The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (19 page)

The news overnight was our troops on standby. I complained first thing about today’s poll from the Muslim community.
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The
Mirror
and the
Mail
led on a picture of the Northern Alliance butchery of a Taliban solider and it was obvious we were going to cop it for any brutality on the way in. There was plenty of ‘What now?’ stuff. Polly Toynbee [
Guardian
] did an excellent piece about our media culture. TB called as I was driving in and agreed that he should do a statement. He shared my amazement at the ability of our press to turn yesterday into a problem. I said to Tucker at the morning meeting ‘Hey, great news, we lost.’ He had been genuinely shocked by the desire of most of our media, or so it felt to him, to fail. TB spoke to Bush and then Schroeder then worked on the statement. The top line was that the Taliban was defeated. TB was still pushing to go faster and further on the political front but it was so difficult mobilising international action on the back of fast-moving events. The coverage out of Kabul was extraordinary though and there was a sense of people’s lives changing instantly. PMQs was OK. The statement was fine content-wise but TB was really tired and not really on form. I think both of us felt a bit that you work your guts
out, you strive with everything you’ve got to make something happen, every step of the way people are saying you can’t do it and then when it happens, they are just straight on to saying you can’t do the next thing. It wasn’t even about a desire for recognition of achievement. It was just the feeling of grind that went with the situation that our media made everything feel like swimming through treacle.

There was going to be a UN presence by Friday and the UK diplomatic presence by the weekend. There was a fantastic story to be told about the role played by a small number of our spooks and special forces, if C and Co. were up for it. John Scarlett had also been superb, calm, clear, always meticulous about the material he assembled and put forward to the PM, but just as willing to give bad news as good. I had a meeting with David Puttnam [Labour peer, former film producer], who I like and think is one of the rare cases of people adapting from success in one world at a very high level to success at a different level in politics. He told me both the BBC and
Guardian
had said to him they were genuinely worried about their relations with us. He also wanted to say that Estelle [Morris] was a real star but she needed boosting and she needed help that she would never ask for herself. I got Tucker in to say hello to TB. He told me afterwards he had never seen a politician who thought so quickly on his feet, who could assimilate big arguments quickly and make them simple.

The news was dominated by [eight Western] aid workers being released [after three months held captive by the Taliban]. Mullah Omar did the BBC World Service. At the War Cabinet, there was a bad scene with Clare because she was totally opposed to putting in a senior humanitarian figure in overall charge. The obvious assumption was her worry of being overshadowed or outperformed but her argument was that there were enough tensions between the various agencies and organisations and this would make it worse. Cabinet was obviously largely dominated by the events in Afghanistan and the diplomatic follow-through. Then I had a session briefing Clare before she did the press conference on the humanitarian side of things. She really was ghastly to deal with. She would give every impression of agreeing with you, and then do or say something different; or she would just have an argument for the hell of it, but in that whiney ‘everyone but me is wrong’ voice that made me want to seal my ears with hot wax.

We had to hope that the real story of yesterday didn’t come out, namely that our our guys had landed but the FCO had forgotten to ask the Northern Alliance for authority and protection so that Abdullah Abdullah [soon to become foreign minister, Afghan government-in-exile] went crazy and at one point they were even asking our guys at Baghram [airbase, Kabul] to leave. The Americans had finally settled on a spokesman for Islamabad, former ambassador Kenton Keith, and he came in for a meeting. Nice guy, fairly quiet but intelligent and he seemed to be on the right track. I then had a meeting with David Manning and the NATO experts while David and I did a very good briefing on the new moves to bring Russia closer to NATO, which was very much a product of TB’s thinking and DM’s detail and drive. He was such a nice guy, and so absolutely professional. Often at these briefings, with a Foreign Office policy expert, I would just have at the back of my mind a worry that they would say something that would give us a problem. But with David I had absolute confidence.

Conference call was largely about the women’s events, plus I was pushing for the
News of the World
to get a piece from Rumsfeld. The Americans were still focused almost totally on the military campaign. Rumsfeld did a briefing showing pictures of Northern Alliance forces with American special forces on horseback. Rumsfeld had definitely emerged as one of the characters of the campaign, was much more popular in the States than here but in his own way had been more impressive than Colin Powell who had come over as a bit weak and dithery. Then, from left field, Mo [Mowlam, former Cabinet minister] had done a [Michael] Cockerell film [BBC political documentary,
Cabinet Confidential
] and said TB was presidential, had killed Cabinet government and the TB/GB relationship was unhappy. JP was asked about it in front of cameras and used the line ‘She’s daft.’ He called me afterwards. I felt he wasn’t far wrong.

The
FT
second lead, part inspired by Mo and part by the usual chat around the place, talked of an ‘all-time low’ between TB and GB, included the stuff about him doing in Byers, messing around on the euro, generally very anti GB. TB was exercised about it, said it was bad anyway, but also that the party really wouldn’t like it if they felt TB was going for GB. It was one thing for the guy at the top to be under attack but it would look bad for TB if it was reciprocated. I spoke to Ian Austin [Brown’s spokesman] who did his usual ludicrous ‘we never
brief the press’ routine and descended into a lot of inarticulate rambling. The problem was there was a reality fault-line problem and it had to be addressed. But the thing was that other ministers were starting to take a lead, starting to think this was the way to get on.

TB felt Afghanistan was going better so far as we and the Americans were concerned but he couldn’t understand why Brahimi was not more proactive. There was also a Reuters report of the Northern Alliance asking our troops to leave Baghram, so we had to deal with that. I went to Coventry vs Burnley with Calum, and did the conference call in the car park, regularly interrupted by supporters coming over to shout down the phone. Laura Bush was doing the broadcast out there as part of the build-up to the women’s event. The Sundays were wall to wall and not much to worry about, though there was far too much TB/GB stuff. We were obviously heading for another wave of it.

John Scarlett had been to the US and said they were more hopeful of finding OBL. He said it would be easier if he stayed in Afghanistan, so I suggested we have a plan to brief round the place that as Afghanistan is ‘the only Islamic country on earth’ it would be a terrible defeat and loss of face for him to go elsewhere. John felt that departure to Pakistan via the North-West was his only possible option for leaving but even that, it wasn’t clear he could do. I had a long run, then took the kids to see
Harry Potter
[
and the Philosopher’s Stone
, the first film in the series]. I couldn’t quite understand the ballyhoo, and I slept through the second half. The GB stuff was running big again. There was no science to this but sometimes a mood just developed and a combination of Mo and the
FT
, then fuelled by others off the record, got us in a bad place. GB came out of it badly but so did the whole government. It felt dangerous.

I was really tired, and emotionally drained after a weekend split evenly between working, time with the kids, and arguing with Fiona. The news was ragged and there seemed to be real confusion over what our troops were doing. The American focus seemed to be almost entirely getting OBL, with the future of Afghanistan barely getting a look-in. So it looked like our troops were sitting there for no purpose, with neither the NA nor the Americans really wanting them there, so it was a bit messy. I probably underestimated how hard the last few weeks had been and maybe I was going in for a crash period. I had to find some energy from somewhere. TB said we had to stop any
attacks on GB. He didn’t think I was doing it directly, but the mood music he and I generated gave others licence, and we had to do everything we could to stop it. I spoke firmly to my lot while Jeremy [Heywood, principal private secretary] sent round an email saying the markets would react badly if this stuff went on. Later he, GB, Balls and Simon Virley [private secretary, economic affairs] had a PBR meeting with TB. TB said Balls was ‘unbelievably rude’ to all the Number 10 people, including him.

I had lunch with Andrew Marr at Christopher’s [restaurant]. He said the problem was the reality – we could talk all we want about how well they work together, but they all knew GB was angry and smouldering because he was consumed with ambition for the top job. TB was back to his point about the danger of ‘policy read-across’ in what was essentially a personality thing. He had asked GB what he called a few polite questions about the tax credits and he was met with a bombardment. I had quite a nice time with Marr who, though self-obsessed, at least thought about things and I think appreciated how hard government was, and how comparatively well we did it. The Pakistan CIC was due finally to open tomorrow and the planning on that dominated the conference call. I saw Pat McFadden [former Number 10 deputy chief of staff] and persuaded him to go to Pakistan.

I didn’t feel great and stayed in bed till 10. I wouldn’t have gone in at all but I had a couple of meetings it was difficult to move. Clare gave us a bit of a problem when she told a select committee that the US record on aid wasn’t good.
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TB called re Clare and said ‘Just try to finesse it.’ I said finessing Clare Short was beyond anyone.

We were still communicating a sense of split with us wanting to put more troops in and the US not, us wanting the focus to shift to the future of Afghanistan, and the US not. Added to which Clare’s comments to the DFID select committee gave us a continuing problem which was on the conference call, the Yanks clearly a bit agitato. Dan said to me later, how much money do we have to spend overseas before people start to recognise who the biggest donor in the world is? Jack Straw came through for the morning meeting to go over his press
conference in the [Downing Street] Pillared Room re his trip to Iran and Pakistan and a bit more on the humanitarian push. The Taliban did a press conference with a ‘No surrender’ top line, also saying they didn’t have contact with OBL. Rumsfeld’s basic position was that they didn’t want anything that detracted from the hunt for OBL, so having had out troops on 48-hour standby, they had to be let down again.

Halfway through the main PMQs meeting at lunchtime, Godric came through to say Clare had done
The World at One
[BBC Radio 4] and had another whack at the US, saying the UK and France were ready to go in but they were holding things back.
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TB rolled his eyes, shook his head, muttered ‘She’s just not serious’ but the truth was every time she did it and got away with it, she knew she was able to get away with it next time. She had been indulged too much for too long. I reminded him how virtually everyone, including Neil [Kinnock], who had ever worked with her, had said she should be one of the earliest casualties. [David] Yelland came to see me prior to his meeting with GB and I did my best to persuade him the TB/GB relationship was OK.

I could feel myself going down with flu and losing my voice. GB had done an interview in
The Times
about how great the Cabinet was. It was all a bit much, protesting too much, and the general take around the place was that it was embarrassing. TB/GB was without doubt the government fault line, as well as part of its strength. But we had to do something about it. We couldn’t allow it just to become a given, another Number 10/11 relationship going wrong because of personal rivalries. Prior to the War Cabinet, GH and CDS briefed TB on the operations going on in the south. CDS was looking tired and grey, and I didn’t feel got any real satisfaction out of his job. He and Geoff were not in the same place about what to do with the troops who had been on 48-hour standby. John Scarlett said at the War Cabinet the Americans were putting massive effort into the hunt for OBL, and we had to be careful not to take our eye off other parts of this that needed very careful attention. I did a briefing for the foreign press on tomorrow’s Europe speech and Afghanistan, using the line from the Taliban yesterday that it was ‘time to forget’ as a way of getting up facts about the nature of the regime. I had agreed with Tim Livesey
[press officer, foreign affairs] we should use it to do a big number on the EMU section of the speech tomorrow. I had to persuade TB first though. I was rapidly losing my voice, and by the time I had done an interview with the ‘Mind Out’ mental health campaign [to raise awareness of mental health problems], I was washed up and went home.

Felt dreadful, and stayed in all day. My briefing of yesterday went big, leading several papers and the radio, the BBC doing the ‘most pro EMU yet’, usual bollocks. TB was happy enough with it, and did want to press on, but was pissed off at the
Sun
, which splashed on the line that we would have a euro referendum to coincide with a general election in 2005. Trevor [Kavanagh,
Sun
political editor] called early, claiming he had written it based on something I had said to Yelland, which was bollocks. The big problem with Europe was that most of the papers had a line and no real interest in setting things out as we said them. Despite feeling crap, I did the conference call but they were lacking energy and at the moment had just become glorified ‘lines to take’ discussions. The new common line coming out of the media re Afghanistan was ‘bloodbath fears’. I turned on the telly to watch TB’s speech, the start of which was delayed because a member of the audience collapsed, and TB called afterwards and said the poor guy had ‘lost his bowels’, said it had taken a while to clear the place up and it was the first time he had rushed through a speech because of the smell. The speech went fine, good mood music without anyone really going for it as a change of policy.
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