The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (60 page)

On the flight back, we discussed it further. They were about to go public with the demand re [RAF] Fylingdales and we had a discussion about whether to go on the front foot. I felt we had to. TB said he was more confident than ever that the Tories didn’t have a thought-through strategy. He said that before we went snap on New Labour, we had gone through a thorough intellectual examination of values, policies and the means. The presentation came at the end of all that. They had gone for presentation first. If they really wanted to signal change, they would go for Europe as the issue. It had definitely been good for him to have had as much time as he had with Putin on his own, away from some of the more conservative elements. Putin had also suggested setting up a secure line between the two of them. TB and VP had been swapping notes about other leaders and both confessed to a great fondness for Vajpayee [Indian Prime Minister]. Putin said that he sometimes felt that if he asked a question on Wednesday, he had to wait till Friday for the answer.

Quiet work-wise. I settled down to watch the England game [European Championship qualifier, England 2, Slovakia 1]. The car bombings in Bali were totally dominating the news agenda.
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Jack seemed to be handling Bali fine, it was apparent early on that there were quite a lot of Brits involved. I put out TB words after he
spoke by phone to John Howard. I was working on a speech for the media correspondents lunch tomorrow.

Bali still absolutely dominant. Today was the first of our new-style lobby briefings, with Blunkett on street crime. The lobby was still very pissed off. The venue, a room upstairs in the Foreign Press Association [Carlton House Terrace], seemed fine and the mechanics seemed to work but to our annoyance, Jack Straw did a doorstep on the Bali figures just before DB was on, which took away the point of the whole thing. The morning meeting was largely Bali, A levels and Northern Ireland, with JR about to suspend the devolved institutions, so it was a pretty big news day.

At TB’s meeting, he was pretty dismissive about some of the policy ideas being put forward by AA and others. He felt they weren’t being radical enough, not motoring, going along in the comfort zone. But as we went through the various problems, it was clear that the common link was still GB, and on the euro, TB was in no doubt now it was being sacrificed to their internal difficulties. We had a meeting on the Queen’s Speech and TB was still not happy about the radical edge. The big things seemed to be fines for child truancy, foundation hospitals, housing benefit, student finance. Hunting was still a problem. If there was one thing he could just wish himself out of, this was it. I was pushing for a statement on Bali tomorrow, which he eventually agreed to. The basic line coming over was that you could not do the war on terror and Iraq. He however said it all showed up the dangers of the modern world.

I went off to Christopher’s restaurant to do a speech and Q&A with academics, opinion formers and media correspondents, the bulk of whom actually seemed broadly to agree with my analysis of media/politics and the questioning was far more supportive than I expected. I felt I had a proper argument to put to them, also accepted our share of the blame and said that the press had to face up to their responsibilities too. Even Stephen Glover [columnist], for all the bile he pours out in print, asked a very tame question. Charlie Burgess [
Guardian
] wanted me to do a piece for them based on what I had said. I felt what it showed overall was that I was at my best when defending and promoting politics in general, strategy and policy, and not when getting down into the areas for a dogfight.

The lobby meanwhile were whingeing and whining about the changes. What a bunch of tossers. Blunkett was a bit pissed off because he felt he had had to take the heat. We just had to persevere with this.
It was right to try to broaden the range. It was right to try to involve ministers, and it was right to try and do it outside Number 10.

Ran in, thirty-two minutes. Home in 31.37.82, a homeward personal best. During the day I formally signed up for the [London] marathon. Up to see TB in the flat. Anna Wechsberg [private secretary, foreign affairs] had done a good draft of the Bali statement. I did a new ending, then he did his own with a couple of over-the-top lines, e.g. a reference to ‘satanic struggles’ then a tacit comparison with the Second World War. He was meant to speak to President Megawati [Sukarnoputri, of Indonesia] but she was on answering machine, and the ambassador in Jakarta [Richard Gozney] couldn’t find her! He seemed to be fretting a lot about it when it was actually quite straightforward. But the question was growing how can we do terrorism and Iraq and TB was keen to build the argument that they were part of the same coin. TB had lunch with the Danish PM [Anders Fogh Rasmussen] then over to the House, no real problems out of the statement.

Back to meet Jeremy and Sally and go for a meeting on the honours list with [Andrew] Turnbull, Hayden Phillips [permanent secretary, Lord Chancellor’s Department] and people from the [Cabinet Office] Ceremonial Branch. It was a really dull list and we were creeping back towards more Establishment dominance. We wanted more head teachers in there. We fought for George Best [former footballer].
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OBE for Anthony Buckeridge [children’s author]. The thing had actually gone backwards and though we had lots of ideas, it was too late for most of them, and it just felt like one of those fights not really worth having.

Jeremy said the TB/GB meeting today had been absolutely disastrous. They had gone through the most difficult issues – euro, pensions, child and housing benefits, university finance. He said the atmosphere was dreadful, that he had never seen a more difficult TB/GB session. On the euro, GB effectively refused to discuss what was happening inside the Treasury. He ended by saying that TB was not the only minister in the government and he didn’t have a veto. It was very hard to see how we could sustain this position much longer. Relations were if anything getting worse.

Fiona was losing patience with Cherie, over the Cate Haste book, but also the trip to Bermuda next week where she was staying with the governor [Sir John Vereker].

One or two potential problems developing out of Bali. It emerged that we did put out local warnings about the danger of visiting night clubs, but didn’t put it in our [FCO] travel advice. I spoke to JP re doing the briefing tomorrow and he was clearly a bit nervous. I said don’t rise to the bait if they try to wind you up. He said they would probably succeed because ‘I bloody hate them’. We assumed IDS would come on A levels, which he did, and when he said they weren’t worth the paper they were written on, TB really picked it up and went for it as an insult to people who passed exams. The press felt it had been a huge mistake and TB came back convinced IDS was a goner. I had quite a good meeting with Charles C on the Tories, tried to get him signed up to a big push on the Tories so that we could get dividing lines in place so the election was not a battle between us and perfection, but between us and them.

Philip’s groups were very down on IDS at the moment and up on TB. Philip’s new thing was that Theresa May [chairman of the Conservative Party] was a great hope for them, which was ridiculous. The TV news [re Bali] was dreadful, and I sent a message through to the FCO that all we could get in these situations was empathy and competence. We should have put Tessa [Jowell] on the case. We were also getting into a muddle on Bali intelligence, with the Americans and the Australians indicating that they did get specific threats, but of course it was always very easy after the event. I was worried this was not being gripped. Saddam won his elections with one hundred per cent.
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I made contact with Leukaemia Research [charity] re the marathon and they sounded very up for it. I spoke to [Andrew] Turnbull and Jeremy about generating sponsorship and they were fine providing I wasn’t using government facilities. At the 8.30 meeting, I read the riot act re the general lack of grip re intelligence warnings, especially now as the Australians were saying all Aussies should leave Indonesia. Later saw TB and asked if there was any point thinking of TV [election]
debates. He said no, that it was totally one of those that just placed you on the at-risk register. On the Tories, we all agreed IDS was probably dead meat, we had to stay focused on the character and ungovernability of the Tories as a whole. We also needed to get up delivery through definition rather than through lists of statistical claims, e.g. ‘I’m not prepared to put at risk the smaller class sizes we have delivered by accepting a Tory approach based on . . .’. Douglas [Alexander] was really impressing me with his strategic mind at the moment. Philip said the Tories were nowhere and IDS was just the worst message carrier they could possibly have.

Then a meeting with TB, Jack S, Geoff Hoon and CDS. First Jack went over where we were re the UNSCR, with TB feeling he was too close to caving in on the two-resolution route. Then GH and CDS re the military options, which included substantial numbers of ‘boots on the ground’. CDS said he would have a real problem with his army if they were not properly involved and also TB would have far greater influence with the US if we were there on the ground. Sally was totally against. I was probably for, but the costs, around £1 billion for Package 2, and £2 billion for Package 3, alongside the far greater risks, were pretty horrific. The question to resolve was really whether we went in for the whole hog.

CDS said that [US General] Tommy Franks was going to a meeting in Ankara with the Turks next week and really needed to know what our answers may be. TB said it was not no, but it was not yet yes, and he wanted more work done analysing the cost. Then to Cabinet. The discussions were almost all foreign, with incessant interruption from Clare including a real display of rudeness to TB on the Middle East. She said Palestine was getting worse and worse and what was he going to do to make good what he had said to conference? TB said he was continually pressing the US and she said ‘Is that it?’ with real disdain and contempt. She and Jack then had another little spat re India and Pakistan. Then a discussion on Bali, then where we were on Iraq, then JP on fire, then GB re the need to be very firm on the pay awards. The atmosphere wasn’t great. We briefed hard out of it. TB’s warning that there could well be more attacks.

Hilary Armstrong said to me afterwards that Clare was angling to become deputy leader under GB. She was a totally ridiculous figure. Today had been like listening to someone on a bus, chipping in comments about other people’s conversations, totally unable to see why people wouldn’t see that she was right about everything. I saw JP before he went over to the briefing, told him not to say that there was no Bali warning, and not to rise to the press
bait. He did fine and later we had a bit of a post-mortem on the week.

Adam Crozier and David Davies came in to see me, said that the FA was moving towards a position of support for a regulator to bring order to football. They wanted to sound me out. I said I felt there were fundamental design flaws in the game, with the FA in charge of the national team and the grass roots, but not the bits in between, and it really made for chaos. TB was off to Northern Ireland and his speech went really big, and we were pleased that Sinn Fein were not too dismissive.
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The French were winning the day at the UN and watering down resolutions.

TB, now in Sedgefield, got very good coverage out of Belfast. The main story today was the Fire Brigades Union strike ballot [over pay], Bali, and the UN with the French claiming they were pushing things to a different position. Adam Boulton called, said he was doing
The Week in Westminster
[BBC Radio 4], and why didn’t I do it with him on the lobby changes. I decided to do it to put over the points of principle – more access to ministers, more access for more media, expert briefers. On the US conference call, I was still pushing for more CIC reform. The [Fire Brigades] ballot came out nine to one in favour of strike action, so that was going to be the main focus domestically for the coming period. Alex [Ferguson], Mark and Jason [his sons] came round for dinner. We’d all done pretty well sorting things out when a couple of lowlifes had tried to set him up in South Africa last week. Mark was saying Alex owed these journalists nothing, that he kept some of their careers afloat by talking to them. He said he felt Alex should cut himself off from them, that he was the best club manager ever, a historic figure in football, and he should be rising above them all the time. They were very nice kids, clearly adored their dad but were worried for him. Jason said that when he had been in trouble last week, ‘the people at this table, not journalists he might think he could trust, sorted it’. Alex said ‘That’s what friends are for. They are the people who walk into the room when everyone else is thinking of walking out.’

Calum and I left early for Leicester. I had a long chat with Estelle [Morris], trying to persuade her to do the ministerial briefing on Tuesday, partly because she had something to say, but also because it would show she had guts and was prepared to fight back. But she said her confidence was low, one more mistake and she would be in real trouble, and she didn’t feel up to doing it. We got to Leicester fairly early and I took Calum to see where we lived and went to school. Both the house and the school looked very different to how I remembered them, and the street seemed wider and the whole area seemed more prosperous than I imagined them to be. Then to the Aylestone Leisure Centre where I was doing an anti-racism event and a couple of interviews. I had lunch at the ground, then over to the away end for the match itself [Leicester 0, Burnley 1]. Our lot were generally OK, but when the anti-racism stuff was mentioned, there was a minority started singing ‘You’re just a town full of Pakis’, indicating how far there was still to go.