The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (98 page)

We gathered the parties, including [David] Trimble, [Gerry] Adams, [Martin] McGuinness, [David] Ervine [leader, Progressive Unionist Party] etc., in a rough circle inside the main dining room. Bush did the rounds and was pretty good at it, and did a little general number, saying he was there in the hope he could put some wind in their sails, and that when NI finally moved to lasting peace, it would be seen as a symbol of hope around the world. I was chatting to Powell about the French. He said even he found them impossible to deal with, that he found de Villepin arrogant and condescending. The meeting went fine, and they all seemed to think it had been worth him coming. TB and Bush then walked down the hill to the helicopters. I was following on behind with Condi. We joked about the next venue, maybe Cyprus. I said I thought it had gone pretty well, but said she seemed a lot more wound up than before. They flew off and TB went back in for meetings with Bertie and the parties.

TB was full of himself on the flight home, really felt it had been good and positive, pretty much on all fronts. GWB was definitely moving a bit on the international agenda, and buying into the need for a new approach, but the tensions internally had been very clear. TB felt Schroeder had a chance of getting back in with Bush, but not Chirac. TB was even more firmly of the view now that Chirac’s world view built around rival poles of power was crazy. Chirac had put himself out on a limb and would see France’s power diminish. The question unresolved from today was when to declare victory.

Today was the day when things really started to turn. While we were having a meeting on the humanitarian issues, which I wanted to badge as a return to normal life, the US forces were now motoring big time, and the Iraqis were spilling out on to the streets in greater numbers and with more confidence. The BBC reporters and David Chater [Sky] were beginning to change their tune. The main focus for the media was the toppling of a statue of Saddam, all the more dramatic for the time it took, but the effect ruined in many ways by an American soldier getting up there to put a US flag round his face. They just don’t get it sometimes. I could appreciate the emotion that led him to do something like that, and these guys are soldiers not diplomats, but even so, surely someone nearby would have reckoned on how what plays well in the States goes down like a lead balloon
elsewhere. The PMQs pre-meeting was strangely flat and desultory and they could tell TB’s mind was elsewhere now, moving on to the next set of problems.

War Cabinet. Signs of regime collapse were all around now. It was still not clear where Saddam was but they believed both he and Chemical Ali were alive. Clare was rabbiting on more than ever. I slipped TB a note about the time Saddam shot his health minister at a meeting because he was annoying him and did he want me to get a gun? Yes, he scribbled. We came out of the meeting straight into another GB-inspired mini crisis. Jeremy had discovered late yesterday that GB planned to include in the Budget a review by [Sir] Derek Wanless [banker] on health inequalities, obviously with a view to making big changes in the future. He hadn’t discussed it with TB or with Alan Milburn, who hit the roof when told about it, and demanded it be removed from the Budget. Of course GB being GB, it was too late to unpick fully, the background documents having been printed we assumed, and Wanless having been lined up. We did though get it pulled from the statement and got the Treasury to agree Milburn would be in charge of the review.

TB and I were in many ways so used to it that with everything else that was going on, we didn’t let ourselves get too wound up, and we were trying to make light of it when Alan came in to see TB pre Cabinet. He was totally on the rampage. He said it was just unacceptable to have a Chancellor behave like this, to announce major change in someone else’s department without even discussing it. He could see TB was not going to get too wound up and so added ‘And it weakens you in the eyes of others that you let him get away with it.’ He said the NHS was more monitored and reviewed than any other part of government and if this was to be another great review, he would put out a statement denouncing it. ‘I am just not having it.’ We tried to get him down from the ceiling but he said he intended to raise it in Cabinet.

I had to leave to chair my Iraq morning meeting which went on a bit so I missed the start of Cabinet. GB was in full flow when I got back, going through the Budget. He got an OK if not overwhelming response. TB said we were doing better than most countries, but there had to be a continuing emphasis on the changes we needed to make for the future. DB made a joke about being upset at the rise on wine. GB said sparkling wine was frozen. ‘I don’t like that. I like red,’ said David. Charles asked about ‘the speculation that we would be doing the euro tests today and what is the answer on that?’ ‘The answer is no,’ said TB. Then Alan got in there, made a few political points, e.g.
that as the Tories tried to stake out a low tax position, we had to win on value for money and he would circulate a paper to colleagues about where the money was going in the health service. He then said he wanted to raise a process point, that there was to be a second Wanless report announced in the Budget. He said that at ten to nine he got a call from Paul Boateng [chief secretary to the Treasury] to say there was to be this review, and it was totally unacceptable and it was unnecessary for the Treasury to operate in this way. Of course having been there as chief secretary, he knew that for something like this to be included in the overall package it will have been known about for some time, and he stated several times it just wasn’t necessary to behave like this.

Ian McCartney [newly appointed party chairman], who was at his first Cabinet after the mini reshuffle involving him and John R, came in with his first intervention, which was pretty telling. He said it was important that colleagues (i.e. GB) did not make things even more difficult than they already were for other ministers. He felt there were sufficient reviews of the NHS going on already. He was not clear what the purpose of this one was, or its agenda. And though at times he was coded, he laid down a marker that he thought GB was exploiting the foundation hospitals issue to be divisive in the party. GB totally ignored the point when he was summing up. As the meeting finished and we went through to TB’s room, TB sat down in the chair by the fireplace, shaking his head. ‘I just don’t know what you do with him. On the one hand, there is nobody else there who has the breadth and the reach that allows you to put together a Budget like that. On the other, why is he incapable of working with other people unless they are wholly owned disciples?’

PMQs went fine. The Budget a bit of a monodrone. Peter M came over for a chat re my situation. The TV was on in the background, Saddam’s statue coming down. He felt Fiona in some ways resented the way I was seen as such a big figure, when she was every bit as political, and she felt let down personally by TB and CB. We perhaps had more realistic expectations because when all was said and done he was a politician and a human being with weaknesses as well as strengths. Fiona was very unforgiving of others’ weaknesses, he said. Also she had got herself into a mindset that could only see the downside. He said I was a figure in political history and that only came about because TB gave us that opportunity.

TB was seeing Fiona and seemingly told her he was sad things had reached this point, that she had done a good job, and he knew these were very high-pressure positions. She felt he was fine about us
leaving but not yet. She told him she thought the political side of our operation was weak, that too much fell on me. She said it was fine on one level, but the reality was she didn’t much like him or respect him any more, and she was convinced we had to get out. I felt that considering everything else he had to deal with at the moment, it was a bit much to expect him to be on top of all the internal personnel issues too, even those involving us.

He had a stack of calls post PMQs, including Chirac and Kofi and he was clearly going to be a feature if not the key player in the aftermath. David Blunkett came round for dinner and Fiona was now pretty open about how she felt about things. He said to me when she was out of the room ‘You must not let her push you out. TB has to have you there, and so do the rest of us.’ He was making clear he thought TB had to grip GB. He realised he couldn’t sack him but he could swap him with Jack. GB might see it as a downward step but you cannot be Chancellor forever and Foreign Secretary is the other big job he could do.

Jonathan had stayed out in Northern Ireland trying to get the final pieces in place for a deal but it didn’t work out, so we aborted the plan for TB to fly out. Jonathan called early to say that they couldn’t do it. TB worked on it for a while, tried out various forms of words, but in the end the IRA were not going to deliver. GB got a fairly good press out of the Budget but on Iraq, the media were moving effortlessly from ‘victory’ to lawlessness and humanitarian disaster. Their determination to ensure TB got no credit at all for Saddam’s fall was pretty intense. Jack was chairing meetings on the aftermath issues and said to me later that having Clare there was like having a fifth column, that he felt the whole time she was trying to sabotage.

The mood in the War Cabinet and Cabinet itself was better but still not great considering the progress made. We still had major problems ahead – e.g. where were the WMD? What do we do to repair the divisions in the international community, particularly between the US and the EU? TB had another difficult call with Chirac.

De Villepin told Jack that as far as France was concerned, the US and the UK were ‘the demandeurs’ so they clearly felt it was up to us to make the running in trying to repair things. Schroeder was trying to get back onside. There were signs of Putin doing the same, but they all would delight at the fact that ‘victory’ was messy and not universally seen as such, and that now we had to involve them more. GH said there were plenty of other countries wanting to help
but they needed UN cover for their internal politics. It was blindingly obvious and yet we were still struggling with the US on this.

John Scarlett’s military and intelligence update was overwhelmingly positive. By contrast Clare was exacerbating problems as much as she could, winding up the International Red Cross, or being wound up, and the DFID website was pretty much unadulterated bad news, dreadful about everything. After Cabinet I left with Charles Lindsay [one of TB’s protection officers] for the Tower Hotel. Charles was doing the marathon and at the security review it had been suggested he run with me, whilst the cops on the route would also get an alert when I was in their area. Deep down I did not imagine anything would happen, but you couldn’t be sure in the current mood. I did a photocall at Tower Bridge, then a press conference and interviews. The organisers were a good crowd and seeing the HQ brought home how close it was now.

Then an Iraq update meeting. CDS was very clear that a near-philosophical difference between us and the US was responsible for some of the disorder problems we had. We believed in peacekeeping. They believed in war fighting. We were good at both. They were only really focused on one, so didn’t adapt quickly enough to changed circumstances.
The Times
had done a story re Bush’s sponsorship cheque, and having seen it, TB said ‘I suppose I’d better sponsor you too then.’ He was totally at a loss re GB at the moment. JP had told him it had to be sorted one way or the other, that it could not go on like this much longer. TB agreed in theory but was unsure in practice what that meant he should do. He felt the euro business had become a bit of a nightmare now, and could easily have been avoided if there was genuine trust between them.

A few OK pictures from the marathon photocall. The main news overnight was lots of looting going on in Iraq, the BBC hyping for all it was worth. Gilligan was saying there was more fear there now than there had been before. The main focus both of the pre-meeting and the War Cabinet itself was the disorder, and there were still problems re ORHA. [General Sir] Mike Jackson was saying that if only the US would operate in Baghdad as we were in the south, we would all be better off. But they didn’t, so things were becoming very messy. In reality, the operation had been an enormous military success, but it didn’t seem like that. We were having to dance around perfectly legitimate questions re when ORHA was going to be up and running and what we were supposed to be doing there. I could hardly believe
the marathon was just a couple of days away, that I had all this other stuff to keep me awake, but the one recurring dream I had been having was that I lost my race number on the way to the starting line. TB went off to Sandhurst [Royal Military Academy] where he was speaking at the passing-out parade. Geoff Hoon called re Terry Lloyd. It was pretty clear US forces had killed him. Amid all this, we then had the people from
The Simpsons
in to record TB. The writer [Al Jean] was a really serious type who clearly worried himself a lot about his work. He and I had been batting scripts back and forth and it was fine really, though as TB said, there would be plenty of people willing to slag him off for doing it. But hell, he said, there aren’t many perks to the job worth having, so how can you say no to a bit part on
The Simpsons
?
³⁹

I was determined to be in the best possible shape for the marathon tomorrow so rested up a lot of the day, didn’t go in for the morning meetings, watched Man Utd vs Newcastle on the TV and took Grace to see
Maid in Manhattan
,
⁴⁰
which had a seriously silly plot, though the relationship between the politician and his spin doctor was moderately amusing. TB left me pretty much alone, though he did call to ask why I hadn’t been to the meetings. I said I really wanted to get my head in gear for tomorrow, and in any event Jonathan had filled me in. Baghdad was still looking grim, though things were getting better in Basra. I was getting loads of Good Luck messages and I was getting really psyched for it. I ate a ton of pasta, then went to bed, after laying out all my gear for the morning. I was really pleased to have got this far, and pretty confident. I think part of me was glad to be doing something to keep John’s [Merritt] memory alive, but part of me was glad too to be doing something that was in a way independent of the job, even though I had managed to raise as much as I had because of that, though the biggest donation was £50k from the Bridges [neighbours].