The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (79 page)

Jack pointed out that we were coming up to six years in power and we were still more popular than past Labour governments. They failed because of division and lost momentum. JP said it should be possible to discuss and debate policy differences without Cabinet committees becoming a battlefield. Honest debate is good, division and briefing is bad. Milburn felt we were losing trust and momentum. He felt we were being protected by the uselessness of the Tories and politics would be transformed if they got a half-decent new leader. He felt that would help because it would challenge the massive sense of complacency in the PLP. He said we needed a course to stick to but we need the political sense of purpose. Charles on tuition fees, Alan on foundation hospitals, Andrew Smith on welfare reform, we had to tie it together around our values. ‘We have thousands of administrators, but we are the politicians and we have to lead, get back to locating policy and values.’ He felt the Tories were trying to place us as big state, and the values of public service were the answer
to that. He said that Blunkett had the most difficult job in government and that crime and asylum were not just his issues, they were health issues, education issues, housing issues, and we need to restructure government systems to recognise that. Margaret [Beckett] said virtually everyone who came to her surgery last time was an asylum seeker. Peter Hain diddled a bit, said he wasn’t advocating jettisoning New Labour, but said we had to accept we weren’t new any more, do a better job at talking to party and public.

Helen [Liddell, Scottish Secretary] said she felt there was a corrosive sense of division and self-indulgence. Cue Clare. She said the record of the government was fine, but the style and presentation damaged us and the PLP was troubled. JR said the basic narrative – strong economy, fairness, public services, rights and responsibilities, Britain strong in the world – is still a strong one for us, and does relate to our values. The PLP was a problem because too many of them do not get the narrative and yet they are an important messenger. TB said that we could win on jobs, health and education. We couldn’t win on crime and asylum, but we can lose on them and we have to deal with them or pay a big price. But it was a basic tough-decision message, if not put over terribly energetically. A pretty desultory discussion re the Olympic bid with Tessa in favour but far from clear where the rest of the Cabinet were, and a real lack of clarity about whether we thought we could win.

On Iraq, TB was due to speak to Bush and sent through a note in advance. He was clear that so far as international political support was concerned, we did not have it without Blix finding a smoking gun and we needed more time. His proposal was to give them another month during which Blix would do two more reports. He was sure that in time we could turn opinion. Bush was pretty clear there would have to be a war, because he did not believe Saddam would ever comply, or that the inspectors would ever be allowed to do the job. As TB said, this was Bush in a different mode. They have very different problems to us. We are getting criticised for being too gung-ho. They are criticised for not being gung-ho enough. Condi explained Bush was going down in the polls because he was keeping the troops out there too long. TB and I felt it was more likely he was getting hit because he was not winning support for going without the UN. TB, who was wearing shorts and tennis shoes and about to go to the gym, was a bit taken aback. Also the Saudis were saying that the US didn’t need a second resolution, and were saying something different to us.

TB wasn’t terribly amused by Jonathan’s characterisation of his current position, as set out in his note, as ‘wobble and delay instead
of shock and awe’. TB was confident we could get Bush to the position where he stayed long enough for a second UNSCR. There was also a real danger the Attorney General would resign if he thought the plan was disproportionate force. He was clear with the Cabinet it was important to stay with the Americans, and emphasise that closeness as a way of influencing the debate there, and he wanted to do a big pre-Camp David diplomacy round. He set out what he saw as the political and other realities. He felt Bush deserved praise for showing strength in forcing Saddam to the position of getting the inspectors in, but said we didn’t have enough international support and we needed time to build it. He was also clear with Bush that not only did he not have support in the country but as things stood he couldn’t really call on a majority in his own Cabinet. He set out the case for delaying military action to give the inspectors more time, during which it would be clear they were being obstructed. Blix would report two or three times up to March, which would almost certainly show they were not being given full co-operation, and meanwhile we would carry on the military build-up and meanwhile build diplomatic and public support and get Arab leaders to push hard for Saddam’s removal. He still believed it would be possible to get him out without war, but the option had to be there, and the threat had to be real.

It was a very well-made, carefully constructed argument that made sense and it was clear Bush had read it. When I asked TB if he thought Bush had basically decided there was going to be a war, TB said if that call was anything to go by, pretty much. He remained hopeful he could keep things on a multilateral track but it was not going to be easy. He was facing a very tough call indeed, about as tough as they get.

Sixteen-mile run with Hugh, steady then slow. [Bill] Clinton was in town and explicitly told TB something I felt already, namely that Bush was not winning support for his strategy because people in the States felt it was a political strategy dreamt up by Karl Rove [senior adviser to Bush], not a principled foreign policy. We put together TB’s briefing for
Frost
and in particular on asylum where he wanted to signal change to our obligations under the UNHCR [UN refugee agency] and ECHR [European Convention on Human Rights]. He felt, particularly on the back of the BNP win in Calderdale, that we had to get a grip of this and be seen to get a grip.
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He was worried that
DB had too much on his plate and was unable really to crack it. He was in no doubt that we had to toughen our approach and he intended to send out a very strong signal. On Iraq, he was clear about the message, that we had to set out a pre-Blix positioning, to show that the onus was on Saddam.

On the Olympics, TB was warming to the idea. We had received a whole stack of handwritten letters from some of the athletes, and it definitely had an effect on him. He now felt it was the right thing to do but we would see where the Cabinet flowed on it. Then to Brentford vs Burnley with Neil [Kinnock], Calum and Charlie [Enstone-Watts, Calum’s friend]. We didn’t deserve to win but took all three chances. Good day. Back for [Fiona’s mother] Audrey’s birthday party, mainly talking about Iraq with Glenys [Kinnock] and Lindsay [Nicholson]. Lindsay had written me a really nice letter after the event on Tuesday, saying she couldn’t have got through everything without me and Fiona, that John always worried about me but if he had seen me on Tuesday he would have stopped worrying, that the persona there on Tuesday night was my political and personal beings coming together as a whole, saying this is what I am, and if the breakdown was the low point, now I have planted a flag on the summit of recovery. Kind of how I felt, and a really nice letter.

Up before 7 and in to see TB to go over all the running stories pre
Frost
, and agree messages on Iraq, Zimbabwe, asylum, GB/TB. He was, despite the real difficulties we faced, much more confident. Strong on tuition fees, very good on Iraq and asylum, and generally empathetic with pumping out message. His body language on GB was not great, but he didn’t mind that. He didn’t much like the way the press were presenting the TB/GB situation as six of one and half a dozen of the other. As Neil had put it, it was more like three of TB and nine of GB’s lot. I went back with him, and did a conference call with Tom and the press team and agreed we would push out more intelligence on concealment and push in certain quarters the idea of radical action on asylum including looking at the ECHR.

Most people I spoke to seemed to think TB did fine, some that he was back to his best, which was probably overstating it. Neil and Steve Kinnock were at home when I got back, dropping off Grace who had been staying with them, and Neil said something interesting, that TB always seemed more comfortable when he was defending something thought to be unpopular. News-wise, the interview ran fine but our problem was that GWB seemed hell-bent on war and we
looked like we were doing things from a US not UK perspective. TB was talking about going to Spain and Italy to show that Europe was not just France and Germany. During the afternoon I spent hours signing Leukaemia Research letters to appeal for funds.

Clocked up close on forty-five miles last week, did ten today.
Frost
came out as a mix of Iraq in most of the heavies, with the briefing on intelligence going well, ECHR in the right-wing papers but lots of doubt as to whether we would do it. TB cancelled his morning meetings and called in experts and lawyers from the Home Office and the Attorney General’s office and spent literally five hours non-stop being taken through the system from start to finish. At the end of it, it looked even worse than when we started. As Jonathan said, it was like the NI peace process in that every time you thought you had it sewn up, you could pick a thread and pull it for miles. The only interruption he allowed during the five hours was an ‘encouraging’ Putin call in which it was clear Vlad was really losing patience with Saddam. Despite yesterday people were still applying the yardstick that the inspectors would have to find WMD rather than simply that Saddam had to co-operate.

On Zimbabwe, Liz Lloyd [policy adviser] was blaming me for getting us into a different position, she hadn’t felt the original deal was defensible. I was up to £76,000 on the marathon front, and today I finalised my deal with
The Times
, also cheques in from Sarah Brown and Sinead Cusack [actress]. The
Sun
was getting a lot worse on asylum. There was a piece by [Trevor] Kavanagh which DB condemned as racist. Rebekah [Wade] came on about that. She had just had her weekend with Murdoch getting her orders. I said she was being totally irresponsible by inflaming asylum as an issue and pretending there were simple solutions when there were not. It was pretty clear she was going to be difficult, probably more difficult than she actually wanted to be. Blix came out at 3-ish and it was OK. It made clear that Saddam was not really co-operating.

Probably the most noteworthy meeting of the day was when Ed Balls came to see me at 3.30. No small talk. I asked him what he intended to do to help get TB/GB on a better footing, because things are really bad and a lot of it is down to their modus operandi. I told TB I was seeing him and he agreed I should say he had never imagined fighting three elections, that he had always imagined he would hand over to GB during this term but that GB would not have that conversation. He felt that GB did not want to work with him, particularly on public
service reform and the euro, and the relationship had become – my word – dysfunctional. Ed agreed it was bad and dangerous. As so often before, their view was that Peter M was responsible for a lot of the bad stuff that appeared in the media. I dismissed that. He talked about the coverage today as if we had planned it deliberately. He insisted there were people around TB who saw GB only as a problem.

I said it was only happening because the relationship between the two of them had become more dysfunctional. If they worked together, and JP was on board with them, we could do pretty much anything, but it simply wasn’t happening. The meetings were dreadful. The so-called strategy discussions weren’t strategic. He said GB felt that TB was tolerating and even promoting factionalism, as with foundation hospitals – for which again he blamed Peter M as well as Milburn – and now top-up fees. GB profoundly disagreed with the policy. There had been no strategy for its preparation. We didn’t need it. It was right wing and would give us a problem right up to the election. GB just couldn’t understand why we were doing it.

I said TB felt that GB believed he could do the top job better, that he now neither liked nor respected TB, and that made it hard to feel they could work together. It would be a lot harder to help him get the job if he thought he was being pushed out. Ed said that GB of course wanted to be PM but it was nonsense to say he had an operation to achieve that or that he was trying to undermine TB or his legacy. He said I only heard TB’s side of the story. I said maybe if GB spoke a bit more, that wouldn’t be so. He intimated, and later said outright, that GB was offended before the last election, and afterwards, because TB was making clear that his departure was conditional on GB saying yes to the euro and us going in. It sounded to me like a line they were developing in the event of GB being forced out.

I said between us we ought to be able to do something to improve things because what was happening now was mutually destructive. He said that he had offered regular meetings with me but he sometimes felt I didn’t think he was senior enough. I said no, we just do different jobs. I would like to have better relations and of late I’ve had no relationship with GB at all, and that is his choice. I said I felt he was playing a dangerous game placing himself to the left of TB, to which he retorted that it was TB who was placing himself to the right, with some very Tory policies. I said he always wanted to be cutting edge, but before they had been able to do it together and that is what we had to get back to. I said they had to cure themselves of their obsession with Peter. He said I was blinding myself to the obvious, that Peter was wreaking revenge on all of us.

He denied they had an operation and said there was no way the Labour Party would ever allow someone who was disloyal to be made leader, so it would be crazy for GB to do that. He had genuine policy and strategy differences. He couldn’t believe that TB had not replied properly to his note on tuition fees. We agreed we had to get back on a proper TB/GB footing, and he and I would mull over how. We had had a proper frank discussion for the first time in a while, and both had shared analysis if not entirely shared views about how to address it. Then to see TB who was still talking about asylum, even more worried after a meeting with some of our MPs who had told him it was raging. His big worry was that it was going to turn the country against us.