The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (56 page)

TB spoke to GWB yesterday and got him on to the same strategy. TB said we had to hang tough. He later spoke to Putin who was very wary re a UNSCR. Blix was at UN saying he could be in there soon but being quite conciliatory with them. The Iraqi foreign minister [Naji Saberi Ahmed] was at the UN saying, via letter from Saddam, they had no WMD programmes. I signed off on the dossier before John S’ final meeting on it. DB came round for dinner. He was getting whacked by the
Express
in particular at the moment and it had made him a bit paranoid re the press in general. He was also defending his relationship with the
Mail
. I could see no purpose for the government as a whole in his courting of Dacre. He was interesting on his visit to GB’s house in Fife at the weekend. He said neither had really acknowledged any difficulty between them. TB was barely ever mentioned. GB had not really engaged on the euro, on Iraq, or on the future. On the Sunday they had asked him to go to church. DB said TB had to stay for the next term because there was currently no one else ready to challenge GB. He said I had to stay too.

The French food standards authority said UK beef was OK [and the unilateral ban should be lifted in France], which ran quite big for the whole day. On Iraq, the US were making it clear they would go it alone whatever. They also published their new security strategy document, full of the theory of pre-emption and their determination to make sure they are never again rivalled as the world’s foremost military power. Tricky. I did a final meeting re how to do the dossier arrangements. I spoke to Jack Straw and said I was really worried about him briefing foreign governments in advance. Jack had promised it, and said he was a bit hacked off because he’d had Number 10 backing for it when he suggested it. I was worried that they would leak and there would be a Parliament problem. So we agreed a compromise: that our ambassadors would brief host governments
from a speaking note. We agreed no media briefing in advance. John Williams not very happy with it. I was sure it was better that it was written by spooks not spin doctors.

We went to the cinema to see
My Big Fat Greek Wedding
, but I couldn’t get into it at all. Lots of A-level stuff around, plus Iraq, and the massive build-up for the countryside [pro-hunting] march. We then learned that Prince Charles’ letter to TB re hunting was being leaked to the
Mail on Sunday
. It could have been really bad but thankfully they didn’t have the text, just a briefing on it, and the line that if we banned hunting he might as well go skiing all year round. Then we learned that Clare Short had pre-recorded
GMTV
and there was plenty in it to make news – no second Gulf War, protect Iraqi children, so on and so on. What a self-indulgent bitch. I didn’t bother TB with it. What with her, the march, and Schroeder expected to lose the elections, it was shaping up to be a big and bad news day tomorrow.

TB called after church. He was praying for Schroeder to win, not least because Stoiber had communicated to us how angry he was at TB’s pro-Schroeder
Tagesspiegel
interview. The exit polls suggested Stoiber winning, which he found a bit alarming. He said Clare was a pain in the arse but it was still better off keeping her inside ‘So I’m afraid we just have to bear it.’ But what with Robin as well, there was certainly a sense of ill discipline on Iraq. On Prince Charles, he thought it damaged him more than us. He had said to Robin Janvrin at Balmoral that he has to learn the difference between short and long term. He felt it was OK for him to give us a bit of a kicking now and then but that if he started to get too political, eventually the next generation will think who elected you to talk about all this stuff? The [Countryside Alliance] march was big [estimated 400,000 people]. We went to Jamie Rubin [former US State Department chief spokesman] and [CNN journalist] Christiane Amanpour’s house. They were very down on GWB. Jamie felt that TB was basically the articulate voice of the Western world, but that the right in the US was bad and dangerous and we should be very, very careful getting too involved with them. TB had done a near complete [conference] speech draft, which was good news.

Massive coverage for the march, and TB adamant that we should be trying to find a way out of this. Schroeder had a narrow win
[Bundestag elections], which cheered us up and by the end of the day, they had been on saying he wanted to come for dinner tomorrow night, which was one in the eye for Chirac. On Iraq, post Clare’s interview there was a lot of focus on division and before Cabinet TB got her in for a little chat, though again was not as tough as he should have been. Meeting with Jack re UNSCR and also votes. We agreed we should make UNSCR the focus of HoC [House of Commons] vote. TB was working on his statement for the Commons.

DM said over the weekend TB had to work on GWB in a thirty-minute call because the US was going down an impossible road again, basically a route that was unsellable. We were worried that Rumsfeld and Cheney were pushing for the idea that we get in conditions that we know Iraq could not meet. Chris Meyer popped in and said ‘Beware these right-wing people in the US government. They are bad news for us. They see TB as a bit of an irritant, a complicating factor, and though they like the articulate support if they felt the need to hang us out to dry, they would do it.’ He said he had recently seen Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff, who was virtually dismissive of the whole UN route. Geoff Hoon came in to go through all the military options with TB.

TB had just seen GB. ‘He was totally ridiculous. Even Balls looked shocked. He was basically just saying we could not afford a military conflict and making clear he had to be consulted on every piece of spending.’ TB felt he was getting worse, in part because he didn’t react much other than by making clear he thought these outbursts were ridiculous. At Cabinet, TB did the intro, went through what the dossier was based on, emphasised the need to put over the history of UN resolutions and also the nature of the regime. The dossier brought together accumulated evidence about Iraq’s attempts to build WMD, part historical, part intelligence-based. We were not saying he was about to launch an attack on London but we were saying there was an attempt to build a WMD programme in a significant way. He made clear we were still focused on the UNSCR route and if he doesn’t comply there will have to be international military action. He will not comply unless he thinks the threat is real. Meanwhile, we have to redouble efforts on Afghanistan and MEPP.

Jack Straw went through where we were on resolutions, then JP came in with quite a hit on Robin and Clare, said we could all do our bit of positioning to make our own views heard, and get a few plaudits, but we were in this together. He said TB had done a brilliant job moving the US down the UN route and we should stick with him and stick together. He said it’s easy to do, a briefing here, a word
there, and it’s not on. Go down that road and we’re in real trouble. One or two do it and it’s indulgent. He said Tony had an incredibly difficult job at times like this and we should support him. He said he had been asked by the BBC if he agreed with Clare about killing innocent children and ‘I said I’m not very keen on killing innocent children either.’ Clare sat looking out of the window with a face like thunder, but didn’t interrupt him.

GB came in with a few long-term points for the US, the need to think through post-Saddam, the importance of MEPP. Patricia Hewitt suggested the Attorney General came to Cabinet to explain the legal position. Robin was pretty creepy. Both Jack and JR had a bit of a dig at him. Even after her performance yesterday, and even after JP, Clare was still full of herself. She said if we are going to have collective responsibility we should have a collective decision. There was no doubt Saddam was dedicated to possessing WMD but re the UN, there’s a double standard vis-à-vis Israel. She said she admired TB for the way he had got the US to go to the UN, but then she went off about Afghanistan being a mess. JR said ‘I think we can all make our points without giving the impression that some of us have a monopoly on caring and humanity.’ Most of them said what we would expect them to say, though I was quite impressed by [Paul] Boateng’s speech, during which Clare spilled tea over Andrew Turnbull [new Cabinet Secretary and head of the Civil Service].

It was a pretty good discussion, though focused as much as anything on the idea that we were having to deal with a mad America and TB keeping them on the straight and narrow. JP referred to the idea that TB would have sleepless nights, that we knew it could go to a difficult choice between the US and the UN. TB said he believed it would be folly for Britain to go against the US on a fundamental policy, and he really believed in getting rid of bad people like Saddam. The discussion was serious and sober and hard-headed and TB was in control of all the arguments. Several of them praised him and his leadership without it sounding sycophantic. Milburn had one or two interesting observations about anti-Americanism. He too felt there was a problem re double standards, and the lack of drive on MEPP. Charles C said the mood in the party was apprehensive. GH said the ultimate objective was disarmament and that weapons inspectors are a means to an end. The clearer we are that we would use force, the likelier it may be that we don’t have to. On the question ‘Why now?’ he said his record, his use of them, and his continued development.

TB said if he fell, the people who would rejoice most would be the Iraqis. It is basically a wealthy country whose people live in poverty. He said the US can go one of two ways. It can go unilateralist, and there may be some who want that, but he was sure Bush was not one of them. Or they can be part of a broader agenda on Africa, MEPP, Afghanistan. Funnily enough, I think TB won the Cabinet over more easily than the public. A poll tonight showed us below forty for the first time since the fuel protests [in 2000]. After Cabinet, Jack did clips on the idea that we were not talking about leftovers from when the [UN weapons] inspectors were in but an ongoing programme. I put out TB words which led the bulletins, but as I briefed [Andrew] Marr and others I realised once more it was not going to be easy.

Dossier day after months of waiting. Adam Boulton was good all day. [Andrew] Gilligan [defence and diplomatic correspondent, BBC
Today
programme] and [Tim] Marshall [Sky News foreign affairs correspondent] and the so-called experts went on about nothing new, but a combination of TB’s Commons statement
⁵²
and the gradual serious build-up re the dossier got us into a better position. TB had to go to the NEC [National Executive Committee of the Labour Party] but had done the statement pretty much himself, gone through most of the difficult questions and was OK on it all. The only really tough question was, if the UN did not sanction war, would the US and UK go along with it? The Iraqis put up their culture minister [Hamed Youssef Hamadi] to deal with it, and he was crap, his main line that it was all a Zionist plot. TB did well. He came back from the NEC laughing because Mark Seddon [NEC member and editor of left-wing magazine
Tribune
] said he had been to see Tariq Aziz [Iraqi Deputy
Prime Minister], that he was a nice man and it was easier to get in to see him than it was to see TB!

Couple of Q&A sessions before statement, but he was so good on this now. The general feeling re the dossier was pretty good. Massive around the world. Leading almost every bulletin in the world at lunchtime. TB’s statement was really strong and I felt Jack did OK yesterday after Cabinet and again today. I called John Scarlett a few times and he was OK too. The conference call was largely about the dossier. Chirac, Bush, lots of others responding to it going well. TB saw Piers Morgan but Sally sat in because, as TB said, it would be like a red rag to a bull if I had been there. Sally said he was reasonably tough, saying it simply wasn’t true when they said they supported us on the domestic agenda, and he had a real thing about Cherie. Meanwhile Fiona had a meeting with Cherie and Cate Haste re this ridiculous book project. I felt it was just wrong that she was getting money out of this and we shouldn’t do it. Schroeder arrived at 6.15. It was quite a thing for him to come to see TB rather than Chirac after his election and it was playing big in all our countries.

Massive coverage round the world and, apart from the
Mirror
, doing pretty well in UK media. Really big hit but still pretty difficult. TB/Schroeder meeting went OK and he was very much trying to get into a better position re the US. The
Mail
did something on letters from Prince Charles to Derry [on the legal system encouraging a US-style compensation culture]. The LCD were clear that they hadn’t leaked them. But it was a very difficult situation, à la Black Rod, and they were clearly fighting back. I got Godric to speak to Colleen Harris in Charles’ office and she said they were clear it had not been leaked by government, as alleged by the
Mail
. But through the day lots of Charles surrogates were up saying he was being attacked by us.

TB and I had several conversations on it through the day. He felt Charles had been captured by a few very right-wing people. TB felt the only line we could take was to make clear it was not government who leaked it and express total respect for Charles’ right to speak on these issues. Some of our MPs were wading in but there had to be a worry he would come over as the man speaking up for ‘ordinary people’ against an over-mighty government. The
Mail
was revolting even by its own standards. It led the bulletins most of the day until Estelle [Morris] came under attack for undermining, allegedly, the [Sir Michael] Tomlinson inquiry [into A-level standards]. TB said it was all very unfair but if this thing becomes the fiasco it risked
becoming, Estelle may well lose her job. She just wasn’t gripping it and was getting bad advice. Jeremy [Heywood] saw David Normington [Department for Education and Skills permanent secretary] to find out what was going on and Bill Stubbs [Sir William Stubbs, chairman of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority] took that as us interfering with the inquiry.