The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (51 page)

Fiona spotted a photographer in the street when she came back from swimming. He was from the [
Evening
]
Standard
trying to get a picture of me running. Up to the flat to see TB. He had not seen the
Spectator
interview with Piers [Morgan] which was a total diatribe against him and CB and had called for GB to be leader.

Went through to Cabinet with JP. He had had a couple of differences with GB over policy. As we walked through, he told me he was going to get rid of the RMT flat because it wasn’t appropriate to have his own house becoming a story while he was doing a lot of difficult stuff on that front.
⁴¹
JP talked about the housing issue at Cabinet. TB did a bit of general spiel, but what was interesting was that he didn’t really do what we discussed beforehand, instead went off on one on ministers’ failure to deal with red tape and bureaucracy. He said if the Tories had any sense they would latch on to this, create a political narrative around the fact that we are demanding more in the centre whilst at the same time pursuing policies of devolution, and sometimes businesses feeling we have tied them in knots.

GB didn’t speak, which again was a bit odd a few days after the CSR. Fiona had given a lift in to Ed Miliband and just as we felt GB and Co. were doing us in the whole time, they felt we were. GB didn’t like the drift of policy but Ed said he felt powerless to do anything about it. Fiona felt GB now feared he was running out of time and the question was no longer whether he would take over but what there would be to do when he did, would he just come in on the back of failure re public services? Fiona had told Ed that if TB and GB worked together as a team, TB would be far more likely to be happy to let him take over, but the more it looked like GB was trying to
force him out, the more TB would dig in, and the more his people would be loyal to him even if they disagreed with some of what he did. She said Ed presented GB as a victim. But he had to use his power to be part of a team. She said why not just do the job, be nice, work with everyone else, and wait in the near-certain knowledge that before too long he would be prime minister? She said Ed had said it would be great if I worked with GB, but Fiona told him GB had barely acknowledged us for months now.

I went for lunch with David Frost at Le Caprice. He felt TB could pretty much stay as long as he wanted because he was in a different league, could probably win four elections if he put his mind to it, could certainly beat Thatcher’s record. Then in for a meeting with TB, Margaret Beckett, RW and all the FMD people. TB had read the [inquiry report] introduction thoroughly, skimmed through the rest and felt it was pretty damning. But neither he nor Margaret were really up for saying someone should go for it. I said the overall sense as you read through it was of chaos, near panic, all the big decisions badly taken and there was bound to be a real drive for resignations and if we felt that was the case, and that’s where we would end, we should do it now. Margaret felt that wasn’t right, that Nick Brown was popular in the House and there would not be a real demand. I felt if the Tories got their act together, and really went for this, then we would be in difficulty. We would either lose people, or it would become a real symbol of arrogance. Billions wasted. Total fuck-up all round. But nobody says sorry and nobody resigns.

Margaret was pretty clear, said the Tories didn’t resign over BSE. I felt if we were serious about the new politics, there had to be heads rolling, but Margaret was totally opposed and TB was a bit flaky about it. Margaret was very robust about the need to tough it out, felt it would be wrong for there to be sackings out of this. I totally disagreed but in the end if TB wasn’t going to push it, there wasn’t much we could do. I said if we are complacent or unapologetic we will be killed on this, and if the Tories or the Countryside Alliance can’t put together a decent summertime campaign on it, they are totally useless.

Got in and TB called me up to the flat. He was wearing the most extraordinary collection – a white collarless Nicole Farhi shirt, plain blue trousers and England football slippers with the three lions on them. I said I find it very hard to take him seriously wearing kids’ slippers and that shirt. He said I had a bias against style. He asked
if I had thought any further about his ‘
grand projet
’. He felt it was nonsense that the Cabinet was moving towards GB and he really thought this could give him strength. He would announce it in the autumn, pre conference, make clear to the Cabinet that if anyone sought to exploit it or organise a leadership campaign, he would sack them. He felt it would actually allow him to move GB e.g. to the Foreign Office, because the charge could not be levelled that he was doing it to damage a rival. It would allow him to do what he thought was right without people saying he was simply interested in staying in power. Bill Clinton had said to him ‘Whatever you do, go when they’re still asking for more. Don’t go like Thatcher.’ TB said if she’d gone in ’88, it would have been very different for her. Her last two years were just a downward path.

He had also decided that GB would not like it. It would mean the curtain on him would open more widely and the spotlight would fall upon him more. Deep down, he felt GB probably was flawed, not right for the top job but it was not a good idea for leaders to pick their successors and the party and the country had to discover these things for themselves. I had quietly discussed what he was saying both with Fiona and Sally and both were adamant it would make him a lame duck overnight, but he was persuading himself it would give him extra authority. There was also the possibility of space opening for another successor to emerge. I wasn’t sure about that but for now he seemed set on it, constantly saying to me ‘You only get two terms in this job.’ I told him what Frost had said, namely that he could easily go into the record books for longevity. He said the great difference between him and other politicians was that he could walk away from it.

He then walked over to the wall, leant against it, laughed and said ‘There’s another complication I need to tell you about.’ He said ‘I think Cherie is pregnant.’ He said they were both absolutely gobsmacked by the whole thing. But it did mean it was forcing him to think about the future. ‘I’ve effectively got two families with the same woman.’ He had known she might be pregnant for a few days and it had clearly had an impact on his thinking about the
grand projet
. I felt a big weight carrying two pretty major secrets from the same conversation, his apparent decision to go before the election, and Cherie pregnant again.

I slept really badly, lots of different worries just floating around, couldn’t decide whether TB was right with his
grand projet
, was trying
to separate out my own feelings about my own position, which would probably welcome it. As for CB being pregnant again, it was mind-blowing. It was a nice morning and I went out into the garden to dictate some notes to the office, and was stung by a bee, much to the Garden Room’s amusement.

Conference call re FMD. Jeremy and I both felt that the FMD draft statement from Defra [Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs] was poor and both of us made various efforts through the day to get it improved but the department was very resistant. There was something of an irony in it, as one of the subtexts of the whole report was that they had been slow to exploit necessary help from the centre. It was only when I spoke to Margaret B herself that we started to make some progress. Jeremy and I still believed TB was slightly head-in-the-sand about the potential impact, but TB felt it might not be the total disaster we feared. I found myself beginning to wind down and think about the holiday.

Ran through the parks, six miles in just over forty-two minutes. I bumped into Michael Martin [Speaker of the Commons] in Green Park, where he was out walking, and had a really nice chat with him, about bagpipes and about Scotland. Through the day, a series of meetings with the policy people on the pamphlet we were planning for September. The balance to strike was between reform and values. I wanted the focus on values, as a way of saying we were New Labour delivering Old Labour goals. TB was on reform for a purpose. I was really impressed with Douglas [Alexander] at the moment. Of all the GB people, he was the one least wrapped up in the whole TB/GB thing.

TB had a conversation with Iain Anderson [FMD report author], then spoke to Margaret B, then to Nick Brown to tell him that he was not going to have to resign and we would tough it out. He went [to the Commons] for the [FMD] statement, which was just about OK. He filled in Sally and me on last night’s dinner with JP and GB. He said it was pretty awful, GB doing his usual complaining that there was no strategy, what was going on, who does what, with the unions his latest area for complaint. TB told him to calm down, said we had a problem and we had to deal with it but let’s not get our knickers in a twist. He said it was quite useful for JP to see so clearly the extent to which GB failed to hide the fact he could hardly bear to be in TB’s
company. JP had said at the end that a lot of the attacks had been personal dressed up as political.

TB and I went for lunch at the
Guardian
and he was on good form, but Iraq was clearly going to be a major problem with everyone, though helpfully Mike White reminded us that TB had talked about WMD, and his worries about the link with Iraq, when he last went for lunch there last September. Later I had a meeting with SIS re Iraq. C had just come back from the US and had reported from his discussions with Condi and George Tenet [CIA director] that as far as they were concerned it was when not if, with or without us, and they did not feel the need for a new UNSCR. TB was right out there and was going to be very exposed. Then to the farewell dinner for Richard Wilson, which was a nice enough do. TB was fulsome in his praise and though Richard and I had had a few ups and downs, he was actually not a bad guy, and I liked his kids. You can tell a lot about people from the way they react to their children and the way their children react to them, and I was really impressed by their relationship with Tom, their deaf son. I sat next to him at the dinner and really liked him.

TB chaired a big Iraq meeting, JS, GH, CDS, C, Francis Richards [director of GCHQ], Peter Goldsmith [Attorney General], plus the key Number 10 people. C reported his strong feeling that the US had pretty much made up their minds. Steve Hadley [US Deputy National Security Advisor] was saying there was no need for another resolution, and how many more times do we hang around watching the Iraqis stiff Kofi? Condi was a bit better but not much. TB was asking whether the Iraqis would welcome an invasion or not. Jack felt the regime would appear to be popular until it tips, but when it tips, it will happen quickly. All the signs out of Washington were that their thinking had moved forward, as per Bush’s remarks about taking the battle to the enemy, taking him on before he takes us on. Boyce set out military options. These would vary from provision of bases, maritime support and special forces, right up to the provision of thousands of troops. Geoff felt the preparations either for a generated start or a running start were well advanced. Kuwait was essential to the plan, so is the UK because of Diego Garcia and Cyprus [airbases].

On the heavy side of things, we could be looking at two armoured brigades entering via Turkey. Jack set out the political difficulties. He said it was all being driven by DoD and NSC, and Powell and the State Department were not fully involved. Apparently Powell would
not be at the August 4 meeting at which all this was being thrashed out. Boyce thought CENTCOM would be briefed on August 1 or 2, Rumsfeld on August 3, Bush on August 4. TB said he did not want any discussions with any other departments at this stage and did not want any of this ‘swimming round the system’. He meant the Treasury, because Boyce had been talking about the need for new money, e.g. for tank desertification. Jack said that of the four powers posing a potential threat with WMD – Iran, Korea, Libya and Iraq – Iraq would be the fourth. He does not have nukes, he has some offensive WMD capability. The tough question is whether this is just regime change or is the issue WMD? TB was pretty clear that we had to be with the Americans. He said at one point ‘It’s worse than you think, I actually believe in doing this.’ He was acutely conscious of how difficult it would be both with the PLP and the public, but when Jack raised the prospect of not going in with the US, TB said that would be the biggest shift in foreign policy for fifty years and I’m not sure it’s very wise.

On the tactical level, he felt maximum closeness publicly was the way to maximise influence privately. Geoff pointed out the Americans’ clear view that they already had legal justification. They had a different take to Goldsmith, who did not see regime change alone as having a legal base for force, and also that self-defence/humanitarian were not current overwhelming arguments, which leaves UNSC. TB said he needed to be convinced first of the workability of a military plan, and second of an equally workable political strategy. Jack said we could probably get the votes for a UN ultimatum, but the Americans may not want to go down that route. TB saw regime change as the route to dealing with WMD.

As if to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, TB, having spent much of the morning dealing with Iraq, spent part of the afternoon doing an interview with readers of
Chat
magazine, including a ventriloquist and a fortune-teller. There were some days I wondered how he kept going with all the different things he had to do, because sandwiched in was a meeting on euro preparations plus a stack of different policy issues. On the euro, TB was keen that we crank up but Roger Liddle [special adviser, European affairs] said that most of Europe thought we were not going to do it because GB was blocking him.