son, and might just about understand that she didn’t trouble TB with all the detail, but they would find it a bit weird to think they had got two flats with the help of this guy Foster. He was still, however, very defensive about it all, said Carole was basically nice, and maybe this guy wasn’t so bad after all. For crying out loud. Anyway we got through it and when the papers dropped, the others seemed to see it as much a story about Foster as about TB, though Cherie didn’t come out of it too well. All very messy but in some ways could have been worse. In a way it was probably best that the
Mail on Sunday
had done it, because the other papers tended to think the
MoS
would have flammed it up as they were so oppositionalist. I was still feeling wretched by the evening and stayed in.

I felt much better after twenty-four hours’ illness. The Gilchrist overly critical speech gave us a big opening. But there was clearly a bit of briefing around on a strike ban, which, as TB said, made it look like we were lurching around again, just when we didn’t need to, because Gilchrist was on the run. The
Mirror
was the only paper left on his side now. JP was being pretty tough while TB was making clear we should move towards taking over the FBU negotiations, making a final offer and if it was not accepted making clear they would be fired and new personnel hired. There was lots of GB in the press post PBR, and some pretty major diddling on the euro. TB still felt his strong card remains that the public wanted him, not GB, and he felt that even if he became unpopular, that would remain the case. The PBR had included a euro reference but was now being seen as blocking the euro and TB was in no doubt GB was trying to thwart it.

On the flats, he denied they had evaded stamp duty or that Foster had helped them get a mortgage, though he later did say Foster had been to the flat in Bristol with Carole, and sent Cherie an email about the building society and the mortgage, so TB accepted Foster was able to present himself as an adviser. He said he had formed the view that Carole was basically decent but naive. I said I felt she had pretty much got them where she wanted them. She also had very bad judgement about men and while this guy was around we had a potential problem the whole time. It had to be sorted. He said he had left her in no doubt what he thought and she was going to reflect on it. Carole had said to TB that maybe the best thing was if Foster got deported, but that was just another excuse to be a victim. How people like this got into the system was beyond me.

The Iraq human rights dossier [containing information from human rights groups, government sources and the United Nations] and the fire report were doing well on the bulletins. Only the
Mail
were really going at Carole. The other big story was TB/GB split on the euro with several following up the
FT
splash of Saturday suggesting that the PBR report on macroeconomic stability should be read as being clear we were not joining the euro. TB called me up to the flat, had toughened his mind on fire, felt we should get to the position where we put down an offer, that was it, and if they kept on striking we make clear they would be sacked and others hired. He said his real concern was GB. Maybe he had been too naive for too long but he realised we now had to have a real strategy for him. He had
one big card, namely that he was the elected PM. He believed it would become more and more clear that GB was responsible for a lot of our problems. But he had the ability to hold us back on policy and he felt at every level he was going at us in a pretty big way. He wanted to play long.