The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (9 page)

I had a meeting with heads of information [Civil Service communications chiefs], did my usual spiel about the need for co-ordination, did a Q&A, but it was pretty clear we were going to need to strengthen things again. The MoD and the FCO were basically OK, though the FCO had a real problem with gabbiness, everyone thinking they needed to get their own point across to the press. Within two hours,
the
Guardian
had been briefed on the meeting and what I had said to them. TB spoke to Major and Thatcher, thought there may be a role for Major in this. He said Thatcher had totally gone off on one, said ‘the English-speaking peoples’ would have to win this despite the weakness of the continental mainland. ‘We will win this like you and I defeated socialism, she said.’ TB replied he would have to give her exclusive credit for that.

Sixteen days on, after all the bellicose talk, there was still no sign of US action. Bush was leading the news with talk of tougher airline security. Our main story was going to be TB’s meeting with Muslim leaders. The press had been complaining about lack of access and with Philip’s note saying that TB was being seen by the public as ‘a rock’, and calling for him to be more not less visible, we agreed that he should do a press conference. He was worrying about Clare. I was trying to get her to do something publicly on the humanitarian front, possibly on the lines of building a humanitarian coalition alongside the military coalition. I worked on TB’s script – not a war on Islam, humanitarian coalition, domestic work goes on. There was some polling showing quite a dip in economic optimism. Julian [Braithwaite, press officer] was due off next week on a management course which was bad news because he was generating some terrific stuff on the anti-OBL front.

TB’s meeting with the Muslim leaders went pretty well and his message was clear at the press conference. Then a somewhat alarming meeting with the defence chiefs and the spooks. It was pretty clear the US remained undecided, could not find that many good targets, and didn’t have the bases in the region. Hoon said there was a lack of clarity which made it difficult to plan. TB was getting a bit alarmed that the Yanks didn’t seem to get why they needed better co-ordination. TB said we needed joint planning cells, not just with the military, but the political and the propaganda, and we needed something similar with Europeans. Equally, the humanitarian effort was going to have to be co-ordinated internationally. TB said the humanitarian operation was every bit as important as the military. Boyce said the only viable bases will have to be in a contiguous country. Iran is a no-no, the Americans won’t go near Pakistan. The ‘Stans were being difficult, messing us around. Condi Rice was sure the Russians were playing games. Boyce warned that the Taliban were brutal if they got their hands on enemy forces, capable of skinning them alive. It’s called a hair-shirt
policy. General [Anthony] Pigott [Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff (Commitments)] did a really interesting presentation setting out the concept of military action working at various levels, including the psychological and the need to win hearts and minds, but again there was no sense of the Americans getting how to do that in a joined-up way.

TB felt that Bush could afford to wait if he gave a sense of forward strategy but it was lacking at the moment. We went straight from that to Cabinet which was really TB, Jack, Clare, Geoff and DB briefing them. TB on the overall strategy, Jack on the Middle East peace process, Blunkett on civil contingencies and race relations, in which he expressed his anger at the BBC constantly giving lunatics a platform, and Clare on the humanitarian effort, and Geoff giving a military update. Then GB doing a big number on the economy, including, as he had already briefed to the press, that the reserve was pretty much gone and they would have to stick to their spending plans. Foot and mouth had already cost us £2 billion extra. He rattled through some bad figures from Europe and America, said we were better protected than most economically but we still had to bear down on spending. TB’s view, expressed on the basis of what they briefed, was that it was a silly message because it would add to public concern and lack of confidence.

I grabbed Clare as she left and said we needed her out motoring on the humanitarian effort. Later she announced more money for Pakistan. Just as GB was demanding a date for TB’s departure, so Fiona was asking me for a date too. She feared we were heading for another period of international crisis when I would be anywhere but home. She had become really bitter and angry about TB, and I wondered if that wasn’t just an easy way of making it not about me.

Went in to work on the conference speech, worked up the script for the Sundays to keep the focus on the nature of the Taliban. There was a growing sense of drift, that the US didn’t really know what to do. Peter Hyman and I went home to work on the speech.

TB spoke to Bush and felt he was still unclear on his own strategy. The media here and there was pretty much geared up, with wall-to-wall war build-up. TB was working on the speech at Chequers and felt comfortable with the draft so far. I took Rory to Spurs vs Man U who came from behind to win 5–3.

Up at 6 and off at 7 to Chequers with Peter H. We arrived to the sight of TB still not dressed and fretting about difficult questions of domestic terror and what more we could do to deal with those successfully abusing our laws here. Peter and I had worked up a new ending for the conference speech and TB was by and large perfectly happy with what he had done. Peter was trying very hard to get him to drop stuff that he felt was basically just whacking the party but TB was adamant there had to be a sense of him challenging the party. We set off for
Frost
and in the car went through the lines on extradition, asylum etc. Chris Patten was there reviewing the papers.

TB had his frightened-rabbit look up to the last minute but the interview went fine even if he got a bit jargonistic, e.g. talking about ‘UBL’ (OBL). We stayed on for breakfast and TB gave Patten and Edward Llewellyn, his right-hand man, a bit of advice about what to do with the Tory Party, basically stay in there and make them come to their senses. He thought Patten was absolutely top drawer, and if we had a few like him, we would be in much better shape. Back at Chequers, he, Peter H and I went through the speech line by line. At one point he admitted that part of the purpose of constantly challenging the party was to remind the public that he was not a traditional Labour leader, and that was in many ways his main selling point. He wanted a more forward section on the euro, including the prospect of it happening in this parliament. He had done a good section about the notion of solidarity as an international doctrine. The speech was a lot better for the fact that we didn’t feel the need to touch every policy base going. Later we left for Brighton.

Most of the day stuck in the hotel, working on the speech, and also on a briefing script which I wanted to push out as interdependence/power of community. We had fallen back on the speech and having spent the weekend thinking we wouldn’t have the usual last-minute bollocks, that’s exactly what we did. I got Hilary [Coffman, special adviser] to do the briefing and by the time the press had finished with it, it was taken as a declaration of war. The main arguments we were still having were just how close to be to the US, and how to frame the public services section. TB wanted to hit the reform message, whereas I was arguing for a greater focus on the values underpinning the reform. It was very much his speech though, much more than any other conference speech we had done. He was comfortable in the argument and confident about the way he was putting it. Most of
the speech team went over for [the speech by] GB. I carried on working and had it on in the background. It would be seen as a pretty good and wide-ranging domestic speech and because he allied himself to the main domestic ministers, it was likely he would get written up as the domestic PM to TB’s foreign affairs PM.

We had the usual toing and froing, writing and rewriting, but TB only wanted polishing and honing from us now. It was his speech, and it was pretty well done. I had a semi-altercation with JP just before midnight when he popped in. Cherie and Sally were also there and I made a crack about GB being the domestic PM and JP snapped that even in these circles, we shouldn’t be slagging him off. It was a bit much on one level, as he and I had had a session in the afternoon where he had been raging about him every bit as much as I did, but he had a point. He was worried that the tensions and the frustrations both between the principals and their teams meant that the divisions just became a given. [Gerhard] Schroeder was the main international speaker and got terrific applause for his reference to Old Labour. He went down pretty well and I think enjoyed coming over.

TB and Bush agreed TB should go to see Putin to try to secure bases and then to Pakistan to try to get a proper fix on Musharraf. It was a perfectly friendly conversation with the usual joshing and laughter amid the heavy stuff, but TB admitted he was worried they didn’t seem to have a grip on things. Schroeder had felt Putin would help if we really pushed and if there was a gain in it for him. The pre-speech briefing led ITN ahead of GB which was likely to have pissed him off big time. The big message of the speech was coming together fine, international solidarity, the power of community at home. I didn’t leave the hotel all day. We got to bed just after 2, which was early by comparison with most of these conference speeches.

TB was up at 6 and I went in to find him with the usual mass of paper all over the place, but he seemed OK with things. He had reordered things, cut down a lot of the middle section on domestic policy. There were still one or two bits that read too much like they had been done by committee, which we fixed. It was a very New Labour speech, and authentic for his voice. The overnight briefing had gone very big on the idea we were declaring war on the Taliban. It was leading the news not just in the UK but in the States too, so much so that as we were going through the autocue rehearsal at 12, Jonathan came in to tell us that David Manning had read the words
on Afghanistan to the White House, who were worried about what we were saying about the nature of military action. They felt it was too forward, too clear re what we intended to hit, with the reference to camps and military installations. But that was the section we had briefed which would make it hard to pull back even if we wanted to. We toned it down a little and got it just about in the right place. TB asked Jonathan and I to go through to his room and go over the final version with the words on Afghanistan. He was getting a bit exasperated with it all, said this was like Kosovo all over again. ‘What on earth do they think we are going to hit? They just aren’t clear about what they want to do.’ I think Hilary [Coffman] was feeling a bit stressed out at the thought that a briefing I had written and she had read out to a few journalists was now leading the news here and in different parts of the world, so much so that we had a sudden blitz of TV channels in the US and elsewhere wanting to take the speech live.

It was inevitable that foreign policy would get the main coverage but it was a strong domestic speech too. We also had extensive discussion about whether we should show the euro section to GB. It was a sign of how bad things were at the moment. The basic view was GB would take it, demand a change, then brief that he had done so to show that he could, so in the end we agreed simply to send the text through once the speech was pretty much done. As ever, his people were assuming a great plan had been unleashed to draw attention away from his speech. In reality, the briefing we did was pretty minimalist. TB had not spoken to him, so far as I knew, since we got to Brighton, which was ludicrous when I thought of the issues he was addressing.

When it came to the delivery, he got the tempo right, a bit slower and more measured, not worrying too much about reaching the heights. [BBC political editor] Andrew Marr’s reaction was that it was as though he had levitated above the party, and indeed just before I left the hotel, I had said to him I got the sense that this year he needed us less, and he needed his colleagues less. The clap lines were good, the mood was good, nobody seemed to get overly alarmed at the public services section and all in all, it went down fine. The party loved the stuff on Palestine, Africa, the environment and the central idea of community driving through the whole policy agenda was strong. The euro was the only bit I felt tricky at the briefing afterwards. We left not long after to get the train back. TB called later, worried about the advice we were getting on security re the trip to Pakistan. But he was pretty keen to go, and very keen to go to Russia. The
speech was getting huge play everywhere, including one headline in the States that it was TB’s ‘pitch for world leadership’. We would have to watch it.

Extraordinary press for TB’s speech, though some found it a bit preachy and there was a real danger of overreach. We had a real problem with the Indians over the planned visit to Pakistan. Vajpayee was on the phone, totally adamant that if TB went to Pakistan without also visiting India, it would be a real disaster for him. He was normally so quiet and soft-spoken but there was both panic and a bit of anger in his voice. TB said that having listened to him, there was no way we could do one without the other. It was not impossible that if OBL successfully launched another hit then the Indians could launch a strike at Pakistan. The security committee, which advised on TB’s own safety, had met yesterday and basically would prefer that he didn’t go to Pakistan, but if he did, they wanted us to use the [Royal Air Force] VC10.

We had endless coming and going on that, including at one point Cherie coming to see me, quivering with rage, bottom lip trembling, telling me I was mad to allow it and ‘Do you want to be a martyr or what?’ She said it was the most stupid visit there had ever been and I should be telling him I’m not going. I pointed out that we had all seen the advice, but that he had decided to go, that therefore I should probably go too, and that if we all went down, I didn’t think it would be me qualifying for martyrdom. Fiona later discovered TB and CB had had another row about Anji, which maybe explained why she was so angry. At 2.40, TB saw Geoff H and CDS. There was an outside chance the Americans might go in the next twenty-four hours because of intelligence on OBL’s whereabouts.