The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (71 page)

I called a few ministers to line them up to do supportive media on the back of a statement from Cherie. I think we all felt that though there was a risk in this, it was probably the best way to blow the storm out. Writing the statement, Fiona was sitting at my computer, while I dictated the draft, Tom chipping in, then we were joined by Peter M, Charlie F and Sally and we did a bit of writing by committee. The first draft was too long, but we had cut it by the time Cherie came down. She was a lot calmer than yesterday, though she and I were still finding it hard to engage. I gave her the draft and she had a few minor changes which she explained to Peter M and I put them in. We suggested she did a read-through to ensure she was happy with it and also so she would be aware of the points where emotional intensity might take over. Peter M said she should pick out people in the audience, look in their eyes and speak to them direct. She looked at me and said ‘I certainly don’t want to look at him.’

We all said good luck and off they went. She looked very pale, said she was worried about crying and went upstairs to compose herself. It was a minuscule drive to Millbank, but Fiona called to say they got stuck in traffic. She got through the scrum, she read the statement pretty well, looked very emotional, pretty close to tears.
⁷⁶
After the event everyone felt a lot better. TB had been with the Queen when she did it and they hadn’t watched it. He caught it on the news later and said he was really proud of the way she stood up to it. He really felt there was an opportunity to go for the
Mail
now, and to a lesser extent the
Mirror
, because there would be a market in the rest of the media to do so. He was finally angry about the state of the media and realised there was no way papers like the
Mail
were going to be anything other than hostile. TB did for once thank us for what we had done for him. As Peter M said, he had a real fright and we had to make sure he did not go back, and that Cherie didn’t either. The news ran fine, and the centre of gravity of the story had moved, so that it now just looked like journalists with an agenda rather than
genuine important questions that needed to be answered. Everyone agreed today had just about paid off. The old team had got together and done it again, but it had been a very tough few days and the press would be reluctant to let go of it entirely.

The papers were much better, the
Mirror
the only really vicious one. Margaret Beckett went for the press in general and was wonderfully dismissive of [BBC
Today
programme presenter John] Humphrys. TB much happier. We had to decide whether to do a doorstep or wait for PMQs. We agreed he should do a doorstep, support CB, attack ‘parts of the press’ and say there were more important things to focus on. We were all feeling a bit battered but in stronger shape and there was definitely an appetite among some of the media to go for the
Mail
.

Then a meeting with TB, GH, CDS and C. C and David Manning were just back from the US and they reported the mood there was far tougher. They felt Saddam was just messing about and that Blix was hopeless and too soft. There was a hilarious headline in the
Süddeutsche Zeitung
: ‘Rumsfeld promises patience as Blair threatens war’. We went over the various military options. It would be possible to do something fairly quickly but TB didn’t believe GWB wanted ‘an ugly start’. I presented my idea of a strategy document to clear objectives which they agreed, but later Jack and GH put out some signs against it. Geoff was very much on the Rumsfeld end of the market at the moment. CDS was a bit more engaged. David felt the US were in a very different position.

The news was still leading on CB but it had a very day-after feel to it. Fiona was in touch with Carole who claimed she was easing Foster out. TB’s doorstep was running big. Then a meeting with Peter M and Peter H. Peter M felt TB would learn from this, that he had had a genuine scare. Fiona and I headed up for dinner with TB and CB and the Yellands [
Sun
editor David and wife Tania]. We had a nice enough time, mainly chit-chat, but I’d have preferred to have been at home with the kids. It was pretty clear there was no real change at the
Sun
re the euro. But Yelland was still broadly supportive, clearly liked them both personally. TB was out hard on Iraq/WMD. The other big story today was Yemen and Korea exporting WMD materials. Later I discussed with TB whether I needed to go to Denmark [EU summit]. Part of me wanted to, but a larger part didn’t. A lot did depend on whether TB and CB really were going to learn from all this. The PLP had been terrific in the
main. The
Mail
and the
Mirror
had been vile but some of the others pretty reasonable.

If we thought it was all going away, we were wrong. Radio 4 was leading on a
Scotsman
story that CB had been more involved than admitted before in the Foster case, with lots of detail based on a fax that he had. It was running wild again. Tom [Kelly] called and we agreed we needed a line very quickly. Tom spoke to CB, FM spoke to Carole. Both said it was Foster who faxed pages to CB’s flat at Carole’s request, but with the current microscope on it, it was going to be difficult to explain as innocent. Really grim again. I ran in and did a quick conference call, including with TB. There was so much in the story that was wrong that we ought to be able to explain it away quite quickly. But the problem was because of recent events, the media had an excuse constantly to say our word could not be trusted. Very difficult to deal with. On the call, TB said that CB, who was due to leave for Warsaw at 9, was adamant she never saw these papers or Foster. Godric and I went up to see TB. Godric was confident these issues could be explained, but it was like there was an equivalence, a moral equivalence, between us and Foster. TB was getting exasperated. He looked tired and grey and could not work out where it would end. Fiona was talking to Carole, saying she needed to put out a statement, which she did, saying that she had initiated this, Cherie did nothing wrong and she was sorry. I was worried it was all getting to TB again. He was desperate to get closure on it.

In the margins of Cabinet I was trying to persuade Jack and Geoff of the need for a campaign objectives document as an important piece of strategy if and when things happened. Cabinet was mainly fire, and Turkey [US support for Turkey to join the EU]. TB thanked colleagues for their support. Clare for once shipped in with something supportive and sympathetic, said the whole thing must have been horrible for him and Cherie. The Turkey discussion was interesting and important and I wrote a script for GS to try to get it up at the 11. But he had yet another pretty torrid briefing and he and Tom were pretty pissed off about the whole thing. I did a fresh statement for him for the four o’clock, to try and shut it down, but it was probably too aggressive, and after a conference call with TB and Peter M, I toned it down. TB felt Cabinet had been supportive but jittery. He was looking wan.

TB popped in a couple of times, pleased when Foster’s solicitor backed up our story. It was now beginning to feed into broader questions. Philip
did groups later and said the link was lack of trust in institutions that were supposed to work. It hit authority to govern. Peter M sent over a note saying we needed these three things: 1. us clearly focused on real issues; 2. the sense of a media vendetta; 3. Carole had to dump Foster otherwise we were linked in through her to a conman.

Charlie [Falconer] came over and he and I went through it again from square one trying to work out a way through. The
Scotsman
story was pretty comprehensively knocked down but they were all still going with it and the
Sun
tape wasn’t as exciting as it first seemed. TB did a brief doorstep in Copenhagen, and he looked pretty rough. I went to Rupert Murdoch’s party, nice enough do, usual News International lot plus the likes of [Sir] Alan Sugar [businessman], [Paul] Dacre, Victor Blank. Dacre was at one point talking to IDS and I walked by and said to Iain ‘How nice to see you talking to your leader.’ Philip called and said that despite the
Sun
, the bulletins had been dire and it had definitely broken through to the public. What a fucking nightmare.

The
Sun
tapes story helped on one level in that it put more of the focus on Foster. The BBC led on Foster saying that Carole covered up for CB. The whole thing was absolutely ghastly. Andrew Neil [editor-in-chief, the
Scotsman
] was on the
Today
programme at 8.10 blathering away rubbish about Watergate. The frenzy was still raging, but both Tom in Denmark and Godric here were saying very little. I was exhausted and fed up with the whole thing. The
Mirror
was saying I was increasingly demented. I agreed with Tom and Godric we should not defend the
Sun
over its story but simply emphasise this was a story about a conman. I finished the Syria article we were doing to set up President [Bashar al-] Assad’s visit. I went home early and was at the school when it came out that Foster was planning to make a statement on Monday.

I said to TB that we had to work out the worst possible stories that Foster could come out with. So long as there was that link to him through Carole, there was damage being done because we were being asked to defend the indefensible. Turkey and accession was the big issue for the meeting in Copenhagen and it was resolved OK for us, though the Turks weren’t terribly happy.
⁷⁷

For the sixteenth day running, most of my time was taken up with Foster and Caplin. Peter M called, very Peterish, pretending nothing much was going on, asked how I was. Spitting tacks, I said. ‘Do you like anyone?’ he asked. I said Rory, Calum and Grace, and Fiona when she’s not disagreeing with me. The rest can fuck off. TB called as I was out on a run, and said that we just had to shut it down, not answer any more questions, and tough it out, I said something that made both of us snap. I was at the top of Golders Hill, had just got my breath back and said to him the real problem was that whether you like it or not, you are linked to a conman. He said I resent that. ‘You are. You’re married to a woman who is determined to protect and keep a woman who is in love with a conman so you are linked to a conman.’ He shouted at me down the line ‘I am not linked to a conman.’ You are, and until Cherie dumps Carole or Carole dumps Foster, or preferably both, that’s the way it is. And every day it’s like that it hits your authority more, both with the rest of the government and with the public.

TB was having none of it. ‘We have a fundamental disagreement. You think Cherie has done something monstrous and I don’t. You think Carole is monstrous, and I don’t.’ I said there was a difference between monstrous and wrong. ‘Well, I disagree. She is not a bad person and I’m not going to dump on people just because the press tell me to.’ I said it was time to do the right thing despite the press, not the wrong thing because of stubbornness about the press. ‘Well, if you’re going to take that attitude, we have a problem.’ I agreed, and said I wasn’t going to defend Carole or anything to do with her. ‘Fine, don’t then. Just say nothing about it.’ Fine, I said, but if this goes on much longer I’m off, out of here, goodbye. There is only so much of this shit I’m prepared to deal with. ‘Well that is hardly the best attitude at a time like this.’ He then went into a spiel that our opponents were always trying to divide us, we had to stick together, that this would blow over soon and we would be back on a proper agenda again. It was a very difficult conversation, among the bloodiest we had had and devoid of the humour that usually laced difficult conversations between us. I was basically saying I felt their judgement on Carole was terrible.

TB called later and we had another half-hour on the phone, this time a lot more friendly. I explained that one of the building workers we had in recently had said ‘Mr and Mrs B were floating off to a different world.’ He said ‘Look, I know how difficult this is for everyone, but in the end we have to hold together and get through
it. We’ve actually done nothing wrong other than live in a country with a totally insane media. Without the media we have this would not be the madness it is, and we cannot let them drive us apart.’ I said I agreed, but he knew I needed to let off steam now and then, and also we really did need to rethink his modus operandi. PG spoke to TB, told him the public was bemused and not really giving us the benefit of the doubt. Sunday paper write-throughs were OK-ish, but the whole impression left was of a total mess, not at all pretty.

Neither of us spoke to TB or CB today. We had both had enough of dealing with it, and they had probably had enough of hearing our complaints about lifestyle and out-of-touchness. We went out for dinner with Philip and Gail. Philip was very down about things while I was just plain angry. He felt there was a problem of trust anyway and this made it worse. Even though the press was vile and ridiculous, people felt there was something in it all.

I felt a lot better running in. Foster fairly low-key. The
Mail
ran a story that TB called Carole’s mum from Copenhagen. There were pictures in several of the papers of Foster driving Carole, her filming the media. Bits and pieces about me, generally negative of course, and lots about CB’s judgement. The feeling was the heat was going out of it though. Assad’s visit and Iraq were the main focus of the day. We were in an OK position on the Blix dossier but it was going to get more difficult. Good piece from Phil Stephens [
FT
] on the press destroying the political discourse.

The mood at TB’s office meeting was a bit muted. Sally told him that people felt let down. We were going over his weekend note on public services and Iraq. You had to hand it to him, that even on weekends as bad as the one he must have had, he still found the time to set out the forward plan and the arguments on the public services. I felt on Iraq we ought to have a slightly different line to the US, not become an extension of them. TB wanted me to work more on Iraq, possibly go to the US. He spoke to Bush re the UN process. The Americans clearly felt Blix was a problem, his dossier was poor.