Authors: Tom Bower
To help his cause, he unobtrusively made lightning trips to visit the European leaders, especially Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi. He also asked Hillary Clinton and David Cameron to urge Merkel to give her support. The more overt campaigning was left to Jonathan Powell and Peter Mandelson. According to a senior official in Brussels, both behaved as if Blair was a ‘slam dunk to get the job. But he was deluded about the support for him. He was never in with a chance.’
His submerged campaign was interrupted by John Chilcot’s request that he return for another public session in January 2011. Since his previous appearance a year earlier, Blair’s hair had turned grey and, despite spending an hour most days in the gym, his youthful looks had faded. For his second appearance, the panel was better briefed, not least because they had obtained copies of exchanges between Blair and Bush demonstrating Britain’s commitment to the invasion. Criticised for their lackadaisical style in the previous session, they attempted to appear more rigorous.
The panel focused on the allegations of Blair’s deception – although the word was never used. Why, he was asked three times by Roderic Lyne, the former diplomat, was the Cabinet Office’s ‘Options Paper’, prepared in March 2002 and describing the government’s range of policies towards Iraq, never offered to Cabinet ministers? Blair spoke at length but never directly answered the question. He denied ordering that the paper should not be distributed but was never pushed to explain why it was not circulated.
In a baffled manner, he insisted that, after the Crawford meeting in April 2002, the Cabinet regularly discussed regime change. The facts contradicted him. Two days earlier, Stephen Wall, the senior official responsible for Europe, had told the panel that, while attending nearly every Cabinet meeting during 2002, he ‘probably’ only became aware,
like most ministers in those gatherings, that Blair intended to join the invasion in January 2003. Blair disputed this account. There could be no doubt, he said, that after April 2002 the Cabinet knew that war was an option. Yet, as Lyne indicated, Cabinet minutes showed that Iraq had never been discussed between 11 April and 23 September. All Blair could offer in reply was to dispute the records. The unasked supplementary question left dangling was whether Blair’s refusal to allow a discussion about Iraq by the Cabinet was indicative of his purposeful deception regarding his intentions. He would never be challenged with that crucial accusation.
Peter Goldsmith’s recollection of events also undermined him. In January 2003, said the lawyer, Blair was told that UN resolution 1441 could not authorise war. Britain needed a second resolution. Blair’s comment about Goldsmith’s advice on the eve of his visit to meet Bush in Washington was that it was ‘not helpful’.
The two questions Chilcot should have posed were: had Blair pressured Goldsmith to change his advice? And why was the Cabinet not shown the complete version of the lawyer’s final paper? Neither was asked. Instead, Blair regretted that Goldsmith had not been ‘more closely involved’, but insisted that their disagreements were mere lawyers’ debates. He dismissed Goldsmith’s complaint that he had been ‘discouraged’ by Powell and Sally Morgan from giving formal advice in writing that the first resolution, 1441, did not authorise war. Under no circumstances, Blair said, would he have allowed ‘a chink of light’ based on a lawyer’s advice to ‘breach the political line’. That, he said, would have been ‘a catastrophe’. On that issue, the panel was required to decide whether to believe Goldsmith or Blair.
Hans Blix’s mission would be harder to resolve. Over the previous eight years, Blair had moved a long way from justifying the war because of Iraq’s WMDs. By 2011, his claim was that Saddam had posed a permanent threat to mankind. He told the panel that he had never felt real confidence in Blix, and disagreed that the UN inspectors’ increasing access to the sites identified by Western intelligence proved that
Saddam was co-operating. On the contrary: first, he explained, Saddam had refused to allow Iraqi scientists to be properly interviewed by the UN inspectors; and, second, Saddam’s concessions were all made under ‘the pressure of 300,000 soldiers’ on his border. ‘He was stringing us along, and we needed a change of heart on co-operation.’ Saddam’s record showed that his aim was to ‘outfox the international community’. The real threat, said Blair, presenting his new argument, was not that Saddam actually possessed WMDs but that he would return ‘to his old games’. None of the panel retorted that the assessment by Britain’s intelligence services about Saddam’s ‘old game’ had been grossly mistaken, and that their incompetence had caused deep anger.
Finally, the panel did not present any discomfiting reports about the fate of Iraq after the war. In his testimony, Blair denied ever contemplating that the situation in post-war Iraq ‘should be left to the Americans’. The panel failed to confront Blair with the evidence of Whitehall officials and generals who specifically recalled him referring to his reliance on Washington.
And that led to a most delicate issue. During the four years after the war, the generals had complained to Blair about insufficient money, men and equipment. The climax of one argument was General Walker’s threat to resign over lunch at Chequers. Yet Blair told the panel, ‘I cannot recall being told we needed resources and I said “no”. Money really wasn’t the problem. If it was a resource problem, we would have paid the bill. We had troops and resources to manage this. So far as resources, that was not the issue being raised with me. I would always agree to more resources.’ The testimony of the leading military figures between 2003 and 2007 again contradicted him.
On his day in the spotlight, Blair’s memory repeatedly jarred with the facts. Baroness Prashar asked the questions about post-war Iraq. He told her that Paul Bremer, the American governor of Iraq, ‘did a pretty good job. When he was there, Iraq was on an upward path.’ It is now generally accepted that Bremer’s demobilisation of the Iraqi army and dismissal of Ba’athist civil servants had hastened Iraq’s plunge into
civil war. Even in his memoirs, Blair recorded that Bremer’s operation needed ‘a drastic boost’. Prashar did not ask Blair about this contradiction. Equally surprising was the panel’s reaction to Blair’s robust assertion that ‘I did not get the impression he [Bremer] was refusing to discuss it with the British.’ John Sawers, Jeremy Greenstock, General Walker and Jack Straw all complained to Blair that Bremer was ignoring his UK allies. But Prashar lacked the ability to challenge Blair.
Overlooking these inaccuracies led the panel into a cul-de-sac. The heart of Blair’s argument rested on his interpretation of events in post-war Iraq. He believed that the conquered people were keen to embrace liberal democracy but were thwarted by al-Qaeda, supported by Iran, stepping into the vacuum. Their regime of terror, said Blair, could not have been predicted. Iraq was just one part of the struggle against Islamic extremism. The aftermath of 9/11, he continued, had generated a stream of dangerous bids for power. This ‘evil’ brand of Islam, he told the panel, one that demanded the destruction of Israel, the imposition of Sharia law and the destruction of everything Western to create a single caliphate, had to be confronted.
His latest interpretation of history was barely challenged. Half-heartedly, Lyne pointed out that Iraqi extremists rather than al-Qaeda and Iranian fundamentalists had instigated the civil war, and their terror started only after Saddam’s removal. Blair brushed Lyne’s musings aside, without answering the principal complaint: that the increasing horrors across the Arab world had been instigated by the invasion of Iraq. If asked, Blair would have quashed such a notion. Mirroring Israeli opinion, Blair asserted that Saddam was a life-threatening menace whose demise was justified, and that the carnage that followed was unavoidably necessary.
That opinion was not shared by all his friends in London. One of the few upon whom he could still rely was Rupert Murdoch. Throughout his decade in Downing Street, Blair had encouraged visits by Murdoch and his lieutenants. Their relationship had intensified after Rebekah Brooks became editor of the
Sun
in 2003. After his resignation, Blair
and Cherie regularly met Murdoch and his Chinese wife Wendi Deng in New York and London. One benefit was Murdoch’s £100,000 contribution to the Faith Foundation. In March 2010, he invited Blair to become godfather to his daughters Grace and Chloe and to attend their baptism on the bank of the River Jordan. Dressed in a white suit, Blair requested no photographs.
Maintaining close relations with Murdoch was important to him. The tycoon provided introductions to a network of billionaires. In return, Blair immediately offered support when, on 4 July 2011, the
Guardian
revealed that an agent acting for the
News of the World
had hacked into the voicemail of Milly Dowler, a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl who had disappeared while returning home from school on 21 March 2002. During the police search for Dowler, voice messages had been deleted from her mobile phone, giving her parents hope that she was alive. In reality, she had been murdered, and her body was discovered in woodland six months later. The
Guardian
mistakenly alleged that the newspaper’s agent had deliberately deleted the phone messages, which had aggravated the parents’ distress. Brooks was editing the newspaper at the time (she had since been promoted to oversee all of Murdoch’s British newspapers) and was caught in a storm of public outrage over her alleged conduct.
Later that day, Blair emailed her: ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can help you with. Thinking of you. I have been through things like this.’ Six days later, Murdoch made a publicised visit to London to support Brooks and his newspapers. The following day, 11 July, Blair telephoned Brooks. During a one-hour conversation, Blair offered himself to her and the Murdochs as a secret unofficial adviser. Her crisis, said Blair, would pass, and in the meantime she should ‘toughen up’, ‘keep strong’ and not make any rash decisions. News International, he suggested, should hire a robust QC to run an independent inquiry and publish a ‘Hutton-style report’. Blair also offered his advice on managing the continuing storm: ‘Publish part one of the report at the same time as the police close their inquiry and clear you,’ he said, anticipating
the result, ‘and accept shortcomings and new solutions and [publish] part two when any trials are over.’
Blair misjudged the public’s disgust. Four days later, Brooks resigned as chief executive. ‘I’m really sorry about it all,’ he emailed. ‘Call me if you need to. T x.’ The next day, in advance of her appearance before a Commons select committee, he texted: ‘If you’re still going to Parliament, you should call me. I have experience of these things! T x.’
Over the following months, Blair met Murdoch in America and, on separate occasions, teamed up with the tycoon’s wife during trips to China, where he offered his services as an adviser to the China Investment Corporation, a sovereign wealth fund. His overtures were rejected, but during the process he became closer to Wendi Deng. Twice during June 2012 he visited the attractive forty-three-year-old at her husband’s London flat, and in August was seen alone with her at 5 Hertford Street, a Mayfair club. Deng was clearly smitten and realised the danger. In an email message to herself, she wrote that Catherine Rimmer opposed the relationship: ‘Katherine [sic] Rimmer does not like me because she does not want Tony gets [sic] in trouble with me.’
On 7 October, Blair arrived at Murdoch’s 1,000-acre home near Carmel in California. Deng had told her husband that she was staying at the ranch with a girlfriend. Her friend departed before Blair arrived. Some of her staff were also ordered to leave the house, and the Metropolitan protection officers were quartered in a nearby hotel. The staff who remained witnessed events amounting to a close relationship between Blair and Mrs Murdoch. Her husband was unaware of Blair’s visit.
Those observing Blair wondered whether he was losing the plot. While his Quartet work had declined, he still jetted around the Middle East to promote the Faith Foundation, give media interviews, make a paid speech or pitch his services for hire. His message had become ordinary. At a conference on Africa in 2012, he told the audience that there was ‘something wonderful, vibrant and exciting’ about the continent’s culture and traditions, and, speaking about the prospects of economic
development, warned, ‘With electricity, given the technology we now have at our fingertips, everything is possible. Without it, progress will be depressingly slow. Likewise with roads and, often, ports.’
Similar banal musings had seeped into his promotion of the Faith Foundation. To finance his ambitions, he had accepted $500,000 from Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch, and $1 million from Michael Milken (the model for Hollywood’s Gordon Gekko and his ‘greed is good’ mantra), who was convicted in 1990 for fraud. Neither maverick was noted for his particular interest in religion, but both succumbed to Blair’s charm.
Pinchuk and Milken would have been puzzled by the attendance of Faith Foundation staff at a conference in Vienna about ‘interfaith dialogue’ and the promotion of human rights funded by Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most intolerant regimes, renowned for punishing minor infractions of Sharia law with public beheadings. As Martin Bright, an admirer of Blair, would discover after joining the foundation, there were irreconcilable conflicts between Blair’s supposed beliefs and his priority of not irritating any paymaster. Bright would leave after complaining that Blair ‘doesn’t do humility and nor do his organisations. Perhaps that’s his tragedy.’
There were no boundaries when it came to sustaining his lifestyle. In September 2012, Jamie Dimon asked Blair to help Ivan Glasenberg, the competitive chief executive of Glencore, the world’s biggest commodity trading house, buy Xstrata, a rival. One year earlier, after the company had been launched on the stock exchange, Glasenberg’s personal stake in Glencore had been valued at $9 billion. Now, the aggressive South African wanted to use Glencore’s shares to buy his competitor and become even bigger. However, Mick Davis, Xstrata’s equally bruising boss, did not agree to Glasenberg’s price. To win, Glasenberg needed the support of Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, the prime minister of Qatar, which owned nearly 12 per cent of Xstrata’s shares.