The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (62 page)

It was education questions at 11.30. We had to decide if Charles went to the House for questions. David M and I put together a script but once TB got into Cabinet, he wasn’t keen for us to announce the names. But with the lobby waiting, and all but Peter Hain now announced, what was the point? In Cabinet, GB, rarely, spoke several times, first on the need to stand up against the French attack on the [British EU] rebate. He also chipped in on Lords reform and on Iraq. With Charles due to leave any moment for questions, I slipped a note to TB saying he needed to announce the first three changes, otherwise they would all hear it first on the media. GB went virtually white. While others were nodding approval, he looked around with something close to hatred. He puffed his cheeks out, his eyes narrowed and he just scanned the room. He knew he had been hit. He went to see TB afterwards and as we waited outside in the private office, GB’s raised voice, and TB’s attempts to calm him down, could be heard.

As GB left, thunderstruck, he said nothing to any of us, just stormed out. I asked TB what he had been saying. ‘He was mad. The whole thing was a conspiracy against him. Every single one of them is a disastrous appointment. All designed to damage him.’ He said he had also railed against me [AC] and my diary and said he wanted to raise it in Cabinet! He had railed at Cherie, said that she hated him and wanted to do him down. He told TB that his office was full of Tories. Later, I was talking to Tessa in the foyer when GB came by, still storming. ‘That man is fucking insane,’ she said. I told her she had been in the frame for education, which cheered her up. Neil called, thrilled at the appointments. All very Kinnockite. He was also supporting my push for Kim Howells [culture minister] to get Europe. TB got to Brussels and was immediately upstaged by Chirac and Schroeder doing a deal on [EU] enlargement/CAP [Common
Agricultural Policy] and saying that the UK rebate would have to be looked at. This was payback time for Schroeder going to see TB rather than Chirac after winning. The French were gunning for us again.

Ran in in the pouring rain. Really like running in the rain. Good press re reshuffle. John Reid had been excellent on
Newsnight
last night and I called to tell him so. I called Andrew Turnbull re whether we could use John for briefings and he was clear we could provided we didn’t make them party political. He felt the reshuffle was strong too, that we had good people in the toughest departments. JR said he would take his time to build a proper relationship with JP, but he saw little point trying to build bridges with GB at the moment as he seemed to be in a total rage the whole time. Did the 11 and was being pushed on why Robin said Estelle was ‘hounded out’ of the job. TB spoke to Putin to offer our support after Chechen gunmen took the audience in a Russian theatre hostage.
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He called from the [Brussels] summit. Said that Schroeder had been taken in by the usual Gallic swagger. He said after the bilateral between the French and German, Chirac had called him in, totally patronised him, tried to say the whole thing was sorted because France and Germany had decided and that was that. ‘I’m not having this,’ he said.

In the discussions through today there was a lot of angst about taking radical CAP reform, as per Berlin, off the agenda. Chirac waded in and said that was exactly what was happening. Jack gave TB the passage from the Berlin outcome that committed them to further CAP reform and TB made clear that they had to get on with it. Chirac said this was a personal attack that in all honour and all morality should not happen. TB said ‘I’ve been very polite’ and insisted. Others then backed him. Chirac later walked up to him and said that was an all-out attack, he would not tolerate it and maybe we should call off the Anglo-French summit. TB said fine, no problem, but there will be CAP reform and we are not going back on the rebate. He said he had stayed really calm, as he always tried to when people are losing their temper, but what it means is that they will really come at us on the rebate. They had also had some pretty fiery exchanges on Iraq, TB telling him the US were going to do it so it depended if he wanted to be part of the equation or not.

Schroeder’s interpreter had said to TB afterwards, ‘Wow, what was all that about?’ as Chirac stormed off, and TB said he didn’t care about him losing it. The French had to accept that they should treat the UK as an equal in Europe. ‘He can present me as an American poodle if he wants, but we’re not putting up with his shit any more. We do it on our terms now.’ Sounded like it had been fun. I agreed with Godric we should brief a couple of the Sundays that Chirac’s real anger had been Schroeder coming to the UK first after his election, that this was all about that, and he had to get the message that the UK should be treated as an equal. On the Europe job, TB was moving towards Denis MacShane [junior FCO minister]. Had a bit of a comic moment on the fire front when a Green Goddess [auxiliary fire engine] crashed and had to be rescued by the fire brigade.

TB was a bit pissed off at the way it came out in the media that somehow the French had ‘won’. All the more reason to get out what had actually happened, and the fact that this was Chirac’s revenge for Schroeder coming here after the election. TB strongly felt the real significance of the last couple of days was that the Franco-German gambit had not worked. The Russian [theatre] siege ended, all the Brits were safe, and TB spoke to Vlad. I spoke to JP and suggested we had radio silence on the fire dispute. [Andy] Gilchrist was beginning to make mistakes. JP agreed, felt he was beginning to behave like an old-fashioned general secretary. JP offered four per cent back on the table with talks on modernisation. He called me around 5 to say it seemed to have worked and the FBU executive had agreed to call off the first two strikes. He had done a good job on this. TB called, still angry about Chirac, said that once they started speaking again, it would be to have strong words, that we were not going to be ‘treated like a dog’ in the way he had tried on Friday. ‘I love Jacques, but he can be fucking arrogant and needs to be taught a lesson.’ The Sundays had loads of write-throughs on Estelle, and maybe I should have talked to them more, because they were all just the usual clichéd stuff about the fact that women couldn’t survive. Education were also briefing stupidly, that it was actually all about top-up fees and that I had asked her to stay.

Conference call re the post-summit fallout. For some reason, our media just did not want to acknowledge that TB had actually stopped the French gambit from working. The weather was dire. Mum had been
staying and her train north was cancelled so I drove her up, briefing a bit on the way. Charles Clarke called re the Sundays. We agreed he should use his first speech on Wednesday to set the full strategic picture.

TB working on the statement, including re Russia, though the Russians were causing a bit of concern by refusing to say what gas was used in the attack to free the Moscow theatre hostages.
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The death toll was now a lot higher than first thought, but TB was instinctively sympathetic to Putin. It was one of those damned if you do, damned if you don’t situations where whatever the outcome some would find grounds to criticise. At TB’s office meeting, we went over the merits and demerits of the various contenders for Europe minister, and ended up going for Denis MacShane. TB did not want a lasting stand-off with Chirac, and though he was glad we’d stood up to him and seen the strategy through, he did not want to see Chirac go through with cancelling the Anglo-French summit.

Then a meeting re the FBU and how we get them off the sixteen per cent [phased pay increase] figure. At some point this was going to become a big communications job. For the time being, JP was handling fine behind the scenes but he said too at some point it would take off in the wrong direction, and we would have to be ready. I had a stack of meetings, including re top-up fees, which David Miliband was warning me had the potential to be political disasterville. A good Queen’s Speech meeting, which I felt was beginning to hang together better, then another pretty dire meeting on the euro. I felt a bit for Douglas [Alexander] because people were looking at him almost as the GB presence but he knew, as we knew, that he could not really speak for him, and we all knew that this thing was undoable without TB and GB playing on the same pitch in the same way.

Interesting meeting with the French ambassador [Gérard Errera] who wanted to explain to me why Chirac was like he was, and why we should not let these bust-ups affect us too deeply. He said Chirac felt he always had to stand up for the French national interest. I said why should anyone imagine TB does not always have to stand up for the UK national interest? Yes, he said, but sometimes we seem to think they are the same. I wasn’t quite sure what he was on about. ‘And then there is Iraq,’ he said. Yes there is, and TB again thinks he
is standing up for what is right, and for the UK national interest. Unconvinced grimace. Then there was ESDP [European Security and Defence Policy], he said, where Chirac felt we were not European enough . . . then there was Kosovo . . . then there was Macedonia. I said at least it was best to be open about the differences, and try to sort them, but I made sure he knew TB really did not think a cancelled summit was a good idea.

Then to a meeting with Cathy Gilman of Leukaemia Research, who was very jolly and seemed to know what she was on about, and was really keen on the idea of the marathon, with Amanda Delew [campaign director, the Giving Campaign] who agreed to help out with ideas on the fund-raising side. Fiona joined us for a while and when Amanda suggested a whole load of ‘meet AC’ sponsorship ideas, Fiona said she couldn’t quite see why anyone would want to pay to meet me. I pointed out that she does not always share the high view of me that others seem to at times. But I was convinced we could raise at least half a million. Then to the opening of the new party offices [16–18 Old Queen Street] across the park where TB made a very funny little speech, watched by an unsmiling let alone laughing GB, followed by an even funnier little speech by Richard Wilson [actor and Labour supporter].

Then to dinner at the German ambassador’s [Thomas Matussek] residence, with Peter M and PG the other guests. The ambassador’s wife [Ulla] took pictures of the three of us and I think it was the first time we had ever been photographed together, having always tried to avoid it when the media were asking. I liked the ambassador, though I suspect he was a bit less of an Anglophile than the last guy [Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz], and he had certainly done his research on us lot. Peter was on very good form, very funny, taking the mick out of the ambassador and me in a way that nobody could find offensive, talking as though it was a matter of fact that I had gone out of my way to destroy him. He was also pretty caustic re Schroeder and the way the German left had responded to modernisation here.

We also had some pretty heavy exchanges on Iraq. We knew the Germans had pretty much the same intelligence as we did, but were pursuing a very different line. We felt that Schroeder’s stance during the campaign had been so crass that he would have a real job getting back in with the US at all. The ambassador took it all in good spirits, but also took a serious message from it. Towards the end, Peter said what should he say in the speech he was due to make in Berlin? The ambassador said you should say Germany should show more leadership, carry out far greater reforms and do a lot more to co-operate
with Russia. He was pro TB but also believed he was at his zenith and the only way now was down. He thought the Tories were hopeless. As we left, PG said to me we had to find Peter M a job. He was a wasting talent. He had so much more to offer than most members of the Cabinet and we had to find him something proper to do. It was true that someone like the ambassadors would listen more to Peter than to most ministers, and he did cut a sad figure at times, because he knew he had a certain authority, but no express power to deliver anything.

The French row was in danger of escalating out of control. TB called as I was running in. On the one hand, he wanted to be on good terms but equally Chirac had to know his recent behaviour was intolerable. The line from the French was now that this had all come out the way it did because of our briefing. TB wanted the message fed back that we had to be treated as equals, and would not accept anything less, but also that he wanted to calm things. I spoke to Peter Hain before he did
Today
, and agreed the basic line that we fight our corner as aggressively as any other country. David Manning, Jeremy and I had all spoken to the ambassador in the last twenty-four hours, so he knew this was serious. He also knew we didn’t want to inflame further. But he knew that to us there had been a cumulative effect building over time.

I spoke to Catherine Colonna [Chirac’s spokeswoman] at 11.10. I always liked dealing with Catherine. She was very French in her style and elegance but there was something Anglo-Saxon about her directness and I was always able to have frank conversations with her. Jesus, I said, we left them for ten minutes on their own and they started a riot! She said she felt Chirac had lacked ‘
politesse
’ with TB and now, probably because he knew it, he was ‘
têtu
’ [stubborn]. We agreed to try to calm. But then ninety minutes later up it popped on AFP [Agence France-Presse], that the Anglo-French summit was cancelled. David Manning and [Sir] Stephen Wall [EU adviser] were both up for a big counter-attack, but TB was more of the view he go up to do media and try to settle it down. I was not sure about that.

It rather dominated the Tuesday strategy meeting, but we did manage a decent discussion re the euro, and convinced TB that there were some very live questions that had to be addressed. But we couldn’t get going until we had some sense of direction from him and GB, but all GB was doing was saying he would do nothing to
compromise the tests. TB said again that he believed we could win a referendum, but Peter M, PG and I all felt we needed to know the shape of a plan sooner not later, e.g. could we have a positive assessment pre election and a referendum after? Did we envisage the assessment and referendum close together? How did we put together a campaign? What are the rules? It was all a bit high-wire and yet I did not feel we knew where GB really was, other than probably not in the same place as TB.