Authors: Tom Bower
The chancellor’s new tax rates favoured speculators, tax-avoiders and the super-rich. Tilting to the other side, he also now opted into the EU’s social chapter, agreeing to new controls on employment and increased health-and-safety rules. One unforeseen consequence was an unnoticed limitation on using the trust laws to accumulate wealth and bequeath property. As a result, British taxpayers began selling expensive property to foreigners and would gradually be less able to afford British assets in the face of competition from the oligarchs whom Brown welcomed to London. ‘I wanted to preserve Thatcher’s competitive tax rates,’ he wrote. ‘I wanted wealthy people to feel welcomed in the UK.’
Blair was unaware of the consequences of Brown’s intensive financial juggling, later conceding that he regretted giving the ‘damaging impression that I had vacated economic management’. His principal focus was on spreading social equality. To make Britain fairer, he defied employers’ predictions of doom, imposing a statutory minimum wage and giving employees more rights when it came to holidays and maternity leave. Younger people were attracted by his promise to remove the stigma of disability, homosexuality and racial differences. Having set his staff to realise those aspirations, he now focused on his global ambition: to change the world.
The possibility of using Britain’s military as a ‘force for good’ was raised by Michael Pakenham, the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, in early 1998: ‘I must tell you, Prime Minister, that there are new problems in Kosovo.’
‘Right,’ replied Blair. ‘You’d better give me a full note, starting with: where is it?’
Pakenham described the intention of Slobodan Milošević, the Serbian president, to invade neighbouring Kosovo and expel the Muslim population. The new threat mirrored Milošević’s attack on the Muslims in Bosnia seven years earlier. That war had been misjudged by John Major, who had relied on the Foreign Office’s belief that the Balkans were enveloped in an old-fashioned religious dispute. Despite reports describing Serbia’s army and militias murdering thousands of Muslims in ethnic cleansing reminiscent of the Nazis, Douglas Hurd, the foreign minister, had urged Washington and Paris not to intervene but instead allow ‘a level killing field’. Hurd’s strategy was supported by other Western governments, who, instead of stopping the atrocities, appeased the Serbs. Across the House of Commons, politicians were prejudiced and misinformed. The Labour Party, in common with Europe’s left-wing politicians, supported neutrality. Those urging military intervention to stop a blatant land-grab in the wake of Yugoslavia’s break-up were condemned as imperialists who were no different from the warmongers responsible for the carnage in Vietnam.
Those opinions changed after eyewitness reports of the massacres
emerged. Labour supported Major’s belated support for a UN peacekeeping mission and humanitarian help. The full truth dawned in July 1995. Some 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica were abducted by the Serbs under the eyes of Dutch soldiers attached to the UN and murdered. All European politicians were tarnished. Only America’s threat to intensify its bombing of Serbia persuaded Milošević to sign a peace agreement negotiated in Dayton, Ohio. President Clinton’s success embarrassed Blair, Robin Cook and others about their mistake.
Four years later, Milošević’s threat to invade Kosovo convinced Blair that the Serbs might repeat the Bosnian massacres. ‘We can’t let it deteriorate to that,’ he said, acting at that moment as the president of the European Union. With remarkable self-belief, he wanted to take control, ‘convinced that he could resolve the problem’.
His resolve hardened after he delivered an agreement in Belfast on 10 April 1998, Good Friday, to start negotiations to end the civil war in Ireland and share government between Catholics and Protestants. Patient negotiations had been rewarded with international acclaim. Forging close personal relationships with all the leaders of Irish terrorism fed Blair’s conviction that men of evil would succumb to his persuasion or, if necessary, be forcefully removed.
Ignoring the Foreign Office’s reluctance, he flew across Europe urging other leaders to join in military action in Kosovo rather than rely on America. Most were not persuaded; even President Chirac of France, a sceptical rival, agreed only that ‘something must be done’. Despite the rebuffs, Blair enjoyed the spotlight. International diplomacy was more engaging than battling to reform the public services or arguing with the chancellor. The media headlines were more flattering too, as British journalists succumbed to Campbell’s image of Blair winning the argument as Europe’s most popular leader. But, by the autumn, Blair acknowledged the truth: Chirac and the other Europeans were unwilling to join a military adventure involving ground troops.
Clinton, however, would consider air strikes. Blair’s close relationship with the White House had been tested ever since the president
faced impeachment for lying about his relationship with an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Any foreign intervention would be damned by Clinton’s enemies as a deliberate diversion from his answering for his conduct. In August 1998, US bombs would be dispatched to destroy alleged al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and Sudan in what were called the ‘Lewinsky raids’. The bombs hit a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan, but that didn’t shake Blair’s support for the bombing of Serbia.
The possibility of a new Balkan war arose on the eve of Operation Desert Fox, the proposed aerial bombardment by the Americans of buildings in Iraq where Saddam Hussein’s scientists were suspected of developing chemical and biological weapons. ‘It really is pretty scary,’ said Blair, adding hawkishly, ‘We can’t let him get away with it.’ American intelligence had reported in late 1997 that Saddam, after expelling the UN weapons inspectors, was exploiting ineffective UN sanctions to restart the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in breach of a 1991 UN resolution. Both Blair and Clinton knew that the weapons inspectors had been expelled after the Iraqis discovered they were operating as agents for the CIA, a clear breach of UN rules. Although Clinton’s bombing operation had not been approved by the UN, Blair committed the RAF to the unlimited operation. He did not disguise the fact that his ultimate ambition was to overthrow Saddam.
In early February 1998, he flew to Washington. ‘I can’t tell you how good it is to have you guys in town right now,’ Clinton told his visitor. The Lewinsky affair had ruptured his relationship with his wife Hillary. Standing near by, she was icily ignoring her husband. At their joint press conference, Blair emphatically closed down questions about the scandal, then agreed with the president that Saddam would be told ‘the threat of force is real’.
Around this time, Blair had read, at the ‘memory-soaked table’ in Chequers, Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 diaries, handwritten following his meeting with Hitler at Berchtesgaden. On his return to Britain, Chamberlain had waved a piece of paper bearing the German
chancellor’s signature that promised ‘peace in our time’. Blair saw this as weakness: Hitler should have been confronted. In his opinion, Chamberlain had misunderstood the threat and produced the wrong answer. Less than two years later, Winston Churchill was Chequers’ new occupant. The convergence of appeasement and Churchill in the same country house roused Blair. ‘Having read widely, I knew a lot about history before becoming prime minister,’ he would write. Blair was casting himself in Churchill’s mould – the indefatigable champion against tyranny. One part of his justification at least was flawed: contrary to his assertion, he had read remarkably few works of history.
As late as 1996, Roy Jenkins, a former Labour home secretary and chancellor, had thrust upon Blair two biographies he had written about Herbert Asquith and William Gladstone, both Liberal prime ministers. Each of the books was a readable, heroic account based on secondary sources. Blair, wrote Jonathan Powell, ‘devoured’ Jenkins’s life of Gladstone, ‘on whom Tony modelled himself to some extent’. He had also read a biography of Henry Campbell-Bannerman, an unexceptional Liberal leader, and was influenced too by John Macmurray, a moral philosopher who at first sought to combine Christianity and Marxism, later shedding Marxism and politics to preach about the virtues of ‘community’. Otherwise, Blair’s understanding of history was unusually thin. He lacked any hinterland regarding politicians, social movements and conflicts before 1939. He was uneducated about the Reformation, the French Revolution, the eruption of European nationalism and socialism during the nineteenth century, the causes and conduct of the First and Second World Wars, and the collapse of the European empires across the Middle East and Asia after 1945. He had never read the biographies of the architects of modern Europe’s fate – Napoleon, the Pitts, Bismarck, Stalin and Hitler – nor those of any American president, nor the classics relating to the machinery of government and international finance. He was even uninformed about the Labour Party’s history and its leaders. Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Jim Callaghan were names he knew, but the details of their
tribulations remained unknown to him. There wasn’t one statesman he praised as an outstanding guide.
While all his predecessors had come to office with some experience of government or had read the classic textbooks at Oxford, Blair’s three years at St John’s College were mainly spent playing football in the quad and rock music in a hall. He was rarely seen in the library. The instinctive politician was a master of concealing his lack of education. ‘I only know what I believe,’ he once said. He admitted his ignorance about contemporary foreign affairs and accordingly did not understand his mistaken comparison of Chamberlain versus Hitler with himself against Saddam. Modern European history had little in common with the religious and imperial conflicts across the Muslim world.
Gladstone’s attraction for Blair was his conviction that he was sent to do God’s will on earth. With self-righteous indignation, Blair excluded those whose personality and recommendations conflicted with his own convictions – thus Robin Cook, who would push for diplomacy rather than bombing Iraq, was dismissed for playing ‘silly buggers’. But General Charles Guthrie, a devout Catholic, was embraced as a loyalist, and beyond his trusted inner circle Blair relied on him to persuade the doubters in his government.
On 11 November 1998, Guthrie set out his estimate of the effects of a bombing campaign to the Cabinet. Britain would be responsible, he said, for about a tenth of the 2,500 deaths, especially if a tank containing anthrax exploded. If the destruction were successful, said Guthrie, Saddam would be compelled to readmit inspectors. Blair glanced around the room for any critics. Since all knew that the decision had already been taken, opposition was pointless. Blair now waited for Clinton to say ‘go’.
One month later, bombing was imminent. In Cabinet, Robin Cook questioned the RAF’s participation. Britain, he said, would be isolated among EU countries. Blair ignored him. A week earlier, in St Malo, Blair had signed a defence agreement with Chirac for closer co-operation between their military services. In his mind, it symbolised
a new era reflecting his passion for European unity and Britain’s new influence in Europe. In the future, he hoped, despite the alliance with NATO and the US, Britain would lead a European army of 60,000 troops. Although Chirac had purposefully, in the words of one eyewitness, ‘overlorded’ Blair during the signing ceremony, the prime minister expected the president would drop his opposition to bombing Iraq.
In the Commons, Blair went further. He was, he said, seeking ways of ‘improving the possibility of removing Saddam Hussein altogether’. That first unequivocal mention of regime change was supported by Clinton’s pledge of $97 million to any opposition group minded to ‘topple Saddam’, and then by Robin Cook speaking in a similar vein on CNN, where he explained that Saddam intended to develop WMDs. Not everyone was convinced. Writing in
The Times
, Simon Jenkins ridiculed these ‘paper tiger’ threats, adding that ‘neither Britain nor America really minds enough about Saddam to fight him to the death’.
Britain’s military machine was purring. Guthrie asked for explicit authority for the RAF to hit particular targets. Blair was visibly anxious. This was real politics without the dreary process of legislation. Nothing had prepared him for his first life-or-death opportunity to kill and change history. The Cabinet agreed to the bombing.
On 14 December 1998, Clinton ordered the B-52 bombers to fly. At the last moment, he feared domestic uproar. The impeachment hearings were imminent and a pernickety lawyer questioned whether the legality of a formal deadline had been observed. Clinton instantly terminated the mission. Then, within twenty-four hours, he reordered the bombing, but without British involvement. Blair called Guthrie for help, whom he reached while the general was driving to the opera.
‘We can’t let this happen,’ said Blair. ‘They’re breaking our agreement.’ Clinton, he feared, had lost faith in his ally.
‘I believe I can do something, Prime Minister,’ replied the general. Minutes later, he was speaking to General Hugh Shelton, America’s senior military officer. The problem was solved.
Blair’s admiration for Guthrie was shared by Campbell. ‘I sensed
him’, wrote the publicity chief that night, ‘as someone who was a great ally and a terrible enemy, and I liked him instinctively. You would certainly go into the jungle with him.’ The bombing was delayed until 10 p.m. on 16 December. ‘We act because we must,’ Blair told the media as bombs fell on Baghdad. ‘We had no other choice.’
He had passed a milestone. He thought about the loss of life and the danger for the pilots. ‘I think if you ever lose that,’ he told Campbell, ‘you risk making the wrong decision and you cease to do your job properly.’ That night he read the Bible.
During those tense hours, Blair called his confidants for relief. The phone rang in Peter Mandelson’s office while he was speaking to officials. ‘Have you taken your cough medicine and vitamins?’ asked Mandelson, after noting that Blair was suffering from a cold. Mandelson’s audience loved the sight of their minister enjoying such a close relationship with the prime minister.
That evening, Blair watched
Air Force One
, starring Harrison Ford. The following day, he made a statement in the Commons. His ambiguities foreshadowed his attitude towards Iraq over the following years. The RAF, he told MPs, had hit their targets, even though Guthrie had reported that the Tornadoes had missed most of theirs. Blair also spoke of ‘the risks if we do not halt Saddam’s programme of developing chemical and biological WMDs’. His emphasis on the word ‘developing’ reflected the intelligence reports’ silence over whether Saddam actually possessed usable weapons. Finally, he concluded, ‘It is a broad objective to remove Saddam … If we can find a way to remove him, we will.’ Despite criticism by some Labour MPs, he had taken his first step towards regime change. Over in Washington, the Republicans decided to resume impeachment hearings.
Two days later, during the third night of bombing, David Owen was invited for dinner in Downing Street. Blair told the former Labour foreign secretary that his early nerves and insomnia had disappeared. As a result of the bombing, the Americans estimated that at least 75 per cent of Iraq’s WMDs had been destroyed. The action against Saddam
appeared to be justified, leaving Blair feeling relaxed. The two discussed the relationship in Iraq between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds. Owen noted that Blair did not seem particularly knowledgeable.