The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries (73 page)

Thirty-five minutes on the treadmill, pretty fast. Kamal [Ahmed,
Observer
political editor] and a photographer here for four hours to do a piece on me doing the marathon. Saw an osteopath who said I had one leg slightly longer than the other and my right knee was inflamed. I had a really vivid dream about Dad dying. Mum and I were out in the field and then we went back into the house and Dad came through from his bedroom, sat down and said ‘I’m absolutely buggered. I’m not sure I can go on much longer like this.’ Small trickles of sweat and blood started to come down his face and I just hugged him and said he was a great father and I hoped I was too. Mum was crying.

Took Grace to Brighton for her first solo Burnley match. On the way down, a call saying Clare [Short] had done Radio 5 and said it would be deplorable if England played [a cricket World Cup match] in
Zimbabwe, how she intended to press Tessa [Jowell], etc. More evidence of how Clare just stirs. It was a difficult line to tread this one, making clear what we would do if it was our decision, but also making clear that it’s not. The difference between having a view and being able to make a decision. Jack S and Tessa both livid at Clare and her usual moral-conscience stuff, as though she was the only one who had one and the only one who says what she thinks. Tessa said we could all go out and say things to please certain constituencies but we don’t because that is the deal on which a system of collective responsibility works. It was bloody cold. We went 2–0 up, then conceded two in the final two minutes. Dreadful.

To the Milibands for dinner. David had quite a detached view these days, felt the government was losing its way. We were both very frank about recent events and our belief that we were talking about rather ridiculous people who had somewhat left the planet. Fiona was feeling it much more than me at the moment and I was also finding it hard to get up much enthusiasm. And TB/GB was a total, probably irredeemable fault line. In the
Sunday Times
, the Olympic bid was the latest issue seemingly to be the focus of TB/GB division. It was all dispute and difficulty by proxy.

Conference call with Jack Straw, Mike O’Brien [FCO minister] et cetera re Zimbabwe and we agreed that Mike should do clips making clear that the decision was for the cricket authorities but if it WAS our decision we would say do not go. It was a tricky one because on the one hand there was a clear political message to send, and on the other it wasn’t the job of government to say where sportsmen should and shouldn’t play. The problem with a compromise position was that it tended to land you in the worst of all worlds. Clare and now Nasser Hussain [England cricket captain] were saying that we should set up a body to decide on these things. IDS wrote to TB urging him to ‘clear up the confusion’ and take a lead. Jack though was very unkeen to move the line. I reminded him that the last time he, Mike, Tom Kelly and I were on a conference call it was followed not long after by a ministerial resignation, namely Peter’s. Tessa was seething at Clare, felt she was just stirring on this and she intended to write to her rather than speak to her, so that the argument could not be misconstrued and spun against her. TB called for a general chat which seemed mainly to consist of telling me what a marvellous time he was having. ‘How lovely,’ Fiona said when I told her.

Zimbabwe ticking over. Finished the New Year message. It was pouring all day so Calum’s tennis was off again. Instead, I went for a long run, 8.7 miles in one hour ten. The
Sun
had a two-page spread in ‘Bizarre’ [gossip column] on me allegedly dumping Britney [Spears, American singer] for Ms Dynamite [award-winning British singer], seemingly based on the fact that I listened to Ms Dynamite when running, though in actual fact I was mainly listening to the Lighthouse Family [British musical duo] on long runs. Godric was doing the honours briefing, plus Zimbabwe. Went to see the new James Bond film [
Die Another Day
], which was total crap.

Agreed with Anne Shevas [chief press officer] to put out the New Year’s message for tomorrow. But no doubt that I was letting my own mood affect it and the overall impact was pretty downcast and gloomy.
⁸¹
Fiona and I both agreed we could not recall feeling less like the New Year mood you were meant to feel. It was largely because we knew that TB and CB had to change but saw little sign of it happening, and had very little belief that it would.

¹
Blair told the audience of politicians and business leaders ‘Today, inevitably, I speak against the background of September 11 and the tension here in this subcontinent. But I want to set even these events in a wider context: how Britain and India work together, with others, to confront terrorism; but also how we build support for the policies and values that promote peace and justice and mitigate against extremism and terror, in all nations everywhere.’

²
1993 Hollywood comedy, in which the same day repeats ad nauseam.

³
Donald Rumsfeld has been reported as saying ‘I do not feel even the slightest concern about their treatment. They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else over the last several years.’

⁴
‘The Week in Strategic Context’, a strategic communications note drawn from the Grid, addressed to John Prescott but copied to all ministers.

⁵
The Blairs had complained to the Press Complaints Commission about reports in the
Daily Telegraph
and
Daily Mail
about Euan Blair applying for a place at Oxford University. The complaint was upheld.

⁶
A ‘unity’ football match would be played on 15 February at the Afghan national stadium between Kabul Olympic Football Club and troops of the International Security Assistance Force, the latter including players from the UK, Denmark, Norway, France, Italy, Spain, Holland and Germany.

⁷
Addis, a 94-year-old, had allegedly been neglected in the Whittington Hospital in North London. Her daughter made a complaint to her MP – Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.

⁸
After telling the audience that each negative media story about the health service was ‘tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper’, Blair said ‘This is the decade when we look to public service professionals as the new byword for can-do innovation and dynamism. For shaking things up and getting things done.’

⁹
Blair was quoted as saying ‘If the NHS is not basically fixed by the next election, then I am quite happy to suffer the consequences. I am quite willing to be held to account by the voters if we fail.’

¹⁰
Allegations that collapsed energy company Enron had offered financial support to Labour in return for a change of policy on gas-fired power stations. The allegations were denied.

¹¹
In what would become known as his ‘axis of evil’ speech, Bush specifically homed in on three nations he claimed were developing weapons of mass destruction.

¹²
The helicopter was carrying twenty-five British intelligence experts from Belfast to a conference in Fort George, Scotland. A 1995 RAF board of inquiry ruled that the crash was caused by gross negligence, a judgement challenged by families of special forces pilots Jonathan Tapper and Rick Cook.

¹³
Blair paraphrased a line in
The Prince
(1532) by Niccolò Machiavelli: ‘Men ought either to be indulged or utterly destroyed, for if you merely offend them they take vengeance.’

¹⁴
Blair told delegates ‘Forget the nonsense about privatising public services . . . if we are to win the argument for collective provision, defeat the wreckers and secure the future of our public services, then we must be prepared to use all available means to make the improvements that patients and pupils and passengers demand. And we will.’

¹⁵
The situation, which Blair would dismiss at PMQs as ‘garbage’, became known as the ‘Garbagegate’ affair. Mittal, a substantial donor to the Labour Party, had been seeking control of Romania’s state steel industry, and despite one per cent of his company’s workforce being based in the UK, Blair’s intervention was seen as decisive.

¹⁶
Sir Richard Mottram reportedly told Sixsmith ‘We’re all fucked. I’m fucked. You’re fucked. The whole department is fucked. It’s the biggest cock-up ever. We’re all completely fucked.’

¹⁷
Sixsmith had kept detailed contemporaneous notes and verbatim accounts of conversations with Campbell and others.

¹⁸
Anthony Hammond had reopened his investigation into the Hinduja passports affair after Peter Mandelson submitted correspondence between himself and his private secretary, Mark Langdale. Hammond conceded that though the correspondence offered ‘some support’ for Mandelson’s account of his conduct, ‘it is still not possible to reach any firm conclusions about the contacts which took place between Mr Mandelson and Mr O’Brien’. Hammond’s main findings, and Mandelson’s situation, were unchanged.

¹⁹
At the Commonwealth summit, Blair revealed Paul Smith-designed shirt sleeves featuring a naked, kneeling woman holding a telephone on each cuff.

²⁰
In the speech, delivered at the London School of Economics and entitled ‘Next Steps for New Labour’, Blair said ‘Remember ten years ago: we were on our knees, out of office and out of hope. Now look forward ten years and imagine what could be possible . . . imagine too what we could achieve pulling together if we show our determination, stick to the values we believe are right, stick to our plans and see them through.’

²¹
Following Robert Mugabe being returned as president in the election of March 9–11, the Commonwealth Observer Group’s preliminary report on the way it was conducted claimed ‘a high level of politically motivated violence and intimidation’ by supporters of the ruling party, Zanu-PF, had marred and influenced the poll.

²²
The EU leaders’ summit was disrupted by anti-globalisation protesters in Las Ramblas.

²³
MPs voted for a complete ban on hunting with dogs when asked to choose between three options: a complete ban on fox hunting; the preservation of the status quo, and the compromise of licensed hunting.

²⁴
In a speech focusing on secondary schools, Blair said ‘We should be proud of our education system, our teachers and staff. There is, however, a lot more to do. We want to be the best. And we can be. The challenge is to educate not just the top twenty or thirty per cent well but all our children.’

²⁵
Campbell and Fiona Millar had met as junior reporters on the Mirror Group training scheme, and worked together on the weekly paper.

²⁶
Aggressive and highly competitive central-midfielder, hugely successful captain of Manchester United.

²⁷
Blair said ‘Leaving Iraq to develop WMD, in flagrant breach of no less than nine separate UN Security Council resolutions, refusing still to allow weapons inspectors back to do their work properly, is not an option.’

²⁸
The Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod, the sovereign’s parliamentary attendant, sergeant-at-arms and Keeper of the Doors in the House of Lords.

²⁹
The
Spectator
having claimed that Blair had tried to ‘muscle in’ on plans for the Queen Mother’s lying-in-state, the
Mail on Sunday
asserted that a Downing Street aide had telephoned Black Rod to ask if the Prime Minister would be able to greet the Queen and the coffin as it arrived at Westminster Hall. Downing Street confirmed the call, but maintained it was only to clarify the Prime Minister’s role. A complaint to the Press Complaints Commission resulted in the regulator finding there was no evidence that the Prime Minister had done anything wrong, but Number 10 dropped the case.

³⁰
Lloyd Scott completed the London Marathon route in five days and eight hours, wearing a deep sea diving suit weighing 110 lb. He and Blair would appear on
Breakfast with Frost
on April 21, though not together.

³¹
Labour: 2,402 council seats and control of sixty-three councils. Conservatives: 2,005 council seats and forty-two councils. Liberal Democrats: 1,263 council seats and fifteen councils.

³²
Stuart Drummond, who played the local football club’s mascot monkey, was elected mayor of Hartlepool, while former ‘zero tolerance’ chief superintendent of Cleveland Police, Ray Mallon, won the mayoralty in Middlesbrough.

³³
In a speech reported as Blair taking on business critics, he told the CBI dinner ‘Nobody likes paying taxes. Even after the Budget we remain a relatively low-taxed economy and one of the best of the world to do business. But I was elected to fix our public services, schools and hospitals first, and that is what I intend to do.’

³⁴
Asked by Iain Duncan Smith which Cabinet minister was responsible for referenda, Blair indicated the Home Secretary. However, responsibility for referenda had been passed from the Home Office to Stephen Byers’ department (DTLR) a year earlier.

³⁵
A public row between Republic of Ireland football captain Keane and manager Mick McCarthy during preparations for the World Cup in Japan resulted in Keane leaving the squad. The Irish team was defeated by Spain in the second round.

³⁶
In his speech at the Jubilee party, the Prince of Wales had referred to the ‘politically incorrect second verse’ of ‘God Save the Queen’, which asks God to ‘Confound their politics, frustrate their knavish tricks’, etc.

³⁷
Corry had emailed the Labour Party asking for information on the political affiliation of the Paddington Survivors Group, which Pam Warren co-founded. The email was sent the day after Mrs Warren had publicly accused Stephen Byers of misleading Parliament over the decision to take Railtrack into administration.