The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (72 page)

TB had a private chat with Assad and agreed lines on suicide bombers/Israel. The lunch was OK if a bit dull and the communications minister [Bashir al-Munajid] gave us a long lecture about their different IT systems. Assad was very odd-looking, tall but with quite a weak chin. TB was pushing on Iraq, making clear that if the US
went for it, they wouldn’t stop until the regime fell, also saying it was clear to us that Iraq was concealing and not being open. He said that David Manning was in constant touch with Condi Rice, ‘who is Bush’s American adviser’. ‘As opposed to his French adviser . . .’ I whispered to Jonathan. Assad said they believed any US attack in that region would strengthen the country under attack. He said a lot of people were against Saddam in Iraq, but all of them were against the USA. Jack said that it was ‘five to midnight’ and both of them were pretty clear about how serious Bush was about it. TB said Bush understood better than they thought about the impact on the Arab and Muslim world. Leo came in, which had the usual effect of warming things up and Assad was clearly up for a rather more friendly press conference than the last one [October 31, 2001]. It was actually a pretty good event. TB saw them off and then left for the House.

Foster had done his statement, said he was going to write an autobiography, had a bit of a go at me. We decided just to ignore it. Later TB called me in for a one-on-one chat. We gave each other the eye and he asked me what the problem was. I said I felt there was a reality problem. We had to change ways out of this. He said he didn’t believe the damage was long term, that it would blow over and we would get back to a proper agenda soon. I said I know, but I sometimes worried that we didn’t do enough to counter the out-of-touch problems. He was clearly angry I had been dumping on Carole and by implication CB in the press. ‘Your great strength is that you feel things deeply and you think things clearly. You are the Roy Keane of the operation, but like him you sometimes stamp people on the head without meaning to. That’s how Carole and her mum have felt and they are not like us, they are not used to it. I know that you and Fiona basically just want to protect the show. But you can come over as being unbelievably hard, Cherie needs support. She will listen to you and Fiona more than anyone, but only if she feels you are being supportive.’ I said I never felt that he did not appreciate what I did for him and I sometimes felt Cherie should be far more appreciative of what Fiona does for her, that it’s hard to feel warm towards someone you think is taking you for granted. As over the weekend, it was pretty frank stuff. He said he knew that if Carole stayed with Foster, they could have nothing to do with her. Also, even if she dumps him, he has to be more careful. ‘I have been reckless and foolish and paid a price. So has Cherie, who had a terrible shock. But she is a good person not a bad person. And you have to take us as we are, strengths as well as weaknesses.’

I said what had been frustrating was that Fiona and I felt so clearly
we were giving the right advice in these lifestyle issues and yet we were really just seen as irritants banging them round the head. Now we felt vindicated, but no satisfaction in that in any way, because we also felt let down. And there was a lot of that feeling round the building which he had to put right. He said we all had to learn from it, and never forget that the only people who want us divided are our opponents. The Tories, because they fear our professionalism. The press, and also GB who would love it if you and I were at odds, so we have to hang together.

Foster was down the agenda and we were getting back to proper domestic issues, e.g. pensions, GPs, transport plan update. Good press on Bain,
⁷⁸
very good press for the Assad visit. So things felt better though we were all still bruised. We had the office strategy meeting up in the flat. TB said we had to have a strategy for rebuilding trust and connection. I said another foreign holiday is not the best start. Even though they were paying, it would not be billed like that. TB wanted the focus for the next stage on antisocial behaviour and public services, but the reality was Iraq and terrorism plus Northern Ireland meant we faced a tricky New Year. I felt we may as well play into that reality and put together a plan for TB on Iraq communications. It was the usual end-of-year feeling. What do we do for the New Year message, what have we got planned when we get back, who’s around over the holiday, everyone feeling tired.

The MoD were doing a background briefing on Iraq military build-up which was going to move things up a gear. The American conference call was pretty hopeless, not very strategic if the big players were on it and not at all strategic if they weren’t. TB was looking pretty grim. During the meeting, Peter M slipped me a note to say I had to be more supportive, that I had an ability to make him feel very low if I wasn’t. Yet when Fiona called Cherie for a chat, she was curt and dismissive, even rude. TB had another bad meeting with GB who was arguing for a two-year delay on university [top-up] fees. NMD was running quite big, the US making the formal offer for the upgrading of [RAF] Fylingdales [radar base], and the PLP were a bit jumpy. JP came in for a chat, said that TB was too prone to letting
guilt run his whole life, that he was maybe too tolerant of some of the things CB did because of it, same as he was too tolerant with GB some of the time. He also feared TB and CB were both a bit too much into the celebrity bollocks and GB would use that against them.

The Cherie stuff was almost totally gone now, but Hilary [Coffman] was still pursuing the questions of the clothes. She called CB to discuss it, and CB said, to Hilary’s utter amazement, ‘Why don’t you pop up, Carole’s here, and you can talk to her direct.’ This after TB assured us she would not be going back in. Of course Cherie was getting lots of letters of support and this made her feel that we had overreacted. She was still not speaking to me, nor I to her, every effort having been rebuffed, and I was making no secret of the fact I found the whole thing absurd. It seemed TB didn’t know that she [Caplin] was coming in.

The MoD’s briefing on Iraq had gone big and [Sir David] Omand was doing a terrorism briefing, with all manner of dire warnings, which would be leading the bulletins by the end of the day. At the political strategy meeting, David Triesman [Labour Party general secretary] told me that Piers Morgan had said to him ‘The country is being run by two couples and I’m at war with both of them.’ Spencer Livermore made the ludicrous statement that tax rises would be popular. Philip put his finger on the problem when he said we had two political strategies running against each other, opportunity versus security, and we should be wedding them together. But GB really saw his job almost as frustrating our political strategy. We had a whole succession of non-arguments. It was perfectly possible to link jobs and education to a strong society founded on values and respect, but we went round in circles on it.

I left for Grace’s school concert then back home to work on the New Year message and the Iraq note to TB. The reports of chaos out of the various briefings were soon coming in. Geoff H having a statement on Iraq forced out of him, Jack S conflicting with TB on Iraq dossier response, plus the Omand briefing. As Mike White [
Guardian
] said, if that was all meant to calm things down, it didn’t exactly work.

I started the day in a rage because Omand’s briefing was unplanned big news and [John] Williams’ [FCO] briefings re Blix were a hardening of our position. Both had almost caught out TB in the House yesterday, so I did a major bollocking at the 8.30 meeting, said there was no
point trying to co-ordinate if we had this kind of thing. Then to see TB re the
Guardian
interview where we wanted to get up the New Labour message again. He was OK, but not on sparkling form, as Polly Toynbee [journalist] noted. Interesting on Rowan Williams [Archbishop of Canterbury], who TB felt was intelligent Old Labour.

I chatted to Milburn and Charles Clarke who were both sympathetic but also said it was a real problem if I went offside on anything. TB mentioned to me later that three or four ministers had raised me with him, not in a critical way, just a bit worried. He asked ‘Have you reassessed recent events?’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I think you slipped the reservation for a while. You went for Cherie and Carole. I know the reasons, you wanted to protect your people, but you should have discussed it with me. If this kind of thing ever happens again, we just have to have it out.’ I said a lot of people, and Fiona and I are among them, felt we make pretty big sacrifices and get taken for granted. There is a lot of give and not much take. I didn’t mind so much with him, because I knew the pressures he was under and basically supported what he was trying to do. But he always knew that I was not prepared to defend what I thought was indefensible. True, he said, but in the end we could discuss these things. But if he decided something, he had to be able to make those decisions from a position of leadership and we couldn’t have a situation where his senior press person was briefing against his wife. He thought it all led to the impression that we had lost the plot. I held my own, saying the people around him weren’t machines and he and CB had to take into account what they thought. They had asked an awful lot in the last few days, of Tom, Godric, Hilary. He said they were fine. I said not so. They might not say to you what they say to me. They are not happy about it. He disagreed, but I knew. I said I really felt they had to change their ways.

He said I was such a big personality and so forceful that if I was pissed off, everyone felt it and it dragged the whole show down. It’s why he made the Roy Keane analogy. He said you lead by example which is great, but if you’re pissed off, everyone around you gets pissed off. You wear your heart on your sleeve and give out very powerful vibes, and I’m just saying that in the last few days, that’s not been a good thing. Now we have to put it together. I think both of us felt better afterwards but I really felt it was ridiculous that Cherie was still seeing Carole, and not protecting herself sufficiently on the freebie front. Milburn was sympathetic, said hold firm. Charles said you have to let Cherie be herself, whatever that is.

Cabinet was low-key, fire, Iraq, Clare as ever pointing up the need for more discussion. Jack on Blix. He was going to the UNSC today
and we and the Americans were both going to be saying the process was holed. Bad political strategy meeting with John Reid, Douglas etc. at which TB said he felt we lacked real strategy at the moment and needed new structures. I said I felt he was looking for new structures as a way of avoiding dealing with the personal/political problem, namely that the TB/GB schism was growing. Things had got worse without Ed Miliband there.
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Not only were we not on the same pitch most of the time now, but if we ever tried to get on the same pitch, one side would pretend that in fact we were apart. Douglas felt polling was the way to engage GB and then get some kind of agreed plan out of that. John R and Douglas both called me afterwards to say how grim they thought things were. John was beginning to realise what a difficult job it was. TB called on his way north and I briefed him re Blix who had been pretty negative on the Iraqi declaration.
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Jack called again to agree a line and we agreed he should do a doorstep outside Number 10. He did fine. There was no doubt the mood music was clearly building up to war.

Guardian
interview OK. Got TB up on a clip on Iraq when he was in Hartlepool. He was worried about Blix’s comments that we had not been helping enough with the intelligence. Cleared my desk, shifted loads of paper, then left for the
What the Papers Say
awards at the Café Royal. I was sitting next to Jane Moore [
Sun
columnist], who said didn’t I find it irritating that they kept panning the cameras on us? Some of the awards were ridiculous and I said to [Alan] Rusbridger [
Guardian
editor] ‘Your profession is in trouble.’ The 3am Girls [
Mirror
gossip writers] – columnists of the year. Picture of the year was a fake. The Paul Burrell reporter [Steve Dennis,
Mirror
] got reporter of the year. Dacre won ‘scoop of the year’ for ‘Cheriegate’ and he very sarcastically thanked me for all my attacks on the
Mail
. I told him I had only just started. I did manage to get a few marathon cheques, including from Annie Robinson [broadcaster, former
Mirror
colleague]. TB’s interview for Forces Radio was now leading the bulletins as a warning of war.

Eleven-mile run, averaging eight minutes ten. Drove down to Gillingham vs Burnley, lost 4–2. The big US build-up re Iraq was going
on. The Egyptian press printed details of TB/CB’s holiday [in Sharm el Sheikh] and the security committee decided to meet to reconsider. I felt the best outcome would be if they didn’t go.

The
Observer
splashed on TB saying no to the Olympic bid, which immediately became a broadcast story. We put out a line making clear no decision had been taken. We got Dick Caborn [sports minister] on to Radio 5. In saying he had barely discussed it with TB he was trying to say no decision taken, but it was taken as a signal of lack of interest and commitment. Sarah Hunter [policy adviser] had done a good note on it which made clear it was potentially winnable, though we lacked Brits in the right places on a lot of the international sporting bodies.

TB called and signed off the New Year message. I went into the office, cleared my desk and brought home a stack of paperwork. Patrick Diamond [policy adviser] had done a good paper on New Labour renewal. Stephen Wall had done a big note on Europe, which suggested to me we had far more problems than previously imagined. I felt in general that we were not in great shape. Iraq was building up pretty big now. The Iraqis shot down a US drone. There was no way they were not going to go to war now.