The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (109 page)

GB, who for years had been a nightmare at reshuffles, was relatively quiet. His attempts to protect Nick Brown were pretty half-hearted. He did his usual appeal for Douglas to go into the Cabinet – ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said JP – and he was of course arguing for the promotion of Michael Wills. Hilary A and Sally were regaling us with stories of how Michael would not even sit with his officials on the same part of a train. TB said to GB ‘If he’s so good why not take him to the Treasury?’

GB said it was ‘Not appropriate I’m afraid.’ We spent most of the morning going through the lists again and again, making sure there were no glaring mistakes, Jonathan keeping tabs on the numbers. We finally got Estelle who said she would think about the arts minister job. We had a hiccup with [Baroness] Patricia Scotland who wasn’t sure about the job [minister for the criminal justice system] with Charlie but he persuaded her. Lewis Moonie was difficult. Meacher made a few threatening noises. Barbara Roche very unhappy.

We shifted Yvette [Cooper] to ODPM [Office of the Deputy Prime Minister] and she had learned from last year, in that she didn’t complain. He sacked Nick Brown by phone. Nick said he would ‘continue to support him and the government’ – joke. Then getting people with new jobs to come through the door – Margaret Hodge [minister for children], Malcolm Wicks [minister for work and pensions], Chris Pond [junior work and pensions minister], Hazel Blears [Minister of State, Home Office] – all fine, real freshness and enthusiasm. Hilary A was an absolute brick throughout all this, softening people up when she knew they were on their way out, keeping in touch with all the Cabinet ministers about who they did and didn’t want. Sally also had a real toughness about her in these situations. Then another hiccup re Tommy McAvoy [government pairing whip] threatening to walk re Bob Ainsworth [Home Office minister] being made deputy chief whip. Then Melanie Johnson [moving from minister for competition and consumers to public health] wanted a long conversation with him about this and that concern, and he was starting to get frazzled, asking if they all thought he had nothing to do but listen to their outpourings.

By the time we started doing the bulk of appointments by phone, he had got it down to a very curt ‘I’d like you to join the government
as X. You should call Y minister and get the drill. There you are, well done.’ The Tories went on a line that he was a dictator because there had been no consultation about changes at the Lord Chancellor’s Department. They felt they were on to something with it being a bit of a constitutional mess, while we were trying to get it pitched as a dividing line of privilege vs modernisation and change. I had a bad phone call with Dominic Lawson [
Sunday Telegraph
editor] who was refusing to apologise over the spooks story. Then talking to various incoming and outgoing ministers. I felt Alan Johnson to universities [minister for higher education, having left school at fifteen] was the best move. Brian Wilson [former energy minister] was very down. ‘What do you need to do? Do you have to creep and cause trouble like some?’ He said he had always been supportive. I said I think TB would admit man management was not his forte. Brian was also of the view that until TB sacked GB, he would never get the government he wanted.

It was now pretty much a given in the media at least that the reshuffle had been ‘botched’. Ian McCartney was out and about defending it but the general feeling was we had fucked up. TB called, clearly pissed off. The truth was the press was in total kicking mode. There was no debate about whether the reform of the LCD was a good thing or a bad thing, it was all about the handling. TB said of course if Alan [Milburn] had not gone we wouldn’t have needed the other changes, but we hadn’t remotely prepared the ground. I was feeling ground down and fucked off. I tried my best with the Sundays but they had written us off on it. I asked TB if he wanted me to work on Tuesday’s [Fabian Society] speech to try to get things back on an even keel and he said no, they’ll just say it’s all spin. We now had a press who could only operate at the level of hyperbole, frenzy and venom. Every story had to be bigger than the last one.

Neil and Glenys were round for lunch. I walked in and Fiona said ‘bad news’. She said did I remember a couple of years ago when she had sent an email to the wrong address, and the
Mail on Sunday
seemed to have it. We tracked it down and in it, she was absolutely vile about Anji [Hunter], her influence, her undermining of Fiona and Sally. Judging from what the
Mail
were putting to us, my impression was they didn’t have the email as such, but knew of the content, but it was another piece of soap opera we could do without. Anji was pretty upset about it when I told her. Dealing with it meant I didn’t really have a proper chat with Neil and Glenys.

Neil said he thought I should be the next European commissioner, which I thought was pretty crazy. He felt I would do it better than any of the other names being touted, but I felt it was a non-starter. Glenys felt the problem with the reshuffle was that it felt like we weren’t gripping things in the way we used to, and she thought that was because I was fed up with it. Peter M called, said much the same and added that the problem was not just the presentation but the substance of the reshuffle and he blamed ‘Baroness Morgan of Huyton’ [Sally Morgan]. He said her main talent was to undermine and she had poisoned TB against his return and got others to do so. I said TB had been thinking of bringing him back but he felt that both his speech to the women’s lobby and his ‘apology’ at the PLP made it very difficult. I suggested to him he still had a judgement problem about himself.

Charlie Falconer was on
Frost
tomorrow. We agreed things had not been well handled but we had to get it back on to some proper dividing lines. The Sundays were on to the theme that the reshuffle shifted the balance to GB but it overlooked the fact that Clare had gone. Charlie asked me what my own intentions were. He said he was very worried that if I left, there would be a new template created by the media for the government, namely TB fucks up after AC’s gone, and creates more space for GB.

Charlie fine on
Frost
. TB was pretty down though, felt the media was vile at the moment. It was just one of those periods of malaise and we had to get through it. Jack Straw called re the dossier Q&A for the FAC, which was going to be the next big dumping on me. There was a lot of shit coming my way again. George Pascoe-Watson [
Sun
] called and asked me outright if I was planning to leave in the next few months. I dodged it. I had decided I was just going to pick a day soon, and go for it. The consensus in the Sundays was that the wheels were starting to come off a bit. TB said ‘They’ll go into total hysteria when they know you’re going.’ Maybe.

The reshuffle was still rumbling on. GB’s people were briefing that he had secured positions for Scotland and Wales in Cabinet. Hoon, Hewitt and Tessa were all saying to Sally that it was a dreadful mess, but she took that to mean they had all wanted health. But the truth was that we hadn’t really thought it through and now we had problems of definition. We also had the PLP getting a bit jumpy re
competence. Whatever else they said about the centre, at least they thought we usually ran a pretty efficient operation. TB seemed a bit down at his morning meeting and was asking what he could have done differently. Anyway, it was done and now Charlie F had to make the thing work, and Reid [replacing Milburn as Health Secretary] had to establish himself for competence and leadership.

What we had really lacked was political narrative and momentum which was why I was arguing for a proper political speech [to the Fabian Society] tomorrow. Peter H and Patrick Diamond [policy adviser] had done what everyone thought was an excellent draft. Everyone, that is apart from TB, who felt it risked sparking a reaction similar to the [September 1999] forces of conservatism speech. He felt it was too simplistic about left and right. We argued about it on and off through the day, using a draft of my speech-briefing note. It started with us talking about closing the progressive deficit and ended with a top line that he was holding firm to reform, which was kind of heard-it-all-before territory. He never wanted to go for the right in isolation. Through the afternoon, the draft went backwards. Peter and Patrick had based it on the progress made on the themes of his ’94, leadership acceptance speech, but he wanted the basic argument to be all about commitment to future reform.

As I was about to leave for home, I bumped into TB who had just seen a group of MPs. We went into his office. He said he was really worried about the reshuffle because we had mishandled it and it was really unsettling the troops. I felt he was overdoing it, and exaggerating how bad it was. He said he was feeling very discombobulated, about me going, about Peter M – they had dinner last night – and by the constant feuding with GB. He felt tired and couldn’t get focused. Tessa had also warned him that there was a feeling he didn’t really look after his own in a way that GB looked after his people, the same point Brian Wilson had made. He looked pretty ground down. I felt really bad now about leaving, but I still knew it was the right thing to do.

We had managed to get TB’s Fabian [Society conference] speech up as a lead story but inevitably they were seeing it as a post-botched reshuffle attempt to get back on the front foot, and with Robin and Clare giving evidence to the select committee we were never going to get an easy run at it. I kept trying to assure TB that it was all a bit of a frenzy that would pass, but he seemed really worried. The PLP was definitely edgy. Hilary [Armstrong] told him that if he didn’t
bring back the Hunting Bill for a third reading soon we would not have a hope in hell of winning the foundation hospital vote. TB said sane people just will not understand how we can put at risk our whole public service agenda over hunting. Hilary said he had to understand that hunting went deep, and was symbolic, also that even with it we couldn’t be sure of winning on foundation hospitals. She was very straightforward with him, and a very solid citizen. She was one of the few people I knew who seemed able to combine being close to the end of her tether with total niceness. Even Jack Cunningham [former Cabinet minister], who called me for some briefing for interviews, said we looked really ragged, that it felt like ‘the opposite of the Midas touch’. He said we had to get a grip pretty damn quick. Mark Mardell [BBC] even talked on the news about ‘a whiff of decay’.

TB said he wasn’t clear about a way forward at the moment. The atmosphere was about as bad as it could be for the speech he was making. Rory got his first byline doing work experience at
The Times
on a story about Gaddafi’s son and was enjoying winding them all up about the fact he had known in advance Milburn was leaving. I had a flare-up with Rebekah [Wade] because Trevor Kavanagh, absurdly, was trying to run the line that the speech was a warning about future tax rises.

We set off for the speech. ‘I suppose “Blair relaunch backfires” will be the headline,’ TB said. Probably. I watched the speech but I could tell it was going to get a bad press. The most important thing now was that we get IDS on the floor tomorrow, paint them as the people who resist all change that benefits the many. TB was very down, and hinting again it was because of me going. He called again later. Even if we had fucked up the reshuffle, the reaction was totally overblown. He said the press has become a real drag on the country, but I’m not sure what we do about it. It sometimes feels like living in the reverse of a police state. Anything the government does it automatically bad, anyone who attacks us automatically good. Tomorrow was going to be tough. He had to wipe the floor with IDS or we could be in a bit of trouble.

The speech coverage was pretty crap, tax being the line in several papers, ludicrously. TB was pretty fed up with it all. We all pretty much accepted the reshuffle had been fucked up and we now needed to get into a good old-fashioned tribal war with the Tories about it. He looked pretty nervy before we went over [for PMQs, then a statement on changes to government functions caused by the reshuffle]
but he did fine. IDS was dreadful so the focus was on him in the end. I had a bizarre email exchange with Richard Desmond [
Express
proprietor]. I complained about the
Express
splash on the speech – Blair knifes the middle class – and sent him the speech, asked him to read it, and tell me how they get that headline out of it. He sent an email saying he totally agreed and signed it off ‘Fuck editors, fuck Brown, yes to Tony and Alastair.’ I had a meeting then with David Hill, Hilary C [Hill’s partner] and Fiona to discuss whether he would do my job.

Then up for a meeting with TB. Peter M was there, and said when you boiled all our problems down, they went to the TB/GB fault line. TB said you either had to manage it or use the nuclear option but we had to realise the nuclear option had the potential to be disastrous for all of us. He felt in the end he had to manage him, get him to agree to his strategy. He certainly felt the ground had shifted a bit and that the Cabinet was different post reshuffle. Peter also felt we had to separate out the total oppositionalists from the malcontents. Above all, Blairites had to get a sense he still had energy and policy worth fighting for. Peter felt there was a lack of project, a lack of politics, a lack of communication strategy. Party and government were too much in silos. He was right, and what I felt in myself was that I lacked the energy to do it all again. Got home in time to see the news on GB’s Mansion House speech. Back to square one re the euro.

TB got a fairly good press out of yesterday’s reshuffle statement but there was no doubt there was something of a sea change going on. TB set off [for Greece, EU summit at Porto Carras], pissed off that neither I, nor Sally, nor Jonathan, who was in Belfast, was going with him. The morning meeting was focused on Greece and the coverage of Beckham was massive after his transfer to Real Madrid. Just before Cabinet, David Hanson told me that his intelligence was that the FAC were looking to clear TB and Jack but have a go at me, particularly over the dodgy dossier. He said he feared an all-party whack at me would be really bad news. I had a bad feeling about it, sensed they were really going to go for me.