The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (29 page)

At my morning meeting, I said we had to start pushing back on Guantanamo. Once we got the Sebastian Wood report [on Guantanamo Bay], I got Ben Bradshaw [FCO minister] to do one [on detainees]. The draft done for him by his office was so poor that I found myself at 3.20pm, ten minutes before he was due on his feet in the House, rewriting it with him by phone. He did fine though and looked and sounded confident and on top of things.

I had lunch with Peter Kellner [political commentator and pollster] who wanted to help us more. He felt the
[Evening] Standard
would stay where it was politically under Veronica Wadley [editor]. He volunteered the view that we lacked the coherent narrative of the past, and he was right. I had a meeting with [Sir] Michael Jay [former ambassador to France] who was taking over from [Sir] John Kerr as permanent secretary at the FCO and I think persuaded him of the need for new structures ready to be properly activated in the event of a genuine international crisis. We had done fine re Kosovo and Afghanistan but we lost so much ground early on when actually setting up the structures from scratch. There ought to be a structure in place, ready to be manned fully if needed. I was spending a fair bit of time fixing things for the football match in Kabul.
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At the morning meeting I read the riot act re DTLR, and gave the same message at a meeting re the Tube later, re whoever was doing in [Stephen] Byers. It was clearly coming from inside the department. I was trying to sort out timing of teachers’ pay before leaving for a very nice lunch with David Frost at Le Caprice. Whatever was going on, he seemed to give us the benefit of the doubt, and he felt TB was just in a different league to most of the politicians he dealt with.

More evidence of the Yanks’ uselessness and lack of touch when DoD [Department of Defense] said on the 2.30 conference call they intended to announce today they [Guantanamo detainees] were ‘unlawful combatants’ and release another picture. They were clearly being driven by the insight that US opinion would just about take
their word for it, and also the feeling that there was no reason why they should be treated properly, but they didn’t seem to see through the implications elsewhere. Jim Wilkinson, who at least seemed to get that part, joined me in talking them out of doing the picture, and that then led to them suffering a hiccup on the other part of the plan. Rumsfeld then went off on another one re Guantanamo. He just lacked subtlety.

TB called an internal meeting re the domestic situation. He felt the key was the CSR [Comprehensive Spending Review] and the Budget and he and GB working together closely. PG said the Tories were nowhere but that had led to expectations on us being higher and we were really expected to fulfil them. He felt we had the basic script right but we needed a better communications plan. At the Tube meeting, I was arguing for Steve [Byers] to go head to head with Ken Livingstone. [London mayor]. The DTLR crew were a pretty hopeless and unconfident lot.

I did the East Midlands group of [Labour] MPs, who were the best yet in terms of engagement. Dennis Skinner was on good form. I got home for Man U vs Liverpool, where I’d fixed for the ball for the match in Kabul to be handed over. Karen Hughes called during the match. She apologised for having been a bit out of touch, agreed we should scale down London and Washington, put Tucker Eskew in charge over there, leave Islamabad to please Musharraf, then use three or four others as a roving team going at short notice to different parts of the world where we felt we needed a presence. But the longer we talked the clearer it was she was really just focused on the US audience.

Fiona was close to the end of her tether, fed up with me, fed up with the pressures I brought into the house all the time. She thought I had changed, that I cared more about the job than her. She said I never seemed to take her feelings and concerns into account as I went about the job in the way I did. She accepted I was good with the kids, but after the job and them, there was nothing left, and it made her unhappy. I tried to do my usual, say that this was not going to go on forever, that I had to do it this way, that we should be proud of the difference we made, but it cut no ice. She said it was all about me, she was only there as an appendage.

I slept badly and when I did had all manner of awful dreams, including one where a pack of lions and hyenas were hunting me down in the corner of a field. I woke up, my whole body in a sweat. The mood in the house was bad as I left for the morning meeting. I got a call
from one of the hacks saying IDS was going to do health at PMQs, the
Standard
having done a big number of the treatment of a woman called Rose Addis.
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TB was up for really going at him. IDS used the line from the woman’s daughter that she had been treated ‘worse than a dog’. TB stayed calm, just presented the hospital’s denials, but it was their toughest exchange so far and the manner in which IDS put it meant it was going big. TB felt it was a mistake, that the public would instinctively see the difference between the role of a relative and the role of a politician putting them in the spotlight deliberately, but I was not so sure. The press would now do IDS’ work for him, and if we were not careful we would be into a new season of personal case histories presented as the big picture. TB said he felt real heat in there. Equally it did allow us to get up definition of what we were doing, the idea of a struggle for the very future of public services. Some in the media were arguing the Tories can never win on health, but they can hurt us if all the public hear are bad case histories like this.

Milburn came into TB’s room at the Commons and we agreed we had to get the doctors at the Whittington Hospital out there. They did the
PM
programme [BBC Radio 4] and were excellent. It then turned out the main one was a Labour Party member – so what, in a sane world, why shouldn’t he be? – but we got him pulled for later media. Unfortunately at the four o’clock, Tom gave out personal details of the people covered in the
Standard
, material which had been prepared for TB’s PMQs brief, and although it was already all in the public domain, either from the hospital or the family, it was a tactical error because it allowed the Tory papers to make it a ‘Labour dirty tricks’ story, rather than being about IDS getting his facts wrong. I felt provided we held our nerve, this would be OK for us, because it allowed us to get up dividing lines rooted in values. Tucker had an interesting take – said that it was the best example yet of our crazy media and political system. The idea that one elderly woman’s care was the big political story for the entire country was ridiculous.

The papers were full of the health row, with the doctors pushing back. I briefed Hazel Blears [junior health minister] for the 8.10 slot on the
Today
programme. She was calm and rational and did well. Up to see TB who felt even by our standards the press had been ridiculous over this, us being put in the dock over the so-called leaking of details when the family went to the press and the Tory leader raised it on the floor of the House. But the press loathed us at the moment and were just desperate to give IDS a lift. I wrote to Piers Morgan whacking him for taking the Tory line on health. Probably just frustration at TB refusing to take them on more vigorously.

Cabinet was interesting, in that it was clear the exchanges with IDS yesterday had really got them up for a political battle on the NHS. But there were some worries expressed, not least by TB, at the idea IDS could somehow set himself up as the friend of the patient. There was a brief discussion of the Lords where JP railed at the idea of an elected chamber, said it was only of interest to ‘Charter 88 or Charter 99 or whatever they call it’. TB gave a very strong message on public services and the dividing lines and they clearly felt better afterwards, speaking to one or two outside. The BMA [British Medical Association] put out a rather unhelpful statement on the back of the Rose Addis case. TB and Alan agreed we needed white coats rather than politicians out there at the moment pushing back. We went to do the
Jimmy Young Programme
[BBC Radio 2 talk show], Jimmy complaining to us before the interview at the way he was treated by the Beeb. He was still pretty good and they got through a fair bit of ground. TB was good on overall message and was clearly feeling in his stride.

On the train to Darlington, TB was working on the speech [to health workers in Newcastle], did a very good section on the current row and set it in the context of the debate going to the heart of the parliament. We got to Myrobella [Blair’s constituency home], worked some more on the speech, then I went for a run. We had dinner at Myrobella after a brief trip to the [Trimdon] Labour Club and I pointed out to TB that virtually everyone we had met today, including on the train, had complained about the way the media covered the country and then political debate. It was an issue waiting to be tapped. He didn’t feel we were the people to do it though. TB asked how things were with Fiona, and I said not good. He said I had to involve her more but also be nicer to her. He said he had realised with Cherie that it was really hard for her. We were blokes, he said, and we were doing big difficult jobs and taking a lot of heat all the time. So we felt CB and FM ought to realise that, because they lived with us, and be totally supportive and understanding. But it was hard for them too, and we had to do better at understanding that too.

The NHS row was probably a messy draw, but the TB speech was at least reasonably well set up. I was sleeping in the room next to his and he woke me up at 6, asking if I wanted a cup of tea, meaning he wanted me up to work on the speech with him downstairs. He felt we just had to shut down the Rose Addis row as best we could so we removed the lines that would most obviously be taken as a reference. With the opinion formers, we were running the argument that IDS scored a tactical hit but it was a strategic blunder because it got him back to an arch-Thatcherite position. I had worked up some good lines on my run yesterday re what being on the side of the patient meant, including being on the side of the staff, who in the Addis case felt really angry. TB was in very jokey mood, saying what kind of political victim will the dirty tricks operatives go for next – nuns, Sunday school teachers, war heroes?

Tom was a bit worried about the briefing he did but I told him not to worry and it was one of the good parts of TB’s leadership that if staff screwed up, he encouraged them not to let it fester. We set off for Newcastle, and though it was a bit flat, the speech went fine.
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The medics and the managers both seemed to feel IDS had made a bit of a blunder, but of course it was always hard to tell at these kinds of gatherings how much was politeness and how much was real. At Darlington, we met up with Neil Wallis and Nigel Nelson from the
People
. TB did a crap interview, just didn’t get engaged, and we didn’t have a top line. He said to me afterwards when I pointed out how crap he had been that he assumed I would cook something up with them so he wasn’t really concentrating. He said he was bored and irritated at the way they used anecdote to make what they thought were serious judgements, e.g. going on about what ‘Mrs Wallis’ would want to know. We talked about the press again. He said he was the one person who hates the press more than I do, but ‘I should not be the person who takes them on the whole time.’ He said we don’t have a [Norman] Tebbit [Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet ‘attack dog’] figure, which is a problem, but even if we did, he was not convinced it was the right way to go. Where I agreed with him was that they matter more to Oppositions than governments, but they are really up for damaging us at the moment.

TB was off to Paris with CB and called for a brief chat re the NHS before he left. He felt we could win the argument and had moved to a position, as it was clearly going into the Sundays, of saying it was in our interest to keep this whole thing going. I took Calum to Regent’s Park to play football but Neil Wallis was pressing me re TB’s NHS words and wanted them harder and harder, basically to run the line that if we didn’t fix the NHS we wouldn’t deserve to win again.

PG called to say he felt we needed a new sense of drive and strategy, that it all felt a bit stale. He was right. He didn’t feel Charles Clarke spoke the same language and strategy as us, was too conceptual, not hard-edged enough, felt he was deliberately placing himself off centre as a way of building up a ‘not TB’ positioning. I was pissed off with myself re the
People
which as I expected went on a very hard line re the NHS and TB was concerned that it made it seem that unless we met any and every expectation re the NHS we would be admitting to failure.
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Not surprisingly, he was not one hundred per cent happy that it came from something he didn’t say, but that I said for him. He agreed that as it was the
People
it was unlikely to fly, but we prepared lines on it in case. The worry was that it became one of those statements that stuck and which the Tories could ram down our throats at the next election, exactly the argument I had used with Wallis before I got fed up and gave up.

Health had died down but the
People
interview was worrying both of us. I apologised to TB for pushing it too far. He was fine about that, just wanted to make sure it did not become an enormous hostage. It had the feel of something that could become big at a later date, and I was amazed the Tories weren’t pushing it. If they had any sense they would keep it running till PMQs. My hope was it just went away but it nagged away at me because it was a mistake and I was angry with myself. TB wanted a transcript to see what he actually said but of course we were talking about ‘add-on words’ agreed between me and Wallis.

At his Monday office meeting, TB said so much depended on how he and GB operated together and that depended on GB. He said he was willing to co-operate in every which way, but Jeremy said the current vibes the other way were not good. We talked about Charles [Clarke], me saying we really lacked a politician attack dog who did not mind putting the boot in big style. I could only do it up to a point. I was constrained by the position and by the fact I didn’t go on camera. Peter [Hyman] was very down on Charles, said he sometimes felt we had a party chairman who was against party campaigning. The Tories were vulnerable. They were just going negative negative negative, talking the country down, willing everything to fail, and without real policy prescriptions, and that was not a great position for them, but we didn’t have the firepower to hurt them for it.