The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (102 page)

I spent part of the day drafting a note on all the strategic challenges we face, viewed through what goals we would like to meet by the summer, just twelve weeks from now. Iraq, MEPP, Afghanistan, Africa, on the geopolitical front, the polar world division with the French, euro, IGC [EU Intergovernmental Conference], all the big domestic issues, also trust, TB. I did it partly to force myself to think it all through but also to draw attention to what I thought was a gap between the scale of the challenges and the lack of capacity in departments and at the centre to meet them. I was trying to get TB to shake up the system, not just rest on his being so sure that it was all about
policy. I sent the note through and he called a couple of hours later. He said he had been thinking the same thing. Six years in, almost to the day, we were facing more or less the same problems. It was all about delivery of the machine.

He felt re the politicians, that we had some OK ministers but too many of them were basically European social democrats, who tended to look for partnership and compromise rather than face up to really difficult decisions. He didn’t like fighting on too many fronts. He felt re the argument on foundation hospitals that it actually wasn’t that radical. He felt that the controversy of the schools agenda was also not matched by the radicalism, that we were being held back by forces of conservatism. I said again I felt we should have stuck with that argument. I put a worst-case analysis – at best what could be called the variable quality of ministers, GB paralysing reform, senior civil servants often resistant to change.

We also faced a big loss when Jeremy [Heywood] went [to join Morgan Stanley investment banking division]. TB had deliberately sought out David Manning and Stephen Wall and that had made a difference. He had to do the same with Jeremy’s replacement. If the Civil Service wasn’t so status-conscious, it would be possible to get one of the best permanent secretaries, Gus O’Donnell or Michael Jay even, but neither would be keen because it would be seen as a demotion. But at least he was focusing on these personnel issues.

Calum and I went to Wimbledon vs Burnley, last game in the season, Wimbledon’s last game at Selhurst Park and a bit of a sad affair all round [Wimbeldon 2, Burnley 1]. Leeds beat Arsenal, leaving Man United the champions. Alex F and Rory both mildly delirious. I watched a bit of [political journalist] John Sergeant’s BBC programme to coincide with TB’s birthday. It was very funny in parts, though Mo [Mowlam] and [Peter] Kilfoyle were exceptionally bitter. Overall TB came over fine.

TB called first thing, wanted to talk again about the strategic challenge note I had done. He said it was the right analysis. He wasn’t sure how widely we could discuss it because it was about policy and personnel. He was aware that things weren’t working as well as they should be. He reckoned we had a year really to get it moving, really to be in a position at the next election where it was accepted that public services are much better. We agreed we were nowhere near that. Education had
gone backwards. Health is better but it’s patchy. Ditto crime. Transport is a disaster. He then said he was thinking about making this a five-year term, really get these issues sorted, ‘particularly if I decide I don’t want to fight a third election’. He still hadn’t decided but said he couldn’t understand why there was now this assumption that a term was four years when the option of five was there. He was also thinking about a reshuffle just before Whitsun followed by a major drive on reform. He knew we would lose some of our coalition over the euro but was confident we could win over others on reform.

He was also still making up his mind about GB. He acknowledged he had ceded too much to him. He said it sometimes felt like we were driving with the handbrake on, because he thwarts reform, not necessarily because he is against it, but because he wants to make life difficult. It was obvious that TB wanted to go a lot further on public services, open them up to real innovation and competition. He was working on a note of what he wanted to see in the statement on the euro assessment. As far as he was concerned, this was a big test of whether GB was serious about working with him. ‘If he’s not, then I’m prepared to do the deed. I’m not prepared to be held back from making a change I believe it may be in Britain’s interests to make.’

The note had at least provoked, or at least brought to the open, some pretty big thoughts. What we actually did about driving change in these big departments was less clear. He felt the Foreign Office was pretty good, Treasury good but limited and sometimes malign, but that overall we didn’t have good domestic departments. What he was signalling was that 1. he intended big policy changes, 2. a big reshuffle, 3. longer term, he seemed to be keeping open the option of someone else leading us into the next election. He said he had not ruled out standing again but ‘I kind of think eight years is enough for this kind of job.’

We were building up to the foundation hospital vote tomorrow and used TB’s speech to the Newspaper Society to get up some of the arguments on that.
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[David] Bradshaw wrote in quite a funny section
on TB being fifty. TB started his day with a ninety-minute session, one-on-one, with GB on the euro. He said afterwards that it was a ‘real crackerjack job’. He had asked him for a completed copy of the draft statement on the EMU assessment. GB said not until they had sorted out their differences. So here we were, a few weeks before what might be the momentous decision of the parliament, possibly of TB’s premiership, and his Chancellor wouldn’t tell him what he intended to say. ‘It’s like dealing with a child,’ he said. ‘I said to him that I wanted him to work with me. He says I am working with you. Then, no you’re not, yes I am. Then he’s back into “I know what you’re up to” and he does all this stuff about me wanting to get rid of him.’

TB said he had told him that it felt at times like driving a car with the handbrake on. ‘That’s a very significant statement,’ said GB. No it’s not, it’s obvious, said TB. He said he just couldn’t see a way out of it at the moment, also that he believed GB was actually intent on destroying the health bill. Alan was making clear he would resign if we lost the vote tomorrow. We signed off the speech, then into the car where Putin called him to say happy birthday, which suggested he was trying to calm things down a bit after recent events.

Ran in and the morning meeting was pretty much all taken up with foundation hospitals. The whips were still worried that if the Tories really went for it, we could lose. The rebellion could be bigger than we thought. TB had breakfast with John Howard [Australian Prime Minister], mainly Iraq and Zimbabwe, then to a meeting with Charles C on schools funding. Charles was clear it could be sorted but he may need more money. We went over for PMQs and though TB did well, and IDS was crap, the signs were still of a very big revolt. I got back for an Iraq communications meeting and we were really focused now on how to try to get a UK operation properly inserted into Baghdad. I called [Major General] Tim Cross [senior British officer, Coalition Provisional Authority] who said that he couldn’t properly express to me just how useless the Americans were. They had no idea. He said there were people working hard but who couldn’t deliver. He felt we should try to get a CIC-type operation inserted in there. I had been led to believe he was very protective of the US there, but in reality he could barely conceal his contempt. ‘I’m afraid they are very capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because they are just useless at the things they now need to be doing.’ On the communications side, he said somehow we had to make it work. We
agreed to try to get more of our people there. It would help when we got John Sawers [UK ambassador to Egypt, Blair’s former foreign policy adviser] there as the UK envoy.

Then it was a case of hanging around for the vote. TB said ‘This is classic. The Labour Party and a group of bone-headed MPs making historic errors that will help put us out of power and leave others to do the reforms that we should have done.’ He said it was a different issue but a rerun of
In Place of Strife
.
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If we lost, he wanted us to come back with a bill that was more reformist, not less. He felt it was crazy for Alan [Milburn] to talk about resigning and that he was far too prone to the cavalier and dramatic. But I spoke to Alan who said he had thought long and hard about it and he would definitely resign. ‘There have to be rules. This is my bill and if it’s rejected I will have to go.’ When it came to the vote, it was 304 for the bill to 230 against. The wrecking amendment was defeated 297 to 117, with sixty-five Labour rebels.

The foundation hospitals vote was fading away but it emerged during the day that Clare hadn’t voted. She claimed it was because she thought the vote was at 10pm. Nor did she come to Cabinet, claiming that she had to read intelligence briefs before a meeting with the leader of Rwanda [President Paul Kagame]. TB had another euro meeting with GB, who seemed a bit troubled. Last night’s vote was not great for him. TB told him that the reshuffle would be after the euro statement, which he hoped would bind him in a bit. TB seemed a bit more confident on the substance.

Cabinet was awful, even without Clare. Iraq, Northern Ireland, then a truly awful discussion of the local elections. Ian McCartney was not too bad, very factual about the results, where we had done well, where we had done less well, some quite good analysis, but then a whole load of interventions displaying considerable knicker-wetting. Alistair D was clearly in a bit of a flap about the Libs letting the Tories in, Blunkett on the BNP and the need to reinforce what we were trying to do on the crime agenda, and above all the need to tackle asylum. Patricia [Hewitt] saw it all through the prism of the electoral behaviour of women. JP left before the discussion had finished, muttering that he couldn’t stand any more of this.

TB agreed afterwards that it was a pretty awful discussion but equally he should have given more of a lead. I went off to speak at lunch for all the EU ambassadors. I was on good form at the Q&A, where the questions were mainly on the euro, fallout from the local elections, TB’s future intentions, EU–US, and defence. It was definitely worth doing. The German [Thomas Matussek] and the Greek [Alexandros Sandis] asked afterwards why I didn’t do TV briefings because they felt that apart from TB, nobody really explained foreign policy so clearly. Only the French sent a deputy rather than the actual ambassador.

Back to Number 10 for TB doing another series of public services meetings, first health, then education, really trying to press his own people and the departments to think more radically. I was also worried that what Jonathan, Jeremy and Andrew [Adonis] were badging as ever more radical, felt to me like radical right wing. We had a brief political strategy meeting, at the end of which Philip said to me he thought TB had been a bit too unyielding – he was right, everyone else was wrong, he was now going for broke. I think it was just an expression of his frustration at lack of delivery. Fiona was having a dreadful time with Cherie, first of all, Cherie seemed to hold her responsible for TB not having a birthday party, whereas in fact all of us had been clear it was the wrong thing to be doing, no matter how privately intended, while Iraq was still as intense as it was. Now, another problem. We had
Marie Claire
[women’s lifestyle magazine] in for an interview and picture session and Fiona had told Cherie not to let them in the flat without her being there. Not only did Cherie have them up in the flat but allowed them to photograph her in the bedroom with Carole [Caplin] putting on her lipstick. Fiona was convinced she would be better out of it sooner rather than later. The way I was feeling, I was keen to get out pretty soon too.

TB was up in Sedgefield and called a couple of times. I was more conscious, after Philip’s observation, of how regularly he said ‘I know I’m right about this.’ In truth, often he was, and I was as down on departments as he was, but equally I was beginning to get less and less motivated. We were already beginning to talk about elections and it just didn’t hold out the excitement it once did. Also Rory had an interesting take. He said he reckoned I wasn’t as good as I used to be, that if I left soon, I would be a legend, the first person really to take communications to a level that made an actual difference to politics, whereas if I stayed, it was downhill all the way. ‘You’re
not enjoying it as much as you did, you’re not doing it as well as you did, and never forget that the reason [former Manchester United footballer] Eric Cantona’s a legend is because he left at the right time.’ I had a long call with Dan Bartlett, who was as seized as I was with the need for change in ORHA’s modus operandi. I offered to put a team of UK people at his disposal. Paul Bremer was replacing [General Jay] Garner [as director of ORHA], [John] Sawers was going soon so it was possible we would improve things but we really needed to up our game. Calum finished his SATs [Standard Assessment Tests] and was particularly happy with a question about Henry V being a lower-league football manager, and how would he prepare to play Arsenal in the Cup Final.

I spent most of the day taking the boys to various sport events, then later the Goulds came round for dinner. Philip, who could normally be relied on for a bit of optimism, said that for the first time he could see TB losing the election, that he seemed a bit out of steam, not getting things like he used to.

The
Mail on Sunday
had stuff on Cherie and Bermuda.
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It seemed to us that whether knowingly or not, Carole was shipping stuff to the Mail group.

TB was seeing GB the whole time, trying to get him to be more positive about the euro assessment or at least be positive about the idea of a referendum this parliament remaining a possibility. TB called me to the flat first thing to say he was really worried about Cherie. There was someone very close in putting stuff into the press, this weekend again with the freebie story in the
Mail on Sunday
. He noticed for the first time that the kids were getting worried about it. He wanted to know if I thought Fiona was still able to help her. I said Fiona felt she had been let down, that Cherie had changed and that Carole was a bigger problem than either of them were prepared to concede. I said Fiona was definitely leaving. He asked what she would do. I said that depended in part on me. He asked what I wanted to do. I said I would like to go fairly soon. I wasn’t enjoying the job anything like
as much as I did and I wasn’t doing it as well as I could. He said he thought I had done it well during Iraq, and he was sure I was doing it better than anyone else could. I said the public service reform agenda was not really my thing, and in any event I wondered whether some of our media problems might be helped if I went. He said he realised why I felt the way I did, because there weren’t that many really high-pressure jobs, but he had one of them, and I had another. He really wanted me to think it through very carefully. He was not sure yet whether he would fight another election. A lot depended on GB.