The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (108 page)

JR, Hilary A and Tessa all called during the day, just to say they would do anything they could to help. Hilary said Dennis Skinner [Labour MP] had called offering support but also saying ‘Don’t trust spies, they’re treacherous.’ JR said whenever ministers got into trouble, I would organise operations to help them, and did I want him to get one organised for me? Hilary said much the same. Then a call from Margaret Beckett who was doing media in the afternoon and who said that it was an accolade that they kept coming at me, and it was because I did the job well that they went for me. I said I had been interested to see how pro EMU she had been, far more positive than she used to be. She said it was partly the views developed at the DTI. She felt the assessment was more negative than the tests.

The
Mail on Sunday
had done a story that CB was going for an Olympics job and TB wanted her to go to the PCC. The trouble was there was something in it. He put her on to me, and she was very defensive, just said ‘What’s the problem?’ I said we just needed to know, because we were asked about it. We agreed to say she was not interested in running the bid but others had been keen that she would help as appropriate.

Most of the papers were reasonably low-key on the AC ‘apology’, apart from the
Mail
which splashed on it and was its usual vile self. Blunkett said on
The Politics Show
[BBC] yesterday that we shouldn’t have done the second dossier and called for an apology. I was reasonably curt, said it was obvious he had to find a use for some
Sheffield steel. Hilary A and Sally said the PLP were virtually solid for me and that Dennis Skinner had been going round the place saying ‘Who do you trust? AC or a spy? He is one of ours.’ The euro was obviously leading the news and we had set it up OK. The
FT
had done ‘GB sells advantages of the euro’. Mike White [
Guardian
] talked of a change of gear.

The statement was still a bit ambiguous though and the Q&A revealed the tensions between them. TB felt the statement had come along but he was still worried. He called Jonathan and me up there at 8, both of us in running or cycling gear. Jonathan was his usual jovial self. ‘Surprised you are still here,’ he said. TB said he was not yet sure GB was going to go for this. Jonathan said how do you guarantee he won’t just do the same thing again next year? TB said he would know in a matter of weeks if this was serious or not, and if it wasn’t, he would have to move him. We talked a bit about the reshuffle and TB was dreading having to sack Derry, who he was sure would take it very badly. I was working with Ed, Jeremy and Peter H on a Q&A and material for the press conference tomorrow.

I saw Jonathan to tell him I was definitely leaving now. He said TB had mentioned it, so maybe he had accepted it. Jonathan felt sure I would regret it. He said he knew that he would. He reckoned I would have a long period of decompression and he was sure the business appointments people would be very difficult. He said he had always felt I was like an extra battery for TB, and he would lose extra power. I spoke to David Omand who, like everyone else, was feeling that DIS [Defence Intelligence Staff] were probably responsible for the briefings. I said to him the only thing that could be seen as an apology were my exchanges with him re the handling of intelligence post the dodgy dossier.

C called later to say he had been through all the correspondence and there was no apology. He was glad he had denied the resignation story. I was of course not sure who would be at it, but somebody was. I went over to the Commons for the GB statement on the euro, which was OK-ish but the Tories seemed to unsettle him and he wasn’t clear. [Shadow Chancellor Michael] Howard was strong. TB called me straight away and asked me what I thought. I said it didn’t work. No, he said, it didn’t. He just wasn’t clear. He was pointing both ways and people picked up the tension. The pro columnists and commentators were very dismissive. Ed Balls and I agreed it hadn’t gone terribly well. It had been a big day, but we had not really taken the big step forward that we planned. IDS wrote to TB saying that I should appear before the ISC and the FAC, underlining that this was
now a political campaign. Sally felt the more obvious that was, the more support I would get.

Press pretty grim. The pro press were very disappointed, the
FT
scathing, while the antis remained aggressive. As GB said, we don’t have a single newspaper supporting us on the position we set out yesterday. I ran in, up to see TB and Jonathan in the flat. TB was in shorts and a T-shirt, making toast, though at least with marmalade rather than the usual olive oil. He said the problem was lack of clarity. It just wasn’t clear where we were going [on EMU policy] so people felt we were saying the same as in ’97 or ’99. GB was also throwing in all this stuff about the housing market and TB couldn’t see how it was going to be possible to move on it before an election. We went through likely difficult questions. I said what do you say to the question – ‘how long will it take to remove the obstacles to the euro?’ ‘The best way would be to get out a gun, shoot the obstacle and then have a reshuffle,’ he said. He was no longer in any doubt that GB was still slowing it down deliberately. ‘It’s the dead hand, the paralysis of progress.’

We discussed the requests from the FAC and the ISC for TB and me to go to their inquiries into WMD. TB was clear that I shouldn’t go, and that he should only go to the [select committee chairs] Liaison Committee. Then a chat with him and GB on the euro. You could tell from his confident body language that GB was where he wanted to be. He was also making clear that if we wanted to make the necessary housing-market changes, that could include a tax on housing, and lots of other things that would not be palatable. TB was sitting behind his desk asking perfectly reasonable questions and GB suddenly got up and stood over him. ‘We have to stick to the language of the statement.’

I was saying that we, i.e. Number 10, had got too focused on ‘referendum possible this parliament’ and had therefore set ourselves up for defeat in the eyes of the media. GB was saying we should get back on to a message about Europe as a whole. I said the day after a statement on the euro, that would be seen as a retreat. GB was being very warm to me which meant he felt confident and at the press conference he was much more relaxed than TB who was twiddling with his pen too much, though afterwards he felt it was worth doing.
The Times
came in for lunch and Sally and I were passing each other notes about how bored we were.

TB spoke to Jeremy Greenstock who agreed to do the Iraq job,
despite his reservations. News broke that Manchester United were prepared to sell [David] Beckham to Barcelona.
⁶¹
Alex [Ferguson] called later from the south of France and said he had definitely played his last game, and that his people had been in negotiation with Real Madrid for months. As far as he was concerned, the sooner they got the money for new players the better. He said even in France, he was picking up how much they were throwing at me at the moment. He said the one thing you and I both appreciate is pressure and it looks to me like they want to go for you till they’ve got you. He said the important thing was still to stay in control over when and how I went. I watched the news for once and Andy Marr was basically a television columnist now.

Things just hadn’t worked on the euro and TB was pretty fed up when we went up for the PMQs pre-meeting. He was confident though we could get into the Tories on ‘in or out’ of Europe. But in terms of a gear change, it hadn’t worked, and the judgement was settling that GB had basically thwarted him. TB feared we were making the wrong decision for the wrong reasons. He thought the Tories would come at us today on trust/WMD and/or trust/division/euro. We discussed the reshuffle. Alan Milburn had been to see TB on Monday and told him that he was going to leave. He had spoken to Sally first, who also told him I was thinking of leaving and during the day I had various conversations with him. He said I may think he was the last person to say this, but he really thought I shouldn’t go. He said everyone knew the stuff about me was bollocks but he really didn’t think I should go at a time I was under pressure. He had told very few people about his own situation and asked me what I thought he should say. I said that he should say that he faced a choice between career and family and chose family, that it was not political but personal. He said he was sad but convinced it was the right thing. Alan’s decision was going to be a big talking point and it would be presented as a blow to TB. Alan said he felt wretched doing it now but he felt he had no choice. TB said he felt it made it a bit more difficult for me to go straight away. I suggested Hilary A for the job.

I decided to go for a letter of apology from the
Sunday Telegraph
over the ‘apology’ story at the weekend. John Scarlett said it had been a real eye-opener to him how newspapers could write whatever they
wanted. PMQs was fine, and TB/GB did OK at the PLP, with people feeling they were up for it, though Peter M seemingly embarrassed himself by doing a long apology to GB re his recent comments. TB said afterwards it was a real lapse of judgement. Greenstock said yes to TB to go to Iraq after John Sawers. TB went off to Paris for dinner with Chirac.

TB reckoned the Chirac dinner last night went well. He had found him much warmer than usual, wanting to put Iraq behind them and work together closely. TB felt it should be possible to reshape Britain’s future in the EU but we had to seize it. Jonathan, Sally, David Hanson, Hilary A and I were going through the list pre reshuffle. Through the day we had all the usual stuff. Sorting out the big changes first, then going through the list, endless discussion. Messages coming through, for example, about [junior minister in the Lord Chancellor’s Department] Yvette Cooper’s very high expectations for herself. For health, we had been thinking of Hain – Simon Stevens and Alan both opposed. Hewitt – Hilary A opposed. Reid – but the problem was his Scottishness [health being a devolved matter in Scotland]. TB though felt that wasn’t insurmountable, and he wanted a Blairite moderniser in there. The changes at the Lord Chancellor’s Department, not least to the courts, took up a lot of discussion, and I knew TB was dreading the Derry discussions.

TB saw JP who told us he had just been with GB who was pushing for a big job for Douglas [Alexander] and also for Michael Wills [junior Home Office minister], though not in the Treasury. TB then saw GB, who was pretty thunderous about the whole thing. After he had left, TB said that despite everything, he was still prepared to help him become leader, but he had to work with him on the euro and public services. If he didn’t, he would fight another election and eventually put him out. He didn’t really want to fight another election, and as things stood, only GB could make him.

I spent part of the day drafting resignation letters. Cabinet was pretty surreal because everyone knew there was going to be a reshuffle. Several people now knew about Alan, pretty much everyone knew about Derry and yet on they went with a discussion about Europe, the Middle East, Congo, Iraq. TB said the UK European Convention team had done a brilliant job.
Le Monde
had been running the line that we had pretty much bulldozed our way to getting everything we wanted. Afterwards, Alan came to my office and we finalised the letter. I said there would be all manner of conspiracy theories, political,
financial, sexual, you name it. He said it was none of that, he would be full of regrets but it was the right thing to do. He had another go at persuading me not to leave. I had actually been thinking about whether to do my own announcement today. I discussed it with Sally and she seemed upset about it. We got the Milburn announcement out for the lunchtimes. He did interviews while we had another session on the reshuffle.

TB saw Derry. He and I had a perfectly amicable discussion re families before he went in. Previously, TB had argued he needed to shake things up and put an elected MP in charge of the new department, so when he told Derry it would be Charlie F [Lord Falconer], he was particularly pissed off. ‘You are getting rid of me and putting in another peer, that’s not exactly what I expected.’ As he left, he looked pretty miserable.

He then saw Helen Liddell, then Reid who was not immediately too keen on health, wanted to think about it. These reshuffles were always awful. During a break, I asked TB why we didn’t announce my departure at the same time. We were out on the terrace. He asked why I was so sure I wanted to go. I said I wasn’t really working as hard or as well as usual. Most days I woke up feeling depressed and didn’t think it would improve. For ten minutes or so, he seemed almost up for it. Then he said it wasn’t a sensible day to do it, because it would give another boost to GB. He was also not convinced that I was one hundred per cent sure, and said he thought I would get a second wind before long. He sacked [Michael] Meacher [environment minister] by phone, who made clear he would be difficult. He didn’t do Nick Brown [minister for work] because he was on
Question Time
tonight. We finished by 7.30, with another day of it ahead tomorrow. Eight-mile run.

The Milburn announcement seemed to be taken at face value. Despite all the crony attacks, the Charlie appointment seemed to be OK. But there was a sense of things being a bit of a mess re Scotland and Wales.
⁶²
I was in for eight then out on the terrace with the others to go through the list again. We needed a few more sackings to make room – Lewis Moonie [defence], Barbara Roche [social exclusion and equality]. Tessa Blackstone [higher education] as well. TB wanted to
promote Kim Howells [culture, moving to higher education] and wanted Des Browne [junior Northern Ireland minister] to do asylum but Blunkett came in and argued for Bev Hughes [Home Office minister] to stay with him. David could be very difficult and egotistical at these reshuffle times.