The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (83 page)

I then spoke to JP, JR and Ian Austin to tell them about an hour before the statement went out. It missed the first editions, apart from the
News of the World
, presumably tipped off by Austin, who headlined it as ‘Brown blocks Derry rise’. I raised it on the conference call later, said to JP we didn’t want this to be anything other than Derry’s decision, that nobody should spin it to damage him. JP called GB and said it must be his camp who had tipped off the
News of the World
. GB of course denied it and even claimed he had told us to deny the story.

The CIC dossier was still rumbling on. Alison even made Rory Bremner [TV satire show]. Following JP’s call last night, GB denied he had pressured Derry, telling [David] Frost that it was all Derry’s idea. But of course the story that ran was GB denying putting on the pressure, which increased the sense that he probably had. It was not a great interview for either of them. GB a bit predictable. TB called to complain that he had so much work to do over the weekend. He cancelled his morning meeting tomorrow, and said he wanted to talk about how we get more politics back into the office. Blix was in Baghdad and ElBaradei came out with more positive comments re co-operation. The other big story was the Franco-German ‘peace plan’ and there was a lot of build-up to the march next week.

TB called me up with David Manning and Jonathan as soon as he arrived. He looked very pissed off, for once grumbling that Jonathan
and I were both in sweaty sports gear. He was harassed and fed up. The Franco-German plan, which presumably Chirac knew all about when we met at Le Touquet, had wrong-footed us. It looked reasonable and the Russians seemed keen to support it. David M said the French denied saying there should be a UN force, the Germans had denied it, but still it ran. We also had a problem in NATO with France, Germany and Belgium blocking Patriot missile defences for Turkey. TB thought it unbelievable that these countries were putting the transatlantic relationship at risk. It had definitely been a few steps forward and a few steps back, Colin Powell and TB on
Newsnight
taking us forward, a combination of the dossier and international division taking us back. TB said we needed a proposal. I said the problem was people felt we were driven by a timetable dictated by a desire for war rather than by a desire to disarm Iraq.

TB was looking more worried and harassed than I had seen him for a while. I looked at his diary and really felt for him for once. Today alone he had meetings on Iraq, on asylum, where Blunkett was giving him grief, feeling he was weakened by TB driving the policy, a big meeting on terrorism, a difficult meeting with the military on Northern Ireland pre Wednesday’s plan, Ruud Lubbers [UN high commissioner for refugees] for a meeting re refugees, the trade unions re two-tier workforce, and a lot more besides. I went to his meeting on the Olympic bid. He was still keen but we agreed that a combination of Cabinet opposition, the usage of political capital, uncertainty about costs, GB likely to be against made it very difficult. But he remained keen.

At a party meeting with Hilary A, JR etc. Hilary said it was really grim in the PLP on Iraq. TB did his ‘Oh well’ look but beneath it I could tell he was concerned. Then to a meeting in the Cabinet Room with a huge group of ministers, spooks and police. TB, JP, GB, DB, AD, Lewis Moonie [parliamentary undersecretary for defence], C, Eliza, Scarlett, GCHQ, [David] Veness [assistant commissioner for specialist operations] from the Met. There was a mildly embarrassing moment at the start when JP walked in and said to me ‘Did you see Gordon’s first answer on
Frost
? What a laugh.’ I then nodded to the other side of the table where GB was sitting, staring down at his notes, pretending not to hear, JP not having seen him. There had already been a Cobra meeting on the threat of a surface-to-air missile attack on Heathrow on Wednesday at the end of Eid.
¹⁷
The choice was
a difficult one. Carry on with the programme of arrests that was underway; do that, plus step up security at Heathrow, visibly and overtly with a public announcement, or three, close the airport. As far as TB was concerned, the last of these was unacceptable, though we had to be clear about all the things we had said about how we would respond to specific threats in intelligence.

DB was very grumpy, clearly had very little confidence in the ability of the police and security forces to handle the public communications on it, constantly warning how their briefings went wrong. His basic pitch was to say as little as possible. AD talked about the need to make sure our political flank wasn’t exposed. He was also worried that once we announced it, we didn’t have the airlines and insurers all going crazy. Eliza was very clear that the threat was serious and the decision that had to be made now was whether TB/MoD authorised the operation for the airport tomorrow. We then agreed that Veness rather than ministers should announce it. Afterwards, Veness and I went to my office to agree words and lines to take and then planned the Q&A. Then a mountain of comments came through, including AD not wanting to say in the Q&A that Heathrow was safe, DB, ludicrously, not wanting to mention Heathrow at all.

On Iraq, Putin and Chirac put out a joint position. TB’s ‘bridge between Europe and America’ was looking pretty shaky and the media was working itself up into going crazy about TB being isolated. People were even beginning to say that his premiership was now on the line. In the conference call with the Americans, I briefed them on the dossier problems and tried to get a proper discussion of all the different divisions, but all we got was the usual crap about who was doing what today.

The fallout from the CIC dossier was continuing. C and John Scarlett both said they were getting a bit of grief from some of their clients who were less signed up to the openness strategy than they were. Michael Jay [FCO permanent secretary] came to see me to say he felt we had to tighten up, get the CIC people more closely bound in to the FCO on policy, go easier on ‘product-led material’. TB could barely be in a more exposed place now. PLP tricky. Massive march being planned. France and Germany right out there now, open in their hostility, Russia difficult. We were in danger of looking like we were the bad guys prepared to disobey international law. It was one of those days when I really felt for TB. Any one of the issues he was dealing with – Ireland, security, terrorism, asylum, some of the diplomatic stuff – was enough to lose you sleep, and he had a stack of
them. He looked absolutely shagged out and was clearly feeling a bit isolated.

The Heathrow situation low-key at first but became huge once they had pictures of troops and tanks at the airport. The briefing on it was OK but got a bit too detailed. Godric was stitched up at the four o’clock, his words on the specific threat twisted. I had another Iraq communications group meeting, and a bit of an inquest into the CIC dossier. John Scarlett and Nigel Inkster [SIS] said there was some dismay among colleagues but John was clear they still understood the need for the [intelligence] agencies to help in public communications. But it was a blow, not least because it was being pinned at my door and would be used to change the general modus operandi. At least TB was being robust about it. He was about to speak to Bush. He had looked at the Mirage report in
Der Spiegel
¹⁸
and decided that maybe we took the wrong line, that maybe we should say it was interesting because it accepted that conventional inspections would not work and was effectively arguing for taking the country over without saying so.

We grasped our way to a plan that was basically wait for Blix, then surface the elements of a second resolution that included the ultimatum, then Saddam to go, and if he didn’t we were going to go for it. He spoke to Bush at 12, who was very solicitous re TB’s political position, said he was determined to help get a second UNSCR. He was livid with the French and Germans, less so with the Russians. But he was just as worried as TB was. TB could not quite believe that the French and Germans were so flagrantly damaging their relationship with the US. He said the problem was everyone accepted Saddam was bad, evil, and a threat, but they didn’t necessarily believe that gave you a reason to go to war. We had to be the people putting forward one last push for peace. TB also wanted to get European leaders to our cause in advance of Monday’s council meeting. But we were looking shaky. I had a good meeting with Jack who was on form at the moment. Ditto Jeremy Greenstock [UK ambassador to the UN], who filled us in on where everyone was re a second resolution. He said the sense of America vs France and Germany was really big. David Omand, with whom I had a perfectly civilised discussion on
the CIC document, sent round a letter re new rules on the handling of intelligence which was fine, if an obvious attempt to retrench.

At the PMQs meeting, we reckoned it would be a mix of dossier and asylum. Iraq was grim at the moment, we just weren’t making headway. TB said again that the problem was people couldn’t see the case for war based on a threat to us. We went over to the House and then heard that JR had said we were facing a threat on the scale of 9/11. In fact he hadn’t said that, but it was how it was taken, and we had to wrestle with it all day. Then both Blunkett and [Sir John] Stevens [Metropolitan Police commissioner] said we had considered shutting Heathrow, which added to a feeling of raggedness. The build-up to the march was growing and clearly it was going to be huge. TB was still saying he could win people round. With TB gone, I tried to clear the mountain of paperwork that had built up. I didn’t feel like I was motoring at the moment. I had done my first marathon column for
The Times
, which they liked.

I ran in with Lauren Taylor [ITN] and a camera crew on a cycle rickshaw. 6.3 miles. Later did another 9.2, running back from seeing the podiatrist at Roehampton, who said I had totally flat feet and needed orthotics. The terrorism stuff was being covered ludicrously, cranking up the idea of ‘mixed messages’ and also still pumping the idea that we had basically sent tanks to Heathrow to scare people re Iraq. I got in for the end of TB’s breakfast with John Howard. UNMOVIC had found a missile in Iraq that breached the allowed range. Howard was impressive if dull. They did a very good joint doorstep on Iraq and terrorism, though the media were getting a bit frenzied again.

I took Howard to say hello to [Rupert] Murdoch, Les Hinton [News International chairman] and James Murdoch who were in for a meeting with TB. After he left, we kicked a few things round on the international scene before TB looked very sharply at Les, and said ‘What about all this other stuff then?’ and we got into a pretty spiky exchange in which TB said it’s not much good supporting us on the international agenda if the domestic coverage is so hostile. We argued our corner on health and education and I felt TB did it too much from the perspective that this was an agenda they should back, e.g. a liberal market in public services rather than these were the issues we really believed in and they should support us because it was right for their readers. TB went off for a meeting with Clare, trying
to get her back in line, though there was no doubt where it was going to end.

Then a meeting with Jack, GH, Clare, CDS on the humanitarian aftermath planning. Jack was giving me a very hard time re the dossier which had indeed done us some harm. I was prepared to take responsibility for it, but truth be told it was as much a failure of internal quality control. But his point was that they saw themselves as answerable to me, and therefore tended to work outside FCO systems. Cabinet was pretty heavy, DB on terror, TB and JS taking them through where we were on Iraq pre Blix. Then RC reporting on a meeting of the PES [Party of European Socialists] . He really played up the extent of the opposition and I sensed he was putting down a marker that he might actually bugger off. He was clearly very offside and had become more so. Clare was chuntering away the whole time. Then Northern Ireland, which was also tricky. Then TB called in AD and DB to say we had to learn lessons from the handling of the Heathrow threat. Gently, but they got the message.

Life seemed to be a never-ending round of meetings on really difficult issues. Next Jack on tactics re a second UNSCR, and whether to table it before the European Council. I was impressed by Jack at the moment. He was really on form, on top of the detail, but not in that obsessive way that he sometimes gets. TB, like me, had sensed that Robin had moved to a different position, a different tone, and was gearing up to go. TB went off for a visit in Yorkshire, then called about whether to do media on the security situation after IDS went on the rampage. Then a Venezuelan was caught with a hand grenade at Gatwick. TB called again from Yorkshire while I was at the podiatrist. He felt we had to get up the humanitarian theme and at least give the marchers something to think about, and something to put them on the defensive. They may not like to think of it in these terms, but they might like to reflect on the penury, the poverty and the cruelty, and that as far as Saddam was concerned, these big explosions of public protest were seen as helping to keep him in power.

At the morning meeting we agreed we needed to get up more of the humanitarian side of things ahead of the march. Catherine Rimmer [Number 10 Research and Information Unit] had a good line, that even if there were one million people on the march, it was still less than the number of people whose deaths he had caused. But it was going to get very tough. Left for City airport [for Edinburgh and the Labour Party spring conference in Glasgow], the plane slightly
delayed. Matthew Freud [communications executive, husband of Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth] called to say that Murdoch had left yesterday hugely impressed and telling everyone TB was the man, not GB. I did the conference call on landing in Edinburgh, then up to see TB who was working on the speech.