The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (3 page)

By the time of this volume we are certainly on the receiving end of the culture of negativity which is powerfully unique to the UK media. I’m not quite sure I would go as far as Derry Irvine’s description of the press as ‘Satan’s people on earth’ – some of them were out for Derry’s son at the time – but I thought David Blunkett summed up the new media mood well when he said if TB had found a cure for cancer they’d report his failure to do anything for victims of meningitis. TB shared my analysis that the media had become a problem not just for politicians but for our culture and therefore our country. But as I said to the Leveson Inquiry, whereas I felt we had to do something about it, he continued to feel that with all the other priorities the government faced, the public simply would not understand if we launched an overhaul of press standards and regulation as another plank of reform. It was a fair point. But there was always going to come a time when the media reformed and hopefully phone-hacking has brought us to that moment. We will see.

Beyond growing disenchantment with the political media, certain other domestic themes recur in this volume: TB’s frustrations at the pace of delivery; something of a culture clash with parts of the Civil Service; continuing difficulties with matters Royal; another media frenzy erupting from false charges that TB sought a bigger role in the Queen Mother’s funeral, clearly being fuelled by members of the establishment, some of whom never quite reconciled themselves to a long-running Labour government; TB and his fashion sense – my determination not to let him wear a coat Cherie wanted him to put on in Russia led to one of my biggest rows with her; and of course the TBGBs. John Holmes, formerly TB’s foreign policy adviser, made an interesting observation: that TB’s problems are caused by his relations with two GBs – George Bush and Gordon Brown. They certainly figure large in his thinking and in any history of this remarkable period. Yet again the two sides of Gordon Brown – the brilliant and the impossible – are on show. But by now TB seems to feel the impossible outweighs the brilliant. Even at the height of international crisis, GB is asking TB for a date of departure (much as Fiona was asking the same of me). The battleground is as much about policy as simply the ambition to be PM. The euro, for example, with TB still keen that Britain should step up preparations to join the single currency, and concerned that GB’s scepticism is a tactic to court the right-wing media, the left already supportive of him because of his approach to poverty. There are some fairly extraordinary scenes resulting from GB’s attempts, often without consultation with the ministers concerned, to direct policy in other departments. Ministers are often unsure of what their instincts are expected to be, always a sign of division at the top.

The policy differences are exacerbated by what became a largely dysfunctional working relationship, the management of which consumed extraordinary amounts of time and energy. TB talks of GB waging a war of attrition. Jonathan Powell at one point says it is like watching a failed marriage disintegrate. John Prescott says it is all about TB’s guilt at becoming leader ahead of GB, and GB’s never forgotten sense of betrayal. At times GB could not even bring himself to look at TB in meetings. It all got so bad that TB, fed up with what he sometimes called GB’s ‘destabilisation strategy’, came back from one holiday determined to sack him. It never happened. At another point a small number of his inner team are asked to reflect on what became known variously as his ‘
grande stratégie
’ and ‘
le grand projet
’ (he and I often spoke in French for some reason, particularly when he was nervous) – namely announcing that he would not fight the next election, but would stay on until that point. I think it is possible that had GB been more co-operative and more of a team player, TB might have executed that strategy. But things seemed to get worse not better. More even than in previous volumes, TB, his ministerial colleagues, I and my colleagues in the TB team are worrying about what GB would be like as PM. Yet when it came to it, there was enough of the good amid the bad to have most of us supporting him when he took over. TB says at one point that GB is a ‘malign force but head and shoulders above the rest’. Back to the ‘brilliant and impossible’ prism.

There have been plenty of books written about the Blair/Brown era, and the Blair/Brown relationship, and there will doubtless be many more. Most of the memoirs, biographies and autobiographies of our time in government have been written with the benefit of hindsight, and some of them to suit a single view or perspective. I hope that one of the advantages of a diary from the centre, in terms of its potential contribution to historical debate and analysis, is the lack of such hindsight.

This volume brings to an end the detailed daily account of my time working for TB, in opposition and in government. I have kept a diary ever since, continue to do so and one day may publish my post-Number 10 diaries, where from a slightly different perspective I took part in and recorded two more election campaigns, between them the transition from one PM to another, and many of the ups and downs along the way, as I sought to build a different sort of life, but found myself drawn back in again and again. Re-reading this volume now, and gathering the impressions of those who have read it during the editorial process, I do understand why some people ask the question: ‘Why on earth did you go back to help GB?’ I understand too why they point to some passages and say it was obvious he was not temperamentally suited to the job of prime minister, or to leading Labour through a general election campaign. But look elsewhere, and it is not quite so evident. He had huge residual strengths and a political appeal which made him hard to resist when, despite all the differences between the Blair and Brown teams, as Prime Minister he was asking me, Peter Mandelson and Philip Gould to return to the fold to help him out in the run-up to the last election. Peter Mandelson returned full time, and full on, back in the Cabinet. Partly because of my views on the Lords, and partly because I didn’t want to go back full time to the front line, I turned down the offer of a peerage and ministerial post but did go back to help plan the election campaign, and support GB during it. And despite being ill for much of the time, Philip made his usual big contribution on polling and strategy. As Philip wrote in his revised
Unfinished Revolution
, published shortly before his death last November, I had predicted a hung Parliament from some way out. For much of the campaign, however, I had felt the Tories were on their way towards securing a majority, and I think we surprised ourselves in preventing them from getting one. But when, after several days of post-election wrangling, the time finally came for Gordon to leave Downing Street for Buckingham Palace to offer his resignation to the Queen, I did get the very strong feeling that, politically, we had for the time being run our course. Shortly before, he spoke on the telephone to TB, from the desk in the corner of his office. It was my old office, which he had taken over when he turned 12 Downing Street into what he believed was a more modern set-up for a PM. As he and Tony chatted, Peter Mandelson and I sat and listened. All of the relationships had been tested at times, but there remained a togetherness of sorts, and certainly the sense of a remarkable shared journey that changed Britain, and British politics, for good and, in my view, for the better.

That moment also reminded me of another insight that has deepened with time and experience: that politics, at its best, is a team game. TB once said we were at our best when we were at our boldest. In what was widely seen as a dig at New Labour, by way of response GB said we were at our best when we were Labour. I felt we were always at our best when we were together, united, pulling in the same direction. When it happened, it felt like we were unstoppable. But it didn’t happen all of the time; far from it.

Whenever I was under the cosh, my mother-in-law was fond of reminding me of the old Harry Truman quote, ‘If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.’ But friendship in politics is possible, and can be real. Teamship is vital. It is because Philip Gould was both a great friend and a great team player that I chose to dedicate this volume to him. He more than any of us understood that politics is a team game, and right up to his death was trying to heal some of the wounds that came with the pressures of power. He died proud of the role he had played in helping to get Labour back into power, and in helping TB and his team do the job we did. I publish this full account humble enough to know we didn’t get everything right, but proud of the overall story it tells, and happy to share it.

Alastair Campbell

January 2012