The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (42 page)

Meanwhile Andy Marr [BBC] had been on broadcasting that we were scrapping the lobby which put them all into a total tizz, and they were disappearing into real media wank. They couldn’t quite work it out. The meeting went on for about an hour, some genuine concerns, which we could work out, few real complaints but by and
large I think it was OK. I called JP to talk it through, he having earlier complained to me that we didn’t seem to be in touch as often as we used to be, when changes were happening. TB called later from Ireland and asked if I had sparked a meltdown. I left early for Calum’s parents evening. Tom and Godric were having to deal with the immediate fallout and Godric was a bit stressed out that the briefings would if anything become even tougher in the short term. Our aim had to be to make the briefings themselves less newsworthy and also extend the range of people there. Ludicrously, it was the second item on the
Ten O’Clock News
.

The local election results started coming in and it was clear we were not going to do as badly as some of the predictions.
³¹
But the BNP won three seats in Burnley, including in a beautiful leafy village, so that was going to take a lot of the attention, and was pretty grim. Most people seemed to think though that the big picture was us OK, Lib Dems OK, Tories pretty poor, plus embarrassment over elected mayors re the monkey in Hartlepool and Robocop in Middlesbrough.
³²
Good news in that turnout was better than expected where there was full postal voting.

RW came to see me, said was I sure I knew what I was taking on with the changes to the lobby? He said lots of people had tried this. The scale of the coverage on it was ludicrous, a further sign of their self-obsession and their obsession with me, which in part was what we were trying to address. Once we talked it through, he was pretty supportive, and said he would help to find premises so that we could do the bigger briefings with the foreign media included, and any other accredited journalists who wanted to turn up. JP called, said that he had premises in his office, in the room that used to be [former Conservative Prime Minster Winston] Churchill’s cinema. The general feeling on the local elections was pretty good for us. TB was at Chequers, pretty chipper. We were under pressure on elected mayors, farce thereof, but TB was adamant we just hold firm.

[Bill] Clinton called me at 1am to go through some changes in the article he was doing for us re all the attacks on TB. He didn’t want
to attack the motives of our critics, just attack the attacks. It was a good piece though, and worth the effort. He was always good to talk to, because he had such a good feel for our politics, and for how best to position TB. He felt we were just going through one of those phases where people wanted to see us tested and pressured and coming through. TB must have said something, or his instincts told him something, about me going a bit offside, because he said that in these top jobs like president and prime minister, you really need people close by that you can trust and rely on one hundred per cent. He said it was important that I hung in and kept helping TB through.

I chatted to a few columnists and the general take was that a combination of the local elections and people taking stock in a measured way five years on was pretty good for us, bad for the Tories. The conference call was mainly Middle East and the lead-up to the French election second round. Papers arrived.

French elections were dominating the news and it was pretty clear as the results came through that Chirac had won. We put together a line fairly straightforwardly and got that out. I had a nice day out with the kids, tennis with Calum. Went to see
About a Boy
[film], lunch, then Rory won his race.

Bank Holiday. Pretty quiet until later with news of [right-wing Dutch politician] Pim Fortuyn’s assassination [in Hilversum, Netherlands]. Conference call with TB, Jonathan, [Sir] Stephen Wall [EU adviser]. We agreed to cancel the planned visit tomorrow and put out a short statement. We were already getting a bit alarmed by all the focus post elections on the politics of the far right, and this wasn’t going to help.

Up to see TB in the flat. He was clearly thinking about bringing back [Ken] Livingstone [into the Labour Party]. Also wanting to get back into the antisocial behaviour agenda. TB set off for Scotland for the Donald Dewar [former First Minister of Scotland] memorial event. The Sixsmith pay-off deal was an absolute outrage – big pay-off, Byers in deep shit. I did an interview with [Tom] Baldwin for
The Times
re our relations with the press.

Massive suicide bomb in Israel. TB said the problem now was that Israelis were stating as a fact that [Yasser] Arafat was behind the latest bombings and even though there was no direct evidence it was very difficult to counter and it would push the US into a much harder-line position. We spent some time working on the right response. TB wanted to keep the balance but felt that basically we had to tilt towards pro-Palestinian. He was really worried about the impact in the States – another bomb, another massacre, [Ariel] Sharon back from the US successfully able to make it look like it was impossible to negotiate with Arafat.

The
Times
interview went quite big and got too much pick-up in later editions and on the broadcasts. I was a bit concerned about the stuff at the end re not being sure about staying. TB called me at 7.10. Said he felt that Byers was pretty shot. He said he was going to give him a chance to step down of his own volition before a reshuffle which he planned for the next few weeks but wanted total radio silence for now. He felt it was monstrous the way Steve had been treated internally but ultimately ministers have to be responsible for their own departments, and he would have to go fairly soon. TB said GB had asked him if it was true that I was going to leave and TB had said no. I said his boorishness yesterday, not just with me but with Vera [Doyle, Number 10 messenger] when she was trying to pour him coffee, was Olympian.

TB took a strategy meeting with the internal team to go through the big strategic overview paper I’d done. It had caused a lot of anger, people feeling I’d bounced it on them, but Peter M was totally supportive, which was important, and would help with TB. TB’s meeting with JP didn’t get off to a great start. As we walked in, TB didn’t realise JP was right behind us as he said to me ‘What on earth are we going to talk about in here?’ JP was pressing him on the need for greater involvement of Cabinet committees. Cabinet was largely a row about select committees, and Clare going on about every issue she could think of. Later meeting of [departmental] heads of information to go over the lobby changes, which was more productive than usual. TB off on a visit to South London and back for a visit to Number 10 by Sven, [David] Beckham, Gareth Southgate, David Seaman [England footballers] and the suits from the FA plus some kids from Southwark. Big media turnout in the street with kids having a great time though CB was monopolising Beckham, or possibly vice versa.

TB at Chequers working through a stack of boxes. Called a couple of times to discuss German TV and
Newsnight
[BBC] interviews planned for next week. I was putting together a series of briefs re
Newsnight
when news came in of a bad train crash at Potters Bar. The early indication was that it was a points failure, seven dead. TB wanted us to rebut some of the coverage of last night’s David Beckham event, and in particular the widespread regurgitation of the story of him claiming to have seen [former Newcastle United footballer] Jackie Milburn, which was one of those annoying urban myths.

We were dealing with the train crash aftermath, then up pops another sleaze situation. This time re [Richard] Desmond offering free ads, which we then said should be a financial donation which we could use to buy the ads. The claim was that this was all agreed at a meeting of me, TB, Margaret McDonagh [former Labour general secretary] and Desmond. One thing we knew for sure was that no such meeting ever took place. But it was the usual Saturday problem of getting all the facts together. The direct allegation seemed to be that the donation was made as some kind of thank you for nodding through the
Express
takeover. In fact, there was no need for ministerial reference because the OFT [Office of Fair Trading] would do it and he had no other newspaper interests so reference up didn’t apply. But it was one of those stories that whatever the facts would be made to look bad. I spoke to Desmond who confirmed he had never discussed funding with TB.

The Express group put out a statement confirming a donation but it fell in the period before the Electoral Commission rules on disclosure came in. The
Mail
,
Observer
,
Sunday Times
all going big, so needless to say the BBC followed it up big. We got John Reid straight on to Radio 5 as the papers dropped and he was excellent. Another Saturday taken up dealing with nonsense. These funding stories were actually born of the fact we were more open, but got no credit for it at all. This one was not a scandal at all but they could make anything look like a scandal. I was really impressed with Reid today. He could assimilate facts quickly, get the point quickly, and express it on the media having thought it through rather than simply parroting a line.

The fightback re [Richard] Desmond had gone OK. We had successfully shut down the allegations re a meeting. So it was basically a
question of whether we should take money from someone who made money from pornography and the Beeb found a few MPs, after a lot of trying, to say no it wasn’t. Gerald Kaufman called to say he had been asked for his view and as soon as he made clear he didn’t intend to be critical, they made clear they didn’t want him on. I called Desmond from Northolt. ‘I wouldn’t have your job for all the money in the world,’ he said. I was a bit pissed off that so much of this was again focusing on me, because I was a so-called ‘friend’ of Desmond’s when all I had done was go to his birthday party because TB couldn’t. The
Mail
of course had two interests here, do us in and do him in.

On the flight to Germany, we went over the interview TB was to do with Sabine Christiansen [German television talk-show host], which Schroeder had asked him to do, but which had the feel of something a bit eccentric. On arrival, we went to meet Schroeder. He looked tired, said that he was doing OK but his party was not and it was tough to change it. He and TB went out for a quick chat on the balcony and then back in for the broader meeting – Europe, world economy, Afghanistan, Middle East, on which Schroeder said ‘You know more than I do,’ and TB said ‘What I know is that it’s bad.’ He said he was trying to persuade the US to keep on engaging. They both agreed nothing could happen without the Americans, but their opinion was in a very different position to ours. Democrats as well as Republicans are lined up behind [Ariel] Sharon so Bush was in quite a difficult position. Schroeder said the Jewish people in Germany tended to present any criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, which was a dangerous route. He said they were fairly lucky in avoiding a big debate about right-wing extremism in their election, ‘which given our history is a good thing’.

We had a long and pretty tedious session with bureau chiefs and then the Christiansen show. The German translation was played over speakers above the audience’s heads as TB spoke so it became quite hard for him, but he did pretty well. We flew back late in one of the smaller RAF planes, wondering whether the visit had been worth the effort. What was absolutely clear was that the Europeans saw TB as the number one star of European politics at the moment.

Spoke to [Richard] Desmond again. He said he had paid ‘only’ £75k for the Beckham party [publishing rights]. Some of our MPs were going on about him not being a fit person. Godric was feeling pretty jaded at the moment as well and was needing more than usual support. I
decided we should not do a four o’clock, which produced the expected tantrums. Fuck ‘em. Desmond still running as a big negative for us.

Sally M sent a note to TB of a conversation with Frank Dobson, who was seriously offside. He said our current difficulties were being made worse because ‘TB and AC have lost the plot’. The main news running today was the three new asylum centres, with lots of attendant nimbyism [‘not-in-my-backyard’]. Media-wise, our main focus was the extended
Newsnight
interview which he had agreed to do as part of our strategy of doing more sustained and serious interviews, which
Newsnight
have agreed to run over three nights. TB looked pretty knackered first thing, then had [Thabo] Mbeki at 7.30, [Jean] Chrétien [Canadian Prime Minister] at 8.30, before we got down to briefing for the interview. He was sure [Jeremy] Paxman [interviewer] would want to do lots on [Richard] Desmond, but they pretty much stuck to the deal – three sections, public services, foreign policy, society and belief. Paxman was tough but fair and TB held his own. As an exercise, it definitely worked. TB said he thought it was odd that Paxman was always lumped in with [John] Humphrys [BBC
Today
programme presenter]. He thought the big difference was that Paxman was actually interested in the answers.

The general view of
Newsnight
was that it was a strong interview. Good coverage. We thought the Tories might come on [Richard] Desmond at PMQs, but IDS did NHS and crime and TB was able to hit him hard on investment. TB was OK, though he didn’t think it was one of his best. Also, Robin [Cook] seemed to be asleep on the front bench. I had a meeting with the whips and went through the lobby changes, the determination to do more in Parliament and the need for them to be fully engaged in what we were doing re message and strategic communications. Charles C was also focused on the need to work up a ‘new politics plan’ basically an end to top-down command and control message work, more about how we develop MPs as local ambassadors, and how we make a link between politics and liveability issues. Charles was really enthusiastic, really wanted to motor. I was in favour but worried that a lot of the MPs wouldn’t be as enthusiastic as he was.