The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (99 page)

I had my recurring dream about losing my race number, only this time there was a different twist. It rained at Greenwich, the ink on the number ran and it became illegible and I was stopped from
running. Relieved to wake up, I turned on the radio and they were talking about me doing it, which I took as an omen I would do OK. It was a nice day, fresh but looked like it was going to be sunny, and the mood up at the start was terrific. There were two starting points and Charles [Lindsay] and I were starting from the one with the smaller numbers, which was a bonus. We were taken to the VIP tent to wait and I chatted to the Slovak PM [Mikulas Dzurinda] who asked me if I would do a race out there. I was peeing every few minutes, a mix of nerves and all the fluids of the last couple of days.

The start felt great, and I reckoned I was in OK shape for sub four hours, which is what I really wanted. I did the first mile well below eight minutes without even really trying, which was probably the adrenaline getting me to start too fast, the second mile bang on eight, and then into a fairly steady rhythm for a while. After three miles Charles said I ought to run on ahead on my own. The hardest points were nine miles, fifteen and twenty-one, but the bands and the crowds were great. ‘Rockin’ All Over the World’ [hit record by Status Quo] got me through one tricky part. A Jennifer Lopez song playing made me think of Grace at another and got me through. The crowd were fantastic all the way. I didn’t get a single adverse comment, which surprised me considering how much war divisiveness there had been, and loads of encouragement. Philip and Georgia [Gould] popped up a couple of times on the route. Andrew Turnbull, Alun Evans [Cabinet Office], others from the office though I missed Alison [Blackshaw] and her crowd at Canary Wharf. I had been warned Canary Wharf would be quiet but it was about as noisy as anywhere on the route and I got a great lift there. There were no quiet and lonely miles at all. Also, on a couple of occasions when I was struggling one of the other runners would come alongside and help push me on, including a woman from Dulwich who suggested I ‘lock on to her’ and follow step by step which, as she had a near-perfect bum, took me through another tricky mile before I recovered my strength and eventually left her.

The last few miles from the Tower were hard and exhilarating in equal measure. I hit twenty-two miles with fifty minutes left to break four hours so I knew I was going to do it and could relax a bit. The crowds by now were just a wall of sound and encouragement. I was worried I was going to cry on crossing the line, so forced myself to do it as I ran towards Big Ben, lost myself in a crowd of runners, and just let the emotion come out, imagined friends on one shoulder, enemies on the other, friends pushing me on, enemies failing to hold me back; thought about John, thought about how long left my dad
had, thought about the kids, really piled it on and cried for a bit as I ran, and then felt fine on the last mile.

I had trained hard in really difficult circumstances work-wise and I felt a real sense of achievement. I wondered around twenty miles if I could beat Bush’s time, but as I tried to pick up the pace, the pain in the hamstrings really intensified and I just went back to my steady plod, and settled for sub four. I didn’t realise the cameras were on me for the last couple of minutes, by which time I was swearing at myself the whole time, push yourself, faster, fuck it, keep going, push, etc. The last few hundred metres were a mix of agony and joy. The pain was pretty intense but by now virtually every second someone was shouting out encouragement, from ‘Do it for New Labour’ to ‘I forgive you everything Tony Blair has done’ to endless ‘Go on, you can do it, not far to go.’

I was siphoned off at the turn into the Mall and could now hear the commentary. I spotted Fiona and the kids right at the end in the stand and ran towards them. They were screaming at me to head straight to the finish but I was seven minutes inside my target and just so pleased to see them. My legs buckled a bit as I stopped and my voice was unbelievably weak, but it felt fantastic to have done it. I posed for a few pictures for the snappers, did an interview with Sue Barker [former tennis player turned sports commentator], dictated my column to
The Times
, and also did a briefing at the ICA [Institute of Contemporary Arts], by which time my legs had pretty much seized up. We got home, by which time I had a massive dehydration headache, and was drinking gallons of water. We went out for dinner with the Goulds. Philip had reminded me of the Woody Allen character
⁴¹
today, popping up in incongruous places along the route. But I felt really happy at having done it. Grace said she had felt so proud of me, and did I know what a fantastic thing I did for John? I was really touched, especially as she had never known him.

Good enough coverage of the marathon, including some nice pictures with Fiona. TB was seeing the Slovak PM, and said he hoped that now I would get back to getting HIM good media coverage, rather than me. He said it with a smile though and the response in the office was really warm. Loads more cheques were coming in today on the back of the recent interviews. The war meeting was fairly low-key.
TB was getting more and more exasperated with Clare. When CDS and Mike Jackson said that the humanitarian scene was not as bad as the [International Committee of the] Red Cross were saying, Clare snorted and said ‘I believe the ICRC.’ TB said she was a total burden. He also felt that now, if he got rid of her, there would not be too much of a fuss. There was still no sign of WMD, no sign of Saddam, and a considerable humanitarian challenge. A little boy named Ali was getting a huge amount of media attention, and becoming something of a symbol.
⁴²
We were going to have to resolve his case pretty quickly.

I missed the Bush call but TB said GWB had said to congratulate me on the marathon and to say that my ‘bleeding nipples’ were all over the US media. TB told him that I had also been covering my balls with large amounts of Vaseline. Bush said ‘I think I have heard enough about his body now.’ The conference call was not great. Syria was a problem
⁴³
because it was clear we and the US were in a different place on substance and on how to handle it. Then a TB/Milburn meeting on foundation hospitals. TB felt the whole thing was looking very ragged, that we had made clear the direction of travel we wanted, but the Health/Treasury conflict was forcing us to a bit of a muddled compromise.

Nice email from Keith Blackmore [
Times
sports editor] who said he thought my pieces for them had been the best marathon column he had ever read, and if ever I wanted a career in sports journalism, I knew where to go. My legs were still stiff and sore and I had to walk downstairs pretty much sideways. I got a cab in and the driver was really friendly, and full of congratulations. He was also totally onside re Iraq. The War Cabinet was OK, though Clare was still causing us as many problems as she could. It was perfectly obvious she was going to end up going. TB wanted me to go on the trip to Germany, but agreed I could come back after that. He wanted to discuss the media and political plans for the next phase, and we often managed to get some decent work done on these plane
journeys. By the end of the day I had put together an OK plan for the next few weeks.

As we drove to Northolt he must have said three, maybe four times, that he was just at a loss to know what to do about GB. He felt that he was now of a mindset that he needed to wage war on pretty much every front. To create the circumstances to depose him, he felt he had to create and win power struggles. I felt if that was the case, it was totally the wrong approach. If I were him, I would love TB to death, support him so closely that TB felt a certain pleasure in handing over power. As things stood, he was making it harder and harder for him to do it. He seemed to want not only to get rid of him, but also destroy any sense that TB had a legacy worth the name.

At the War Cabinet, Clare had said she had been talking to the French and German development ministers and ‘they just need lots and lots of talking to’, to which TB replied ‘Well I’m all in favour of therapy but I’m not sure it constitutes a policy.’ I asked if he finally accepted my long-held view that she was bad news. He did. He said what she did re ‘reckless’ was an act of treachery.
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He believed GB was now calculating the potential implications of her resignation, that he wanted her to resign over 1441. TB said he was still of the view he didn’t really want to serve a third term but he couldn’t see how he could hand over to GB.

I was urging the MoD to do something about the young boy who had lost his arms, Ali, who was getting enormous media attention. We flew up to Scotland with Helen Liddell [Scottish Secretary] and Catherine MacLeod [
Herald
] who was interviewing TB. We landed, drove to the Burrell Collection [Glasgow art museum], where the speech [for the Scottish Parliament elections] went fine, then off to RAF Leuchars [Fife] to see the families of pilots out in the region. The people there seemed genuinely appreciative of the support TB gave them. Of all the various services we came in contact with, I would say the military were consistently the best to deal with. Then to see the team on permanent standby for a terrorist incident or a hijacking. A great bunch of blokes, who admitted that a lot of the time they were bored stiff, but they knew they could be called on any second, and had to keep mentally alert the whole time.

Back on the plane and off to Germany. TB was reading the
intelligence and briefings pre the meeting [EU summit] in Athens. Chirac was up for causing as much trouble as possible on Iraq and ESDP. Schroeder was seeking to be more constructive, and even to become the bridge to France/Russia. But Chirac basically wanted us to be left out as much as possible. TB felt it was as though Chirac had ‘found religion’, that he had become fixated on a multipolar vision of the world, and it was a recipe for disaster. ‘It is madness. It is like a rerun of the Cold War, and yet there is no real balance. If you say US or France, what is he talking about, what is the choice?’

Chirac was intending to try to stuff the Americans over ESDP by backing a ridiculous Belgian idea of a four-way defence summit with France, Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The French were assuming that we would not want to upset them, and so were intending to try to push the whole defence debate in a different direction. It was the wrong assumption, and the wrong time to make the move. Luxembourg for God’s sake. TB had a good meeting with Schroeder in Hanover. He said he did not subscribe to the Chirac multipolar view and also that he was looking for better relations with the US. Then a three-hour flight to Athens, during which I worked on a note to get TB back focused on some of the domestic issues that had gone off the boil during the height of the Iraq business.

Overnight in Athens and I woke up to open the curtains of the hotel room and behold the most beautiful blue sea imaginable. It was hot without being unbearable, and I sat out on the terrace and finished the note I had been working on on the flight down. Then the media monitoring note came through and Short had given us another problem, this time saying time will tell if TB made the right decision and whether we should have given Blix more time. TB was pretty close to the end of his tether with her.

TB had a breakfast meeting with [Romano] Prodi [President of the European Commission] who was mumbling and rambling more than ever. At the end of the meeting, even his own spokesman said to me ‘What on earth was he talking about?’ TB spent a lot of the meeting just nodding and I don’t think he could hear much of what Prodi was saying either. Very odd. Then to a meeting with Kofi, who made a beeline for me on arrival, said ‘Ah the marathon man, and such a good time.’ I think TB was getting a bit pissed off with the attention it had been getting. To be frank, I was beginning to feel a bit of a void without the training routine and the day to aim for, and would need something else. I had been kind of hoping work would fill it
again, but things at home made that difficult. We were due to go off for a week in Majorca and tonight I had promised to take Rory to Arsenal vs Man United and was fretting about getting back in time, particularly when the plane back was delayed. I left the summit early with Kate [Garvey, events and visits team], got to the airport and just made it back. I told Kate I was feeling myself heading towards the exit door.

We had a nice enough week in Majorca, but Fiona and I had said too much to each other that was hurtful in recent weeks and we weren’t really getting on that well. At one point she said in terms that she sometimes felt that I had left her for TB, that that was where all my emotion and energy went, and that any left over went on the kids but not her. It was a pretty harsh thing to say, but I knew what she meant. I could only do the job full on or not at all, and full on meant staying on top of things round the clock. Whenever I didn’t, I felt things slipped backwards. Her view was that I had been to some extent brutalised by politics, that I had put up so many barriers around me as a way of making myself immune to the attacks that came my way, but it had carried over into our home life too.

The kids were brilliant though, and seemed to have a great time. I had a couple of heart-to-hearts with Philip, but his main concern really was that I stay involved. TB called a few times. He had had another session with GB at Chequers which had been better, but then it was all briefed into the
FT
as a discussion of the euro tests, saying how TB had agreed it would be very difficult to do this parliament. It was intolerable if they could not have private discussions on issues like the euro without it all being spilled into the media.

We got back last night and to Fiona’s annoyance I went in today for a whole stack of meetings, first on health policy, one on foundation hospitals then PCTs [NHS primary care trusts], then Charles C in for a session on the choice agenda for schools, where he and TB pretended to be in the same place but weren’t in reality, then on the euro. TB was determined to ensure a more positive tone to the assessment. He had read all the texts now and felt it was OK and reasonably positive. Arnab [Banerji, economic adviser] was of the view that it would and could be presented as a case for entry. TB also went through how it could be presented positively. But GB would present it in a negative light. TB said we needed to get the focus on fact – he would be saying
four out of five tests were met, measures would be taken to meet the fifth, there will be a changeover plan and a referendum bill. Provided there was warm body language alongside that, it could be a big step forward. But it was not clear to any of us that he and GB were on the same pitch. He did the
FT
interview and though we didn’t really want the euro to be the story, he was pretty forward on it.