The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (58 page)

The staff were gobsmacked when we trooped in. There was a young kid behind the counter who was shocked enough to clock Kevin Spacey, but then saw Clinton and went a funny shade of pink, before getting everybody out of the kitchens to come and see. Doug Band [Clinton aide] ordered massive amounts of burgers, chicken nuggets and fries while Bill went round saying hello to the small number of customers in there. There was a fringe event going on at a pub or hotel over the road and word went round there. [Former Labour minister] Margaret Jay’s daughter Tamsin came back with a few journalists including Matthew d’Ancona [deputy editor,
Sunday Telegraph
] but they just sort of gawked, pretended they had just been
going out for a night at McDonald’s. I got them over to say hello a bit later on. Meanwhile a crowd was building outside, some of them classic Blackpool landladies out of the postcards, looking and pointing and then when he occasionally turned round and waved at them, they were waving back in a state of high excitement.

So there we were, sitting in a Blackpool McDonald’s, drinking Diet Coke and eating chicken nuggets as he poured forth on the theme of interdependence, the role of the Third Way in progressive politics. He was also quizzing me about GB, and could sense that GB didn’t really want to acknowledge TB’s peculiar skills and talents, just as Gore hadn’t used him properly in the campaign. He spent a while talking to the crowd on the way out, then we got driven back in a little van. He was like a man replenished, not because of the food but because he had been out with real people, and got something out of it. It was probably the single biggest difference between him and TB. They both loved political ideas, wrestling with policy problems and the rest of it, but of the two, Bill was the one who most saw politics in terms of its outcome in people’s lives.

We got back to see TB who had been doing the rounds of receptions and was on a bit of a high, chilling out after the speech, which seemed to have gone down really well. They talked about Bush and it was pretty clear that though Clinton didn’t go for him in public, he didn’t rate him much and thought he stole the election. ‘The problem was that we let them,’ he said, and then gave another pretty negative analysis of the Gore campaign.

I went to the office meeting, then did a few bits and pieces for Bill’s speech, including the suggestion he kick off with ‘Clinton, Bill, Arkansas CLP, New Labour’. He needed assurance that it would work. He also asked me to work on a few lines on Northern Ireland, and on the Third Way. Hans Blix seemed to be making progress and looked like he was trying to do a deal which would not necessarily include palaces. It wasn’t good enough for the US but the UN were pushing it and suggested that we didn’t need another UNSCR. Powell was very hard line that there could be no new inspections without a new UNSCR. We were saying the same but TB and Jack had a very difficult meeting early on, Jack explaining that the US were getting very jittery re the UN route. As Bill said, Rumsfeld and Cheney didn’t want to go the UN route, Powell did, and Bush was not so sure. Jack said the French were simply making clear they would not support war at all. The Chinese didn’t care, the Russians were playing hardball.
TB was also conscious that he had told Bush that Blix was a good guy who knew what he was doing and he was worried Bush would doubt his judgement. TB would speak to Bush later, after Clinton’s conference speech, and it became quite fraught because the Americans wanted one resolution that would allow them to hit Iraq at the first sign of Saddam lying or causing trouble. TB came off the phone around 4pm and said ‘That was difficult. He is beginning to wonder whether we are going down the right road.’ The Americans basically felt that Saddam was fucking them around and they were getting more and more impatient.

TB and I had the
Mirror
lunch to endure, which considering recent events was reasonably friendly. [Sir] Victor [Blank, Trinity Mirror chairman] made his usual spiel about the
Mirror
being a constructive friend. TB did his usual stuff, Piers [Morgan] being cocky, then we left so that I could hurry up Bill. He had put a fair bit of work into the speech and it went down a storm. He was very good on TB, the best exposition of the Third Way I had heard, awesome on the purpose of politics and on the big geopolitical questions. He did a terrific denunciation of so-called compassionate conservatism, got very close to the mark on the Republicans’ domestic agenda and was fairly heavy on them on the international stuff too. Some of our press were seeing it as a big attack on Bush’s policy, whereas we wanted it pitched much more as his expression of support for us.

The real line Clinton was pushing was that we should appreciate the fact that TB was in a position to influence US policy vis-à-vis the UN route, and get Bush to side with Powell versus Cheney and Rumsfeld. Earlier, when we had been running through the speech in his room, he was scathing about the American press, and the corporate corruption they didn’t pursue, the laziness of their coverage. Jonathan and I both felt there were likely to be reverberations from Washington, and TB made sure he was the one who briefed Bush on it on the call. He got fantastic coverage on our news, and the top line running was that he was backing TB to keep going down the UN track. But it was becoming more and more difficult. TB was less confident we could get the tough resolution we wanted. Peter H suggested earlier that we get TB to do a press conference before leaving Blackpool and we got TB up for it, so then we had to sort a venue, backdrop etc. Word had got out about the McDonald’s trip, which was also running big. Jack and Powell had talked five times and Powell was worried that Bush was struggling to keep on the right side of the line. Bush himself had told TB that ‘I’m having trouble holding on to my horse’ but what was clear was that GWB was trying to get TB to agree that if Saddam
was found to be lying that was ‘
casus belli
’ [case for war]. David Manning and Condi spoke to try to get things back on track, then TB spoke to GWB again. Bush was clearly being assailed by his right wing at the moment. TB felt his problem was that his rhetoric was aimed at the Republican right wing but it would stop him getting to the right policy positions. Perhaps it was the Clinton influence, but he seemed to be moving to the view that this was a government which was ruthless about its own power and position. Jack had told him, and we assumed this was in part based on American intelligence, that Chirac was basically intent on avoiding military action come what may.

The GB situation was no better. TB and I both noted that Clare Short had looked like death warmed up after Bill’s speech, presumably because it had been so fulsome about TB and his unique position. Ditto GB. While TB said Ed Balls had brushed shoulders with him when he walked by, like kids in a schoolyard do. Fiona and I went out for dinner with the
Independent
. They were all swooning re Bill and felt TB had done really well yesterday. But there was still resistance there and one or two of them were really pushing for GB. Then a flurry of calls, including from James Blitz at the
FT
, re foundation hospitals. He had been told that GB had seen TB and the policy had been sorted in GB’s favour. In fact it hadn’t and I told James so, which led to the
FT
splash ‘Blair and Brown at loggerheads over foundation hospitals’. TB was neither angry nor upset, just said he really had to sort it. He agreed with me that GB or Balls must have set Blitz up to try to bounce us. He felt Gordon was now so bitter and jealous that it was hitting his judgement. GB was worrying he was running out of time. If it was going to be resolved, then maybe TB ought to press the advantage now, the week definitely having strengthened him.

Awesome coverage for Bill. Not least the
Mirror
front page – the
Mirror
salutes you, sir, an American leader who says everything we have been waiting to hear. Up early and in to see TB pre the
Today
programme interview. The hard question was whether the conference vote meant that we could only take military action with a specific UN mandate. TB felt we just had to dance around it for now and point to the UN process. He was actually more worried about the A-levels issue. He could not find the rationale as to why, if it was an accident waiting to happen, and then it happened, no minister carried the can. He felt that nobody had really thought through it all and gripped it. For the press conference, I drafted very brief opening remarks on reform, Iraq and the French beef ban being lifted. On Iraq,
the Americans were saying today they were putting out a dossier on [Saddam’s] palaces, which they never did. But we used the line that it was no good going for ninety-nine per cent of Iraq being inspected if the WMD were in the other one per cent.

TB was OK on foundation hospitals, said there was agreement on principle but technical details needed to be worked out, Milburn was right to want greater autonomy, GB right to press for value for money. The truth is that both had cocked it up by overzealous briefing which we had allowed to get out of hand in the crazy conference atmosphere. He was good on
Today
and [James] Naughtie said he looked like he had got his second wind. TB said he had never been clearer about the direction of the government, a theme picked up by
The World at One
. A lot of the journos were pissed off at having to stay in Blackpool for his press conference but he was on a roll. He was amazingly bouncy for the end of such a heavy week. On Iraq, he said Saddam would be disarmed come what may, but we must have a new UNSCR before inspections go ahead. Then lots of regional questions for those stations that didn’t get full interviews. And though it wasn’t chart-topping stuff, it was definitely another win for us, 4–0 I would say. We went down to the conference centre and I watched John Reid who had real presence on the podium, could deliver a joke and a message. Good mood at the end. I listened to Reid on
The World at One
. He was absolutely superb.

I spoke to a number of columnists on the drive out to the airport and they all seemed to think TB had had a particularly good week. GB could win the lesser races but he wasn’t in the same league. We were in a great position. The Iraq row never really took off. TB had been commanding and strong. GB had put himself around everywhere but had not been brilliant. And the Tories were gathering against a backdrop of worries about Jeffrey Archer,
⁵⁵
Major shagging Currie, and growing concern over IDS.

Iraq still really tricky. TB just wished the Americans would do more to put over a proper message to the world and worry less about their own right wing. First, a meeting in the garden, TB, AC, Jonathan, Andrew Adonis, later joined by David Manning. First we had to work out how to respond to the breaking news that Sinn Fein members
were being arrested for arms offences and the obvious worry the ceasefire was breaking. Just had to play it along. Then foundation hospitals. There was a plan for a major presentation on this to ministers on Monday but Andrew said the Health department and the Treasury just could not agree on the facts. It was clearly going to have to be sorted at political level and I suggested a TB/GB/JP/AM meeting with no officials at all. TB said he was worried GB was just looking the whole time to position himself slightly to the left on everything. He felt Balls was a real problem, clever but often giving him wrong strategic advice.

Then A levels, on which he was persistently worried, saying we had to find some good people to put round Estelle. On student finance, again a GB problem, with AA saying the Treasury were preparing to undermine it as ‘the university poll tax’. TB said ‘I’m afraid there does rather appear to be a pattern here. It could be he is getting desperate and maybe preparing to bring the show down.’ David Manning joined us, said we were in a much better position with Blix having said yesterday he was keen to get a tougher resolution with no inspections till then. TB felt there was a case for trying to get Putin more firmly on board and then get him to work on Chirac. He felt the Americans simply had no strategy for the French because, as Bill [Clinton] had said, it was all being driven by his [Bush’s] own domestic politics.

David Manning felt that Saddam was probably going to make positive noises about inspections and try to drag things to February because then the ‘window of war’ would close because he couldn’t expect troops to fight in fifty-degree heat. I got a message from Godric that Charles Reiss [
Evening Standard
] was picking up on a line from Mary Ann Sieghart’s [
Times
] column that GB was ‘insanely jealous’ of TB. TB wanted us to put out a very pro-GB line and make clear he would never sanction such a statement being made. But it was worrying, given he had said those very words, and I wondered to whom as well as to me.

In the conference call with the Americans I stressed the worries from here that Bush needed to get out a message to the world, not just the US. Tucker Eskew [White House media affairs] said Bush had said that war was his last choice not his first choice. Then spoke to Blunkett to get him signed up to do the first of the planned new briefings to be done by ministers rather than officials. Jeremy did a note to TB on EMU, saying that even Gus O’Donnell [Treasury permanent secretary] did not know what GB was really thinking but Jeremy’s guess was that GB would come to us in the next six months and say
that four out of the five tests were met or being met but that one, sustainable convergence, was not. TB said that on everything, even these vital national interest issues, he was just using them to position himself in a different place to TB. However, surely the lesson of the week had been that the party had changed and it was GB who was not properly adapting to it. TB remained adamant that we should not go after GB and his people through the press, because the party would not like it and would get confused. But the GB fog was clouding everything.

I called Doug Band in Germany to fill him in on the coverage of Bill’s speech, and Bill came on the line and said ‘Hey man, what is going on in Northern Ireland?’ I explained how some of the SF people were stuck in the arms game. He said if there was anything he could do, he wanted to do it, and he would go there at the drop of a hat. He asked if Bush’s people had reacted to his speech. I said not officially, but my sense from Dan Bartlett and Tucker was they weren’t terribly happy about it.