The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (124 page)

Once I finished my statement I got Alison to send out a message that I wanted to see all my team and anyone else in the building who was around. They knew what was coming so they weren’t exactly shocked, but there was a lot of sadness in there. I said they knew I had been thinking about going and today was the day. I had had a great time and it had been an amazing privilege and one of the things that meant most to me was the team I had built up. I could not have done any of it without them and certainly in recent weeks I could not have asked for more by way of support. I said everyone was replacable, I would leave with nothing but good memories of them, but Fiona and I desperately wanted to get a life back for ourselves and the children.

I suppose I knew it would go quite big but it was ludicrous just how big it went. Someone told me PA gave it the same Priority tag as a royal death or prime ministerial resignation. For several hours, once they did the breaking news Whoosh, they did literally nothing else. They had some so-called intelligence expert in the studio when it broke and they had him blathering away without knowing what on earth he was talking about. Matthew Doyle and Mark Bennett [Labour press officers] organised JP in Leeds, JR for later bulletins and some good backbenchers. The Tories put up Ann Widdecombe [former minister], Theresa May [Conservative Party chair] and eventually IDS. They looked shrill and ridiculous, trying to make it a disaster day for TB.

I gathered my thoughts again before doing a round of interviews with the broadcast political editors. They came in one by one and I used pretty much the same messages – great privilege, downside all taken by family, big on values, make the case for politics. It was also going big in the States and across Europe. Graeme [AC’s brother] said he had been channel-hopping in Poland and found me simultaneously on Russian, Polish, French and Portuguese telly. The news channels were
going with it hell for leather in the outer office and the endless two-way blather reminded me why I had got fed up dealing with them all. They just went on and on and on until another talking head was found. It underlined how out of hand the whole thing about me had got.

TB said even he was surprised how big it was going. He said I was a big personality and even though some of them hated me, they knew it was a big personality leaving the centre of the stage. Some of the hacks were trying to build it as a huge blow to him – could he cope blah? – which must have been a bit galling. Peter H was now also talking of leaving. He was worried Peter M was moving into the gap and it would not help us. My worry was more that there would be a concerted Civil Service retrenchment effort. All in all, things went fine today. Lots of nice messages, most media people saying I did well, even if I had become a problem.

The announcement re Fiona was in there though buried in all the avalanche of coverage re my leaving. It was a real sadness to me that she was leaving on bad terms with CB and with Tony too. But she was clearly happy we were on the way, and maybe surprised I had brought it to a head so quickly. They were straight on to what would I do in the future, and making assumptions I would make a fortune. The truth was I didn’t really have a clue what I would do. I didn’t speak to many journos. It was all kind of on autopilot. Boulton was pretty sour as ever, Marr OK, [Nick] Robinson [ITN] a jerk. Andy Bell [Channel 5] and Gary Gibbon [Channel 4] pretty straight. After a while they started to cover the coverage – the fact that it was so big abroad, that so many foreign hacks came into the street when the statement went out, the Trevor McDonald [ITV] special, US network websites doing it as number one or two and Boulton et al. saying they couldn’t think of any official who would ever have sparked this kind of interest by announcing his departure. Catherine Colonna [Chirac’s spokeswoman] called and said ‘
Tu es un star mondial, tu sais. Il faut saisir le moment
.’ [You are a global star, you know. Seize the moment.] She said the president ‘
te salue
’ [salutes you]. It was all a bit weird. Twenty minutes on ITN news, fifteen on the BBC, hours on Sky, the Sundays preparing to do pages and pages on it.

I cleared my desk. Went on a last walk round the building to say a few thank-yous and goodbyes, met Fiona and then we walked out together. I didn’t look at the hacks and I didn’t bother to listen, let alone answer. I just wanted to get out, and get home. There was a horde of media waiting in the street when we got home, more than I think we’d ever had. We parked at the top of the road, then walked down and we were swarmed as we tried to walk down the pavement.
Fiona got left behind a bit and I kept looking back and she had virtually disappeared. I stopped and yelled at a few of them and she caught up for a bit. The live reporters were describing what was going on, others shouting, snappers falling over each other. Ridiculous.

We got it and Audrey was very upset I had gone. She felt it was the right job for me and I should have stayed with Tony to the end. I was cheered by a message from Hutton. I had earlier asked Clare Sumner to tell Lee Hughes [secretary to the inquiry] what was going on and that I was keen he understood I would be doing interviews but would not talk about anything being investigated by him. The message came back now that he was very touched that I took the trouble to tell him in advance. I was probably reading too much into it but I had felt giving evidence that he felt I was an OK personality and I felt the same from the tone of his message today. I also thought that if he had watched any of the coverage, he would see once more what a nightmare culture we dealt with. I had a hunch that the diaries will have had a similar effect. TB felt the same, that the diaries gave an insight into what it was like trying to handle these big decisions surrounded by the 24-hour media trying to trip you the whole time.

Neil, Glenys, Rachel [Kinnock] and the Goulds came round for dinner and I think shared some of the relief. Rachel had been one of the first suggesting I leave ages ago, feeling it was time I stopped taking hits for others. Neil and PG were ambivalent but agreed it was the right time for me. TB called a couple of times. He had seen some of the news and couldn’t believe how much coverage it was getting. He felt it was partly about the size of my personality but was also a reflection of their obsession with themselves. Philip had been following it all day and said I should get the tapes of the live coverage. ‘You’d have thought the Pope had died.’ We had a nice evening and Fiona was definitely more relaxed and I sensed the kids, though annoyed at all the bollocks in the street every time they came and went, were feeling a change for the better was happening. My asthma was bad though, partly the air, partly the current stress, also maybe a bit of anxiety about the total lack of certainty about what I would now do with myself. People were telling me I could make a fortune on the lecture circuit, but I can’t say it held that much appeal. The most important thing was to try to get things at home on a better keel, rest, and then take stock. As I left, TB had said ‘You do realise I will phone you every day, don’t you?’ I said yes, and I hope you realise sometimes I won’t be there.

To be continued . . .

¹
Six men were arrested after a police raid in Wood Green, North London, on suspicion of manufacturing ricin with the intention of attacking the London Underground by releasing the poison in airborne form. The only subsequent conviction was of Kamel Bourgass, who had already been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Stephen Oake.

²
Special Branch officer Stephen Oake had been stabbed in the heart by Kamel Bourgass, in a raid connected to the January 5 ricin raid. Bourgass received a life sentence for the murder of Oake and seventeen years for his involvement in the ricin plot.

³
UN weapons inspectors had found eleven empty chemical warheads at the Ukhaidir depot, seventy-five miles south-west of Baghdad.

⁴
3,000 pages of documents detailing the process of producing enriched uranium had been removed from the Baghdad home of a leading scientist. The notes – on creating the substance using lasers – dated back to the 1980s.

⁵
The Community Charge, or poll tax, was a system of local government funding that moved away from the rateable value of property and placed a blanket levy on individuals. It was introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1989 in Scotland and 1990 in England and Wales. It provoked significant anger, even leading to riots. Thatcher had chosen to front the policy herself. Her stridence on the issue contributed to her political demise.

⁶
John Merritt, Campbell’s closest friend, had died of leukaemia in 1992, as had his daughter, Ellie, six years later. Merritt’s widow, Lindsay Nicholson, and Hope, their surviving daughter, attended the launch of Campbell’s marathon run, which would raise funds for Leukaemia Research.

⁷
At a press conference marking the fortieth anniversary of the Franco-German post-war friendship treaty, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder announced their decision to co-operate against a US-led invasion of Iraq.

⁸
Though no agreement had been reached, France was pushing for EU travel sanctions against Mugabe to be eased to allow him to attend the Franco-African summit in Paris.

⁹
The far-right British National Party had won a council by-election in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, pushing Labour into third place.

¹⁰
To Cook’s chagrin, Blair had said the true options on Lords reform were either a wholly elected or wholly appointed House of Lords. He told Labour MPs ‘I personally think a hybrid between the two is wrong and will not work.’

¹¹
The space shuttle
Columbia
disintegrated over Texas during re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere. All seven crew members were killed. President Bush addressed the United States, saying ‘This day has brought . . . great sadness to our country . . . the cause in which they died [space programme] will continue.’

¹²
Blair told MPs ‘Eight weeks have now passed since Saddam was given his final chance. Six hundred weeks have passed since he was given his first chance. The evidence of co-operation withheld is unmistakable. He has still not answered the questions concerning thousands of missing munitions and tonnes of chemical and biological agents unaccounted for.’

¹³
Benn described the interview as ‘Very historic for all of us’ and asked Saddam to ‘Help me see what the paths to peace may be.’

¹⁴
The three-week-old ‘top secret’ document stated that the ‘aims [of al-Qaeda] are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq’.

¹⁵
Both Houses of Parliament had voted on the future make-up of the House of Lords. Eight reform options were defeated in the Commons, while the Lords voted for the status quo.

¹⁶
Channel 4 News
had broken the story of what was dubbed the ‘Dodgy Dossier’, a briefing paper compiled for the Sunday papers by CIC civil servants. Cambridge academic Dr Glen Rangwala recognised plagiarised passages from writings available on the Internet, particularly ‘Iraq’s Security & Intelligence Network: A Guide & Analysis’, an article written by political scientist Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi, and published in the
Middle East Review of International Affairs
in September 2002.

¹⁷
Eid-ul-Adha, ‘Festival of the Sacrifice’, the Muslim festival commemorating the prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God.

¹⁸
Der Spiegel
reported a Franco-German plan, ‘Project Mirage’, to prevent war by sending UN regulars into Iraq to strengthen weapons searches, declare the whole country a no-fly zone and increase trade sanctions. Iraq would have become, de facto, a UN protectorate, forced to disarm.

¹⁹
Blair told Labour delegates ‘It is still possible for Saddam Hussein to prevent military action by co-operating, and fulfilling his obligations as set out by the United Nations.’ Blair dismissed Saddam’s invitation to South African officials to visit Iraq to advise on disarmament. ‘The concessions are phoney, the weapons are real.’

²⁰
Police estimated that at least 750,000 people had taken part in the London march. Organisers put the figure at nearer two million.

²¹
The ten East European and Mediterranean countries due to join the European Union in 2004 had signed a letter of support for the US stance on Iraq.

²²
Payment made by an individual, usually at the time a service is received, to offset some of the cost.

²³
Blair told MPs ‘The intelligence is clear: [Saddam Hussein] continues to believe that his weapons of mass destruction programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression. It is essential to his regional power. Prior to the inspectors coming back in, he was engaged in a systematic exercise in concealment of those weapons.’

²⁴
The amendment arguing that the case for military action against Iraq remained unproven was defeated 393 to 199.

²⁵
Dr Rowan Williams had been anointed as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.

²⁶
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been captured by the Pakistani secret service in Rawalpindi.

²⁷
Angola, Cameroon and Guinea supported continued inspections, but were thought to be against taking a stand on disarmament by military action.

²⁸
Blair told the MTV audience ‘If we don’t act now, then we will go back to what has happened before and then of course the whole thing begins again and he [Saddam] carries on developing these weapons . . . dangerous weapons, particularly if they fall into the hands of terrorists.’

²⁹
Lord Goldsmith was later to tell the 2010 Iraq Inquiry that he had strengthened his legal view of the Iraq War after a visit to the US, for discussions with lawyers there. He described suggestions that he did so because of political pressure as ‘complete nonsense’. The former Attorney General said he had believed it was ‘safer’ to get a new UN resolution but gave the ‘green light’ after deciding force was justified by UN accords dating back to 1991.