The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (104 page)

I got a message to call TB. He asked ‘Are you on a landline?’ I said yes. ‘I think there may be a case for moving him come what may. It’s just not tenable like this. He is impossible to deal with at the moment.’ The press as a whole were not totally convinced by the statement but at least they knew we were trying to keep the act together. I was also dealing with getting more of our people into Baghdad by Monday.

Conference call with JP before the
Today
programme. The euro was tricky but he was fine. TB felt the statement we had done went well. I felt that it had given the press the chance to take the piss in saying we were protesting too much. We did however get up the message for the party and the rest of the government that we were trying our best to be united on this. I had been a little bit troubled by something Matthew Freud [PR] had told me last night, namely that there was talk around I was thinking of leaving and that I would be absolutely mad and I had the best job in the world for anyone interested in politics and the media, and nothing I ever did afterwards would replace it. Fiona was pressing for a kind of ‘road map’ re my leaving, but it felt like we were going round in circles a bit. I wanted out, but I felt bad and guilty about it. Philip was strongly of the view that GB would feel it would be easier to go for TB if I wasn’t there. But then again, after nine years, surely it was time to get a life back, and get things with Fiona back on track long before the kids move away.

We also had another Leo [Blair] episode to deal with. Some of the papers were doing stuff on the school they expected him to go to. During the day, he fell over [at Chequers], banged his head, so they called NHS Direct who suggested he go to Stoke Mandeville Hospital [Buckinghamshire]. He got the all-clear very quickly but we were back into another potential PCC situation.
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TB felt we shouldn’t push it, while CB told Fiona she felt we should. TB called me as his guests for dinner at Chequers were arriving, including Chris Meyer [former UK ambassador to Washington], Peter Hain, Ben Kingsley [actor], Richard and Judy [Madeley and Finnegan, TV presenters]. Chris Meyer was being touted as the leader of the Olympic bid, presumably by himself as he was very busily not denying it.

Watched GB on
Frost
. The reality was that he was not very warm on EMU. He said he would fight in a referendum as hard as TB if there was one, but the constant emphasis was on the tests. It was an odd performance all round. He was very but-but, his legs stuck together making him look tight and unrelaxed, and he had this odd habit of putting both hands on the arm of the sofa. He was also
dropping in references to Raith Rovers [Scottish football club] in an obvious attempt to give himself a touch of man-of-the-peopleness. When I briefed TB on it afterwards, he said it sounded like a real wasted opportunity. He felt the problem was that whatever the issue, GB was obsessed with idea of winning or losing. He can’t just be part of a team making the right decisions. He has to win, and be seen to win, in the decision-making process.

Fiona spoke to Peter M re CB. Fiona felt Cherie was in something of a state of denial. She just didn’t want to live a normal life really. Peter was broadly sympathetic to Cherie, but the cumulative effect was negative. He also said
en passant
that he thought GB got the best of me in the joint euro statement because it still meant he had the lock on the process through the tests, which in the end were not scientific but a mix of economic and political. He sounded pretty down about his life, said in terms that he had another busy but ultimately meaningless week ahead of him.

The euro was pretty much back where we had started a few days earlier with GB ‘reasserting control’ via the economic tests. The issues were conflating in the Eurosceptic papers which was deeply irritating. We weren’t really motoring on public services either. Also unhelpfully, someone had briefed Colin Brown [
Independent
] yesterday that TB would do a press conference on Thursday on better asylum figures, and the right-wing press were gearing up to undermine all that in advance. On the euro, we had the first round of Cabinet trilaterals and that plus the IGC was the main news of the day. We were not in the right place on the IGC. And on the euro, there was still a lack of unity.

At the party meeting with Hilary A, Ian McC and David Triesman, TB was very open. He said that on Europe and on the public services, the party felt division. ‘If GB and I were united on this, there would not be a problem. We have to sort it.’ Ian McCartney said the party was feeling more and more remote, partly from TB but also from the whole government. It was partly about Iraq but it was also about the way we spoke and the claims that we made and the way we made them. The values didn’t come through powerfully enough. TB kept telling me that the EMU stuff was moving our way but there was very little sign of that from GB and his lot.

Jeremy sat in on all the trilaterals. Hilary was clear they could be read either way. So was Ian, who said that on the basis of what he
had read, he certainly wouldn’t rule it out. JR was more sceptical, Patricia and Charles more pro and Jeremy said that on a number of specific detailed points, Patricia got the better of GB. Giscard [d’Estaing, chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe] was due in for dinner with TB to discuss the Convention, but Danny Pruce [press officer, foreign affairs] and I proposed against drawing attention to it. Europe was suddenly right back at the top of the agenda again and I didn’t feel we had a proper strategy for it. Even though he was mainly focused on the euro, in the chats we had in between, he was banging on about reform again. ‘I know I’m right about this.’ If we don’t take on reform the Tories will rebuild around it, and win their way back by promising to do things that we should be doing. It was just crazy to stand in the way of reform. Wrong for the country, wrong for the party.

Sally having told me he was in denial about me leaving, I wrote him a note setting out why I was going. Also, Godric was going to announce at the four o’clock that he was moving on. Then just before, bizarrely, Ari Fleischer announced he was leaving. I had David Hill in for a chat, and asked him, if I moved on, whether he would take on my job. He said he feared he was too old at fifty-five. He had got himself into a nice position [in commercial public relations] and didn’t know if he had the energy to get up for another massive job. He was clearly tempted, said he felt it was probably a no, but he would think about it.

In for a meeting on the Convention [on the Future of Europe], trying to get a grip on overall strategy and message. We were not in a good place on the euro, or on Europe more generally. Ian McCartney came to see me, said he was really worried about the party, that the sense of division had definitely driven through. TB said the euro trilateral with Andrew Smith [Work and Pensions Secretary] in particular, and to a lesser extent with Alistair Darling, was comical because they were totally on the Balls script. Most of the others were pro. Some in particular were clear that if the judgement was not now, we had to be clear we would be going in before too long. TB was convinced GB was moving a bit, but his CBI speech was pretty sceptic, and was emphasising all the obstacles.

Then we heard that Peter M had done a lunch with the women’s lobby and had said, off the record, that TB had been outmanoeuvred by a 24-hour political obsessive, and that because GB had won that battle, we were in danger of making the wrong decision for the
country and the government on EMU.
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Of course the chances of it staying off the record were zero as Peter must surely have known, and for once it gave GB the moral high ground. Even though nobody seriously believed we would have put Peter up to do it, it allowed GB to present himself as victim. TB was furious at Peter’s stupidity. He said it also made it much more difficult to bring him back.

Peter M all over the press. TB up the wall about it. GB was on to him, Ed was on to me, saying that unless we denounced and disowned Peter, people would think TB supported what he said. TB was up in the flat on his own working on PMQs. He was looking more isolated, or maybe that was just my guilt at the thought of leaving. PMQs was clearly going to be EMU division and/or the latest education fuck-up, namely schools sending kids home because of lack of funds.
⁵⁴

Peter M was not in a mood to back down. He said he believed in the euro, he intended to carry on fighting for it, and as he was a backbencher, he should be allowed to behave like one. He did not believe there was any chance of him coming back to government and he therefore intended to speak out more freely. He said he did believe we were making the wrong decision and it was because TB had been outmanoeuvred. Then in his ultra-haughty voice, he said he was about to do a doorstep for ITN and then sit down to write an article for the
Guardian
. TB just shook his head and rolled his eyes when I told him.

PMQs was OK-ish but we didn’t have a good answer to the question ‘why not a referendum?’ and we needed one fast. TB didn’t really dump on Peter M or defend GB so afterwards GB came in, TB called me in and said Gordon felt he had not been firm enough. I had to agree. GB said unless you put him down he will do this every day, day after day, because it’s a campaign to divide and undermine the government and it has to stop. It was of course an exact mirror of
what Peter, and from time to time we, said about him. TB was pretty meek about it. Jonathan said that the trilaterals he had been at had been OK, but then when the two of them were together, there was a rhythm of low murmuring followed by explosions. ‘It’s like watching a marriage fall apart.’

I had lunch with Phil Stephens to discuss his book on TB [
Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader
, published 2004]. He told me he had extensive notes of all my previous lunches with him. I was trying to tell him that TB was basically the same person. He seemed almost as interested in Cherie as TB, which for someone from the
FT
was a bit odd. [David] Bradshaw and I were working on a script for TB’s press gallery [bicentenary] dinner, which was annoyingly at the same time as Celtic’s UEFA Cup Final tonight. David and I went to discuss it with him, and afterwards I said to him ‘You do understand that I’m leaving don’t you?’ I could see he realised I was serious. I went through some of the arguments – that I had lost enthusiasm, that my relations with the media were bad and I didn’t much care, too many groundhog days, too much pressure that I felt others ought by now to be taking. He was very nice about it, I think finally realised it was going to happen, said he agreed that if I wasn’t really motivated I couldn’t really do it. He said he still wasn’t sure if he would fight another election. I said if he didn’t, maybe all the more reason why I should go now, and if he did, I could come back.

I wasn’t the only one feeling down about things. Peter M came to see me, said he was planning to move to the country, that he really wanted out of the [Westminster] village. I told him about my intentions, and reasons, and he said I would be mad to go. Life outside is not that great. What I do now matters. In the end the media doesn’t matter that much. And also there’s the question of duty. [Major General] Tim Cross came in for a chat re ORHA and I got TB to come round to see him too. He felt there was a lot we could do to grip it if they let us. I was quite impressed by Cross. I liked the fact that he said he couldn’t do
Frost
because he said he had to go to church. He was very clipped, smart. He said that if he ever heard anyone say the Americans were involved in a conspiracy he wouldn’t believe it, because they weren’t capable of organising a conspiracy. We were at a bit of a disadvantage though. The Americans were a bit worried about us taking over. There was still something holding me back from sending TB the note setting out fully my reasons for departure, but I was eighty-five per cent there. I didn’t much enjoy the press gallery dinner. In a way it was our two lives coming together, and though I
stayed in for TB’s speech,
⁵⁵
I sneaked out to a bar in the [Hilton London Metropole] hotel to watch Celtic’s extra-time defeat against Porto [Porto 3, Celtic 2].

TB was very worried about the
Times
stuff on schools based on an NAHT [National Association of Head Teachers] survey on teacher sackings. Overnight, the
New Statesman
broke the story of the Attorney General’s advice, which we assumed was leaked by Clare. At Cabinet, JP asked Jack to say who had received it, so he read out the list of copy addressees which ended ‘Secretary of State for International Development’, at which point JP just said ‘Next business.’ Asylum was running fine, with much better than expected figures, but TB was keen to press home the advantage by saying there would be further legislation to deal with other abuses.

After Cabinet TB saw Charles and warned him to be careful that we didn’t simply sort out schools funding at a technical level but still had schools laying off teachers around the country. Cabinet was mainly Iraq. There was a hilarious moment when Gareth [Lord Williams, Leader of the Lords] was going through Lords business and said they had all been up till 2.25am on sexual offences. ‘They love it in there!’ roared Blunkett, who said people ought to read their Hansard, especially when they were recommending ‘delete genitalia and insert penis’. TB did fine on the euro, then GB presented a short paper on the benefits and the possible steps we need to take to get there, and he was a bit warmer than usual. TB said some ministers had been honest enough to admit they hadn’t read all the documents before their trilateral meetings with him and GB. What was clear was that everyone was in favour of setting a direction towards entry, and he urged them all to ignore what he called ‘noises off’.

Patricia [Hewitt] spoke first after GB and was very good, said there had to be part of the assessment which set out the costs of staying out which she believed were growing, in terms of falling share of foreign investment, possible loss of trade. She felt the longer we stayed out, the higher the economic price. JP said he felt much clearer about the economics, JR that there had been a coming together of the political and the economic. Nearly all of the speeches had been in favour. TB summed up by saying he felt a clear strategy as reflected by the
discussion would release energy within the party and elsewhere to start making and winning the case. The press conference was fine, TB very confident, pushing back hard on Europe, and strong on asylum. On the euro, the question that worried me most was whether the Cabinet could change the assessment but he didn’t really get pressed on it. I had a meeting with Ian McCartney and Douglas [Alexander]. Douglas felt we needed a strategy for reconnection with the party along the lines of the one we did for TB last summer.