The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (53 page)

When they spoke, TB sensed Bush was a bit nervous about the UN route but equally he wasn’t happy about the Cheney/Rumsfeld comments, which he tried to justify by saying they had been reacting to [Brent] Scowcroft [former US National Security Advisor] and Jim
Baker. Later though I spoke to Mary Matalin [Cheney’s press secretary] who was adamant that Cheney had not ‘gone freelance’, by which I assumed she meant he had been speaking with Bush’s knowledge and approval. David was not so sure. TB was now clear he should see Bush as soon as possible and felt that we had to get at it before he was making his UNGA [UN General Assembly] speech, and preferably whilst Bush was still having his ‘Council of War’. He was clearly getting a lot of competing advice.

TB still felt confident we could turn the argument. He felt the left had got itself into a ridiculous position by appearing to be standing up and protecting Saddam. The reality was people had let him get away with it for too long. Everyone felt that if we could get the UN route it would be a lot easier. TB, when I first saw him today, was wearing the full Rio Ferdinand [footballer] look – shorts, his FA slip-ons and the trendy vest. He said he had been thinking a lot and the most important thing now was that he did what he thought was right, on foreign and domestic regardless of what the focus groups or anyone else thought.

TB had decided he wanted to delay the EMU referendum to 2004 so we had lots of time to make the case. He wanted to calm Iraq and we spent some time working out what he should say to the press on the plane tomorrow. He had done an exceptionally long note on the general position, the need to get a big political argument re the individual and the state, the need for much greater radicalism re reform in the public services. It contained a few barbed criticisms about what was coming out of the Policy Unit and his continuing frustration at the lack of strategic capability in the main departments came out of virtually every note he wrote. I think we both felt frustrated that so much fell upon the centre, whilst departments complained that it was because we took things away from them. If they were more competent and capable, I think everyone would be happy.

TB also said, though we had heard it after holidays before, that he wanted to change the way we worked, so that we became more formal, with a proper approach modelled on a company board. We went through his note page by page, general direction, radical reform the answer not the problem, discussion about the pamphlet. Jonathan was pushing even harder than TB on the radicalism front, re diversity, choice of provider [in public services], Civil Service reform. He thought the Tories would come in and take a big-state argument against us.
TB had also proposed trying to establish a cross-party commission on pensions and transport. He felt both were issues that would require several terms to sort and we should try to build support across the board. But why, we all thought, would the Tories go for it, taking away two of the most potentially difficult areas for us?

TB was also banging on even louder than ever about crime and asylum. Felt that if we weren’t careful asylum would become the next fuel-protest situation, and for obvious reasons have the potential to be even worse. There were more bad figures out today and he felt that the Home Office just weren’t on top of it. Nor did they get the need for the message on this to be so widely understood that it had an impact on behaviour. On Ireland, he was more not less worried than when he went away. On Europe, he had really gone through the detail of the IGC [EU Intergovernmental Conference] negotiations, and said that whilst on the big message we were standing up against the superstate ideas, it was in the detail that these arguments were won and lost. The one big surprise out of his holiday was him saying he didn’t want to do the [euro] referendum before 2004. On GB, he felt we had to keep trying for an agreed strategy but at the same time broaden his efforts with the rest of the Cabinet. He was worried about the party but totally dismissive of the unions, felt they were just misreading what was happening in the country. Finally on the office, he said he wanted fresh people but didn’t go beyond that. I got David Manning to tell Condi that we would like to announce the TB visit on Tuesday but it would be difficult to pin down re dates. I was also concerned that the mood music going out from us about the need for a UN resolution was being picked up by the US as evidence of us diddling them.

Up at the crack of dawn to go to Number 10 and meet the TB convoy. The
FT
splash said TB pressed Bush for a UN mandate, which could be a problem with the Yanks, while the others were saying TB would break his silence on Iraq on the plane to Mozambique. We both wanted to avoid talking about Iraq, but it would be difficult and we agreed we would have to say he was not letting it overshadow the [Johannesburg] summit. If pushed, he’d say that doing nothing was not an option but he didn’t particularly want to go beyond that. Privately, he was growing more and more dismissive of the critics. He found it unfathomable that even the [Church of England] bishops almost appeared to be defending Saddam as if he was some great liberal. Equally, he was clear that the Yanks had not handled it well
over the holiday. Condi had admitted as much to David, that they had allowed the game to run ahead of them, and Cheney and Rumsfeld had just made it worse.

We spent ages on the plane working on the three speeches he would be making on the trip, including one in which he intended to be very forward on Kyoto [climate change protocol, 1997]. He was clear that he wanted to be more and more himself, but also that we did need fewer papers and fewer journalists who were basically out to kill him. He was a lot steelier than when he went on holiday. Clear that getting Saddam was the right thing to do. Barely mentioned GB. Very strong language on climate change in the speech. He saw the press and it was going to be hard for them not to make Iraq the story. We arrived [in Maputo] and a somewhat chaotic and noisy motorcade took us to the hotel. Clare Short arrived and TB was pretty chilly with her.

We drove out to the presidential palace where they [TB and President Joaquim Chissano] had a tête-à-tête and I talked with the finance minister [Luísa Días Diogo], the daughter of a nurse. The dinner was pretty ghastly, cold soup that was meant to be hot, cold prawns that were meant to be hot, a strange-tasting turkey and a fruit salad out of a tin. I’d love to know if Chirac, should he ever be here, would do his usual over-the-top ‘look at all this wonderful food’ routine. I liked the politicians. They had a directness that was appealing. There was a lot of talk about Maria Mutola [800 m runner, nicknamed ‘the Maputo Express’] and the president told us she was so good at football that the boys demanded she was sex-tested to see if she was a girl. She was a major national heroine though.

David had got Condi to get GWB to offer TB next Saturday for a meeting in the margins of his so-called war counsel. I think they realised they had messed up the presentation and had to get into a better position, so it seemed clear Bush did want TB there, but heaven knows what Cheney and Rumsfeld would make of it. TB was up for it. JP was in total summit mode and calling the whole time from Johannesburg.

Iraq was becoming a frenzy again. TB was becoming more and more belligerent, saying he knew it was the right thing to do. He said the US had to be managed. Obviously the best thing to do would be to avoid war, get the UN inspectors in and all the weapons out. It was obvious too that the US had to be managed into a better position.
That is what we have to do, he said. But we won’t be able to do it if we come out against the US the whole time. He was developing the line that the UN route was fine if it was clearly a means to resolve the issue, but not if it’s a means to duck the issue. Equally, it was clear that public opinion had moved against us during August. I worked on the speech while he went to church. He came back to sign off the speech, including the very strong line on Kyoto.
⁴⁴

I went out for a run, first through the diplomatic compound then drifted into what looked like the middle-class area of town, and eventually into a shanty town, where the kids were surprised to see someone like me running through, and joined in for a bit. They were incredibly friendly, and parts of the countryside were lush and rich. But the signs of extreme poverty were everywhere amid sporadic signs of wealth. Later we flew to Beira [second city of Mozambique]. We had
Marie Claire
magazine with us and I got them to interview the finance minister. We visited the hospital. The kids’ malarial ward was pretty depressing, several kids to a bed, helpless-looking parents. One of the little girls was called Grace so I phoned home and told her about it. Then to a town called Dondo, TB pretty much mobbed going round the market. Watched a children’s show, then a school visit before flying back to Maputo. The hotel seemed obscenely nice after some of the things we had seen. Up to see TB and finalise the speech. Spoke to Fiona who had received an email from Cherie about discussions she had been having with Cate Haste [author, wife of broadcaster Melvyn Bragg] about a book she was planning to do on PM’s spouses.
⁴⁵
Fiona sounded very fed up about the whole thing.

Flew down to Johannesburg, finished the speech on the way. It was one of these difficult little five-minute jobs, where everyone was trotting out the same clichés and we decided to concentrate on the big-vision message. TB had a chat with Clare at the hotel. She said that if she had a problem with Iraq, she would tell him. She said too that she was very surprised when TB had said GB did not always work closely with him. I had an example, the
Mirror
doing a story re
GB warning against the cost of an Iraq war. We reached Johannesburg and set off for the usual summit bollocks, I could tell TB was a bit nervous about the speech because it was one of those where he and a small group of others were expected to make the biggest impact, but it was a pretty tough audience. He was also livid at all the stuff appearing in the media about the UN and now, the
Mail
splash on TB going out there to see Bush. He spoke to David [Manning] and Jonathan, saying he wanted a message round the system that all this loose talk had to stop. And he wanted the Americans to know how angry he was. He thought it might be Sally thinking she was protecting his internal position, saying he was pushing Bush, but TB knew it would be damaging with the US. Condi had said it looked like we were trying to push them, and they didn’t like it.

Iraq scene was a bit grim and all building up to the press conference. Condi liked the argument that the UN was the route to dealing with it, not the route to avoiding it. TB’s speech got a pretty good reception but the Namibians whacked him [Namibian President Sam Nujoma demanding sanctions on Zimbabwe be lifted] and when [Robert] Mugabe [President of Zimbabwe] had a go as well, that was the news for the day. We had a bilateral with Zhu Rongji [Premier of China], who agreed we had to deal with Iraq but said he felt strikes would be bad and dangerous. He said ‘wisdom and patience’ were required. Then Chirac, and we agreed to get the focus not too much on Iraq, had a short press event, which was a bit chaotic. TB had a warmer conversation with him than usual, sensed that Chirac was worried about a Schroeder victory because it would mean bad relations after his backing for Stoiber.

We left for Alexandra township, where we had been before. Plenty of progress to see, lots of change amid all the problems. They had set up a huge marquee with music playing, dancing, nice food, where TB planted a tree and made a little speech about how steadily this place was changing for the better. He was good at this type of event and it came over well on the media here but by now Mugabe was the main story at home, at least as far as the main papers were concerned, though Fiona said he was coming over really well on TV. He did clips on the tour of the township saying Mugabe etc. did not represent the true voice of Africa and he was worried that other leaders would look at these comments and say why should we help them? On the edge of the township, new homes had been built which were being shown to us as evidence of the great progress, though in reality homes housing large families were of a size a modestly well-off single person would expect at home.

We got back for a reception hosted by the British delegation to the summit, I spent most of the time chatting to Jack McConnell [First Minister of Scotland]. TB had a stack of bilaterals with Kofi [Annan], [Thabo] Mbeki who was very weak on Zimbabwe, [Jean] Chrétien and Helen Clark [New Zealand Prime Minister]. Although a lot of the talk was about the summit business, most conversation turned to Iraq at some point and TB was clearer by the end of the day that we had to get the Americans down the UN route. President [Abdelaziz] Bouteflika of Algeria told TB he wanted Algeria to be able to join the Commonwealth. TB was so taken aback that he said yes, I’m sure that’s fine. He felt that all the angst that was coming our way about Iraq would strengthen our hand as it was clear that a lot of them would come with us down the UN route and we’d set that up with the Bush speech to UNGA. On the way back, we went over the lines for the press conference tomorrow. TB said he intended to be on the tough end of the market as we ran through some of the questions. I went to bed and slept almost till we landed. The summit outcome was OK but the general take was that it hadn’t delivered all that was promised or hoped for.

Landed 7.15 at Teesside, and drove to Myrobella with TB. Press working themselves into a lather re press conference. I finished the script and TB decided in the end to do very brief opening remarks on the North-East, Johannesburg outcome and then Iraq, but the bulk of the argument was going to be made during questions. He came back and we went through some of the hard questions on Iraq. The hardest was ‘Why now? What was it that we knew now that we didn’t before that made us believe we had to do it now?’ It was not going to be at all easy to sell the policy in the next few months, especially because GWB was so unpopular in the UK. TB, Tom Kelly and I went through it all again in the garden. He said several times he was going to be on the tough end of the market, and he was. He kept going for ninety minutes, really hitting the ball in the middle of the bat, top lines very clear – dealing with Saddam was the right thing to do and we would stand by the US. Major bulletin coverage. The
Sun
thought he was brilliant. Even critics said he was on top, committed and passionate about it. Definitely worth doing.