The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (74 page)

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Mrs Blair said young Palestinians felt they had ‘no hope but to blow themselves up’.

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Labour had attacked former Tory Leader William Hague for tacking to the right under pressure.

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The IRA issued an unprecedented apology to the families of those ‘non-combatants’ it killed during the thirty-year campaign of violence in Northern Ireland.

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Prescott was paying rent of £220 a month under a protected tenancy for a flat subsidised by the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers’ Union.

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Two ten-year-olds, Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, had gone missing in Soham, Cambridgeshire. After a search lasting two weeks, their bodies were found and school caretaker Ian Huntley was arrested and subsequently convicted of murder.

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The 1987 broadcast, popularly known as ‘Kinnock: The Movie’, mixed footage of Kinnock’s speeches with shots of the Kinnocks walking on a coastal path in Llandudno, Wales. As part of Labour’s highly professional, but ultimately unsuccessful election campaign, the broadcast strengthened and broadened Kinnock’s leadership profile.

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‘Kyoto is right and it should be ratified by all of us . . . the facts remain, the consequences of inaction on these issues are not unknown, they are calculable. Poverty and environmental degradation, if unchecked, spell catastrophe for our world, that is clear.’

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The Goldfish Bowl: Married to the Prime Minister 1955–1997
would be published in 2004.

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Blair also undertook to publish a dossier on Iraq’s WMD development, saying ‘Originally I had the intention that we wouldn’t get round to publishing the dossier until we had actually taken the key decisions, but I think it is probably a better idea to bring that forward . . . a lot of the work has already been done. There needs to be some more work and some more checking done, but I think probably the best thing to do is publish that within the next few weeks.’

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Asked if Britain was prepared to ‘send troops . . . to pay the blood price’, Blair replied ‘Yes. What is important though is that at moments of crisis they [the USA] . . . need to know, are you prepared to commit, are you prepared to be there when the shooting starts?’ He added ‘We are not at the stage of decision on Iraq, and there are all sorts of different ways in which we might decide to deal with this Iraqi problem in the end.’

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After telling union leaders that his door was open to any of them, Blair told TUC delegates ‘Partnership doesn’t make headlines. But the vast majority of trade union leaders and members know that it does far more good than a lot of self-indulgent rhetoric from a few that belongs in the history books. Indulgence or influence. It’s a very simple choice.’

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Black Wednesday, when the then Conservative government withdrew the collapsing pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism at a cost of £3.3 billion.

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Speaking at an East London school, Blair said ‘Our goal is a Britain in which nobody is left behind, in which people can go as far as they have the talent to go . . . in which we continue to redistribute power, wealth and opportunity to the many not the few, to combat poverty and social exclusion, to deliver public services people can trust and take down the barriers that hold people back.’

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A new two-level exam system, filtering out less able students at the halfway stage, led to accusations that exam boards had fixed grades to avoid much higher pass rates.

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Blair told MPs ‘As the dossier sets out, we estimate on the basis of the UN’s work that [in 1997] there were: up to 360 tonnes of bulk chemical warfare agents, including one and a half tonnes of VX nerve agent; up to 3,000 tonnes of precursor chemicals; growth media sufficient to produce 26,000 litres of anthrax spores; and over 30,000 special munitions for delivery of chemical and biological agents. All of this was missing or unaccounted for.’ Blair concluded the statement saying ‘Look at Kosovo and Afghanistan. We proceeded with care, with full debate in this House and when we took military action, did so as a last resort. We shall act in the same way now. But I hope we can do so, secure in the knowledge that should Saddam continue to defy the will of the international community, this House, as it has in our history so many times before, will not shrink from doing what is necessary and right.’

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The former US president was to attend part of Labour’s conference in Blackpool.

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After paying tribute to ‘the brilliance and vision’ of Gordon Brown, Blair told Labour conference delegates ‘We are at a crossroads: party, government, country . . . I believe that we are at our best when at our boldest. So far we made a good start but frankly we have not been bold enough.’

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Lord Archer, former Conservative deputy chairman and London mayoral candidate, was serving a four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Despite being imprisoned, he was continuing to attract a lot of media coverage.

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Blunkett proposed denying support to asylum seekers unless they claimed asylum at a port or airport and declared how they entered the UK. He also proposed that failed claimants should be less likely to be granted exceptional leave to remain.

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Bush laid out in detail, for the first time, his case for disarming Iraq, saying ‘If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today – and we do – does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?’

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Putin remarked that the dossier ‘could be seen as a propagandistic step’ to influence public opinion.

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Three bombs detonated in the tourist district of Kuta killed 202 people from twenty-one countries, including eighty-eight Australians and twenty-six Britons. Various members of Jemaah Islamiyah, a violent Islamist group, were later convicted and three sentenced to death.

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Belfast-born Best, a world-renowned winger who succumbed to alcoholism, would die in 2005 without receiving an honour. He has been honoured by a saying in Northern Ireland, ‘Maradona good; Pelé better; George Best.’

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Of 11,445,638 eligible voters, it was reported that every one of them voted for Saddam Hussein, the sole candidate.

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In the Belfast speech, Blair asked Northern Ireland politicians ‘Do we have the courage as politicians to do what the people want us to do? Do we trust each other enough to make the acts of completion happen? I can only tell you as British prime minister that I have that trust in all the parties I have worked with. We must implement the [Good Friday] Agreement in full, because it is the choice of the people; the people here, the people in the South and the people of the United Kingdom as a whole.’

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Armed Chechens claiming allegiance to Islamist separatism had taken 850 hostages in a Moscow theatre and demanded the withdrawal of Russian forces from Chechnya.

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Russian special forces pumped an unknown chemical agent into the theatre and raided it, killing thirty-nine of the attackers and upwards of 130 hostages.

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Wright said ‘Could I ask the prime minister to tell us exactly how rude he was to Monsieur Chirac? Did he perhaps remind him that if the French president was not in the Élysée he would almost certainly be in jail?’ Blair responded ‘No, I didn’t say that.’

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Burrell had been accused of stealing more than 300 items belonging to Diana, Prince Charles and Prince William. Late intervention by the Queen, who recalled a 1998 conversation with Burrell, raised questions as to whether the trial should have gone ahead in the first place.

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Then French president Charles de Gaulle vetoed the British application to join the European Economic Community in 1963 because he thought the UK, under the premiership of Harold Macmillan, lacked the necessary political will to be part of a strong Europe.

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Blunkett took responsibility for the error. The statement as released said: ‘Maybe they [al-Qaeda] will try to develop a so-called dirty bomb, or some kind of poison gas; maybe they will try to use boats or trains rather than planes.’ The revised statement, which Blunkett said had been amended to avoid creating panic, said: ‘If al-Qaeda could mount an attack upon key economic targets, or upon our transport infrastructure, they would.’

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During the Paul Burrell trial it had been revealed that Diana had secretly kept tape-recorded conversations in a locked box. These reportedly included details of an alleged rape in 1989 of a male member of Prince Charles’ staff.

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The Prince of Wales had announced an internal inquiry to be headed by his private secretary. Sir Michael Peat had responded to criticism of the limited scope of the inquiry by saying it would be conducted ‘without fear or favour’.

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Three men had been arrested in London on terror charges and the
Sunday Times
had speculated that they had planned to release cyanide gas on the London Underground.

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Rather than elderly Green Goddess auxiliary fire engines, in the event of industrial action by firefighters, a reserve of modern red fire engines should be available to military crews.

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A vehicle drove into the Israeli-owned Paradise Hotel and exploded in the lobby, killing thirteen, and two surface-to-air missiles were fired at but missed an Israeli charter aircraft. A previously unknown group, the Army of Palestine, claimed responsibility.

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Blair referred to the fire dispute at the fund-raiser, which had been boycotted by up to seventy trade unionists, saying ‘It’s better to do the right thing even if it is the unpopular thing, than to do the wrong thing and have the country pay the consequences of it.’

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Foster had assisted CB when she bought two flats in Bristol, where Euan Blair was at university.

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Cherie Blair said ‘My immediate instinct when faced with the questions from the
Mail on Sunday
ten days ago was to protect my family’s privacy, and particularly my son in his first term at university, living away from home . . . I am sorry if I have embarrassed anyone, but the people who know me well know that I would never want to harm anyone, least of all Tony or the children or the Labour government.’

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It was resolved in Copenhagen that if political criteria were met two years later, negotiations for Turkey to join the European Union could begin ‘without delay’.

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The final Bain Inquiry report recommended an eleven per cent pay rise over two years, compared to the FBU’s demand for a forty per cent immediate increase. It also proposed replacing an automatic wage mechanism, dictating the level of pay, with a new formula which would simply inform the bargaining process.

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Miliband had taken a year-long sabbatical to teach at Harvard University.

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A 12,000-page weapons inventory given to the United Nations by Iraq maintained it had no nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programmes.

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In the message, Blair said ‘With the world economy, Iraq, terrorism, the Middle East, Africa, the environment, Europe, the euro, this is a big and difficult agenda . . . the world economy will intimately be affected by world events on peace and security, for good or ill.’ The
Daily Telegraph
described Blair’s words as ‘unusually grim and distinctly unfestive’.

Very quiet on the work front. The New Year’s message got big coverage, but there was no doubt I had allowed my own somewhat gloomy view of events to colour things, so the coverage was pretty much on the ‘we’re all doomed’ lines. As Mike White said when he called me to discuss it, ‘Don’t jump.’ Fiona and I were both pretty down about the thought of going back. Partly it was the weather, partly the thought that actually the tone of the message was pretty much where things were, and also the fact that TB, whenever he phoned, went on and on about what a marvellous time they were having, and how energising it all was for him. I said there was a time when I felt natural warmth to his irrepressible enthusiasm and zest for life. But it can sound unbelievably irritating and selfish when he’s basking in sunshine and we are swimming through floods.

He was mulling over the various pressing problems and they were pretty much the same as a year ago, if a bit more advanced and a bit more difficult in some cases – US–UK, terrorism, MEPP, Northern Ireland, public services, Europe and the euro. We had to get through it as best we could, but within that list there were a lot of complicated and interacting problems. I felt out of sorts personally, not motivated by much other than the kids and the marathon training. I had stopped doing the weekly strategy notes, and in trying to analyse why, I feared it was largely because he and I were in slightly different strategic positions. I felt we needed to be more on reconnection with party and public whereas he was still pressing on all the controversial buttons, often with right-wing positions flying from them.

Had a nice enough day for Fiona’s birthday, got her plenty of decent presents, out for dinner and also had an OK session at the track. All quiet on the work front.

David Davies came round to sound me out about the FA chief executive job. He wanted to mark my card about the politics, and to go over why he thought it was a good idea for me. It was clearly a highly political organisation and very difficult to reform, but he felt even the non-modernisers would be impressed and flattered if I was interested and he reckoned I had a good chance of getting it. He felt the job would be as big as I wanted it to be, and that above all the organisation needed greater focus and clarity about priorities. It sounded tough but Fiona was very keen and at the end of a few hours mulling it over, I was quite keen as well. I liked David who was pretty straightforward, and a very good ally. I then headed north with Calum and on the way fixed David Hill [former Labour Party chief spokesman], Howell James [former political secretary to John Major] and Richard Tait for the GICS review team. Dad was a bit worse but still hanging in there. I went to the local gym, did seven miles on the treadmill.