The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (55 page)

Left for the train to Preston. Had to drop out of the US conference call. I worked on an overnight script on TB’s [TUC] speech, which
Tom briefed, main focus on Iraq but also the hostile atmosphere with assorted union leaders getting on the news with real criticism over Iraq and much else besides. TB was in no real mood to be nice to them. We drove to Blackpool, then up to see a very downcast John Monks [TUC general secretary] with a very downcast Brendan Barber [his deputy]. I think they were worried that their modernising legacy was vanishing amid the noise of the dinosaurs. TB was definitely going to get a hostile reception tomorrow. He spoke by phone to Chirac who really went off at the Americans again, said they didn’t understand the Middle East, or how they brought anti-Americanism upon themselves.

The overnight briefing went pretty big on the line that he intended to be very robust. It was being built up as real lion’s den stuff. The speech was in three parts – Iraq, which would improve by being clearer about the balance between UN and determination to deal with it. It was measured, calm, serious. Second, public services, which was all a bit samey and listy, and third, partnership with the unions. We were a bit worried that some of the lines were so hostile – e.g. indulgence or influence – that he might get booed but he wanted to do it and felt it would strike a chord with the public. Monks wanted him to tone it down, which he did but I still felt it lacked clarity. TB got a much better reception than we feared, was even applauded for the attack on indulgence, and a fair few got up for a standing ovation, so he was pretty pleased with himself as we went back to the hotel for meetings.
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Alex F called, really worried about Iraq, said he thought it was a very dangerous situation for TB. I said TB had a real sense of certainty about this one. He was really on the rampage about the press as well, said we had to do something, they were out of control. We had very little time before [Labour Party] conference and we hadn’t done a lot of the planning we normally do. The Tories were clearly going to reposition as being more interested in domestic policy than Europe, and they were going to try to get up compassionate conservatism. They would try to do us as being distracted by foreign policy, and divided on Iraq. There was a bit of a flurry later on when Charles C
said the recall of Parliament was under review. TB was still not keen, but I was sure we were going to have to do it. Got Iraq dossier draft, read it at home.

Good press for the TUC speech. TB was with Robin C, even more puffed up than usual. Robin said we had to recall Parliament and better we do it sooner rather than later. We were behind the curve. He was making clear he felt we had to avoid military action, saying he didn’t want to serve twenty years under a Gordon Brown premiership. He even mentioned Suez. This is not Suez, said TB. That was not thought through and the US were not there. I’m not going to let the US go unilateral. It would be wrong and this way I get to influence them. RC spelled it out, said the US didn’t understand the Middle East peace process. They were doing Iraq for the wrong reasons and they were hugely unpopular. He welcomed the fact TB had been able to restrain Bush, but they were clearly determined to go to war. ‘I’ll put you down as an unenthusiastic then,’ said TB. RC said he feared it would be the end of the government. TB really was isolated at the moment and yet he kept going on this. We agreed that I would draft the letter from TB to Michael Martin setting out our thinking, saying it would be connected to the dossier and unrelated to UN thinking. Then we had to square MM. David Hanson [Blair’s parliamentary private secretary] got him in New York, read him the letter. Later Jack S called me from NY, he was with MM, who said maybe we should think of a two-day debate instead, because lots would want to speak.

Meanwhile I was working on the Iraq dossier. Long chat with John Scarlett. I said the drier the better, cut the rhetoric. The more intelligence-based it was the better. There was a need to separate IISS [International Institute for Strategic Studies report] from what was new in this one. I gave some suggestions later re a different structure. We had the basic story and now had to fill it out. TB looked at it and felt it was pretty compelling stuff. He was in a bit of a strop re recall of Parliament, said that it was a new precedent. He also didn’t want Cabinet until after a recall. Ridiculous. No wonder Betty Boothroyd said it was becoming more presidential. I watched the St Paul’s [anniversary of September 11] service, to which I was invited but couldn’t go, while reading the Iraq dossier. Then meeting with TB to sort lines on the recall of Parliament, and briefing. Philip had now done ten groups since the holiday and the pessimism was dreadful. They were close to a turning point, and really angry
about Iraq. Robin put out a line effectively claiming he persuaded TB to do the recall.

GWB speech to the UN [General Assembly] was leading news all day, up to delivery at 3.30 NY time. They sent a draft through yesterday but though good in tone, it lacked the crucial point that they would go for another UNSCR first. It just wasn’t there. This was what Cheney/Rumsfeld wanted. They felt that more ‘UN-ery’ was just a way to give Saddam the chance to mess them around. So David Manning sent through a passage from TB and spoke a couple of times to Condi. But it was only at the last moment that we heard he WAS going to include reference to UNSCR and in the end he delivered it in plural. That meant that others would be able hopefully to welcome it more than they would have done. RC was on the
Today
programme, diddling like crazy both re his alleged influence persuading TB to recall, and also on the issue of whether there would be a vote. Nobody pointed out there was no vote when he was Foreign Secretary re Kosovo, Gulf, and the attack on Iraq a few years back.

I had a long chat with Alan Milburn. JP had had the same conversation with him as he had had with me, namely saying he would support GB but not if he went for TB. ‘There can only be one prime minister, and we have already got one.’ But Alan said TB was very isolated and Iraq was going to be very difficult for him. He said he and John Reid would be there totally. He put down DB as ‘cautiously supportive’. We were hoping to get Margaret B fully on board. But he felt there was quite a lot of dicking around. TB, at the political strategy meeting, was beginning to focus on his conference speech. Douglas and Peter M both made the point that we lacked a narrative for this phase of New Labour. TB wanted to make ‘reform the route to social justice’ a big theme.

Meeting with TB, Jonathan, DM, AC, C and an SIS colleague re chemical and biological weapons, and what Blix would be looking for if the inspectors went in. It showed what was going on was really bad and getting worse, that he was determined to keep WMD for reasons of regional power. They were strategically vital and he was going to keep them come what may. C said we could use some of the material through assertion.

They were confident this stuff was real, not being run against us. SIS believed the regime would collapse and there would be lots of defections etc. Very interesting meeting. TB saw Charles Kennedy and then IDS who immediately went out and said we were publishing
the dossier before the debate. IDS was basically just diddling about with it. GWB speech going OK. David Davies came in and asked if I wanted to be chief executive of the Football League. He thought they would definitely go for it and I would enjoy it.

Meeting with Julian Miller on the dossier to go through the new structure. I was worried that it was going to have to rely too much on assertion. We also had a flurry with an overnight telegram re Scarlett’s US trip, because he’d been told the US were going to publish their own dossier using US material and we worried it would undercut ours. I raised it on the conference call. There were also persistent reports of problems re Cheney and Rumsfeld pushing for much more robust, less UN-related lines. GWB speech had gone down well and seemed to shift opinion around the place but they were arguing for such a tough UNSCR that it would not be acceptable to anyone.

Geoff Hoon called me last night before
Question Time
and said it was going to be tough, not least, as he first intimated and later confirmed, the US were on the point of asking us to upgrade [RAF] Fylingdales [radar base] for National Missile Defense. Otherwise we were working out how to ‘park’ Iraq pre Parliament recall. I was worried that the dossier was going to be too assertive and that even though the agencies presented it as their work, it would be seen as us trying to spin them a line. GB did an
FT
interview saying he supported TB on Iraq. I called JP in Thailand and said it would be good to get him out there in similar vein. He agreed I could brief out his support whenever I wanted. I briefed Phil Webster [
Times
] who got it on to page 1, and we got a bit of broadcast play too.

Burnley vs Stoke. Good win, 2–1 after going one down. TB called after his visit to Peter M’s Progress [New Labour policy pressure group] event. Philip said TB was on great form. Lots of Iraq in the Sunday papers, but a bit of a lull. We killed the story in the
Sunday Telegraph
re TB demanding from each Cabinet member what their view was on Iraq.

Up at Mum and Dad’s, eight-mile run, lunch, then back with Calum. Göran Persson [Swedish Social Democratic Party] won the Swedish election. TB had given him Clinton’s advice about looking hungry to the end, even if you already know they want you to win.

Chat with Scarlett re dossier. He was still worried the US were going to do their own version first. It came up on the conference call again, and I had to pin down Dan Bartlett afterwards to try to get it back out. We were really needing to get some focus back on the domestic agenda but it was going to be hard. At his Monday meeting, TB was going on about parking Iraq, and then getting proper focus on Home Office and asylum. This was real groundhog day, him just railing and railing at their inability to grip these issues properly. Yet again, he said he wished we could get out of hunting. Today was the tenth anniversary of the ERM.
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We were blessed with the current Tory lot being so useless, but he really felt that on some of the toughest issues, departments just weren’t delivering. They lacked cutting policy edge.

I was in bed after midnight and Dan Bartlett called. Kofi had announced a letter from Iraq saying they’d let the inspectors back in. Dan wanted us to share a sceptical line, making clear the issue was disarmament. That was fine. We put out a fairly tough line. Needless to say our media was on the case straight away saying how that clever Saddam had done us in. I commissioned the CIC to do a paper on his past dicking about. TB wanted to be on the very tough end, saying we needed a tough new UNSCR and that had to be about maximum inspections, etc.

Meeting about Iraq’s ‘offer’ of inspections, as on conference call later. I agreed with Jack he’d do a doorstep on it. I bumped into RC who said ‘great development and we should claim it as TB’s success’. Jack said to me he felt Robin was on an exit strategy and he was going to cause us real problems. I got the new dossier draft and did detailed comments on that. TB also read it and made some comments. Nuclear was the most difficult part. Scarlett and I chatted away re that. Then a meeting with Jack and [Sir Jeremy] Greenstock [UK ambassador to the UN] to go over tactics on the UN negotiations. Greenstock was very good on the detail. TB felt the US hawks would be trying to say to GWB we should never have gone the UN route and now it becomes a mush and we had to be really hard over on them. Debate meeting with Hilary Armstrong, who said there were massive expectations re the dossier. On hunting, she
said it simply wasn’t possible to get out of it. TB said he would rather be humiliated for doing a massive U-turn than stay in a position he believed to be wrong.

Iraqi move being seen as blow to us. The overnight briefing on TB’s [poverty] speech and the commitment to ‘redistribute power, wealth and opportunity’ was seen e.g. in the
Mail
splash as a hint at more tax rises and a sop to Old Labour. TB called at 7am. ‘What on earth is this?’ I said we just had to stick to the same message that we had agreed yesterday, that we were back on the domestic agenda, doing the things we have to do and being open about it. He was not overly pleased. The Treasury were in a real flap about it. TB’s speech went OK,
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then he did some clips on Iraq which were seen as keeping up the pressure, then did five minutes for BBC crime day. I was still working on the dossier. I got Jo Nadin [Number 10 special adviser] to read it with a fresh eye. She felt it was very convincing, apart from nuclear. I made a few more suggested changes to John Scarlett and went through the nuclear section with Julian Miller, which was OK. JS was keen to keep in the very downbeat assessment. Got TB foreword signed off, then to meetings re dossier production. Charles Clarke came to see me to say he was worried there had been friction between us at recent meetings. I said no, but we had a basic disagreement re ways to attack the Tories. I felt also he had been too focused on so-called attacks on him. He said he didn’t see politics as his sole job. His job was to get the politics done by others. On the dossier, the Tories were making clear they felt we should have something on the link to terrorism.

TB was down at Chequers hoping to get going on the conference speech. The A-level exam row was in danger of getting out of control.
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Estelle Morris decided on an independent inquiry. TB spoke to her at length and sensed a bit of panic around the department. After the criminal records [vetting of education employees] issue post Soham
[child murders], a decision allegedly taken by officials, and now this, she was in danger of becoming tainted goods, not reforming fully, not competent. We were also getting bad coverage at the moment on crime, asylum and transport. As I said to the Yanks on the conference call ‘Joy to be back on the foreign agenda.’ Most of my work at the moment was on the dossier. Nuclear timelines just about sorted. Jo Nadin had one or two good thoughts and I put them through. I agreed to drop the conclusion. Some people reasonably convinced, others not. We’d end up convincing those who wanted to be and not those who didn’t.