The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (41 page)

There was quite a good discussion at Cabinet on the Le Pen situation. Robin [Cook] said there had been a genuine miscalculation re the two rounds of voting. Jack said Jospin had fought a terrible campaign. What it showed was that post the collapse of the Berlin Wall, asylum and immigration were big problems for a lot of countries, and governments would get judged on how they handled them. He said there was a lot of racism in France and there was a problem with Muslim youth feeling disconnected. Then, in a very Jackish kind of way, he referred to an article he had written for
The Times
in 1985 in which he said PR [proportional representation] would lead to the rise of Le Pen. John Reid, warming to the anti-PR mood, pointed out that Hitler was elected by PR. TB summed up, saying asylum was a problem to be dealt with, not exploited. People want to know there is a fair system, rules with integrity. He said up to now, EU colleagues had been reluctant on this and we had been something of a lone voice but now they would realise more. GB was at UNISON, and it was noticeable how much lighter the mood was.

To Windsor for the Queen’s Golden Jubilee media reception. It was a beautiful evening, about 700 journalists there. Oborne and [Simon] Walters [
Mail on Sunday
] both tried to engage me in conversation but I pushed them off. The general feeling among most of the hacks was that we shouldn’t have gone to the PCC but that’s because they were self-serving. I had a chat with Janvrin who said he really hoped Black Rod would deliver for us, but he didn’t think we should put our house on him. The event was a huge success for the Queen. There was something truly pathetic about these so-called hardened hacks, many of them self-proclaimed republicans, bowing and scraping the whole time. She moved effortlessly between them and left grown men in little puddles of excitement as she moved on to form the next one.
She was such an old pro but there was something mildly sick-making about the way they fell about in front of her.

TB did the PEB [party election broadcast] last night in the margins of a visit to Dudley, and today was off to Blackburn [local elections to be held on May 2], allowing me to complain all day that he had never ever been to Burnley. Jack was in his usual Blackburn–Burnley wind-up mode, and sent me a message that the road into Burnley had been blocked by a broken-down banana lorry taking in the food for the natives. The visit went OK without too much focus on the BNP. TB was back mid pm, had enjoyed getting out, and felt the mood out there was better than we thought. Boris Johnson wrote to say would I do a letter next week setting out our position re the lying-in-state, which suggested they were looking for a way out.

Someone had briefed, or possibly the Sundays just picked it up from Mary Ann Sieghart’s column in
The Times
, the possibility of child benefit withdrawal from parents with persistent truants who veer towards crime. The problem was that whoever was briefing was doing so by saying it was TB against GB and others. Amazingly, TB had been asked about it when filming for the PEB in Dudley on Thursday, but there was no way it could have been briefed out of that. It was possibly a sensible idea to look at, though at first blush I didn’t think so, but in any event there was no point getting it out in a time or in a manner that would send the party neuralgic. Once the papers came in and we basically said it was being looked at, we were facing an ill-discipline problem – ill discipline of those who briefed it with a particular slant, then the ill discipline of not standing up for it properly so that in the end it looked like a gimmick.

JP was doing interviews and I briefed him to hold firm on the child benefit issue, but he was clearly uncomfortable and didn’t. GB called TB and complained both about the policy but also, and this made me suspicious, said that it was being deliberately fuelled to do him in, totally overlooking the fact that it had been pitched as a hit on TB. Jeremy, listening in, said it was a truly dreadful call. Even when TB said he wasn’t prepared to put up with this any longer, GB was unmoved, kept at him. TB was also struck by something Charlie Falconer had said, namely that Balls had briefed DTLR officials to
bid over the odds on housing because ‘Number 10 are not interested in housing’. It was beginning to feel a bit too warlike. During the day I briefed variously TB, JP and Estelle [Morris] who would all be expected in their various media appearances to say something on the child benefit row. Estelle was fine, JP wasn’t. TB was angry and frustrated, said it only became a problem when we sounded like we were in retreat. GB was currently working on Cabinet, party, press, the voluntary sector, the lot, just getting himself in a slightly different position.

Child benefit story was still raging on, with lots of split-ery around the place. The take generally was that the Cabinet was against it. TB was a bit head-in-hands mode. We put it round that the story was clearly put there by someone who wanted to kill the policy, which was probably true. I suspected GB’s people were responsible for the
FT
story saying that [Rupert] Murdoch would be shafted by the media ownership bill. So I called Les Hinton simply to say don’t believe everything you read in the papers.

TB’s big concern re the GB situation was the feeling that ministers were unsure what their instincts were meant to be, because though we were the present, they realised GB was the future. TB needed to be clear that they were answerable to him. I said there was a case for sacking one or two Brownite ministers like Nick Brown [minister for work], tell them it was unfair but it was needed to shake things up a bit. He was more up for it than I thought he would be. I told the morning meeting that the real story here was not [child benefit] policy but ill discipline. TB intended to go up and defend it big time on his local election visit, which is exactly what he did.

I had a few meetings then up to 9 Whitehall to give evidence to the FMD inquiry. Quite tough, and maybe I didn’t prepare enough for it. I gave them a paper on the media and how hard it had been to put over what we were trying to do. He [Dr Iain Anderson, chairman] clearly felt that we had ballsed the first stages and never really got over it. He suggested that maybe in future we should bring journalists in as part of our team, which was an interesting idea.

Back to get changed for the Number 10 dinner for the Queen, which was being attended by all her PMs or, in the case of those who’d died, by family reps. Terry O’Neill [photographer] in to do pictures. Ted Heath [former Conservative Prime Minister] complaining about the seating plan. A bit of a problem re Stockton [the 2nd Earl Stockton, former Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s grandson]
taking the place of Macmillan’s daughter [Lady Caroline Faber]. But it went well enough, nice pictures of her with all her surviving prime ministers which we got out by 8.45. TB’s kids were downstairs to meet her when she arrived then up for drinks. The Queen said ‘Isn’t it wonderful not to have to be introduced to anyone?’ [John] Major and I had a very civilised conversation, re Chelsea, cricket, small talk. But there was always a tension there and Norma [Major] was very distant. Thatcher was complaining loudly about the decor and the paintings, how some of the carpets and furnishings looked worn, and the colours in the Green Room weren’t properly co-ordinated, tut-tutting, not exactly saying ‘wouldn’t have happened in my day’ but not far off it.

The Queen, the PMs and their descendants went into the State Dining Room whilst Robin Janvrin, Jeremy, Fiona and I had a very nice dinner in the White Room. Robin was a thoroughly decent bloke. There was another drinks do at the end and I had a long chat with Mary Wilson and Robin [widow and son of Harold Wilson]. At one point Ted [Heath] was sitting on one sofa, Jim [Callaghan] on another, just having an old man to old man conversation about how things used to be. Ted could barely bring himself to look at Thatcher but she teased him a bit, tried to make him laugh, without any apparent success. Prince Philip was deep in conversation with TB, the Countess of Avon [widow of former Conservative Prime Minister Anthony Eden], Macmillan’s and [former Conservative Prime Minister Alec] Douglas-Home’s families, and there was lots of reminiscing about life in Number 10. It was interesting to see the difference between the Queen’s demeanour at the do at Windsor, when she had been doing her professional small-talk thing, and here, where she seemed genuinely happy.

I said to Fiona that nobody else had really had the kind of access and contact that she had had and yet while everybody thought they knew what she thought of them, nobody could be sure. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smiling so much. TB occupied pretty much a back seat, wanted the others to be talking to her and enjoying it. I also knew he was worrying about the question he had asked earlier, whether he had already ceded too much power to GB, and whether it was too late to get it back.

The
Mirror
splashed on a poll, figures bent and twisted against TB. He was almost minded to scrap the interview with them but we went ahead and it was OK, Brian Reade [columnist] basically onside but
there was little point dealing with Piers at the moment. I called Byers who said there was an agreed statement going out today effectively exonerating Sixsmith. He had delegated to mediators and the lawyers had totally caved in. We got RW to stop it going out today because it would look like we were burying it under the Queen’s address to both Houses of Parliament. I couldn’t believe this was still dragging on.

We had a long-term diary meeting based on the plan Peter H, Philip and I had put together. They all basically disagreed with it and it turned ugly and I said I was fed up with being surrounded by commentators who were great at criticising other ideas but didn’t deliver their own. Then to a meeting with GB and the Eds [Balls and Miliband], which was better than usual because TB was much firmer. There was a big disagreement though, TB and I strongly believing we had not only to deal with crime and antisocial behaviour, but be seen to deal with it because in part the signals you sent out were important actually to dealing with it. Their basic take was that to talk about crime was to alarm the public that it wasn’t being dealt with. Ed Balls felt we had lost the ‘causes of crime’ part of the argument. TB said that we always had to do both. GB thought the Tory strategy was to say they were moving to the centre now but they would become more right wing later. TB not sure, though at least on that there was a civilised and sensible discussion.

Sixsmith was clearly threatening to go to the press if things were held up any longer. TB kept going on about how incompetently it all had been handled. Godric was more wound up than ever. I told Richard W we were fed up having to cover up the incompetence of people who should have sorted this out. He looked really hurt, said the senior Civil Service really tried to work with us. I said a lot of them used the SpAd issue to hide behind. He got really angry at that, said that he was happy to resign if we thought it would make it better. I said nobody was talking about that, or even thinking about it. I calmed down a bit, said I was sorry that he and I had ended up shouting at each other. The truth was with the combination of the
Mirror
, the whingeing at the diary meeting, still having to deal with Byers and the ludicrous discussion with GB about crime, I had just about had enough.

I was in a foul mood with everyone. The
Mirror
interview was fine but there was a big factual error about TB’s kids which we got a correction for. I spent most of the day locked away, and most people knew to avoid me. Yesterday’s diary meeting sparked a flurry of
emails, Sally M and Robert [Hill] in particular feeling I had just dumped a long-term plan on them without consultation and was trying to bounce them. It was more that I was just trying to get some proper direction and movement and was fed up of the endless circular conversations without agreement. Creativity was dead, had been for some time, and there had to be change.

Up to see TB. He said the row he had had with GB at the weekend was as bad as it got. He was effectively fighting a campaign of attrition, wants me out and thinks he has to wear me out to get me out. In the end ‘I’m quite stubborn.’ He said he had called back to apologise and GB had been nicer since. I said that’s how he works. It’s the banging-head-against-wall theory. He forces you to lose your rag, you feel bad, he feels a bit more empowered. Interestingly, though, the undertone for a lot of the five-year coverage was that GB might not be rounded enough for the top job. Things would be so much better if they could work together. GB had been a bit better but when I bumped into him this morning getting a coffee pre Cabinet it was the usual total non-communicado.

Cabinet was mainly Middle East and Afghanistan. Charles C was looking for reassurance on his recent whacks on the media. I advised he keep going, but get himself some cover by making clear there was a lot of good amid the bad, and engage other ministers on it too. Then we got ourselves into a bit of a mess re changes to the lobby. I had floated the idea at the meeting with the BBC and then Tom Baldwin called to tell Godric that Simon Walters was planning to present it as a great attack on the media, so I decided to go upfront on it now. I called James Hardy [
Mirror
political editor], the chairman of the lobby, and suggested he get together a group of people to do a meeting with me, Godric and Tom [Kelly]. I told them we were going to change things. TB would be doing more in Parliament. He and other ministers would be doing far more press conferences and on days they did, we would cut down on lobby briefings. We also intended to open the briefings to others, including more foreign media. They were suspicious but some, like Patrick Wintour [
Guardian
] and to a lesser extent Trevor Kavanagh [
Sun
political editor], seemed OK on it.