The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (69 page)

He was making tea while I was leaning against the oven and Cherie came in wearing her nightdress to get herself a drink, not totally hostile, but we didn’t discuss the issue in hand. I went off to my morning meeting and there was too much going on – fire, Iraq human rights, plus Blunkett and Sarkozy meeting on Sangatte. I was trying to get a line agreed with TB that Foster gave no help in getting the mortgage on the flats but TB admitted we couldn’t really say that. There was a real problem re CB’s judgement on Carole, who could do no wrong. TB was also a bit all over the place. I told Tom [Kelly] and Godric to be very careful because I wasn’t confident in the robustness of the case we were putting, and feared the facts on Foster would come back on us at some point.

The FBU did a four-hour meeting at the end of which they said ACAS [Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service] had asked to intervene. The press took it as the first sign of crumbling so we pushed hard on the line that our position was as before. TB saw Monks and [Brendan] Barber with JP, said he felt they [TUC] had behaved really badly on this, that if they kept pushing out all this stuff about the link with the unions broken, it would be self-fulfilling. Fiona spoke to Carole and said she was back to thinking Foster was victim not villain. Ian Monk was still on the case advising her.

TB/GB thing was messy, one or two reports suggesting GB would get chopped. TB felt GB had overreached again and was now trying to pull back. He felt he was moving to a different mode, and the problem was he did have real reach in the party and was doing it on policy issues of substance. I was amazed by the fact the press weren’t going bigger on it. TB said I had to leave it to him to sort with GB. But he did accept that there was a reality problem. He said GB had raised me again, and my diary, and had asked TB to discipline me. TB had said to him that if you treat serious people like shit, don’t be surprised if they are not exactly rushing to help. Also, [Ed] Balls was about to make a speech about the history of the euro. That would inflame further and risk things getting out of control. I did a few meetings on fire, top-up fees, sport strategy, then home to collect the boys and off to Burnley vs Man Utd. I did the US conference call on
the way, which was poor. Saw Alex briefly before the match, which we lost 2–0, but it was a terrific night to see the ground [Turf Moor] full and humming.

Student march on top-up fees included Will Straw [son of Jack and President of the Oxford Student Union], and by the end of the day we were in a different position, TB ruling out ‘upfront fees’ during PMQs. Crap day. At the John Reid party meeting, I had a real pop at Spencer Livermore, who was resisting any message focus on ASB, saying schools and hospitals were all that mattered. TB was fairly relaxed after a not very good PMQs but top-up fees was going to be seen as a U-turn and a victory for GB. Pat [McFadden] had lunch with Sue Nye yesterday and said GB’s lot were totally convinced we were doing him in the whole time, me in particular. They felt I was trying to disable him as a possible successor to TB. They denied having any strategy against TB at all.

There was a flurry before I left. The
Mail
called to say they had an exchange of emails between Foster and CB which totally debunked the idea that he was not an adviser. Even though I had half expected this, I was absolutely livid, and Godric was worried he had been put in a position of misleading people. TB and Cherie were at the theatre. Bloody hell. I told the
Mail
I couldn’t find them and we would have to deal with it in the morning. We were being hit again because we didn’t get the full facts out. I dictated a note to TB saying this was likely to be big and bad. He called me at ten to twelve, said it was ridiculous to say Foster was their financial adviser. He was still in denial about it. He said at the weekend he had said that Foster had sent Cherie an email but CB did not even reply, so it was ridiculous – one of his favourite words at the moment – that this was a big story. I said we had given, in his name, the clear impression that Peter Foster had had nothing to do with the whole thing, but these emails would show very clearly otherwise. I said this was a problem born of Cherie going to a different place getting bad advice. I also felt he was far too tolerant of the whole Carole scene. As we were speaking, I got a message that the
Mail
had done three pages, all pretty grim. I told him, and he said he was going to have to get to the bottom of it. He went off and got all the emails from Cherie and was up most of the night going through them and working up a response. I went to bed but was unable to sleep. Why the fuck should I spend so much of my life digging them out of shit of their own making?

Carole had been a disaster waiting to happen, as I had said for years, and it was happening. I called TB who had been working on some kind of statement overnight. We both knew there was no point going over the old ground. This just had to be sorted. I got a cab in and was hugely cheered up by the driver who said the reason the media went at the government was because we were doing a good job on the main things, and the reason they went for me was because they hated people who stood up to them. I got in, up to the flat, where TB was sitting at the table in the window, a welter of emails spread out in front of him, having written a draft statement. There was no small talk, no banter. Cherie came in wearing her pyjamas, could barely look at me and we didn’t speak. TB and I agreed that the problem was going to focus on the fact that we misled the press. They continued to insist that this guy was not their financial adviser, but based on these exchanges, they were deluding themselves if they thought we could persuade people of that. When it suited the media to treat Foster as a conman, they would. When it suited them to take things at face value, they would do that too. This problem arose, like others before, because TB and CB so often wanted to believe the best and ended up doing so. But we were going to get the blame for this.

I said there was a case for turning the draft into a CB statement and she agreed to that. We spent ages going over it. As the day wore on, I could see TB was becoming more and more worried. He and I went up to the little changing room by the bedroom and he said his instinct was to fight it out. I said if we gave nothing on this, we’d be dead. He said it was only because we lived in a world infested with this media scum that we had to get into any of this. Cherie joined us, looking very downcast. I then worked on a Number 10 statement followed by a CB statement which said she would have been more circumspect if she had known and that she regretted causing misunderstanding. TB saw the Danish PM while Jonathan, Sally, Tom and I went to CB’s office in the flat with the latest version. We had to fill in some of the gaps with copper-bottomed facts. I read it out. At the end she looked to Sally and said ‘Alastair hasn’t looked me in the eye since the weekend. He thinks I’m a fraudster.’ No I don’t, I said, anything but, but I do think you can be a bit daft and have some odd friends, but we are where we are. We went through it, and Fiona joined us, Cherie didn’t change much and then she had to leave for court. She was very emotional, bottom lip quivering when she spoke to me, but otherwise OK.

TB came back and was fine with it. He said we had to clear up the
idea we had misled the press. He was worried we were going to end up with the worst of all worlds, which of course we were, but I felt we just had to get the facts out as best we could. We finally got it sorted, TB taking out the reference to the
Mail
’s ‘vicious personal campaign’ and agreed it before Cabinet. I left Cabinet early to put in an extra couple of lines and then spent some time with Tom before he did the eleven o’clock. He went off armed with the best answers we could muster but it was going to be pretty grim. He came back to say it had been particularly torrid, that they didn’t really buy the idea that we didn’t mislead them. The hacks were also moving to the idea that it was me and Fiona who were responsible for the misleading.

TB spoke to CB and she agreed we could make clear she alone was responsible for any misunderstanding. Through the day the story developed into one about Cherie’s judgement re Carole and re them not telling us that Foster had indeed had a lot to do with these transactions. TB called Tom and me round and Tom filled him in very honestly on how hard the briefing had been, and said it was moving to a great row about us and the press, focused on me in particular. TB said he was sorry we had been dropped in it like this. Sally said he really had to sort her out, that he was far too tolerant. She should not be doing the book. She should take proper advice. Carole had to be off the scene. TB was clearly worried about the impact of all this on Cherie, said it was monstrous that she was being done in like this, that she is a far better person than all this suggests. I said he should worry less about Carole and more about his own position. Later he set off for Bristol where he was due to do a Q&A and see Euan. I worked the phones, mainly editors and columnists, all feeling pretty sore about it all, and we were heading for an orgy of stuff about the Number 10 media machine again. This was a massive setback to the new media strategy. Tom did the four o’clock, gave out the CB statement that she alone was responsible for misleading the press, which helped us. Foster did a little doorstep, protesting innocence. He was clearly going to be around for a while. We were going to take a real hit on this, and as I said to Godric, pretty much the whole day taken up with dealing with this bollocks.

The papers were dire for CB, while the
Mail
and the
Telegraph
were really going for me – Liar-in-Chief. The storm was probably at its height and would blow out before too long, but TB was really worried. Cherie had been very frosty with Fiona last night. I explained that Fiona had a lot of sympathy for CB, but there was no point disguising
the fact we felt this was a problem of their own making, and in part the result of Cherie relying far more on Carole than Fiona for advice on things which ultimately could impinge on him. He said I was talking about his wife, whose character was being assassinated. He said they were trying to do to her what they had done to Diana. I said it was nowhere near as bad as that yet, but why give them ammunition? It doesn’t mean you have to totally change your lives, but you just have to be more careful about who is around. It was not a warm conversation. These character issues, where the political and the personal collided, were always difficult, and it must at times have felt like they both had me and Fiona on their backs the whole time, trying to cut out what they would regard as any fun or escape out of their lives. I said we were trying to help navigate through shitty waters. He said I know, but we are talking about my wife here.

I asked how Euan was. Fine, he said, but he won’t be fine when he sees what this is doing to his mother. He accepted she had not been totally open with us, and also that we should have been able to go through everything as soon as this issue emerged, but it was clear he still felt they were more victim than villain. I was feeling crap all day because Grace and I had a rare flare-up in the morning, the kids as ever picking up on the tensions from elsewhere. TB called from Bristol and said he was worried we had no line out to Carole. He wondered if Hilary [Coffman, special adviser] shouldn’t speak to her, but Hilary felt Carole would just see her as my agent.

TB called again from the train and said of course there was one person – GB – who would be loving all this. I had a few ministers on saying they would happily go out and defend Cherie – Hilary A, Robin C for example – but in the end we settled on Paul Stinchcombe [Labour MP] who was a genuine friend and who did well in making the case for some perspective in all this, and saying her faults were excessive loyalty and protection of her children. TB called again to say he had now spoken to Carole, and he sounded a lot better. He was talking about her like a doctor talking about a patient – she was stable at the moment, but she would need attention. Foster and Monk were still with her, so the dangers were still there. He felt she knew Foster had to go. He said you have to trust me on Carole. I honestly believe she would never sell her story, she is a good person, just naive in many ways.

Today’s broadcast story was to a large extent about me, which was a pain, and a total joke in the way I was being collared on this. Meanwhile, there were all sorts of ridiculous rumours swirling round the Sundays, the most outlandish of which was that Cherie, Anji and
Carole used to take showers together. It was beyond belief the way some of the Sundays operated, literally just made it up. TB said we had to get to a position where we were saying, and the public was believing, that there were two very different agendas, a press agenda and then the issues that really mattered to people. But we were not there yet. And my next worry in all this was [CB’s] clothes and discounts.

Went for a run, but couldn’t get going. The media were kind of on hold waiting for the Sundays. The whole day was a series of conference calls as the various sets of questions came in, mainly from the
Mail on Sunday
and the
News of the World
, a few from the
Sunday Times
and the
Observer
. I was buggered if I was going to be tarnished any more with this nonsense. People knew that I had always been warning about this woman. TB said that we had to be professional and focused. But I feared there was a lack of professionalism and focus coming from his desire to believe the best not just of Cherie but also of Carole. He said that Cherie was the subject of a vicious character assassination. I said I thought a lot of this was self-inflicted. He said that was really unfair, Cherie didn’t deserve this. I said I had been warning about Carole for years. He said that’s not true, that I had stopped a few years back. I said that was because it became pointless, the more I tried the more difficult Cherie became, to the point where I was worried neither of us were wholly rational about it.