The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (44 page)

Birthday. Forty-five today. The herald for a weekend of gloom. Feeling really down again. Best thing was that Rory was running in the South of England qualifiers, so he and I went out to Watford. Fiona had bought me a pedometer and I ran for over an hour to get it working. The Roy Keane/Mick McCarthy drama was for some reason really
draining me too, even though I knew neither of them well.
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I felt a real sense of empathy with Keane, felt he was driven but also haunted by demons, depression, violence, an inability to share all the same emotions as everyone seemed to have around the big moments. TB, coincidentally, said he had had friends over for dinner, one of whom asked what I was like. TB said he is the Roy Keane in the operation, driven, doesn’t suffer fools, expects everyone to match his own standards, flawed but brilliant.

I ran for an hour then had a heart-to-heart with Fiona, who was finding my depressions harder and harder to deal with, which I completely understood but it didn’t exactly help. At the heart of it was probably stuff that had always been there, and also a feeling at the moment that I hated the job but I couldn’t work out how much of that was because of the pressure she put me under to leave, and the pressure TB put me under to stay. Charlie [Falconer] called me about the Dome because they were close to a deal that was being presented as giving it away. So another hour trying to help deal with that.

Up to see TB early. He had been thinking over the weekend about a reshuffle, perhaps on Wednesday, with Steve [Byers] out. He didn’t want a major reshuffle but he knew Steve had to go. There were others he would like to get rid of, notably Clare and Nick Brown, to a lesser extent Robin, but he knew he couldn’t, certainly not all at once. He was thinking of AD for transport. TB agreed with me that Steve had been the victim, but he did feel a lot of it was his own fault. But I think we both felt sorry for him where it was ending. He was totally fed up with Clare and intended to see her to make clear she understood she was far from being indispensable. These reshuffles, like pregnancy, dentistry and exams, were further proof that pain has no memory. I didn’t know how many we have done now, but until a new one starts, you forget how awful the process is.

First the usual and occasionally random discussion of who could go where. Then the unstructured remembering by different people at different times of reasons why such and such a move was unwise or
even impossible. With each reshuffle also came the realisation that the PM’s power and room for manoeuvre is more limited than people might think. In an ideal world, there was no way people like Short, Nick Brown, Michael Meacher [environment minister] would survive. But there were balances to be considered, and you couldn’t make all the personnel changes at the same time. We also knew with absolute certainty that today’s broadly loyal minister was tomorrow’s bitter and backbiting backbencher, their only hope of salvation in their mind turning against the government, giving the impression it was out of principle rather than bitterness. We had seen some already, and there would be more after tomorrow. He was pretty clear he couldn’t get rid of Nick Brown. He thought of making him chief secretary [to the Treasury] but it was interesting that GB rarely wanted in his own team the people whose claims he pressed hardest with TB.

Then a couple of quite extraordinary serendipitous moments. JP came in, and TB told him he was thinking of making a few structural changes, and JP said he shouldn’t rule out hiving off parts of DTLR. Then Byers came in and said to TB that he wanted to go, if TB felt that was the right thing to do. Steve said he had had enough, and he knew it was the right thing for him. We agreed to separate the Byers announcement from the rest of the reshuffle so that we could genuinely say it was his decision. He was still extraordinarily Zen-like, very calm, only very rare flashes of emotion. He said he passionately believed in what we were trying to do as a government and now felt he was a liability and that was something he didn’t want to live with. We chatted with TB for twenty minutes or so and Steve and I walked round to my office to sort the detail. I got Godric in, who was really angry. We agreed the best thing to do would be a short statement to camera in Number 10, which would show he was not being forced out, no questions. I said I was astonished how calm he was. He said politics is a rough trade, but we love it, and I found myself replying ‘Do you know, I’m not sure that I do any more.’ Yeah, he said, maybe not. He said he had spent so many years working for a Labour government, had been proud of what we had done, but he knew this was the right time to go. He asked me if I thought he should have gone earlier. I said probably, yes. But I was like him, I really didn’t want those fuckers to get a scalp. I was worried even now that TB would look weak out of this because in the end it was Steve deciding to go, basically driven out.

We agreed that Milburn and Blunkett should do the rounds for him, speak up for him. What he needed to get out of this was a bit of dignity and self-respect. He went off, and I think the people in the outer office could tell from the body language what was going on. I
joined a TB office meeting plus Hilary Armstrong to go over the rest of the reshuffle. I was still pressing for Clare to go, but TB really felt it wasn’t possible yet. There was a bit of pressure for Paul Boateng [financial secretary to the Treasury] for chief secretary. Hilary agreed that if he sacked Nick Brown, he was just setting up a rival GB whips operation. We made a bit of progress, and then TB said we should prepare a list to send to him in Rome tomorrow so he could work on it on the flight back, by which time we would be announcing Byers. I saw Michael Levy who said he had been really upset at our conversation the other day, that I’d been thuggish towards him, that nobody ever spoke to him like that. His interview went fine and he would never do anything to harm TB.

TB left for the NATO summit in Rome, which was genuinely historic on one level but when he called in, it was to tell me inter alia about Berlusconi getting some dolly bird to hand out watches to all the leaders while Chirac made a speech attacking him over his pronouncements that NATO was the key to our defence. We had an internal meeting plus Hilary A to go over the reshuffle options for TB. We persuaded ourselves that [David] Miliband could go straight in as a Minister of State because he was nice enough and popular enough for the inevitable jealousies to be contained. Just how big a twat Sixsmith was became apparent when he appeared at the gates after Steve went, wanting to be let in, saying he was still his director of communications.

Steve was more nervous than I had ever seen him now that the moment was coming, Jan [Cookson, his partner] was fine, relaxed about it, happy even. His mother felt he was doing the wrong thing. With Mark Bennett working at my computer we finished the statement. Steve read through it a few times, kept in ‘friends who knew me know I am not a liar and try to behave honourably’. I got the office to call round the media to tell them to come to a briefing without telling them what it was about. We thoroughly enjoyed the spectacle of [Adam] Boulton blathering from Rome for ten minutes about all the things it might be – referendum on the euro, declaration of war, TB illness. Others were speculating it would be me resigning, one or two that he was going back on some of the decisions in the reshuffle.

Nobody mentioned Steve. He was still fairly calm but not quite so Zen-like. I left him for a while to compose his thoughts and he asked for a glass of water. I went back in, asking him if he was ready, then took him up the long route through the basement so that nobody would bump into him. We got to the side door, he took a deep breath,
said ‘Here goes then’, and in he went. He did well, held it together but as he came out he was a bit choked. I took him back to my office where Boulton was still blathering away, now saying it was evidence of how few friends he had that the news didn’t leak. What total scum these people are. Couldn’t bring himself to admit he hadn’t heard a whisper, and all his speculation had been for the birds. We sat around chatting with Hilary Armstrong and Sally M while Mark B tracked down Mike White and Lucy Ward to do the
Guardian
interview. Again, he was pretty good. He seemed happier in himself already. He looked grey as he started but the colour came back as the interview went on. We knew the press would be pretty merciless about both him and TB, but we just had to get through it.

I joined the TB meeting on the reshuffle, the usual agony. JP was worried it would look like he was losing part of his job rather than gaining. Hilary A and Robert Hill said his reputation in local government was not good, but TB saw no way of changing what he had agreed with him. Jeremy gave TB a long list of what JP wanted. Fiona and I went out for dinner at the Mannings’ [David and Catherine] but I was in and out the whole time. Estelle [Morris] was worried she was being heaved because she had a call that TB wanted to speak to her first thing. I called David Miliband to tell him to be in London. Milburn called to get briefed on Byers for the
Today
programme. The whole thing was a bit draining and I didn’t much enjoy dinner despite David and Catherine being very good hosts, the Master of the Rolls [Lord Phillips] interesting and a Frenchwoman there [Christylle Rouffiac, wife of Lord Phillips] who had a good take on our media culture. At one point I looked out of the window and saw a druggie breaking open a pay and display box where the car was parked.

The press was vile about Steve. ‘Liar for hire’ in the
Star
. The
Mirror
was merciless. It’s like they get a corpse, but then are disappointed there is nothing left to try and kill, so they kill the dead body too. TB had to get on with the reshuffle. [David] Miliband could scarcely believe he was going to be a minister let alone in charge of schools as Minister of State. Estelle not totally happy and had wanted Margaret Hodge out, but TB resisted on that. He had a number of difficult conversations with GB. TB wanted to move Yvette [Cooper, junior health minister, wife of Ed Balls] but GB was resistant. ‘You can’t do that. She won’t accept it.’ To which TB said she would get very short shrift. GB described the LCD [Lord Chancellor’s Department], where TB was planning to send her, as a graveyard, which was rubbish. She had also gone AWOL but
eventually came through and was clearly expecting a big job. When he told her she said straight out ‘What do I have to do to become a Minister of State?’ He should have said ‘Not talk to me like that for a start’, but instead said these reshuffles were very difficult. Doubtless helped by Ed, they were out spinning straight away that she was going to be the minister in charge of referendum administration.

We now had the ever-changing grid of all the ministerial changes, Jonathan trying to keep a grip of the master copy. He started the calls to ministers. He was certainly tougher than in the past, usually saying ‘There is no easy way to say this but I need your job to make space for changes. It doesn’t mean you haven’t done well or can’t come back.’ Seven sackings in all. We got it all done in time for Tom to do a briefing at 3. Alistair Darling and I had a chat about how to grip his department [Transport], and also how to avoid becoming a pawn between TB and GB. Alistair was pleased TB had entrusted him with a pretty big challenge, said he intended to get on top of the detail, worry more about doing than talking about it. [Paul] Boateng [as chief secretary to the Treasury, becoming the UK’s first black Cabinet minister] came in and I warned him against getting trapped by the GB machine.

There was a fair bit of ‘blow to GB cronies’ around the place, so I got Tom and Godric to call round and get that in a better place. TB and I went upstairs and Peter M was there, playing with Leo. He was clearly annoyed for three reasons – first he was not back in government and nobody had called him to say so. Second, he had been brought back from Korea for another meandering meeting. Third, Douglas [Alexander] was there for the strategy part of the meeting. He was very snappy, ate very little and was the first to leave, though as ever made some sensible and telling contributions amid the histrionics. TB was very solicitous of Douglas, and clearly wanted him to feel he was part of the inner team. He failed to persuade TB that he should do more to deal with some of our negatives, like Parliament, greater interaction. Then another argument about how to deal with the press who were in total kill mode most of the time. TB was looking a bit frail, physically and politically. I ran home around 10.

TB called first thing after reading my note on the PCC which warned him how Black Rod was behaving, and we had to look for a way out of this. He asked me to send all the papers to Derry [Irvine], who quickly came to the view that we should try to get the papers involved to write to me around a deal that we would drop it on the basis they accepted TB had not been involved, which had always been our
concern. TB was torn, as was I. On the one hand TB didn’t particularly want a great row with a senior official of the House, but nor did he want to back down. I went in to see him first thing to go over the options, then had to leave because I was having breakfast with C at SIS HQ. I liked Richard [Dearlove] a lot. He was witty and engaging, and also had a real strategic understanding on the big foreign policy issues. Kashmir, it was a disaster waiting to happen. He was really worried about the Americans’ lack of proper engagement in the Middle East. Lots of small talk re Cornwall, where he had a house, as well as big talk on the foreign policy stuff.

Some of the papers, most adamantly David Yelland at the
Sun
, were saying that Sixsmith was lining himself up to do a deal on his story. Yelland was really steamed up about it, said he held no candle for Byers but he didn’t like this. I did a note to RW, Jonathan and Mottram, setting out what was being said, which, if true, would seem to be a breach of the agreement I thought Mottram struck.