The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (115 page)

He said Bush liked TB because he stayed with him but if somebody came along they thought would help them more, they would go for them. He was speaking very slowly, calmly, matter-of-factly, probably conscious that we were on the lookout for signs of bitterness, but there was precious little of that and it was pretty compelling. He felt Bush had lost an election and having ‘won’ it he was now behaving as if he had walked it. But they were clever, and so was Bush. He was good at dealing with opponents. I asked him what Bush would do with the BBC. ‘If he could kill the governors, he would. But he can’t, so he would do a deal.’

On Iraq, he said the Bush lot had never been keen on Blix. He said Powell was the one who really wanted to let the inspectors work, and now it was looking bad for them, but because they still had control of the media, Bush was not yet under pressure. September 11 had changed the American people’s psychology. Bush understood that and the Democrats had not worked out how to respond, how to
fight it. He was angry about Bush, philosophical about the campaign [Al] Gore fought, hopeful for Hillary.

Peter M had to leave to do an interview. Philip, BC and I went over to the sofas and out poured something of a masterclass in political strategy. He followed our politics closely, and I asked him what his remedy would be for our problems. He said he was touched that we trusted him so much that we could openly lay out the problems we had. He said first, you have a weak Opposition. Keep them weak by coming up with the forward policy positions and push them where you want them. Second, TB is about as good as they get. Keep reminding everyone of that. Third, on the press, he said you need a strategy to get back credibility. He said he’d followed my troubles and was sympathetic. He said that I’d always been the number two target after TB and that I’d taken a lot. I’d been right to fight for myself and I did a great job, but now move on. Don’t keep digging the hole. Let others do it. Go back to the media and say I didn’t lie, but maybe I missed something. I always strove to tell the truth but I’ve thought deeply about it all. I’ve got a job to do and so have you, and it’s best if we can do it without regarding each other as subhuman. He said the problem was they felt it was a pattern of behaviour – manipulation and bullying – and that I had to show them I was real again. He said they don’t like me in part because I was one of them and now I’m not.

Next, a strategy for the PLP. Understand their lives and reach out to them. They have shitty lives. You guys go to DC. You have real power. They get a weekend in their constituency. Give them some romance. They think you guys have gone Hollywood and they want more local. It’s about their psychology. It’s the same with the press. Some you will never win but others you will if you are nice to them, involve them. Your MPs know TB is better than them but that doesn’t mean they are nothing. Fifth, you have to reconnect. People are falling out of love with Tony because they think he has fallen out of love with them. He’s a statesman and that’s great but their world is here and now and they are paying him to sort out their world, here and now. They know he has to do this other stuff but they want to know he cares about them, here and now. Sixth, the Third Way is fine, but it has to be a third way with liberal values. Don’t just push a reform message. He has to have good old-fashioned left causes too, for the poor, whatever. It’s about values not reform.

It was the same argument I had been having with TB. I said so, and he said yes, but maybe he thinks you are just beating up on him. It’s all about balance. He has to balance the Third Way message for
his new coalition with the liberal message for the party. You have to balance frank advice with real support. On TB himself, he said he had to rediscover his joy in politics. He needed new stimuli without throwing everything out. He had to keep change with continuity. He came to the point about me not beating up on Tony. He could see for example why I thought Carole [Caplin] was a problem, but other people’s emotions and psychology are not always the same. ‘My brother was a cocaine addict and the word to remember for addicts is HALT. Yes, it means stop. But it also means I’m Hungry, I’m Angry, Lonely and Tired. You usually find the reason in one of those.’ Clearly talking now about Monica Lewinsky [White House intern with whom he had had an affair], he said ‘I wasn’t hungry but I was angry, lonely and tired. I was being beaten up by everyone. Ken Starr [Independent Counsel, prosecutor] was trying to put me in jail. Friends were leaving me and enemies were killing me. Hillary was angry with me. This ball of fire came at me as I felt H, A, L, T.’

He said he sometimes thought Tony wanted a blue ribbon and a gold badge for the work he does, ‘but the ribbon and the badge are the JOB. It’s a privilege. It’s a great job he’s got and yes it’s tough but who says it shouldn’t be? Get his juices flowing again.’ So he summed up. Keep the Tories weak. Get back credibility with the press, remembering that you are the best and that’s why they judge you so harshly. It’s the same with Tony. You’ve got to show you’re real. Get your troops back in shape by loving them a bit. Reconnect with the public by showing it’s about them. Get TB to rediscover his joy in politics. He told a story about the first woman he ever loved, how he left her and drove her into the arms of a friend and she ended up hating both of them and it always bugged him. Years later when he was president he made contact with her and they talked it over, and he felt happy that he had resolved an important thread in his life. Another story about a friend he fell out with but then when he became president they rediscovered that friendship. So keep your friends, get some joy back into your politics, get a left liberal cause.

Philip then asked him what he thought I should do, whether he thought I should leave the job. Again, he was terrific on the analysis. A long pause, then said these are the factors: 1. Is it hurting you more than you’re getting out of it, especially for Fiona and the family? 2. Is it hurting Tony more than you are putting in? 3. Can anyone else do it? 4. If you stay can you deliver a new strategy? Only you know, but remember it’s a great job and I don’t like to think what could have happened if you had not been there. He also thought in some ways Fiona would blame herself for having let Carole take Cherie
over, but she shouldn’t. Really warm and friendly. He took me to the door and said ‘Hang in. There are three centres of power in your politics. You guys, the Tories, the press. You have an affirmative programme. The others don’t. Their job is to stop you doing your job. Don’t let them. Raise your eyes above them, and stay with it.’

As we left, both Philip and I observed that he was about as near to being a political strategic genius as we knew. Philip asked if it made me want to stay and it did but I wondered if TB was up for the change needed. I told TB later what Bill’s analysis had been and he agreed with most of it, apart from some of the liberal stuff. We finished the [Third Way conference] speech and then headed for the Metropole [hotel]. Lynn Forester [Lady de Rothschild] told me she had been at a dinner recently where C had really stuck up for me during a row with Lord Carrington [former Conservative Foreign Secretary]. Bill C said he had really enjoyed our lunch, hoped he had helped, but on my own situation, he said only I could know.

TB’s speech was OK without being brilliant. He told a very funny story about an early experience canvassing and asking a woman in Hackney what she thought about getting rid of nuclear weapons and she said ‘I don’t have nuclear weapons, I have rats and I want to get rid of them first.’ Bill gave a terrific speech, very hard on the Republicans, strong on why our values were right for today and said that we had to fight the resurgent right. Think. Feel. Fight. We had to understand that there was indeed a Fourth Way, namely aggressive conservatism. These people want real change and we should be the ones resisting it, winning the argument for our own agenda for change. They want more power for people at the top. They want America and her allies to dominate everything. He told about how they ran smears against people who even asked questions of e.g. their policy in Afghanistan. He said the Third Way worked and we had to stick with it and fight for it.

It was a really good speech, easily the best I had heard for a while. I don’t know why TB was so reluctant at the moment to do the values. I loved Bill’s line about the Fourth Way. He was also very funny in parts, like when he told of how he had to cut into a meeting with [Viktor] Chernomyrdin [former Prime Minister of Russia] on nuclear arms control because Turkey and Greece were about to go to war over an island with 200 sheep on it. In the car later, TB said he agreed with Bill’s analysis in many ways and on some of it we should act. Re me, and the four questions BC had posed, TB said three answered themselves. He said his one worry was about whether he could get a real replacement.

The
Guardian
ran a piece on the front about me maybe leaving. There was also a lot of coverage on the theme that TB’s position was becoming perilous. Clare Short did a pre-record for
GMTV
saying TB should go. There was a lot of noise from the unions digging away at the Third Way conference. We also had the bizarre resignation of Michael Wills, who resigned in interviews without actually telling TB or anyone at Number 10.
⁶⁶
The BBC row was weakening but would come back on Tuesday with the FAC.

TB called a couple of times. He had spent a fair bit of time with Bill C who had given him pretty much the same analysis.

WMD was still going big. The BBC were operating a news blackout on the source issue. The
Scotsman
had a page 1 story about GB preparing to take over. The drums were definitely beating. GB was getting marked up the whole time, and TB marked down. GB was making clear he wanted to visit Murdoch in the States during the holiday. TB press conference in Surrey went OK, but it showed up further evidence of the BBC simply driving their own agenda. They cut away from initial questions and instead ran a commentary alongside saying all the UK media was interested in was WMD/Iraq. Guto Harri [BBC] was claiming that TB didn’t answer the question about whether he backed the intelligence. He did. I got John Sawers to call Trevor Kavanagh who was doing a two-page spread on Iraq being better than everyone says.

TB came back, and had a meeting with John Scarlett, DM, Clare Sumner, Jonathan re his upcoming session with the ISC. Then to the den to discuss what TB would say at the reception for [former Labour leader] Michael Foot’s ninetieth birthday. I said to him that I felt he needed at some point to make clear what his plans were for himself in the future because people were making assumptions about him going, and were therefore starting to peel off and take licence. Michael Foot arrived around 6 and although physically he wasn’t in great shape, mentally he was all there, and determined to have a good time. Speeches were fine. I had an interesting chat with John Cole [former
BBC political editor] about the BBC. He felt BBC journalism was not in good shape, but didn’t really want to get involved.

Ran in, forty-five minutes. We were looking forward to [David] Kelly giving evidence to the FAC, but Godric, Catherine Rimmer and I all predicted it would be a disaster and so it proved. Despite MoD assurances he was well schooled, a mix of the MPs’ malice – Tory – and uselessness – our people – was going to give us a bit of a headache. By the end of the day, we were down as usual. I tried to have another discussion re a successor with TB. We had both spoken to David Hill again and it was clear he would come. There was a slight problem in that a lot of people were urging me to stay, but I had pretty much decided. Gerard Russell showed me a two-page spread on me in an Arab newspaper. There was even stuff in the press today about my haircut, so it was getting more not less ridiculous.

There was a good atmosphere at the office summer garden party, where I played the bagpipes on the balcony, much to the amusement of GB and the people he was entertaining at Number 11, including John Edmonds [GMB general secretary]. The FAC, despite a big row on the committee today, were saying that Kelly was probably not the source, thereby spectacularly missing the point. I had an hour or so with John Scarlett and Clare Sumner to go over ISC inquiry issues. TB did it this morning and all was fine, but Clare was a bit worried because TB said that he wrote the foreword [to the dossier] when in fact I did the draft.

I got a cab in and the driver had also done the marathon, so we chatted away about that. We thought the Tories would do a mix of FAC and NHS and TB/trust at PMQs but when it came to it IDS went for me, as did one of their backbenchers. IDS quoted the
Mail on Sunday
made-up story of me saying TB couldn’t cope without me. I bumped into Rod Gilchrist [deputy editor,
Mail on Sunday
] at a party for Michael [Foot] later, and thoroughly enjoyed telling him he was scum.
⁶⁷

TB was pretty down today. PG, Sally, Pat McF, Peter M and I had
a long meeting specifically to discuss TB and how to get him back in shape. We were all a bit tired and the whole operation needed a blood transfusion, new energy. I did a note based on the discussion and later saw TB in the flat. It was ragingly hot. He looked a bit ridiculous in a sleeveless grey vest, matching shorts and flip-flops with ‘Bermuda’ emblazoned on them. Unlike me, though, he loved the heat.

PMQs had been fine, but he agreed the whole operation was a bit tired. He felt on policy, on media strategy, and on systems for reaching out to the party, we had to improve. GB was motoring in the party and there was a danger that we were leaving the field to him. We had a pretty tired meeting with Ian McCartney and the party people. We went round in circles. We were pressing TB to focus more on progressive causes, but he felt he really had to be the one constantly emphasising the hard edge of New Labour.

I had a long chat with Dan B who said Bush was finally taking a bit of a hit on Iraq. He had picked up on the fact that the Tories were calling for my head and said Bush was unimpressed at the way the Tories had behaved. At Michael’s ninetieth at the Gay Hussar, which Fiona had pretty much organised, there were a lot of the Old Labour people urging me to stay. Bostock [AC’s GP] had said earlier he was worried I would crack up again if I suddenly went from all-out activity to doing nothing.