The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (59 page)

Ran a half marathon around the Heath. Papers moving on to the Tories. Iraq fairly low-key, focus on trying to get the UNSCR. I took Grace and her friends to the cinema but was called out by TB, really obsessing at the moment about GB and what he was up to. He feared it was coming to a head.

Philip called, said it was obvious that Jonathan did a lot for TB, particularly foreign and Northern Ireland, but that I basically held it together and I could not possibly leave. Also, he said, what else would I do? He felt TB was moving to a different phase, developing in an interesting way and I should be part of that history. Silly briefings on foundation hospitals still going on over the weekend by Treasury and Health. As a policy problem, it was one easily sortable behind closed doors but they were at it.

The Tories were in pretty dire straits. They had had a dreadful press over the weekend, were now trying to get up the idea of twenty-five policies being announced in the week, but IDS was looking vulnerable. They briefed overnight that he was going to go for the Thatcher mantle on public services, which totally played into our hands, allowed us to attack on lurch to the right and cuts. Quite a big news day with
Northern Ireland still very difficult, Blunkett up with some tough new asylum measures.
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At the morning meeting, I told everyone we say absolutely nothing on foundation hospitals other than that the principles were agreed and the details being worked out.

TB saw JP to get him on board. JP was pretty much onside at the moment. TB told him that he felt GB not only wants him out of the job, but was also trying to make sure we don’t succeed while he’s doing it. It makes him even madder when people say that TB’s doing well. He was genuinely concerned GB would bring the whole show down. At TB’s morning meeting, he said we needed a strategy to build up the better union leaders. ‘I can’t believe I find myself saying this, but [John] Edmonds [GMB union general secretary] is about the best we’ve got.’ Peter H was saying that for once we had the chance to drive real momentum forward from the conference and the key was the Queen’s Speech. Philip had done an excellent note pointing out that on four fronts we faced the toughest battles – Iraq, EMU, public services and economy – none were easy but TB had strengthened his position on all of them. TB wanted a big, bold Queen’s Speech but that was not what was going through the system at the moment. We just didn’t have the big theme and it was all too piecemeal.

I did a staff meeting to explain how we should now be more focused on strategy and less on day-to-day news, and what that meant in practice. TB was still on about seeing [Viscount] Rothermere [chairman of Associated Newspapers] to try to get the
Mail
neutralised a bit. I felt they were a total waste of time and we should go for them harder. On Iraq, we still felt that Bush was looking to TB to move Chirac, but TB was sure he could only be moved by Bush, if at all. I saw Alan Milburn to discuss foundation hospitals. Alan was very down, and I tried to persuade him it wasn’t as bad as it seemed, that all that mattered was the policy that was agreed in the end and he should ignore the rest of it. He felt we underestimated the negative impact GB had on progress. I said we didn’t, but we had to try and make things work. I felt GB had made a mistake in allowing himself to be presented on a par with Alan because it was clear where TB needed the policy to go. I went to a meeting on asylum where DB and Derry had a few rather lively exchanges, Derry accusing Blunkett of taking cheap shots at judges for the sake of a few headlines.

The Treasury couldn’t resist doing a bit of briefing on foundation hospitals. Basically TB supported GB in that he felt Alan was using this to try to get more money for his CSR settlement. But he supported Alan in that he wanted foundation hospitals with the ability to borrow, within overall Treasury controls. TB was happy enough with the policy outcome but of course GB had to insist that he had won.

Bush’s speech [in Cincinnati] of late last night was leading in the news and was a bit more aimed at the international community, so maybe they were listening a bit more.
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I had a meeting with Dickie Stagg and Asif [Ahmad] in the Foreign Office, and then all the CIC staff, to get a bit more direction into their operation. Asif was going to the US tomorrow so we needed him to keep going at the Americans to be more international in their message. I had a conference call with Peter Reid [press attaché] at our embassy in Washington re the same.

TB did a brief doorstep on Ireland after his meeting with the Bulgarian president but wasn’t happy with it. Then [David] Trimble came in for a shouting match. TB was going to have to go over there soon. We had a long-term diary meeting, desperately fighting to get more domestic stuff back in the diary but it wasn’t easy with all the foreign commitments in there already. There was a lot of dithering internally and with the FA over whether we should have cameras in for the World Cup reception. Eventually we agreed to have a pool [media sharing]. They [England players] arrived by coach, most of them with wives and girlfriends, though Beckham was solo because she [Victoria Beckham] was at a birthday party for one of [their son] Brooklyn’s friends. Of all the people who had been into the building in our time here, these were the ones getting the most rubbernecking, particularly him. I spent a lot of the time chatting to Emile Heskey as we had both gone to the same school [City of Leicester], also trying to make Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt feel more at ease than they looked. Nancy [Dell’Olio, partner of Sven-Göran Eriksson] pretty much stole the show from all of them when she arrived in an amazing red outfit that was bound to be all over the front pages and very much seen in the context of sending a message to Ulrika [Jonsson] that she was history. TB did a little speech and then off he went.

I ran in, a bit sluggish. Nancy totally stole the show last night with the plunging neckline on her scarlet trouser suit. David Davies [FA] called to say he was really sorry that that was about all anybody knew from last night. I said it was fine, I thought she was a real character. Lots of people in the office were saying how unimpressive they had found most of the players. TB, JP, GB and Alan M were due to meet to resolve the foundation hospitals policy. Andrew Turnbull had been asked to try to draft a compromise. As of last night, it was far too close to the Treasury view but had been improved overnight. Simon Stevens had drawn up a press release making clear we were going ahead with foundation hospitals in the Queen’s Speech and they would enjoy substantial freedoms, which was OK for Alan. But, with TB’s support, it was going to be ‘on balance sheet’ which was enough for GB to claim victory. We should never have got to this at all. At the start of the meeting, GB indicated how he intended to carry on by saying the previous minutes didn’t accurately reflect the last meeting. Rolling eyes all round. TB was clear he wanted to support GB in not letting Alan use this to reopen negotiations but he did want to be able to press all the reform buttons. Once the meeting finished, we decided to put the press release out straight away and do the briefing speaking for everyone. But because it didn’t suggest GB had ‘won’ he went mad that the press release had gone out. Also Balls was going berserk because he had not been in on the process.

Meanwhile Northern Ireland was going bad. TB saw Mark Durkan [Social Democratic and Labour Party] and later Bertie Ahern [Taoiseach of Ireland] and it was pretty clear that we were going to have to suspend the Executive. Philip called having done some groups on the Tories last night. They were beginning to break through a bit. They were getting somewhere with the idea of modern Thatcherism. Major was basically out of the political script, but the idea of a softened and modernised Thatcher had appeal. Philip and I both felt that TB was being too complacent about the Tories. Both he and Peter M felt the public would not be impressed with anything they had seen, but I sensed the media still trying to give them a lift. The big problem for IDS was an incoherent economic policy – where was the money coming from? – and silence on Europe.

Foundation hospitals worked out as a bit of a score draw but it was perfectly obvious GB was going to keep at it and cause more trouble. I felt though that he had really messed up the handling of it. It hardly
helped with their presentation of him as lord of the domestic manor while TB and JP had to sort it out, with Alan and GB seeming to be equals. TB saw [Gerry] Adams, [Martin] McGuinness and Bairbre [de Brún, Sinn Fein]. I went in at the end of the meeting and GA was giving TB the usual rather patronising history lesson. TB did though believe that Adams and McGuinness were genuinely trying to move towards non-violence and there was little chance of the IRA going back, but they had real issues in dealing with their own people. McGuinness and I had a long chat about football while TB and Adams had a little session in the corner of the room. Adams did a big number in the street.

Then we left for the airport and I listened to IDS’ speech, which I thought was really poor, no real argument and very negative about Britain. I did a quick conference call with the party people to agree lines on it. TB had a brief session with the hacks on the plane to Moscow and they were winding up the line that he accepted Russia had legitimate financial interests in Iraq. Over dinner, he and I had another little argument about how to handle the Tories. He denied being complacent but felt IDS was just useless and that the Tories had not faced up to the change they needed to make. I agreed it was hard to take IDS seriously but felt that some of the strategic moves they were making might have appeal. The Tories were pushing IDS’ line about ‘the determination of a quiet man’ but it was pretty woeful.

TB felt the press conference with Putin tomorrow could be tricky because we were in such different positions and there was little point pretending otherwise. We flew out in a crappy little airbus, then TB, CB, David Manning, Tony Bishop [interpreter], cops and I were flown by helicopter to the hunting lodge [at Zavidovo] forty-five minutes away. Pretty bleak landscape on the way, and the odd ramshackle home in the middle of nowhere. TB and CB were taken straight away to see Putin for dinner. I went for a run around the lake inside the grounds. TB came back a bit more confident that Putin would be in the right position re the UNSCR but there were other problems to come. On the way out to their dacha for dinner, Putin had taken them on a diversion to go and look at wild boar.

TB spent several hours one-on-one with Putin, so David and I were hanging around a lot of the time. They seemed to be getting on fine, though at the press conference, Putin took a bit of a pop at our dossier.
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Earlier we checked what he would say about a UNSCR, namely that he might consider one, but on the dossier there had been no prior discussion, so the perfectly avoidable problem became a story for some of our lot. I was kicking myself, thinking maybe I wasn’t as alert as I used to be, not to have spotted that one coming. TB was less bothered about it than he was about actually sorting the UNSCR situation. Putin took me aside at the end and said he hoped they realised he had just announced a change of position in saying he would consider going for the UNSCR.

But the press were happy for the wrong reasons and we were slightly on the back foot. The one thing we lacked, during the brief time we had the hacks in the compound, was a picture so [press secretary Alexey] Gromov and I agreed TB and Putin would do a little walk through the trees by the lake. We went over to meet TB and VP who had just been having breakfast with their wives. TB was wearing what I can only call an Afghan hippie coat. I said there was no way he could wear that. Mohni Bahra [protection officer] had a fairly ordinary-looking sheepskin and I suggested they swap. This is ridiculous, Cherie said. Just ignore him. I said my job was to stop him looking ridiculous and try to get the press focused on real issues and not his bloody clothes. I said if he walked out in that, they would fall about and we’d have endless blather about his coat rather than the substance. Putin was looking on a bit bemused and TB, a bit embarrassed, said ‘He doesn’t like my coat very much.’ Putin smiled and nodded in a way that made me think he thought I was right not to. He then tried on Mohni’s coat, which just about fitted and looked fine and unremarkable, at which point Cherie said to me ‘You are a total fascist.’ I said I think that’s a bit over the top but he would look a complete clown going out in that. Mohni meanwhile was trying on TB’s coat and launched into an impersonation of Elvis Presley. Godric, Magi and the cops were all totally on my side, really felt it was over the top but it was all a bit bloody. The walk-by went fine. They had another meeting, then off on a boat trip, stopping at a field for lunch where a marquee had been set up and they served barbecued wild boar.

TB liked him. I got the sense he was still a bit isolated. Putin told him he was pretty much alone in the leadership re pursuing a very pro-Western policy, and he felt he was getting very little in return from the US. TB told him he thought Bush got it but he wasn’t sure about some of the others. As the day wore on, TB seemed to buy more into the Putin charge. He said he would have to talk to Bush about it. Putin said that if there was something the Americans were worried about, they expect the whole world to share their concerns
and drop everything, but if it’s something that the rest of the world are interested in, like the Middle East peace process, they don’t get the urgency. He was clearly pretty pissed off and the rhetoric cranked up through the day. But he was making an impact on TB, who was even saying to us by the end of it we had to get the Americans on a more multilateral track. On Iraq, VP said to TB ‘Do you really think Iraq is more dangerous than this fundamentalism? Course not’. His bottom line was the oil price. The Iraqi debts were one thing, but if the oil price went too low, he was in trouble with his electorate. We had to remember he was putting through big reform and he was not always going to be popular. But he felt the US didn’t sufficiently understand the problems other countries had. I think TB was beginning to feel the same, for example on missile defence.