The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (47 page)

The other big drama was JP. He called me at lunchtime. I said ‘That was pretty dramatic yesterday.’ ‘What?’ ‘What you said in Cabinet.’ ‘Well, you’ve created camps and you’re in one of them and you’ve pushed me to the other. There you go.’ ‘Oh well. I just wanted to say I was taken aback. Me, not him.’ He told me that just before Cabinet TB had accused him of messing around with GB and said he wasn’t having it. JP said he wasn’t prepared to be excluded from strategy and he wasn’t having all this Third Way/Mandelson policy stuff bypassing the party. He let off steam, said he had warned him again and again and he thinks if he strokes my arm I’ll be fine, but it goes much deeper. He has to do things through the Cabinet and his ministers and not his own little Loya Jirga [Afghan Grand Council]. He then said ‘You’ve withdrawn from all this anyway.’ I said that I’d tried to pull back because of the attention I was getting, but it hasn’t worked, has it? He said no, you’ve got your own problems. I’ve never had a problem with you but we’ve grown distant again. I’m loyal to TB and you both need to understand that. I always will be, I’m not going over to GB, but Tony has got to start treating people better than he does. I know he has a lot to deal with, a lot of problems, a lot of difficult people, a lot of big decisions. But he knows he can do it better. We chatted for close to an hour and I think both felt better at the end of it. We agreed to have dinner at our house tomorrow night. TB called later and said JP had been transformed, which showed I should keep close to him.

As ever, JP then started to worry about tomorrow, about taking up all our time at the weekend, said he would get a takeaway. I said ‘Aw, aren’t you sweet?’ TB spoke to GB who was on his way to Canada. GB said he was thinking of him and if there was anything he could do to help either of us, he would. I was almost minded to write to him to thank him for all the support he had given and to say if he ever ran into difficulties, his support would be reciprocated in full. TB was pretty feisty about things but at the end of the day it was all pretty tough. He got back from the BIC [British–Irish Council] in Jersey. He said Northern Ireland was a mess and we may lose [David] Trimble [Ulster Unionist Party leader and First Minister of Northern Ireland].

Fiona took Grace to the ballet and I had a great chat with Rory and Calum who were developing similar views to my own about the press. Calum said something really sweet, that I’ll still be standing after all these people are gone. Richard Desmond called and asked if there was anything he could do to help. I suggested a piece from Jack Straw defending me. Desmond came back saying Jack’s office had
said he didn’t want to do it. I called Jack, who said he hadn’t even been told about it and was more than happy to do it.

We agreed re the
Mail on Sunday
that the best line would be to point out the inconsistency with the statement at the time. Once the papers dropped, we had a quick conference call to agree the lines and Martin Sheehan put out a statement. Most felt the whole thing was overblown bollocks, Black Rod says AC must go. Nothing much to it.

JP and Pauline [his wife] arrived about 8. After all the small talk, JP with some anecdotes on his trips, taking the mick out of Pauline’s hats, then we got down to it. He liked TB, felt he was the right guy at the right time and a good leader. But he wanted to be properly involved in decision-making. He only felt he was in the areas for which he had direct responsibility but if he was going to be a proper deputy, he had to know a lot more about what he was up to and where we were going. He said he sometimes felt TB stroked his arm, patted his head, that it was about managing him rather than using him properly as a DPM [Deputy Prime Minister]. He had used the line on Thursday about ‘the snake leaving the skin behind’, that TB seemed to have this ability to lose people but not necessarily lose his strength. He said that he felt I had pulled back and that meant people in Number 10 didn’t always feel there was a proper understanding of JP’s views. I said that was true, but it wasn’t personal. The personality clashes did my head in. GB was in TB’s head the whole time messing it up.

He said TB had directly accused him of playing around with GB, building an alliance to isolate him, but that misunderstood things. He had told GB he would support him to take over but he would not be part of any plan to force out TB. He agreed with me that it was almost like a failed marriage, they had fallen out but they knew they had to live together. He felt there was a deep belief inside GB that they did have a deal, that GB had done his bit and he felt TB was doing the dirty on him. He felt TB was still popular in the party and the country and he couldn’t see any pressure for him to go. He also felt that on the policy front, and again he felt my partial disengagement had something to do with this, the balance had tilted too far towards [Andrew] Adonis and what JP saw as a very right-wing agenda. We both agreed how much we missed David Miliband there [i.e. as Adonis’ predecessor in charge of the Policy Unit].

I tried to give him a sense of what it was like for TB getting his head pummelled every day by GB. I tried to explain too why
sometimes TB didn’t want JP at some meetings. I said when TB is making a big decision, he prefers an endless series of circular conversations with different people rather than full-blown confrontational sessions that are supposed to reach conclusions. It’s just his style. I suggested a weekly meeting of TB, JP, Charles C and I to keep JP more involved with political strategy. It was a really good evening, because we both laid things out very frankly, both also knew we needed both of us to raise our game again, and in a bizarre sort of way we needed each other to do that.

JP warmed up as the evening wore on and was in full flow by the end, totally open about himself, his background, his chippiness, why he felt as proud as he did of where he had got to, why he was so desperate to play a role getting TB and GB to work together better than they did. He said he would do nothing to damage the party and even though they had different views about lots of things, he felt TB was in the same place on that. He said between us all, we have put Labour in the strongest position ever and a lot of that has been down to TB and GB hanging together. I said don’t underestimate the impact GB is having on him for the worse at the moment. I said he had not exchanged a single civil word with me since the election. They stayed till close to midnight.

TB called, even more outraged and angry about Black Rod than ever. I filled him in on the JP dinner. He said the only question is whether an open and admitted two-term strategy weakens me or gives me more space. He said that even though GB had behaved abominably towards him in many ways, it was really important that leaders did not try to get successors in their own image, but go for the best on offer. He said it was important to his own legacy that the party does well after he’s gone. So if GB was the best option for delivering a third-term Labour government, it’s the right thing to do. But he admitted he had doubts about him temperamentally, that he worried what he would actually be like. He thought that perhaps two full terms is pretty close to the limit for jobs like this. But what really mattered was what we did policy-wise. He felt if he could get GB working with him properly on policy, we would be unstoppable. He said JP was key because he was the one politician that GB feared and the idea of a black spot being put on him, JP saying he wasn’t fit for the job, he would really worry about that.

The
Mail on Sunday
stuff didn’t go very far, and though there was reams of it in the papers, nothing deadly. I briefed Margaret Beckett
for
The World at One
and she was absolutely brilliant. Haughty and dismissive. Reid was excellent on
On the Record
against Tim Collins [Conservative Party vice chairman], whom God preserve. The story was going nowhere but it didn’t stop the BBC leading on it most of the day. We went out for dinner with the Goulds and the Milibands, all very supportive though Gail [Rebuck, publisher and wife of Philip Gould] said, probably rightly, that it was worth me trying for a concerted period of being nice to the media and then getting out.

Only the
Mail
with ‘the smearing of Black Rod’ led on it, but the mood was definitely different now. I agreed with TB we should just shut up shop, say we had said all there was to say. There was an excellent story in
The Times
, saying the Palace were worried Black Rod was dragging them into a political row, but it was dropping down the agenda. At the Monday morning meeting, TB was worrying about how we get back on the front foot. He was very nice to Clare Sumner. She was so manifestly nice, and professional, and mortified to have been accused in the way she had been. I saw TB on his own later and he was clearly thinking a lot about this two-term plan, moving to the view that if he did it soon it might give him more freedom. His only worry was his fear that GB would not change, and continue not co-operating properly. He said it was extraordinary to think that GB discusses the euro more openly with Murdoch than he does with him.

The Black Rod story was dying, yesterday’s
Times
pretty much the turning point. David Davies [Football Association executive director] called as I was in a cab to the Eurostar, asking if TB would go out for later rounds of the World Cup. We agreed he would certainly come out if England got to the final, possibly before, and we also had to think about receptions etc. afterwards. He said they were having a fantastic time. What was clear was that if Japan went out, most of the Japanese would swing behind England. I explained some of the recent madness re the Queen Mum, so it was important it was clear the invitation came from them to TB, rather than TB ‘muscling in’. We agreed both to speak to the Palace to find out their plans, which looked like [Prince] Andrew for the semi, Charles and Andrew for the final.

I left for Brussels with Danny Pruce [press officer, foreign affairs]. We went to [Ambassador Nigel] Sheinwald’s residence where I briefed
the Brussels hacks on the summit, pushing hard on asylum and immigration. The mood was fine and it was definitely worth doing. Then to the EPLP [European Parliamentary Labour Party] where I pushed the line that the Tories had moved out of policy, were trying to turn politics into a policy-free zone and make character the issue, which required a fresh approach to communications again.

Godric called to say Cherie had given us a bit of a problem. Without knowing there had been nineteen deaths in the morning in the Jerusalem suicide bombing, she said something that was taken as a defence of suicide bombers.
³⁸
She was with Queen Rania of Jordan to launch a charity. And after Rania said something fairly balanced, Cherie said something that appeared to offer justification for suicide bombers and off we went on the next great frenzy. We needed a statement out from CB, plus Rania’s words to give the context, plus getting Labour MPs attacking Michael Ancram [Conservative deputy leader and Shadow Foreign Secretary] for making a big issue of it, plus we needed prominent Jews out defending her and putting a more balanced message. After the Black Rod/AC spin row, this was the next one and it wouldn’t be very nice for CB.

CB row died down quickly, more support for her than I expected. All the country really cared about was the World Cup, which was great. We were starting to think about going to Japan if they got through. David Blunkett did a pretty heavy attack on the press which though it was fairly light-hearted would probably prolong the Black Rod/AC/CB stuff. TB was off to Paris for dinner with Chirac, called afterwards, said he had been good on beef, Sangatte and the general need for more co-operation before summits, so he was pretty pleased with himself.

Ran in, thirty-five minutes, 4.4 miles. Whizzed through the morning meeting, need to get the focus totally on TB’s [televised] press conference. He was over at a Cobra meeting, back really late, eating into preparation time. I had worked up the script pre Seville [EU summit] but it was all going to be about his demeanour and body language under questions. The only strategic decision was whether he engaged in all the current debate about the press and the nature
of the debate. He was minded not to and I didn’t particularly want the Black Rod business reopened so we agreed just say he wanted to be judged on substance, that he was prime minister, not commentator. The backdrop for the media was a
Telegraph
poll saying fifty per cent didn’t trust him. Cabinet, better mood than last week but a bit meandering. They discussed foot and mouth, the Tube, a lot of foreign affairs stuff. Clare made even by her standards a ridiculous intervention, saying could he make sure that if Bush sent in Saddam death squads, there was a proper discussion here in Cabinet before they went. He and several others flashed identical looks of disbelief.

He went up [to the press conference], with only Saeed [Khan, Number 10 press office] for company, and we stayed back to watch it on TV in his office. It was very long, he was solid and serious, with a few really good moments but it was definitely worth doing, though the coverage was as much about the wretched hacks and what didn’t happen as about what he had said.

Good coverage for the press conference, even in some of the hostile press. He was good at them, but we needed more colour and texture. TB was off to Seville via Scotland. England vs Brazil was all anybody cared about. One up, then lost 1–2 and the whole country was deflated. TB called afterwards and sounded pretty down about it. I was also feeling a lot more disappointed than I thought I would. Godric had spent three days working up a proper communications plan on asylum and we now discovered we had been holed by Clare Short doing a pre-recorded
GMTV
interview, recorded after the meeting at which we had agreed we would not tie aid to asylum. It was a mad idea which we had somehow allowed to get away from us.