Back running regularly, twice today, feeling a lot better after first reasonable chat with Fiona for ages. She had seen Jonathan yesterday to say she was leaving definitely in September, whatever I did. At my morning meeting, Ian Austin [Brown’s spokesman] reacted very defensively when I asked why GB didn’t simply say that he supports the policy on foundation hospitals. Ian protested that he did, and said people were briefing against GB. Both the Sun and The Times had leaders today attacking him for not being reformist enough, leaning to Old Labour, which was clearly Murdoch’s line.
We had a brief political meeting, with TB and the core political people, back to the argument why public service delivery isn’t happening at the rate we want, why no overall narrative, where is the sense that education is still the number one priority, where are the values driving what we are doing? We were also still miles apart on the euro. The Treasury sent over a draft structure for the statement, which was hopeless.
Cabinet was pretty dire, a fairly desultory run around the block on European elections, Northern Ireland, fairly lacklustre discussion about Iraq where Clare made even by her standards a ridiculous intervention, that seemed interminable, about a museum in Baghdad.46 JP was barely containable. TB then had a meeting with Milburn who was in a total rage re GB. ‘It’s fucking not on. He’s actually encouraging people to vote down a government bill [Health and Social Care Bill, containing plans to introduce foundation hospitals] that’s been agreed. He’s just sent over a long document with new queries and problems which in fact have already been answered. You wouldn’t tolerate it from anyone else but you have to realise this is an attack on you, Tony, and you can’t just stand there and take it, you have to do something.’ All TB could do was say he had spoken to GB who had assured him he would get in there and support the policy. Alan’s face betrayed the reality, that it was wishful thinking. Hilary A said it was becoming a settled view that GB was using this to damage Alan but it was also damaging TB.
Alan came round to see me afterwards and said if this kind of thing happened again, he would walk. I had the phone call with Margaret Tutwiler in Baghdad. She had a very broad, slightly weird accent and was prickly and defensive. I got the impression she didn’t really understand why she had to speak to me. I tried a bit of charm and flattery, but all I really got back was a litany of difficulties, how the lack of communications and security made it all very difficult. The impression I got was of a pretty chaotic approach. I said I just wanted to help as much as I could because I feared there was a lack of positive strategic communication and the media would fill the vacuum. She said she thought the best thing would be if we could persuade the press to leave because everything was so chaotic! It was a pretty hopeless discussion.
We had Rumsfeld due in tomorrow. I agreed with his office that there should be no media. TB with Rumsfeld was the last thing we needed right now. We went out for dinner with the Kinnocks. On Iraq, it was very much Neil and I on one side, Glenys and Fiona on the other. Neil had a great line, said he thought we had the best possible outcome, that Saddam was both dead and alive. The only point he slightly lost it was when Glenys said we were following the Bush doctrine. He was pretty down on GB at the moment, said he had told him that the only thing that could stop him becoming leader was himself.
The local elections were better for the Tories than expected. BNP strong in Burnley [from three council seats to eight]. We did badly without it being a disaster.47 TB felt that for midterm, second term, it was OK. I ran in and at the morning meeting had to contend with Ian Austin’s anger at the coverage on foundation hospitals. Both the Sun and The Times ran stories that GB allies, with John Healey named, were orchestrating the opposition. The Treasury put out a denial and Healey called me later to say it wasn’t true. ‘You know me well enough to know I wouldn’t do that.’ He said he had been accused of stirring both Dobbo [Frank Dobson] and Doug Henderson but was adamant he had not spoken to them about it. TB, though he had asked us not to stir it, didn’t exactly complain about the coverage. It was interesting to note again that it was only when their antics risked being exposed that they occasionally started to pull back.
TB was seeing Rumsfeld at Chequers. But I emphasised to TB he needed to make clear to Rumsfeld how urgent it was that they got their act together at every level. I had been alarmed by the Tutwiler call. She was very defensive. Dan [Bartlett] called me later, fresh from the spectacular impact of Bush landing on an aircraft carrier in a flight suit to deliver a victory speech, and said she [Tutwiler] had never really wanted to go there.
On foundation hospitals, I met with my team to plan the next few days, with Darren Murphy [Milburn’s special adviser] sure we would win the vote, Simon Stevens [health policy adviser] less confident. We hadn’t really got up the argument well about how this was helping to deliver Labour goals. TB had a pretty daunting workload at the moment, Iraq, UN, euro, NI, asylum, public services, European Convention, all of them really eating into his diary, with the GB business constantly in the background. Looking back at the week, I didn’t feel we had achieved much.
The Times magazine ran Peter Stothard’s piece [on TB at fifty] which was pretty fair. The other thing running was follow-up to the line in Vanity Fair of me saying ‘We don’t do God’ when I tried to shunt David Margolick to the back of the plane [see March 16]. Allied to Peter Stothard’s line that TB had wanted to say ‘God bless you’ at the end of his Iraq broadcast, there was a bit of a running theme in the media about me trying to stop him talking about God. TB seemed reasonably relaxed.
His current refrain was that the only radical policies were coming from the centre. Even the departments we felt were pretty good, like Health under Alan and Education under Charles, didn’t really drive forward change. The machine at the centre was trying to push forward all the time, and the bureaucracies in departments trying to push back. It was really frustrating him. He was disappointed that Charles and David Miliband had allowed the schools funding situation to deteriorate. Whilst he had been so focused on Iraq, others had taken their foot off the accelerator.
I spent part of the day drafting a note on all the strategic challenges we face, viewed through what goals we would like to meet by the summer, just twelve weeks from now. Iraq, MEPP, Afghanistan, Africa, on the geopolitical front, the polar world division with the French, euro, IGC [EU Intergovernmental Conference], all the big domestic issues, also trust, TB. I did it partly to force myself to think it all through but also to draw attention to what I thought was a gap between the scale of the challenges and the lack of capacity in departments and at the centre to meet them. I was trying to get TB to shake up the system, not just rest on his being so sure that it was all about policy. I sent the note through and he called a couple of hours later. He said he had been thinking the same thing. Six years in, almost to the day, we were facing more or less the same problems. It was all about delivery of the machine.
He felt re the politicians, that we had some OK ministers but too many of them were basically European social democrats, who tended to look for partnership and compromise rather than face up to really difficult decisions. He didn’t like fighting on too many fronts. He felt re the argument on foundation hospitals that it actually wasn’t that radical. He felt that the controversy of the schools agenda was also not matched by the radicalism, that we were being held back by forces of conservatism. I said again I felt we should have stuck with that argument. I put a worst-case analysis – at best what could be called the variable quality of ministers, GB paralysing reform, senior civil servants often resistant to change.
We also faced a big loss when Jeremy [Heywood] went [to join Morgan Stanley investment banking division]. TB had deliberately sought out David Manning and Stephen Wall and that had made a difference. He had to do the same with Jeremy’s replacement. If the Civil Service wasn’t so status-conscious, it would be possible to get one of the best permanent secretaries, Gus O’Donnell or Michael Jay even, but neither would be keen because it would be seen as a demotion. But at least he was focusing on these personnel issues.
Calum and I went to Wimbledon vs Burnley, last game in the season, Wimbledon’s last game at Selhurst Park and a bit of a sad affair all round [Wimbeldon 2, Burnley 1]. Leeds beat Arsenal, leaving Man United the champions. Alex F and Rory both mildly delirious. I watched a bit of [political journalist] John Sergeant’s BBC programme to coincide with TB’s birthday. It was very funny in parts, though Mo [Mowlam] and [Peter] Kilfoyle were exceptionally bitter. Overall TB came over fine.
TB called first thing, wanted to talk again about the strategic challenge note I had done. He said it was the right analysis. He wasn’t sure how widely we could discuss it because it was about policy and personnel. He was aware that things weren’t working as well as they should be. He reckoned we had a year really to get it moving, really to be in a position at the next election where it was accepted that public services are much better. We agreed we were nowhere near that. Education had gone backwards. Health is better but it’s patchy. Ditto crime. Transport is a disaster. He then said he was thinking about making this a five-year term, really get these issues sorted, ‘particularly if I decide I don’t want to fight a third election’. He still hadn’t decided but said he couldn’t understand why there was now this assumption that a term was four years when the option of five was there. He was also thinking about a reshuffle just before Whitsun followed by a major drive on reform. He knew we would lose some of our coalition over the euro but was confident we could win over others on reform.
He was also still making up his mind about GB. He acknowledged he had ceded too much to him. He said it sometimes felt like we were driving with the handbrake on, because he thwarts reform, not necessarily because he is against it, but because he wants to make life difficult. It was obvious that TB wanted to go a lot further on public services, open them up to real innovation and competition. He was working on a note of what he wanted to see in the statement on the euro assessment. As far as he was concerned, this was a big test of whether GB was serious about working with him. ‘If he’s not, then I’m prepared to do the deed. I’m not prepared to be held back from making a change I believe it may be in Britain’s interests to make.’
The note had at least provoked, or at least brought to the open, some pretty big thoughts. What we actually did about driving change in these big departments was less clear. He felt the Foreign Office was pretty good, Treasury good but limited and sometimes malign, but that overall we didn’t have good domestic departments. What he was signalling was that 1. he intended big policy changes, 2. a big reshuffle, 3. longer term, he seemed to be keeping open the option of someone else leading us into the next election. He said he had not ruled out standing again but ‘I kind of think eight years is enough for this kind of job.’
We were building up to the foundation hospital vote tomorrow and used TB’s speech to the Newspaper Society to get up some of the arguments on that.48 [David] Bradshaw wrote in quite a funny section on TB being fifty. TB started his day with a ninety-minute session, one-on-one, with GB on the euro. He said afterwards that it was a ‘real crackerjack job’. He had asked him for a completed copy of the draft statement on the EMU assessment. GB said not until they had sorted out their differences. So here we were, a few weeks before what might be the momentous decision of the parliament, possibly of TB’s premiership, and his Chancellor wouldn’t tell him what he intended to say. ‘It’s like dealing with a child,’ he said. ‘I said to him that I wanted him to work with me. He says I am working with you. Then, no you’re not, yes I am. Then he’s back into “I know what you’re up to” and he does all this stuff about me wanting to get rid of him.’
TB said he had told him that it felt at times like driving a car with the handbrake on. ‘That’s a very significant statement,’ said GB. No it’s not, it’s obvious, said TB. He said he just couldn’t see a way out of it at the moment, also that he believed GB was actually intent on destroying the health bill. Alan was making clear he would resign if we lost the vote tomorrow. We signed off the speech, then into the car where Putin called him to say happy birthday, which suggested he was trying to calm things down a bit after recent events.
Ran in and the morning meeting was pretty much all taken up with foundation hospitals. The whips were still worried that if the Tories really went for it, we could lose. The rebellion could be bigger than we thought. TB had breakfast with John Howard [Australian Prime Minister], mainly Iraq and Zimbabwe, then to a meeting with Charles C on schools funding. Charles was clear it could be sorted but he may need more money. We went over for PMQs and though TB did well, and IDS was crap, the signs were still of a very big revolt. I got back for an Iraq communications meeting and we were really focused now on how to try to get a UK operation properly inserted into Baghdad. I called [Major General] Tim Cross [senior British officer, Coalition Provisional Authority] who said that he couldn’t properly express to me just how useless the Americans were. They had no idea. He said there were people working hard but who couldn’t deliver. He felt we should try to get a CIC-type operation inserted in there. I had been led to believe he was very protective of the US there, but in reality he could barely conceal his contempt. ‘I’m afraid they are very capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because they are just useless at the things they now need to be doing.’ On the communications side, he said somehow we had to make it work. We agreed to try to get more of our people there. It would help when we got John Sawers [UK ambassador to Egypt, Blair’s former foreign policy adviser] there as the UK envoy.
Then it was a case of hanging around for the vote. TB said ‘This is classic. The Labour Party and a group of bone-headed MPs making historic errors that will help put us out of power and leave others to do the reforms that we should have done.’ He said it was a different issue but a rerun of In Place of Strife.49 If we lost, he wanted us to come back with a bill that was more reformist, not less. He felt it was crazy for Alan [Milburn] to talk about resigning and that he was far too prone to the cavalier and dramatic. But I spoke to Alan who said he had thought long and hard about it and he would definitely resign. ‘There have to be rules. This is my bill and if it’s rejected I will have to go.’ When it came to the vote, it was 304 for the bill to 230 against. The wrecking amendment was defeated 297 to 117, with sixty-five Labour rebels.
The foundation hospitals vote was fading away but it emerged during the day that Clare hadn’t voted. She claimed it was because she thought the vote was at 10pm. Nor did she come to Cabinet, claiming that she had to read intelligence briefs before a meeting with the leader of Rwanda [President Paul Kagame]. TB had another euro meeting with GB, who seemed a bit troubled. Last night’s vote was not great for him. TB told him that the reshuffle would be after the euro statement, which he hoped would bind him in a bit. TB seemed a bit more confident on the substance.
Cabinet was awful, even without Clare. Iraq, Northern Ireland, then a truly awful discussion of the local elections. Ian McCartney was not too bad, very factual about the results, where we had done well, where we had done less well, some quite good analysis, but then a whole load of interventions displaying considerable knicker-wetting. Alistair D was clearly in a bit of a flap about the Libs letting the Tories in, Blunkett on the BNP and the need to reinforce what we were trying to do on the crime agenda, and above all the need to tackle asylum. Patricia [Hewitt] saw it all through the prism of the electoral behaviour of women. JP left before the discussion had finished, muttering that he couldn’t stand any more of this.
TB agreed afterwards that it was a pretty awful discussion but equally he should have given more of a lead. I went off to speak at lunch for all the EU ambassadors. I was on good form at the Q&A, where the questions were mainly on the euro, fallout from the local elections, TB’s future intentions, EU–US, and defence. It was definitely worth doing. The German [Thomas Matussek] and the Greek [Alexandros Sandis] asked afterwards why I didn’t do TV briefings because they felt that apart from TB, nobody really explained foreign policy so clearly. Only the French sent a deputy rather than the actual ambassador.
Back to Number 10 for TB doing another series of public services meetings, first health, then education, really trying to press his own people and the departments to think more radically. I was also worried that what Jonathan, Jeremy and Andrew [Adonis] were badging as ever more radical, felt to me like radical right wing. We had a brief political strategy meeting, at the end of which Philip said to me he thought TB had been a bit too unyielding – he was right, everyone else was wrong, he was now going for broke. I think it was just an expression of his frustration at lack of delivery. Fiona was having a dreadful time with Cherie, first of all, Cherie seemed to hold her responsible for TB not having a birthday party, whereas in fact all of us had been clear it was the wrong thing to be doing, no matter how privately intended, while Iraq was still as intense as it was. Now, another problem. We had Marie Claire [women’s lifestyle magazine] in for an interview and picture session and Fiona had told Cherie not to let them in the flat without her being there. Not only did Cherie have them up in the flat but allowed them to photograph her in the bedroom with Carole [Caplin] putting on her lipstick. Fiona was convinced she would be better out of it sooner rather than later. The way I was feeling, I was keen to get out pretty soon too.
TB was up in Sedgefield and called a couple of times. I was more conscious, after Philip’s observation, of how regularly he said ‘I know I’m right about this.’ In truth, often he was, and I was as down on departments as he was, but equally I was beginning to get less and less motivated. We were already beginning to talk about elections and it just didn’t hold out the excitement it once did. Also Rory had an interesting take. He said he reckoned I wasn’t as good as I used to be, that if I left soon, I would be a legend, the first person really to take communications to a level that made an actual difference to politics, whereas if I stayed, it was downhill all the way. ‘You’re not enjoying it as much as you did, you’re not doing it as well as you did, and never forget that the reason [former Manchester United footballer] Eric Cantona’s a legend is because he left at the right time.’ I had a long call with Dan Bartlett, who was as seized as I was with the need for change in ORHA’s modus operandi. I offered to put a team of UK people at his disposal. Paul Bremer was replacing [General Jay] Garner [as director of ORHA], [John] Sawers was going soon so it was possible we would improve things but we really needed to up our game. Calum finished his SATs [Standard Assessment Tests] and was particularly happy with a question about Henry V being a lower-league football manager, and how would he prepare to play Arsenal in the Cup Final.
I spent most of the day taking the boys to various sport events, then later the Goulds came round for dinner. Philip, who could normally be relied on for a bit of optimism, said that for the first time he could see TB losing the election, that he seemed a bit out of steam, not getting things like he used to.
The Mail on Sunday had stuff on Cherie and Bermuda.50 It seemed to us that whether knowingly or not, Carole was shipping stuff to the Mail group.
TB was seeing GB the whole time, trying to get him to be more positive about the euro assessment or at least be positive about the idea of a referendum this parliament remaining a possibility. TB called me to the flat first thing to say he was really worried about Cherie. There was someone very close in putting stuff into the press, this weekend again with the freebie story in the Mail on Sunday. He noticed for the first time that the kids were getting worried about it. He wanted to know if I thought Fiona was still able to help her. I said Fiona felt she had been let down, that Cherie had changed and that Carole was a bigger problem than either of them were prepared to concede. I said Fiona was definitely leaving. He asked what she would do. I said that depended in part on me. He asked what I wanted to do. I said I would like to go fairly soon. I wasn’t enjoying the job anything like as much as I did and I wasn’t doing it as well as I could. He said he thought I had done it well during Iraq, and he was sure I was doing it better than anyone else could. I said the public service reform agenda was not really my thing, and in any event I wondered whether some of our media problems might be helped if I went. He said he realised why I felt the way I did, because there weren’t that many really high-pressure jobs, but he had one of them, and I had another. He really wanted me to think it through very carefully. He was not sure yet whether he would fight another election. A lot depended on GB.
Later, when he saw Fiona again, he said he was unlikely to stay but he couldn’t be sure. She spent an hour with him and though he started off very defensive about Cherie, he admitted that in part because of the pressure of the job, he had neglected her, but he also knew that things had to change. TB and I had been talking about it just before 10 and Jonathan and Andrew Turnbull came in.
Suma Chakrabarti [permanent secretary] had called from DFID to say that Clare was about to resign. From then on we were set for a day in which she would do as much damage as possible. She got a line out to PA as soon as she resigned, then interviews, later a statement. Every part of it was very bitter and designed for maximum damage. TB though felt it was the best outcome. He was intending to sack her, she probably knew it, so she walked, but with little credibility. Her letter of resignation was pretty bitter. I worked on TB’s reply, conscious of the fact I had waited eight years for this, but now it came to it I felt very little satisfaction from it. She wasn’t worth it. I watched her Commons statement and she got more and more bitter as she went on, spreading the attack on Iraq to the whole style of government. She was heard in near silence with the occasional gasp as the boot went in.
TB said afterwards that he had bent over backwards to be nice to her and about her, and if there was a criticism to be made of him, it was why he let her stay so long. ‘I doubt that any Cabinet minister has ever been indulged so much by a prime minister.’ There was no point pretending it wasn’t a bad day but she was such damaged goods that it wasn’t that bad. Adam Boulton [Sky] said few people could swallow it all without gagging. She was pretty powerful as a speaker but nauseated a lot of people. Valerie Amos51 took her job. The main thing the politicos were on to was any input GB had. She said on TV that she had discussed her position with GB which begged the perfectly fair question, why he hadn’t mentioned that to TB. We were going through a pretty vulnerable phase. GB, euro, reform, rebellion, Iraq.
Al-Qaeda bombings in Riyadh [Saudi Arabia, thirty-five killed] which were pretty massive. I spoke to John Sawers through the day about ORHA. He was due to have dinner with Paul Bremer and I suggested that he proposed to Bremer that we send a UK team to support their media operation. The papers were needless to say full of Short but the commentariat wasn’t greatly in favour of her. I felt CS herself was not so damaging but the GB resonance was and there was a bit of focus on why he hadn’t alerted TB to what was going on. We were trying to persuade TB that he did have to do more to get back in with those parts of the party drifting off, but he was more and more determined that reform was really all that mattered. The BBC called me out of the blue to ask if I would do a documentary on Paula Radcliffe [world record-holding marathon runner]. I obviously couldn’t do it now, but it underlined again that I wouldn’t be short of offers of work if I left.
Sawers called me after his meeting with Bremer who had asked if I could go out there and help set up the new system I was proposing. Lunch with Piers Morgan. We met at the Savoy Grill. He was in appeasing mood, said he had ballsed up the war, had lost 60,000 readers through that, 120,000 to the price war and he accepted he had fucked up. He knew he wasn’t in a strong position with us but said he wanted to come back in a bit, needed to get rid of [John] Pilger [journalist and polemicist], cut down on [Paul] Routledge [columnist], stop whacking CB, get back to being more positive on the domestic agenda. He denied there was a pro-GB agenda at the Mirror. He viewed TB as a formidable politician who won things through argument. He was sure that if ever it did go to a TB/GB war, TB would win and the Mirror would be on our side. Back for a meeting on the Olympics. I sensed we were moving in the yes direction. I had a chat with Sally who said TB didn’t believe that I would go, so if it was serious, I maybe ought to have the conversation again.
Alison [Blackshaw] spent much of the day trying to sort flights to Iraq while I was talking to John Sawers, then a series of meetings and conference calls on what we needed to do if I got out there. I was starting to ask some of our people, like Simon Wren [MoD] and Darren [Murphy], if they would go to Baghdad. I got the sense that with Bremer there to replace Garner there was the chance to move in properly, though everyone agreed it would not be a good story if I actually went out and ran it.
TB was still thrashing out the euro with GB. He wasn’t at all happy with the process and nor were we, but it was about all we had. Charles C had a bit of a rough time at the PLP because MPs felt the Tories were on to something re tuition fees. Fiona had a face like thunder when I told her I might have to go to Iraq. Then a problem with the Olympics. Yesterday we were clear that we had sorted out the answers to all the financial questions we needed to be clear about for now, but today GB told Tessa that it was definitively not sorted. Both Andy Marr and Martha Kearney [BBC] were chasing me on the euro. Then Simon Buckby [pro-euro campaigner] called me at 9.30 to say the BBC were getting him on to respond to a report by Marr that the assessment had happened, it was negative and it was definitely not happening this parliament. This was clearly the next stage of the bounce. I called TB who said I should call Marr and say he could end up with egg on his face if he was definitive about this parliament.
Andy said he had been briefed by someone with ‘iron authority’, which I assume was his way of saying it was GB. GB denied briefing Marr. I put in a call for Ed Balls who came back just as the bulletin began. He was on a train. He said unless GB was a kamikaze pilot there was no way they would do this the day before a Cabinet meeting that was already going to be difficult. He was adamant that neither he nor GB had spoken to Marr. I said Andy could not have done a story so definitively unless it was one of us four, or Jeremy or Jonathan. I knew it wasn’t me or TB and I didn’t for one second think it would be Jeremy or Jonathan, both of whom were in a state of outrage.
The upshot was that I was taking calls till well past midnight. The best line we could deploy was that a very small number of people knew what would be presented to Cabinet tomorrow, Marr was not one of them and whatever he said the final position was not decided. TB felt GB was worried at the moment. He knew that Clare had damaged TB, but felt she damaged GB too. ‘If this thing ever was pushed to a contest, the fact is I would win. People would not want him if he was trying to force me out. He also knows now that if I wanted to, I could get rid of him and I’ve decided unless he starts being more co-operative and more supportive, I will do that.’ He sounded pretty steely. When I finally got to bed, the phone went again and it was TB again, saying he was sorry I had been kept up late.
The euro stuff was not taking off in the press, but it was still leading the BBC and we had to get ourselves in a better position. TB came down from the flat and after the usual bound down the corridor, we got into his office, sat down, in the armchairs, and he looked really fed up. I asked him what was wrong. He said he and GB were in a different league to the rest of the Cabinet as politicians, and GB was the only one who got anywhere near him in terms of ability, which was why he still felt he had to be next. But he couldn’t see a way out at the moment. He felt if they fell out terminally, and he felt he had to get rid of him, that was the nuclear option. ‘I would probably be left standing but there would be plenty of big holes in the floor around me and the party would be damaged for quite a while.’ He sat down at one point with a pad and made a joke of it, saying let’s do the pros and cons.
Cabinet was going to be tricky. Jeremy had worked out a stage-by-stage process. They had to have a sense of involvement in the process. So we would give them the eighteen documents, and follow it with a series of trilaterals with TB and GB, followed by another Cabinet and finally TB’s statement to Parliament. JP and GB came over and we signed them up to the process. TB believed that GB now thought that if he didn’t do what he wanted on the euro, he was prepared to move him. He said he would still be a pain in the arse at the FCO but he couldn’t do as much damage there. They had another one-on-one after which TB claimed GB was on the same pitch, but we doubted it.
Into Cabinet. First FBU/troops, then Iraq/MEPP, then TB set out the process on the euro and you could sense the relief round the table. He said that everyone within the Cabinet would be engaged in this discussion and whatever the press briefings coming out, he said the final decision had not been made. A number said explicitly how pleased they were at the process. It meant TB was wrestling back some of the control in this, though GB couldn’t resist saying there would also be meetings of the economic affairs subcommittee. TB said there would be another full Cabinet on June 5 or 6 and his statement would probably be on June 9. He urged them to ignore anything they heard in the media until this process was through. TB chaired the discussion well.
Then on to the Olympics decision. TB set out the basic case, Tessa the process and also the need to learn lessons from the [Millennium] Dome and Wembley [Stadium]. JP said everyone had to support it if a yes decision was taken, that there could be no mixed messages. Both Blunkett and Straw, then McCartney, said what a huge benefit it had been to Manchester to host a successful Commonwealth Games. GB then said, in a pretty barbed way, that it was important the business community get the message that things will be asked of them. We had agreed that JP would do the media at lunchtime on the euro. JP went through to see GB at Number 11 and shortly afterwards Joan Hammell [Prescott’s special adviser] came out and asked me to join them. We went over what JP would say, then GB said to me ‘Where do you think the BBC story came from?’ Before I could answer, he said it was not him or Ed – ‘I absolutely guarantee you.’
I did a note to John Sawers on what we could offer Bremer, and on what approach I should take. I had another long chat with [Margaret] Tutwiler who seemingly had delayed her departure by a week in case I went out there. I was really trying to help but practically anything I suggested she would say that they already had it, even if I knew they didn’t. I got the very strong impression she saw me simply as an irritant. Charles Heatley [FCO spokesman in Baghdad] told me that whatever John Sawers said out there, there tended to be an immediate US push back. He also said there was a lot of chatter there about me trying to take over the communications side of things. He felt there was no way I would get them to accept everything we wanted.
Tutwiler gave me a long list of all the things she said were being done, but in the end what mattered was output and in so far as opinions were hardening, they were hardening against us. She was due to be the next undersecretary for [public diplomacy and] public affairs [US State Department] and was going through the approval process, so clearly didn’t want to be seen as part of any failure. Her attitude was ‘we’re not doing perfect but we’re doing OK considering’. John fixed a call with him, me, Bremer and Tutwiler. I did a five-minute pitch, then said I would write him a note overnight on what I felt they needed and what we could offer. I was beginning to think it might be a bad idea actually to go out there, partly because of home, partly because it would be seized on as a big bad story, but most importantly because it did not feel like what the military call a permissive environment.
TB and I had a cup of tea out on the terrace. There was a rumour around that the Mail had some big Carole story they were saving up to do damage either during a euro campaign or the next election. TB said he continued to believe she was basically straight and didn’t want to harm them. Sally sensed he was more worried about it than he was letting on to us. GB was now causing grief on the Olympics. He said to TB ‘Do it anyway, you’ve already made up your mind.’ I saw Les Hinton [News International chairman] and without being absolutely explicit, told him I was thinking about leaving. He started to go over the sorts of things they might ask me to do, columns in the Sun and The Times, books, speeches, etc. He was the first person outside the immediate circle that I had raised it with, albeit obliquely. The only thing really holding me back was a basic loyalty to TB, my fear that he would be weakened, and GB emboldened if I went.
On the one hand, the papers came out fine for TB with a sense that he was back in control of the process and that the Cabinet was being used to shift to a more pro-euro position. On the other, there was still the sense, e.g. The Times and the Guardian, that GB was clearly set against a referendum in this parliament. TB called an EMU meeting for 11, just before he left for Chequers. He said we had to correct the impression, by the weekend, that GB was against a referendum in this parliament. I said that was easy enough for me to say to people but I couldn’t deliver what GB said. I suggested that I try to negotiate an agreed statement with Ed. I discussed it with him and with Jeremy and then drafted something. There was a risk of course that it would be seen as protesting too much. I felt we should get TB to echo their usual line – not dogmatic and emphasise the tests – whilst GB should echo ours, namely that he would fight for a yes vote if the tests were met and it was not the case that in principle he was against a referendum in this parliament.
It took an hour or so. When I read it to TB, he was fine. GB came back with a couple of changes that were relatively insignificant, there basically just to clutter it up, but we kept the basic thrust, i.e. unity and a position more subtle than was being ascribed to both. Phil Webster [Times], who was usually my first yardstick port of call on tricky issues like this, thought it did the job well. [Trevor] Kavanagh’s response was that it showed GB had seen off TB, a bit odd given that I had written it, and in the end it was probably not one of my greatest triumphs, but further evidence of the dysfunctional nature of their relationship.
I got a message to call TB. He asked ‘Are you on a landline?’ I said yes. ‘I think there may be a case for moving him come what may. It’s just not tenable like this. He is impossible to deal with at the moment.’ The press as a whole were not totally convinced by the statement but at least they knew we were trying to keep the act together. I was also dealing with getting more of our people into Baghdad by Monday.
Conference call with JP before the Today programme. The euro was tricky but he was fine. TB felt the statement we had done went well. I felt that it had given the press the chance to take the piss in saying we were protesting too much. We did however get up the message for the party and the rest of the government that we were trying our best to be united on this. I had been a little bit troubled by something Matthew Freud [PR] had told me last night, namely that there was talk around I was thinking of leaving and that I would be absolutely mad and I had the best job in the world for anyone interested in politics and the media, and nothing I ever did afterwards would replace it. Fiona was pressing for a kind of ‘road map’ re my leaving, but it felt like we were going round in circles a bit. I wanted out, but I felt bad and guilty about it. Philip was strongly of the view that GB would feel it would be easier to go for TB if I wasn’t there. But then again, after nine years, surely it was time to get a life back, and get things with Fiona back on track long before the kids move away.
We also had another Leo [Blair] episode to deal with. Some of the papers were doing stuff on the school they expected him to go to. During the day, he fell over [at Chequers], banged his head, so they called NHS Direct who suggested he go to Stoke Mandeville Hospital [Buckinghamshire]. He got the all-clear very quickly but we were back into another potential PCC situation.52 TB felt we shouldn’t push it, while CB told Fiona she felt we should. TB called me as his guests for dinner at Chequers were arriving, including Chris Meyer [former UK ambassador to Washington], Peter Hain, Ben Kingsley [actor], Richard and Judy [Madeley and Finnegan, TV presenters]. Chris Meyer was being touted as the leader of the Olympic bid, presumably by himself as he was very busily not denying it.
Watched GB on Frost. The reality was that he was not very warm on EMU. He said he would fight in a referendum as hard as TB if there was one, but the constant emphasis was on the tests. It was an odd performance all round. He was very but-but, his legs stuck together making him look tight and unrelaxed, and he had this odd habit of putting both hands on the arm of the sofa. He was also dropping in references to Raith Rovers [Scottish football club] in an obvious attempt to give himself a touch of man-of-the-peopleness. When I briefed TB on it afterwards, he said it sounded like a real wasted opportunity. He felt the problem was that whatever the issue, GB was obsessed with idea of winning or losing. He can’t just be part of a team making the right decisions. He has to win, and be seen to win, in the decision-making process.
Fiona spoke to Peter M re CB. Fiona felt Cherie was in something of a state of denial. She just didn’t want to live a normal life really. Peter was broadly sympathetic to Cherie, but the cumulative effect was negative. He also said en passant that he thought GB got the best of me in the joint euro statement because it still meant he had the lock on the process through the tests, which in the end were not scientific but a mix of economic and political. He sounded pretty down about his life, said in terms that he had another busy but ultimately meaningless week ahead of him.
The euro was pretty much back where we had started a few days earlier with GB ‘reasserting control’ via the economic tests. The issues were conflating in the Eurosceptic papers which was deeply irritating. We weren’t really motoring on public services either. Also unhelpfully, someone had briefed Colin Brown [Independent] yesterday that TB would do a press conference on Thursday on better asylum figures, and the right-wing press were gearing up to undermine all that in advance. On the euro, we had the first round of Cabinet trilaterals and that plus the IGC was the main news of the day. We were not in the right place on the IGC. And on the euro, there was still a lack of unity.
At the party meeting with Hilary A, Ian McC and David Triesman, TB was very open. He said that on Europe and on the public services, the party felt division. ‘If GB and I were united on this, there would not be a problem. We have to sort it.’ Ian McCartney said the party was feeling more and more remote, partly from TB but also from the whole government. It was partly about Iraq but it was also about the way we spoke and the claims that we made and the way we made them. The values didn’t come through powerfully enough. TB kept telling me that the EMU stuff was moving our way but there was very little sign of that from GB and his lot.
Jeremy sat in on all the trilaterals. Hilary was clear they could be read either way. So was Ian, who said that on the basis of what he had read, he certainly wouldn’t rule it out. JR was more sceptical, Patricia and Charles more pro and Jeremy said that on a number of specific detailed points, Patricia got the better of GB. Giscard [d’Estaing, chairman of the Convention on the Future of Europe] was due in for dinner with TB to discuss the Convention, but Danny Pruce [press officer, foreign affairs] and I proposed against drawing attention to it. Europe was suddenly right back at the top of the agenda again and I didn’t feel we had a proper strategy for it. Even though he was mainly focused on the euro, in the chats we had in between, he was banging on about reform again. ‘I know I’m right about this.’ If we don’t take on reform the Tories will rebuild around it, and win their way back by promising to do things that we should be doing. It was just crazy to stand in the way of reform. Wrong for the country, wrong for the party.
Sally having told me he was in denial about me leaving, I wrote him a note setting out why I was going. Also, Godric was going to announce at the four o’clock that he was moving on. Then just before, bizarrely, Ari Fleischer announced he was leaving. I had David Hill in for a chat, and asked him, if I moved on, whether he would take on my job. He said he feared he was too old at fifty-five. He had got himself into a nice position [in commercial public relations] and didn’t know if he had the energy to get up for another massive job. He was clearly tempted, said he felt it was probably a no, but he would think about it.
In for a meeting on the Convention [on the Future of Europe], trying to get a grip on overall strategy and message. We were not in a good place on the euro, or on Europe more generally. Ian McCartney came to see me, said he was really worried about the party, that the sense of division had definitely driven through. TB said the euro trilateral with Andrew Smith [Work and Pensions Secretary] in particular, and to a lesser extent with Alistair Darling, was comical because they were totally on the Balls script. Most of the others were pro. Some in particular were clear that if the judgement was not now, we had to be clear we would be going in before too long. TB was convinced GB was moving a bit, but his CBI speech was pretty sceptic, and was emphasising all the obstacles.
Then we heard that Peter M had done a lunch with the women’s lobby and had said, off the record, that TB had been outmanoeuvred by a 24-hour political obsessive, and that because GB had won that battle, we were in danger of making the wrong decision for the country and the government on EMU.53 Of course the chances of it staying off the record were zero as Peter must surely have known, and for once it gave GB the moral high ground. Even though nobody seriously believed we would have put Peter up to do it, it allowed GB to present himself as victim. TB was furious at Peter’s stupidity. He said it also made it much more difficult to bring him back.
Peter M all over the press. TB up the wall about it. GB was on to him, Ed was on to me, saying that unless we denounced and disowned Peter, people would think TB supported what he said. TB was up in the flat on his own working on PMQs. He was looking more isolated, or maybe that was just my guilt at the thought of leaving. PMQs was clearly going to be EMU division and/or the latest education fuck-up, namely schools sending kids home because of lack of funds.54
Peter M was not in a mood to back down. He said he believed in the euro, he intended to carry on fighting for it, and as he was a backbencher, he should be allowed to behave like one. He did not believe there was any chance of him coming back to government and he therefore intended to speak out more freely. He said he did believe we were making the wrong decision and it was because TB had been outmanoeuvred. Then in his ultra-haughty voice, he said he was about to do a doorstep for ITN and then sit down to write an article for the Guardian. TB just shook his head and rolled his eyes when I told him.
PMQs was OK-ish but we didn’t have a good answer to the question ‘why not a referendum?’ and we needed one fast. TB didn’t really dump on Peter M or defend GB so afterwards GB came in, TB called me in and said Gordon felt he had not been firm enough. I had to agree. GB said unless you put him down he will do this every day, day after day, because it’s a campaign to divide and undermine the government and it has to stop. It was of course an exact mirror of what Peter, and from time to time we, said about him. TB was pretty meek about it. Jonathan said that the trilaterals he had been at had been OK, but then when the two of them were together, there was a rhythm of low murmuring followed by explosions. ‘It’s like watching a marriage fall apart.’
I had lunch with Phil Stephens to discuss his book on TB [Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader, published 2004]. He told me he had extensive notes of all my previous lunches with him. I was trying to tell him that TB was basically the same person. He seemed almost as interested in Cherie as TB, which for someone from the FT was a bit odd. [David] Bradshaw and I were working on a script for TB’s press gallery [bicentenary] dinner, which was annoyingly at the same time as Celtic’s UEFA Cup Final tonight. David and I went to discuss it with him, and afterwards I said to him ‘You do understand that I’m leaving don’t you?’ I could see he realised I was serious. I went through some of the arguments – that I had lost enthusiasm, that my relations with the media were bad and I didn’t much care, too many groundhog days, too much pressure that I felt others ought by now to be taking. He was very nice about it, I think finally realised it was going to happen, said he agreed that if I wasn’t really motivated I couldn’t really do it. He said he still wasn’t sure if he would fight another election. I said if he didn’t, maybe all the more reason why I should go now, and if he did, I could come back.
I wasn’t the only one feeling down about things. Peter M came to see me, said he was planning to move to the country, that he really wanted out of the [Westminster] village. I told him about my intentions, and reasons, and he said I would be mad to go. Life outside is not that great. What I do now matters. In the end the media doesn’t matter that much. And also there’s the question of duty. [Major General] Tim Cross came in for a chat re ORHA and I got TB to come round to see him too. He felt there was a lot we could do to grip it if they let us. I was quite impressed by Cross. I liked the fact that he said he couldn’t do Frost because he said he had to go to church. He was very clipped, smart. He said that if he ever heard anyone say the Americans were involved in a conspiracy he wouldn’t believe it, because they weren’t capable of organising a conspiracy. We were at a bit of a disadvantage though. The Americans were a bit worried about us taking over. There was still something holding me back from sending TB the note setting out fully my reasons for departure, but I was eighty-five per cent there. I didn’t much enjoy the press gallery dinner. In a way it was our two lives coming together, and though I stayed in for TB’s speech,55 I sneaked out to a bar in the [Hilton London Metropole] hotel to watch Celtic’s extra-time defeat against Porto [Porto 3, Celtic 2].
TB was very worried about the Times stuff on schools based on an NAHT [National Association of Head Teachers] survey on teacher sackings. Overnight, the New Statesman broke the story of the Attorney General’s advice, which we assumed was leaked by Clare. At Cabinet, JP asked Jack to say who had received it, so he read out the list of copy addressees which ended ‘Secretary of State for International Development’, at which point JP just said ‘Next business.’ Asylum was running fine, with much better than expected figures, but TB was keen to press home the advantage by saying there would be further legislation to deal with other abuses.
After Cabinet TB saw Charles and warned him to be careful that we didn’t simply sort out schools funding at a technical level but still had schools laying off teachers around the country. Cabinet was mainly Iraq. There was a hilarious moment when Gareth [Lord Williams, Leader of the Lords] was going through Lords business and said they had all been up till 2.25am on sexual offences. ‘They love it in there!’ roared Blunkett, who said people ought to read their Hansard, especially when they were recommending ‘delete genitalia and insert penis’. TB did fine on the euro, then GB presented a short paper on the benefits and the possible steps we need to take to get there, and he was a bit warmer than usual. TB said some ministers had been honest enough to admit they hadn’t read all the documents before their trilateral meetings with him and GB. What was clear was that everyone was in favour of setting a direction towards entry, and he urged them all to ignore what he called ‘noises off’.
Patricia [Hewitt] spoke first after GB and was very good, said there had to be part of the assessment which set out the costs of staying out which she believed were growing, in terms of falling share of foreign investment, possible loss of trade. She felt the longer we stayed out, the higher the economic price. JP said he felt much clearer about the economics, JR that there had been a coming together of the political and the economic. Nearly all of the speeches had been in favour. TB summed up by saying he felt a clear strategy as reflected by the discussion would release energy within the party and elsewhere to start making and winning the case. The press conference was fine, TB very confident, pushing back hard on Europe, and strong on asylum. On the euro, the question that worried me most was whether the Cabinet could change the assessment but he didn’t really get pressed on it. I had a meeting with Ian McCartney and Douglas [Alexander]. Douglas felt we needed a strategy for reconnection with the party along the lines of the one we did for TB last summer.
I went in for TB’s meeting with John Sawers. TB wanted a note of all the things he would need to get Bush to deliver on. He popped round to my office later and said that on Europe, it would be a total disaster if we turned our backs, that he was glad the right wing was out there campaigning on the referendum and the IGC because he felt we were going to have to take on the whole argument. Alistair Darling called me about a piece in the FT saying that Number 10 were not impressed with him. ‘If it’s what Tony thinks, I’d rather know and I can go and do something else.’ He said he had seen this happen to other ministers and it wasn’t going to happen to him. I said I could honestly say that neither TB nor I had ever expressed such a view. I told TB who said he would speak to him. It was pretty clear they were all getting a bit jittery pre-reshuffle.
Geoffrey Levy and Gordon Rayner had a big piece in the Mail, ‘Carole the Conqueror’, saying that Fiona was going to leave and it was a victory for Carole [Caplin]. Fiona called Cherie and said to her she was worried that CB was ‘sleepwalking to disaster’. I told TB it was perfectly clear she had a link into the Mail and the paper was just toying with her, building her up, in the hope of using her to create a huge splash later. TB called ostensibly re Europe – again – and his continuing worries on education funding, and then raised Carole. She does Cherie’s clothes and personal training. So what? He said he had seen her five times since Christmas. I said the problem was that he didn’t think there was a problem, and I did. Relations between CB and Fiona had effectively broken down and it was too late to sort it out. He said it was vital that we do not let this kind of stuff take over the agenda. I said we haven’t, they had. I had been warning about Carole for years and neither of you have listened. The whole thing was demeaning and belittling.
He called me again later, said he hadn’t been able to speak freely because he had been in a car, but I had to understand Carole was barely involved at all any more. I said I just didn’t believe it, and nor did Fiona. He said if we left now, people would think it was about this, which was belittling for everyone. Fiona spoke to Cherie a couple of times during the day but the lack of trust was pretty obvious. She asked Cherie outright if she had told Carole about her leaving. ‘She said no, but I didn’t believe her.’ I took Rory to the South of England Championships up at Watford, and got in an hour-long run myself.
Big pieces in the Sundays on Fiona to quit. TB called and said we had to put a lid on this. He said it was becoming dreadful for Cherie because the coverage was making her look crazy. I said it was bad for all of us. He said we had to make clear it was nonsense. I said there was no way we could deny Fiona was leaving, because she is. He was now very irritated by the whole thing, and when he was irritated with this kind of issue, he could become very irritating. It was as if this was all terrible for him when in fact they had created this madness by allowing her in so close. I gave the press office a line that Fiona had not left and that it was absurd to see this as some kind of power struggle with Carole, the usual flimflam. The problem was a number of journalists now already knew she was leaving. Philip was in the States and Georgia [Gould] needed a lift to the QPR vs Cardiff play-off finals at the Millennium Stadium, so I went down with her and Calum. She was a bit upset when they [QPR] lost, and we could see [Cardiff supporter] Neil [Kinnock] going crazy in the directors’ box. The Israeli Cabinet endorsed the road map, which dominated the news. TB said he found that even at weekends now, he was working pretty much all the time, and it never stopped.
The latest Giscard [d’Estaing] draft [European constitution] appeared to the usual insane cacophony from the sceptic press. Work-wise, it was a fairly typical quiet bank holiday. I made a few phone calls whilst watching Calum play tennis, trying to get some of them off the ceiling about Giscard. We went out for dinner with David and Louise Miliband who had decided to adopt a baby and had us down as referees. David felt we were drifting politically. I agreed but somehow I lacked the energy to respond to it in a way that I would have done a while back. Meanwhile, the situation re Fiona was being made to look like the end of the Camelot show, and she was starting to get hit in the press unfairly.
Peter M called me later and said that he felt I would know for sure when I wanted to go. So did I, and it wasn’t quite yet but it wasn’t far off. Fiona felt TB and I worked so closely, and ninety-five per cent of the time in a pretty good spirit, so that by now I was in many ways TB’s closest friend and he mine, and she understood why that made it harder to leave, because I felt I was letting him down. There was something in that, but I also felt I was letting him and myself down in not being up for the job in the way that I used to be. I had a dreadful cold but went out for a run in the afternoon and got a phone call to say that Mark Gault [close friend from university] had dropped down dead. I was pole-axed. I tried to call Susie [his wife], eventually got hold of her and she was pretty much inconsolable. He had literally just conked out sitting in a chair.
TB was at Chequers and I was supposed to go down for a meeting but in the end didn’t as I was dealing with the fallout from Mark’s death. Peter Hain gave us a problem by appearing to say that European elections would be seen as a [euro] referendum, so we had to weigh in on that a bit. I got Jack Straw to do a Times article on the Tories fighting old battles. GB, unbeknown to us, was doing something in the Wall Street Journal. It almost looked co-ordinated, but the truth was that, as so often, we had no idea what GB was up to. His piece was mainly to emphasise his European economic reform credentials for the US audience and Murdoch in particular. TB saw Adams and McGuinness and told them he thought it might be time for him to meet the IRA guys that they kept going back to see. Adams seemed keener than McGuinness. TB felt they had to give something. I took a couple of meetings on Europe. The Europe coverage showed once more the need for better rebuttal and proactive communications. As ever, the press was setting the agenda for the broadcasters.
The car came at 7.15 to take me to the airport, where we waited for TB. We sat down to work on his speech for Poland on Friday. He was up for a big pro-European message. He had not really read the papers so I briefed him on just how mad the Sun/Mail/Telegraph had been. He said they were going to have to be confronted on this. The heavy thing to do would be to say that this was a campaign headed by three people – Murdoch, an Australian living in America, [Conrad] Black, a Canadian [Telegraph proprietor], and [Paul] Dacre [Mail editor], an extreme right-winger. They thought it was fantastic that he faced down public opinion over Iraq, but terrible that he could possibly disagree over this. I was worried that we had missed the time at which it might have been possible. But he seemed up for it and was very firm when we went down the plane to see the press. After a good run around the block on Iraq, he engaged with Cabinet on Europe in a pretty robust way.
Rumsfeld had not helped set up the visit to Iraq with a statement that we may never find WMD, or that he may never have had them, which was a pretty dreadful backdrop to the visit. But TB was pretty firm, strong on both Iraq and Europe. We had breakfast together on the plane to Kuwait and as we were just chatting away over his current list of concerns – Europe and the IGC, the assessment, GB, the press, whatever – it was very hard to imagine not being on these kinds of trips, having these kinds of conversations in future. Despite everything, he was still very engaging, very funny and hadn’t fundamentally changed at all. We always had a laugh on these trips, which was good for us, but also I think helped build a sense of team with everyone else, from the cops to the policy wonks.
In Kuwait we were almost in hysterics when the deputy prime minister [Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, also foreign minister] started lambasting us over our asylum and immigration policies, saying we were too soft on the Kurds and we gave too many benefits to asylum seekers. It was a pretty bizarre event, a bilateral where none of us could hear the conversation, so we sat muttering amongst ourselves while just looking over at the line of princes sitting playing with their worry beads. TB and I kept exchanging looks and we just stayed on the right side of laughter.
The news was leading on TB and Rumsfeld. What a clot. The cuttings came through to the residence where I once played the bagpipes with my namesake [Colonel Alastair Campbell, defence and military attaché]. Linda Lee-Potter [columnist] had a ghastly piece about me and Fiona in the Mail, obviously written to order. While TB had a bath, Kate [Garvey] and I went over what pictures we wanted from the visit to Iraq, then out to a pretty sumptuous dinner at one of the palaces. Chirac’s people came on with an interesting suggestion. He wanted to do a joint article about Africa with TB and Schroeder. Schroeder was less keen than we were. TB was saying again that he found the workload really heavy at the moment.
Up at 5, UK time. The press was dominated by WMD and Rumsfeld’s comments, which was really irritating. When I thought of what we could do to fuck them up in the same way. We then heard, though we couldn’t get it substantiated, that Paul Wolfowitz had said that WMD had been a bureaucratic convenience to get us into the war. Some of the top British military told us that the American top brass loathed Rumsfeld, found him impulsive, interfering, making the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons. The local Kuwaiti paper had a picture of TB and a group of sheikhs all in traditional headgear, with the caption helpfully pointing out that TB was ‘second right’. I was working on a political strategy paper and planning upcoming events.
We boarded the Hercules flight to Basra. TB was up in the jump seat, David Manning and I behind. We flew over Umm Qasr, burnt-out tanks all over the place. It was very hot and arid, and a few oil wells were burning. We landed at Basra airfield to be met by [Paul] Bremer and [John] Sawers. TB afterwards was very clear that we really had to press the US to get better engaged. It was just not moving in the way it should be. I had a meeting with Bremer. He had read my earlier note and said he basically agreed with it, yet was still waiting for a replacement for [Margaret] Tutwiler. He was falling into this classic US thing of waiting for these mythical figures who were never quite delivered. He asked if I could provide someone, and I agreed to provide John Buck [FCO] to help draw up a plan. He also agreed to the idea of more of our people going out there if we got a plan in place. So it was useful but I could sense he was feeling pretty overwhelmed by the whole thing.
John Sawers was as tiggerish and enthusiastic as ever in his light suit and white shirt looking every inch ‘our man in a hot country’ and revelling in the machine gun-toting close protection squad. We then drove off to a visit to a school. Nice kids, lovely reception. He did a little speech in the playground while I talked to General [James] Conway [Marine Expeditionary Force], who said how impressed he was by how light we travelled compared to GWB. I told him about Rumsfeld’s WMD comments and he didn’t seem too surprised.
Our military had accommodated brilliantly to what was going on. The recurring theme though was that the Americans were not quite getting it right. TB had a fairly long briefing on how Basra was won, and then on to the speech to the troops. It was by a river under an awning, hot, but with a breeze, and his words were OK without being brilliant. He was full of praise for the troops, said it was a defining moment for the country, which the press felt was OTT. But he said afterwards he really believed it changed the way people in the region thought about the future, as was clear from the discussion with the Kuwaitis last night. I hung round talking to the press about a ghastly Gilligan story [aired that morning on the Today programme] claiming that the spooks were not happy with the dossier, which was clearly a repeat of the stories at the time.56 We left for the flight to Umm Qasr by Chinook [helicopter], then down to see the army and navy in a very well-organised session. Several soldiers asked me my marathon time. Some of them had been following the Times column but hadn’t seen the result. They were a nice crowd. One came over and said he had never been much of a fan of TB or the government but both had grown on him and he felt that went for a lot of them. We went on to the minehunter, [HMS] Ramsey, where he did a Forces Radio interview.
TB clearly got a charge from the positive response, though earlier there had been no applause for his speech, which was a surprise, but then it was pointed out to me they had been told to be quiet. On the way back to the chopper, the Number 2 in the base said they had just heard that someone who worked in a photo shop had sent the police pictures of soldiers maltreating Iraqi PoWs. Bad. The reception he got was warm all day but General [Peter] Wall [1st UK Armoured Division, responsible for security in Basra] said that at night there was a lot of criminality. On the dockside, bizarrely, given I was spending so much time thinking about my own future, one of General Wall’s protection team asked me whether I had a lot of pressure. I said yes. You wouldn’t miss it for the world, he said. I’m not sure about that, I said. ‘You just hang in there.’ Odd. He was from Stirling.
We flew back to Kuwait and the relief of a cool, air-conditioned place. TB had to get changed into a suit for the official send-off and called me in for a chat. He said he found our troops really terrific, easily the best, and he was glad that we came. On the plane, we both worked on the Poland speech. He felt he needed a harder political strategy based on public service reform, Europe and the poverty agenda. He felt that post EMU, what we needed most was Number 10 and Number 11 working far more closely together on policy. I said I didn’t think it was possible. He felt GB allowed himself to be influenced too much by his inner circle. He thought Balls was clever but got too many backs up, which would not help him once he entered Parliament. There were two things that might shift GB to be more co-operative. The first was that he now genuinely believed TB might move him. ‘He’s already said to me if I try to move him to Foreign Secretary, he will go on the back benches.’ Second, he was very worried about being portrayed as anti reform. He said that though DFID offered the most extreme picture of GB influence over minister and department, there were other parts of departments where things only happened if he said so. The Civil Service often talked of ministers being lazy. In truth, often they were just doing what they were told, or not doing what they were told not to do. TB said the real nightmare is that he is head and shoulders above the rest, which is why it is always better to try to work with him. He said he had always been sincere in saying to him that he wanted to hand over to him at some point, but he made it very difficult.
I was keen to get to Mark’s [Gault] funeral in New York, and mentioned it to TB, who said he would prefer it if I stayed for the whole trip but would understand if I didn’t. Over dinner on the plane TB, AC, DM, Tom Kelly. Serious stuff on Iraq. TB said it reminded him of FMD [foot and mouth disease] before we gripped it and the military sorted it. People knew what problems needed to be solved, but nobody was gripping it. Paul Bremer was impressive but looked like he was overwhelmed. David and I explained to him that the problem was the US. His critics looked at Bush, said he’d won his war and now seemed less interested. Rumsfeld fired off orders the whole time. The State Department was marginalised. Bremer spoke to Rumsfeld and the Security Council were out of the loop. There was not much we could do to make it better.
Alarmingly, TB said what he felt it needed was for me to go out there and be his person totally gripping it, alongside someone who was GWB’s person. I said I was not keen, but he clearly was. He said he would speak to GWB, Russia and France and make them realise it could go belly up. I felt that the US had an electoral strategy that meant they just kept moving on to the next bold thing. He said we shouldn’t see it as a conspiracy, it’s just that they had a bigger and more difficult bureaucracy.
Overnight we had a telegram about the US warning that there could be two Brits among those at Guantanamo Bay that could end up being executed. I said to TB it would be dreadful and it couldn’t be allowed to happen. He said he didn’t think they would go through with some of this tribunal stuff, but I wasn’t so sure. He then turned to Chirac. Giscard [d’Estaing] had said to him that Chirac was a man of strong but changing emotions. TB said he only really understood strength. Since we turned on him over Iraq he had become much nicer and treated TB with much more respect. TB believed Chirac would try hard to get back onside with Bush, but another telegram was saying that Bush was only in the mood to tolerate, not to forgive. David M suggested we try to get Jeremy Greenstock to go to Baghdad.
TB was worried about [visiting] St Petersburg [EU–Russia Summit]. He wanted to be low-profile and felt it would be a disaster for Putin if the whole thing was over the top because people would think he was suffering real folie de grandeur and possibly becoming corrupt. We had a nice enough dinner on the plane and I was in a reasonably good mood, which ended as we approached Warsaw [tour taking in Warsaw, St Petersburg and the G8 summit in Evian, France]. I gave him the note I had done setting out a plan for my departure. He read it, gave me a quizzical look and then said ‘Keep it, don’t put it in my box, don’t copy it round.’ Meanwhile Fiona had told her staff she was going, so it was all going to be a bit messy. Part of me felt I couldn’t let Fiona down but part of me felt I would be a real loss to him. I had grown very friendly with David Manning, who I liked, for his seriousness and commitment. He said he felt TB would be bereft and I should probably fix on the general election and make clear I would be going then. We arrived at the hotel in Warsaw and TB was pretty much doing the speech himself now. I went for a run then tried to work out how I could get to Mark’s funeral.
WMD firestorm was getting worse. I told TB the papers were really pretty grim as he woke up, and he was worried that the spooks would be pissed off with us. He felt that in part the attacks coming now were about Europe. ‘It’s another attack to go to the heart of my integrity,’ he said. We decided we would have to hit back at the press conference even though it would take away from the Europe speech. He said he was happy with the speech. He was a bit jumpy about the spooks [September dossier] stuff and said we had to get him all the facts on it. I said the facts were that it was the work of the agencies and the idea that we would make these things up was absurd. I spoke to Julian Miller [Cabinet Office intelligence and security official] in the car, and then to John Scarlett during TB’s meeting with the Polish PM [Leszek Miller].
John S said he was emphatic in saying to people that it was not true that we pressured them, and they were saying that. But he stopped short of agreeing to do a letter about it. He was very much up for helping us but only so far. As TB’s meeting went on, I did a very strong line of rebuttal and when the press conference came up, he hit back hard on it. The meeting with the Poles was excellent. Though the prime minister and the president [Aleksander Kwasniewski] were different sorts of people from different parties, they were on the same agenda. They were pro NATO, anti Chirac, determined to protect the transatlantic alliance. The president was really concerned about the neocons in the States and TB didn’t go that far to placate, though he did say he sometimes felt the analysis was right but the way they secured their objectives was all wrong.
On the Polish referendum [on entry into the EU], the president said the Pope [John Paul II, a Pole] had helped in saying vote yes, but a lot of the priests were saying vote no. He said turnout was a problem and they really wanted TB to do a big vote-yes pitch, which he did. They also asked him to offer support to Ukraine and to get Russia to be nicer to former satellites. The press conference was a bit of a shambles and I rather childishly enjoyed the sight of two burly Polish women manhandling Trevor Kavanagh and others out of sight. We went for a break at [UK ambassador] Michael Pakenham’s residence and sat out in the blazing sunshine. TB’s speech [at the Royal Castle] had gone down well.57
I eventually decided to go to the funeral, and arranged to meet Jeremy Greenstock while I was out there to put the idea of him going to Baghdad. Cherie joined us on the plane for the flight to St Petersburg, which whizzed by with lunch and a bit of work. They had the papers from the last couple of days. TB had a rare look at the Mail and said it’s not just vile, it’s evil. On my future, he said don’t do anything yet, you must distance it from all the Carole stuff. I said fine, so long as he understands we are serious about leaving. He said he understood that but it required careful handling.
We arrived and were driven to a specially built complex of so-called cottages for the leaders attending the anniversary celebrations [300 years since the foundation of St Petersburg]. The cottages were grand, ornate identical homes built for the purpose of this event. It underlined TB’s worries about folie de grandeur. Marble of dubious quality all over the place. Huge en suite bathrooms, lavish but rather tacky furniture, gyms and pools. Yet the overall effect was pretty horrible and the people working there were not much less surly than during the Communist days. TB went off for a ceremony and then we went to the Mariinsky Theatre concert to join the leaders. I had been dreading it but actually quite enjoyed it. Chirac, TB and wives were seated together. The body language was OK. By the time I got back to the cottage, I was trying to work out what I had really added today. I had sorted our response on the [September] dossier, helped out re the funeral, done a note on forward strategy, talked to Fiona a few times but that was about it.
TB away at a stack of different events and ceremonies. I met up with him at the EU–Russia summit. He said they were all wondering why they were there. Lots of the other leaders had been rolling their eyes around at the nature of the event. He said Chirac had been very warm to him and had sent him a note thanking him for what he said about France in the Warsaw speech. He was being very fulsome with TB in front of all the others. Chirac asked me if I enjoyed the concert. He said it was too long, and that music events should never be longer than forty-five minutes.
At the summit, TB was taken into the leaders’ room while the rest of us were taken to what must once have been a dungeon. I had a long chat with Bela Anda [Schroeder’s spokesman]. He said Schroeder was getting fed up with all the stuff coming out of Condi Rice’s mouth and might fight back at some point. TB came back to the cottage after what he said was the most extraordinary fireworks spectacle he had ever seen. Both he and Bush said neither of them could have got away with something like it. He had obviously been talking to some of them about the nature of opinion in Britain. He said we had to do something about the press on Europe, and we may have to take them on properly. I said I have been saying that for years. He said I know, but you have to pick your moment and your issue, and you may be right, but this is it. He said it may be that we have to do it even if we lose because ultimately we should do the right thing.
He was also musing on the ‘prophet in his own land’ phenomenon. You didn’t have to be at an event like this for long to see how the other leaders, particularly those from the accession countries, saw the UK as perhaps the best place imaginable, and TB in the very top league. Even the French and the Germans were clear that Bush would not be moving in the way he was on the Middle East without TB’s influence, but all we got from our media was total shit. GB sent through a forward strategy note for TB that happily was similar to mine in the way he saw the dividing lines. I did a long run with Rod Lyne [UK ambassador] out on a trail near the sea. We had a bilateral with [Atal Bihari] Vajpayee [Indian Prime Minister]. Kashmir, Iraq, MEPP, Nepal, Peter Bleach.58 He was more fluid and talkative than usual, but very frail. He walked very slowly now and his hearing aids were clearly very powerful. We were still being hit hard on WMD and the Sundays were going to be doing it even bigger with a lot of the focus on me.
With DM to the airport, had a readout of the papers, pretty grim. On the plane I told TB and he was a bit down about it all. Also, he and Cherie seemed to have had a row and she was really lip-quivering. TB went down the plane to see the press, again pushing back on WMD. He was fine but the WMD issue was now digging into us. TB kept saying ‘What are the allegations?’ I said it’s that we made them do something they didn’t want to do. But it’s ridiculous, he said, and so it went on. At Geneva, he left for Evian and I stayed on the plane to come back with Cherie, Alison etc. The Sunday papers were on there, and were even worse than media monitoring had said. The Sunday Times had a story about an email showing I’d discussed the dossier with John Scarlett and there was a suggestion that I had tried to get JS to write a conclusion. In fact John had drafted one and I’d said I didn’t think that it worked. There was an account in the Observer of meetings with TB, JS, C, Jack Straw and complained it wasn’t right. There would be grains of truth in all this but it was just crap. Indeed I’d bent over backwards not least because I was fearful this kind of thing could happen.
Gilligan had a big piece in the Mail on Sunday having a go at me from the alleged source that he had, with descriptions of meetings there had never been and things I was said to have done that I never did.59 But it was grim, and grim for me, and also for TB with huge stuff about trust. It was definitely time to get out. I called John Scarlett when I got back and he remained, at least to me, very supportive, said he’d always been happy to do the dossier, had always insisted it was his work, and would only release it if happy with it. Maybe there were some people lower down who were not happy at the idea of a dossier because of the need to preserve secrecy and because of the fear it would be politicised, but that was not the case for the people at the top. He was emphatic that the agencies were pushing back and denying all this, but there was precious little sign of that in the Sundays.
He said he was minded to set everything out in a note to ministers, which they could then draw on themselves. He said we were being made to accord to our stereotypes – you are the brutal political hatchet man and I am the dry intelligence officer. It’s not very nice but I can assure you this is not coming from people at the top. He was clear I had never asked him to do anything he was unhappy with. I said before long, once the left was bored with WMD they would be on to the idea that we were victims of what security services have always done to Labour governments. TB didn’t believe in that stuff but he was clear that there was something going on here. John S recalled the various stages of the dossier process; how we said we would present the evidence, then how we retreated last Easter because we feared it would raise the stakes too high and it was not a great document. Then how more and more intelligence came in, then how we agreed to go for it at the time we did. Then on to the production through Julian Miller. I said it was really bad, all this stuff.
In early, WMD still raging and it was going to be the big build-up to Wednesday, PMQs and the G8 statement, then hopefully some kind of catharsis. TB was still in ‘it’s ridiculous’ mode and getting more and more irritated by what was essentially a media-driven thing. The main problem of course was that there were no WMD discoveries beyond the two labs, and no matter how much we said that there were other priorities now, the public were being told as a matter of fact that we had done wrong. We had Clare S, Robin C and a lot of backbenchers on the rampage now. So it was difficult. I did the morning meeting which essentially I used to get together the briefing for Wednesday. Meeting with Jonathan to try to get a sense of where to go on the WMD story. ISC [Commons Intelligence and Security Committee] inquiry or a letter from John S to TB saying there was no improper interference in the process. [Andrew] Marr was back from holiday and decided to peddle the line that AC would be the scalp the Commons was looking for. So here we go again, Black Rod, Cheriegate, all over again.
On the flight out to New York, I did a bit of work and then read [Harold Wilson’s former press secretary] Joe Haines’ book [Glimmers of Twilight: Harold Wilson in Decline]. Pretty grim reading and the problems with Marcia [Falkender, Wilson’s former political secretary] worse than anything we had. His section on the BBC of today was brilliant. I was met by Jeremy Greenstock’s driver Gary and his Bentley and taken to the residence. I did a bit of paperwork, then out to meet friends from university who were over for the funeral. Rebekah Wade [Sun editor] was over for a News Corp meeting and I had a drink with her and Sarah Murdoch [wife of Lachlan, Rupert Murdoch’s elder son] at Soho House and gave her a hard time over their coverage of Europe, and made-up stories.
Later I sat down with Jeremy [Greenstock] and explained that TB was looking for someone to go to Iraq effectively to be his man, and we would be urging Bush to do the same. Jeremy wasn’t keen. He said he was an Arabist not far from retirement and desperate for a break and not sure he really wanted to keep doing government work. He also felt that unless and until the Defense Department moved over and let the whole bigger operation take over, it was not going to work. He really admired David M for the way he worked with Condi but said he found it quite alarming that what was basically happening was that David was almost tutoring the American president and his team. He felt TB had much more influence over Middle East policy than on Iraq and he was clear TB had to stay close to GWB. But he felt sometimes they just didn’t care sufficiently either about the way things blew back on us or actually, whether things got better or not.
The impression was almost of a country-by-country war strategy and they were far less focused on what happened after the fighting stopped. It was brought home to me later when Rebekah and Les Hinton dragged me out to Langan’s [restaurant] and the New York Post editor [Colin Allan] said ‘WMD just isn’t an issue here. Nobody cares.’ So we had to be careful. I said to Jeremy G I was worried that TB was setting himself up for too much of the blame if it went wrong. He said that Bush didn’t really grip these guys at all, but Rumsfeld was off the leash and out of control. He said the other reason why he was hesitant was because the American system knew that he thought very little of Rumsfeld.
Godric called just before his briefing, said the frenzy was going apace and was obviously going to keep going up to Wednesday. I spoke to Jonathan and we agreed a way forward was for the ISC to trail an inquiry before TB formally announced it and John S to make clear nothing improper took place. I wrote a long note for TB re what we should try to do in rebuttal of the continuing WMD allegations. Defensive and offensive, give context and explanation, inquiry, defend ourselves re agency interference nonsense, and also hit back in that the people who were saying there would be no WMD were the people saying this other stuff too. Five pages or so, culminating in MEPP and they said we would never do that either but we are, GWB is there etc. We had to fight back but also put over a more subtle message. But there was no doubt we were in trouble on it, and the trust thing was back, which was partly about trying to undermine him on the euro. I felt it was an OK piece of work though and hoped it helped him. He was going to be feeling the heat on it, although the Beeb would try to deflect it to me.
I finished my speech for the funeral and then dictated a long note to TB by telephone. I guess the main point was that he needed to give a sense of process, show understanding of the concerns but also make clear we did the right thing because of the better things now happening. Met up with some old friends in a bar before the funeral, then up to the church. I read my speech over the phone to Fiona and was worried I wouldn’t be able to hold it together. Susie [Mark Gault’s widow] was in a bad way and the boys just looked out of it. The speeches were fine. His brothers [Philip and Hugh], me, two good friends and a McCann-Erickson [advertising company] executive. I just about got through without breaking down. The worst bit was when the boys told me that Mark was still their best friend.
The event afterwards was pretty dreadful. A series of corporate speeches, one of which seemed to be saying that what he would want was for the company to use this to go out and pitch for business. It really was the worst of corporate America. I got a lot of nice plaudits for the speech, certainly got the most laughs. Mark’s dad [Jim Gault] said he didn’t get the impression that some of the people speaking at the wake really knew him at all. WMD still raging at home. I spoke to TB, who said it was grotesque. There was no story here at all, but it was being driven by the BBC as a huge crisis for us. He said he liked my note. I got on the plane and slept all the way back with the help of a sleeping pill.
I arrived back and the big story was John Reid saying rogue elements in the security services were out to get us. By the time I landed, Switch[board] called me to say that C, John Scarlett and [Sir] David Omand [permanent secretary and security intelligence co-ordinator, Cabinet Office] had all called for me. I called Richard [Dearlove, C] who said there would be a bad effect on the staff if they felt ministers couldn’t trust them. I said I’m sure Reid would not have meant to attack them as a whole but clearly someone was stirring it. I said TB would be very supportive at PMQs. Scarlett said he was pushing back the attacks on me and my integrity. I’d asked for all my notes to be dug out on the dossier and I was provenly in the clear. I’d done a long three-page process note on Sept 9 last year making clear it must be one hundred per cent their product and there must be nothing in it they’re not happy with. And there was also a long note I made with detailed drafting suggestions.
I went to a TB meeting re what to say about it all with Omand, Scarlett, David Manning, Sally M, Clare Sumner [private secretary], Jonathan. Scarlett was fine re what we were going to say, namely we did not override them. TB was pretty cool with me and the truth was he wasn’t taking much advice. I had a chat with Bruce [Grocott, Lords chief whip] about my future and he said he was worried the operation would fall apart if I went. Then a better than usual meeting with Balls and Mike Ellam [head of communications, Treasury] to lay the ground for a euro statement. It was all about the body language. We really had to go out of our way to show a united front. Peter Hyman was trying to push towards a referendum in this parliament, or a change of gear to the next steps, but Ed was not having any of it. It was an OK meeting but I suspect they felt they had got their way. Fiona was really fed up with Cherie. It transpired she hadn’t sorted the finances of the Bermuda trip. Fiona also discovered CB had agreed to a Harper’s Bazaar [fashion magazine] interview.
The main focus of the day was the euro Cabinet. TB and GB had had literally dozens of meetings and TB remained convinced that something had moved in GB, that he wanted to be in a pro position but he also wanted to keep the anti press on board. Ed Balls had revealed that yesterday when I said the best way to signal a gear change was for the Sun and the Mail to say this was getting serious and there was a real fight on and Ed said yes, but we don’t want the Sun to go for us next week. WMD still raging on and I sent a long letter of complaint to the BBC re Gilligan, pointing out factual inaccuracies e.g. the fact that he said the JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] was a Number 10 committee.
TB seemed pretty clear with me that he was thinking of standing down before the election, but I couldn’t be sure that he wasn’t just stringing me along a bit. He had made no mention of the note I showed him last week about my departure, and was clearly hoping it would just go away. The euro Cabinet started with TB making quite a long exposition of where we were, then GB, as usual in rather more dense form but not too bad. The discussion was OK, though nobody openly said what I suspected most of them thought, namely that the assessment was more negative than the earlier discussions had led them to believe. GB was pleased with the process, as were we all, as there had been no real leaks on this for weeks, ever since we took the decision to involve them all. Patricia H and Charles C were both very strong on the costs of staying out. Peter Hain was very pro, Margaret Beckett far more pro than I thought she would be. Helen [Liddell] and Tessa [Jowell] were very pro. JR, DB and Jack S a little bit more sceptical, Darling and Andrew Smith more so. But it was a good discussion and the mood was definitely ‘yes but’ rather than ‘no but’, with a lot of focus on the steps to get there.
The discussion ended with a barnstorming JP performance in which he said that when TB and GB were united, and the Cabinet involved properly, there was nothing we couldn’t do. So the mood was good. But then GB went out in the street and did his usual ‘nothing to harm the national economic interest’, so we ended up with the usual headlines, facing both ways. We had also agreed a joint TB/GB letter which I drafted and sent over but it came back with lots of changes that made it more dense and Brownish. Even the little things were difficult with them. We were going right up to the statement knowing that it would all be in the body language and the briefing.
Reid’s comments had upset the spooks and Jack said to me they should have been told straight away about what he had said. But at the same time, there was some stirring going on somewhere and they needed to grip it, surely. I left for the ballet with Fiona and David and Janice Blackburn [friends]. I didn’t like ballet at the best of times, and these weren’t the best of times. I have never been so stared at in my life. I felt like I was an exhibit in a zoo. It was a mix of ‘He doesn’t look too evil’ and ‘What on EARTH is he doing here?’ I wondered myself.
Iraq meeting with ministers and officials, TB wanting to get fully briefed on how bad it was, for example reconstruction work going too slowly, what the military really thought. He was due to speak to Bush later. Jack was scathing re Rumsfeld, said ‘Let’s be honest Tony, he has no affection for you or the government and couldn’t care if we survive. He just wants his troops home.’ TB was looking pretty fed up with this. He realised that WMD was one thing but if we didn’t grip this it would give us problems for the future. [General Sir] Michael Walker [new Chief of the Defence Staff, succeeding Admiral Sir Michael Boyce] was much less friendly than [CDS preceding Boyce, now General Lord] Guthrie.
The Bush call began with lots of congratulations re the MEPP summit. GWB was sympathetic re the way we were getting hit on Iraq and WMD which was still running today because Blix had criticised our intelligence. There was a fair bit of the usual friendly banter but TB was getting a little exasperated at the Pentagon’s seeming lack of grip. At the office meeting, we had yet another discussion on strategic message. TB and GB had been discussing it and they wanted to go for a message based around ‘choice and equity’. I didn’t like it at all. I also felt we needed less new policy and more focus on seeing existing policy through, and with far greater drive on message. There was a lot of reshuffle talk in the press. Derry [Irvine] was in a terrible state because of all the talk of him being for the chop. DB was fretting on all the suggestions that he would lose out [as Home Secretary] with the creation of a new Ministry of Justice.
TB wanted Ann Taylor [chair of ISC] to do a quick investigation into the 45-minutes stuff.60 TB was telling us that we had to get back on domestic politics but then also saying he wanted to make more speeches on Europe, wanted better rebuttal on Afghanistan and more of our people into Iraq. I can’t say I blamed him wanting to avoid domestic because it was such hard work dealing with GB at the moment.
Lots of pick-up on yesterday’s Guardian splash on a briefing note Peter M did re TB and GB during the ’94 leadership contest, on which GB had scribbled ‘change’. It was not much of a document but such was the media interest in TB/GB chemistry that it was reproduced in most papers with various interpretations. Peter M was adamant he wasn’t responsible and if there was a gainer out of this, it was GB, because it showed him both as Mr Fairness and Mr ‘I’m in charge’. TB was worried about the euro and I briefed the Observer, based on TB, JP and GB interventions at Cabinet, to the effect that the idea of a referendum in this parliament was still on the agenda. I told Neil [Kinnock] that the line would be ‘yes but not yet’ and he was happy enough with that. I also told him about leaving, and he said I should leave if I wanted, but he was worried about it.
WMD was still rumbling on with the BBC driving it as hard as they could and we were bracing for more Sunday stuff, a lot of which basically directed at me, e.g. David Clark [former special adviser to Robin Cook] in the Mail on Sunday, AC must go. The Sunday Times went back to the old dossier and why we didn’t publish it. The Sunday Telegraph led on a so-called apology from me to Richard Dearlove re the [February 2003] dodgy dossier, the Indy talked of the spies recording all the pressure put on them, and so it went on. I felt I was being royally set up for a fall.
The Sundays arrived, ghastly, full of absolute shit about me, which would keep the story going. Also I’d been invited by FAC [Foreign Affairs Committee] and ISC to give evidence so it was going to be a grim few weeks. I worked out a line with Danny Pruce re the Sunday Telegraph – it was not the case at all about an apology, but that I had made clear to those who produced the [February 2003] dossier they should have acknowledged the author of the article [Ibrahim al-Marashi] and I assured agencies that greater care would be taken about anything that impacted on them or their work or their reputation. Of course, the BBC just took that as a green light to say that we had said that we had abused the intelligence.
Ludicrously, my ‘apology’ to SIS was leading the news and being conflated into a sense that it was an apology over the main [September 2002] WMD dossier rather than – the reality – that it was about the so-called dodgy dossier [February 2003] about which I’d accepted mistakes were made, sent a letter to the system about it, and on which Omand suggested new procedures. But it was an outrage the way the BBC was twisting this. Anyone listening to their bulletins would think I’d apologised – all I had done was give assurances – and that I’d admitted we abused intelligence material – I didn’t. We were going through a totally mad phase.
The first call of the day was from GB who wanted to know what to say on Frost and we agreed it was best to get on to the bigger theme of WMD and why we did the right thing. I explained the line and the fact that this was the second dossier they were talking about. In the event there was very little about it, mainly Europe and the euro, he was pretty good, very strong and confident, pushing a pro-European line and the effect was pretty good. I called Richard Dearlove on the way to Calum’s tennis match, said I was really dismayed that our exchanges were leaked and twisted in the Sunday Telegraph. He was in Cornwall, said he could not recall an apology, not at least a letter, felt there may have been something verbal. Then he said that he may have told the ISC he had had an apology. I also told him that some of the papers said he and Eliza [Manningham-Buller, director general of the Security Service, MIS] had threatened to resign. He said that was totally untrue. He was actually more concerned at news that he was going to be Master at Pembroke College [Cambridge] was going to break. I agreed with Richard that he would deny the resignation story and re the apology we just had to put out the line that we had not had major rows but that somebody was stirring it.
JR, Hilary A and Tessa all called during the day, just to say they would do anything they could to help. Hilary said Dennis Skinner [Labour MP] had called offering support but also saying ‘Don’t trust spies, they’re treacherous.’ JR said whenever ministers got into trouble, I would organise operations to help them, and did I want him to get one organised for me? Hilary said much the same. Then a call from Margaret Beckett who was doing media in the afternoon and who said that it was an accolade that they kept coming at me, and it was because I did the job well that they went for me. I said I had been interested to see how pro EMU she had been, far more positive than she used to be. She said it was partly the views developed at the DTI. She felt the assessment was more negative than the tests.
The Mail on Sunday had done a story that CB was going for an Olympics job and TB wanted her to go to the PCC. The trouble was there was something in it. He put her on to me, and she was very defensive, just said ‘What’s the problem?’ I said we just needed to know, because we were asked about it. We agreed to say she was not interested in running the bid but others had been keen that she would help as appropriate.
Most of the papers were reasonably low-key on the AC ‘apology’, apart from the Mail which splashed on it and was its usual vile self. Blunkett said on The Politics Show [BBC] yesterday that we shouldn’t have done the second dossier and called for an apology. I was reasonably curt, said it was obvious he had to find a use for some Sheffield steel. Hilary A and Sally said the PLP were virtually solid for me and that Dennis Skinner had been going round the place saying ‘Who do you trust? AC or a spy? He is one of ours.’ The euro was obviously leading the news and we had set it up OK. The FT had done ‘GB sells advantages of the euro’. Mike White [Guardian] talked of a change of gear.
The statement was still a bit ambiguous though and the Q&A revealed the tensions between them. TB felt the statement had come along but he was still worried. He called Jonathan and me up there at 8, both of us in running or cycling gear. Jonathan was his usual jovial self. ‘Surprised you are still here,’ he said. TB said he was not yet sure GB was going to go for this. Jonathan said how do you guarantee he won’t just do the same thing again next year? TB said he would know in a matter of weeks if this was serious or not, and if it wasn’t, he would have to move him. We talked a bit about the reshuffle and TB was dreading having to sack Derry, who he was sure would take it very badly. I was working with Ed, Jeremy and Peter H on a Q&A and material for the press conference tomorrow.
I saw Jonathan to tell him I was definitely leaving now. He said TB had mentioned it, so maybe he had accepted it. Jonathan felt sure I would regret it. He said he knew that he would. He reckoned I would have a long period of decompression and he was sure the business appointments people would be very difficult. He said he had always felt I was like an extra battery for TB, and he would lose extra power. I spoke to David Omand who, like everyone else, was feeling that DIS [Defence Intelligence Staff] were probably responsible for the briefings. I said to him the only thing that could be seen as an apology were my exchanges with him re the handling of intelligence post the dodgy dossier.
C called later to say he had been through all the correspondence and there was no apology. He was glad he had denied the resignation story. I was of course not sure who would be at it, but somebody was. I went over to the Commons for the GB statement on the euro, which was OK-ish but the Tories seemed to unsettle him and he wasn’t clear. [Shadow Chancellor Michael] Howard was strong. TB called me straight away and asked me what I thought. I said it didn’t work. No, he said, it didn’t. He just wasn’t clear. He was pointing both ways and people picked up the tension. The pro columnists and commentators were very dismissive. Ed Balls and I agreed it hadn’t gone terribly well. It had been a big day, but we had not really taken the big step forward that we planned. IDS wrote to TB saying that I should appear before the ISC and the FAC, underlining that this was now a political campaign. Sally felt the more obvious that was, the more support I would get.
Press pretty grim. The pro press were very disappointed, the FT scathing, while the antis remained aggressive. As GB said, we don’t have a single newspaper supporting us on the position we set out yesterday. I ran in, up to see TB and Jonathan in the flat. TB was in shorts and a T-shirt, making toast, though at least with marmalade rather than the usual olive oil. He said the problem was lack of clarity. It just wasn’t clear where we were going [on EMU policy] so people felt we were saying the same as in ’97 or ’99. GB was also throwing in all this stuff about the housing market and TB couldn’t see how it was going to be possible to move on it before an election. We went through likely difficult questions. I said what do you say to the question – ‘how long will it take to remove the obstacles to the euro?’ ‘The best way would be to get out a gun, shoot the obstacle and then have a reshuffle,’ he said. He was no longer in any doubt that GB was still slowing it down deliberately. ‘It’s the dead hand, the paralysis of progress.’
We discussed the requests from the FAC and the ISC for TB and me to go to their inquiries into WMD. TB was clear that I shouldn’t go, and that he should only go to the [select committee chairs] Liaison Committee. Then a chat with him and GB on the euro. You could tell from his confident body language that GB was where he wanted to be. He was also making clear that if we wanted to make the necessary housing-market changes, that could include a tax on housing, and lots of other things that would not be palatable. TB was sitting behind his desk asking perfectly reasonable questions and GB suddenly got up and stood over him. ‘We have to stick to the language of the statement.’
I was saying that we, i.e. Number 10, had got too focused on ‘referendum possible this parliament’ and had therefore set ourselves up for defeat in the eyes of the media. GB was saying we should get back on to a message about Europe as a whole. I said the day after a statement on the euro, that would be seen as a retreat. GB was being very warm to me which meant he felt confident and at the press conference he was much more relaxed than TB who was twiddling with his pen too much, though afterwards he felt it was worth doing. The Times came in for lunch and Sally and I were passing each other notes about how bored we were.
TB spoke to Jeremy Greenstock who agreed to do the Iraq job, despite his reservations. News broke that Manchester United were prepared to sell [David] Beckham to Barcelona.61 Alex [Ferguson] called later from the south of France and said he had definitely played his last game, and that his people had been in negotiation with Real Madrid for months. As far as he was concerned, the sooner they got the money for new players the better. He said even in France, he was picking up how much they were throwing at me at the moment. He said the one thing you and I both appreciate is pressure and it looks to me like they want to go for you till they’ve got you. He said the important thing was still to stay in control over when and how I went. I watched the news for once and Andy Marr was basically a television columnist now.
Things just hadn’t worked on the euro and TB was pretty fed up when we went up for the PMQs pre-meeting. He was confident though we could get into the Tories on ‘in or out’ of Europe. But in terms of a gear change, it hadn’t worked, and the judgement was settling that GB had basically thwarted him. TB feared we were making the wrong decision for the wrong reasons. He thought the Tories would come at us today on trust/WMD and/or trust/division/euro. We discussed the reshuffle. Alan Milburn had been to see TB on Monday and told him that he was going to leave. He had spoken to Sally first, who also told him I was thinking of leaving and during the day I had various conversations with him. He said I may think he was the last person to say this, but he really thought I shouldn’t go. He said everyone knew the stuff about me was bollocks but he really didn’t think I should go at a time I was under pressure. He had told very few people about his own situation and asked me what I thought he should say. I said that he should say that he faced a choice between career and family and chose family, that it was not political but personal. He said he was sad but convinced it was the right thing. Alan’s decision was going to be a big talking point and it would be presented as a blow to TB. Alan said he felt wretched doing it now but he felt he had no choice. TB said he felt it made it a bit more difficult for me to go straight away. I suggested Hilary A for the job.
I decided to go for a letter of apology from the Sunday Telegraph over the ‘apology’ story at the weekend. John Scarlett said it had been a real eye-opener to him how newspapers could write whatever they wanted. PMQs was fine, and TB/GB did OK at the PLP, with people feeling they were up for it, though Peter M seemingly embarrassed himself by doing a long apology to GB re his recent comments. TB said afterwards it was a real lapse of judgement. Greenstock said yes to TB to go to Iraq after John Sawers. TB went off to Paris for dinner with Chirac.
TB reckoned the Chirac dinner last night went well. He had found him much warmer than usual, wanting to put Iraq behind them and work together closely. TB felt it should be possible to reshape Britain’s future in the EU but we had to seize it. Jonathan, Sally, David Hanson, Hilary A and I were going through the list pre reshuffle. Through the day we had all the usual stuff. Sorting out the big changes first, then going through the list, endless discussion. Messages coming through, for example, about [junior minister in the Lord Chancellor’s Department] Yvette Cooper’s very high expectations for herself. For health, we had been thinking of Hain – Simon Stevens and Alan both opposed. Hewitt – Hilary A opposed. Reid – but the problem was his Scottishness [health being a devolved matter in Scotland]. TB though felt that wasn’t insurmountable, and he wanted a Blairite moderniser in there. The changes at the Lord Chancellor’s Department, not least to the courts, took up a lot of discussion, and I knew TB was dreading the Derry discussions.
TB saw JP who told us he had just been with GB who was pushing for a big job for Douglas [Alexander] and also for Michael Wills [junior Home Office minister], though not in the Treasury. TB then saw GB, who was pretty thunderous about the whole thing. After he had left, TB said that despite everything, he was still prepared to help him become leader, but he had to work with him on the euro and public services. If he didn’t, he would fight another election and eventually put him out. He didn’t really want to fight another election, and as things stood, only GB could make him.
I spent part of the day drafting resignation letters. Cabinet was pretty surreal because everyone knew there was going to be a reshuffle. Several people now knew about Alan, pretty much everyone knew about Derry and yet on they went with a discussion about Europe, the Middle East, Congo, Iraq. TB said the UK European Convention team had done a brilliant job. Le Monde had been running the line that we had pretty much bulldozed our way to getting everything we wanted. Afterwards, Alan came to my office and we finalised the letter. I said there would be all manner of conspiracy theories, political, financial, sexual, you name it. He said it was none of that, he would be full of regrets but it was the right thing to do. He had another go at persuading me not to leave. I had actually been thinking about whether to do my own announcement today. I discussed it with Sally and she seemed upset about it. We got the Milburn announcement out for the lunchtimes. He did interviews while we had another session on the reshuffle.
TB saw Derry. He and I had a perfectly amicable discussion re families before he went in. Previously, TB had argued he needed to shake things up and put an elected MP in charge of the new department, so when he told Derry it would be Charlie F [Lord Falconer], he was particularly pissed off. ‘You are getting rid of me and putting in another peer, that’s not exactly what I expected.’ As he left, he looked pretty miserable.
He then saw Helen Liddell, then Reid who was not immediately too keen on health, wanted to think about it. These reshuffles were always awful. During a break, I asked TB why we didn’t announce my departure at the same time. We were out on the terrace. He asked why I was so sure I wanted to go. I said I wasn’t really working as hard or as well as usual. Most days I woke up feeling depressed and didn’t think it would improve. For ten minutes or so, he seemed almost up for it. Then he said it wasn’t a sensible day to do it, because it would give another boost to GB. He was also not convinced that I was one hundred per cent sure, and said he thought I would get a second wind before long. He sacked [Michael] Meacher [environment minister] by phone, who made clear he would be difficult. He didn’t do Nick Brown [minister for work] because he was on Question Time tonight. We finished by 7.30, with another day of it ahead tomorrow. Eight-mile run.
The Milburn announcement seemed to be taken at face value. Despite all the crony attacks, the Charlie appointment seemed to be OK. But there was a sense of things being a bit of a mess re Scotland and Wales.62 I was in for eight then out on the terrace with the others to go through the list again. We needed a few more sackings to make room – Lewis Moonie [defence], Barbara Roche [social exclusion and equality]. Tessa Blackstone [higher education] as well. TB wanted to promote Kim Howells [culture, moving to higher education] and wanted Des Browne [junior Northern Ireland minister] to do asylum but Blunkett came in and argued for Bev Hughes [Home Office minister] to stay with him. David could be very difficult and egotistical at these reshuffle times.
GB, who for years had been a nightmare at reshuffles, was relatively quiet. His attempts to protect Nick Brown were pretty half-hearted. He did his usual appeal for Douglas to go into the Cabinet – ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said JP – and he was of course arguing for the promotion of Michael Wills. Hilary A and Sally were regaling us with stories of how Michael would not even sit with his officials on the same part of a train. TB said to GB ‘If he’s so good why not take him to the Treasury?’
GB said it was ‘Not appropriate I’m afraid.’ We spent most of the morning going through the lists again and again, making sure there were no glaring mistakes, Jonathan keeping tabs on the numbers. We finally got Estelle who said she would think about the arts minister job. We had a hiccup with [Baroness] Patricia Scotland who wasn’t sure about the job [minister for the criminal justice system] with Charlie but he persuaded her. Lewis Moonie was difficult. Meacher made a few threatening noises. Barbara Roche very unhappy.
We shifted Yvette [Cooper] to ODPM [Office of the Deputy Prime Minister] and she had learned from last year, in that she didn’t complain. He sacked Nick Brown by phone. Nick said he would ‘continue to support him and the government’ – joke. Then getting people with new jobs to come through the door – Margaret Hodge [minister for children], Malcolm Wicks [minister for work and pensions], Chris Pond [junior work and pensions minister], Hazel Blears [Minister of State, Home Office] – all fine, real freshness and enthusiasm. Hilary A was an absolute brick throughout all this, softening people up when she knew they were on their way out, keeping in touch with all the Cabinet ministers about who they did and didn’t want. Sally also had a real toughness about her in these situations. Then another hiccup re Tommy McAvoy [government pairing whip] threatening to walk re Bob Ainsworth [Home Office minister] being made deputy chief whip. Then Melanie Johnson [moving from minister for competition and consumers to public health] wanted a long conversation with him about this and that concern, and he was starting to get frazzled, asking if they all thought he had nothing to do but listen to their outpourings.
By the time we started doing the bulk of appointments by phone, he had got it down to a very curt ‘I’d like you to join the government as X. You should call Y minister and get the drill. There you are, well done.’ The Tories went on a line that he was a dictator because there had been no consultation about changes at the Lord Chancellor’s Department. They felt they were on to something with it being a bit of a constitutional mess, while we were trying to get it pitched as a dividing line of privilege vs modernisation and change. I had a bad phone call with Dominic Lawson [Sunday Telegraph editor] who was refusing to apologise over the spooks story. Then talking to various incoming and outgoing ministers. I felt Alan Johnson to universities [minister for higher education, having left school at fifteen] was the best move. Brian Wilson [former energy minister] was very down. ‘What do you need to do? Do you have to creep and cause trouble like some?’ He said he had always been supportive. I said I think TB would admit man management was not his forte. Brian was also of the view that until TB sacked GB, he would never get the government he wanted.
It was now pretty much a given in the media at least that the reshuffle had been ‘botched’. Ian McCartney was out and about defending it but the general feeling was we had fucked up. TB called, clearly pissed off. The truth was the press was in total kicking mode. There was no debate about whether the reform of the LCD was a good thing or a bad thing, it was all about the handling. TB said of course if Alan [Milburn] had not gone we wouldn’t have needed the other changes, but we hadn’t remotely prepared the ground. I was feeling ground down and fucked off. I tried my best with the Sundays but they had written us off on it. I asked TB if he wanted me to work on Tuesday’s [Fabian Society] speech to try to get things back on an even keel and he said no, they’ll just say it’s all spin. We now had a press who could only operate at the level of hyperbole, frenzy and venom. Every story had to be bigger than the last one.
Neil and Glenys were round for lunch. I walked in and Fiona said ‘bad news’. She said did I remember a couple of years ago when she had sent an email to the wrong address, and the Mail on Sunday seemed to have it. We tracked it down and in it, she was absolutely vile about Anji [Hunter], her influence, her undermining of Fiona and Sally. Judging from what the Mail were putting to us, my impression was they didn’t have the email as such, but knew of the content, but it was another piece of soap opera we could do without. Anji was pretty upset about it when I told her. Dealing with it meant I didn’t really have a proper chat with Neil and Glenys.
Neil said he thought I should be the next European commissioner, which I thought was pretty crazy. He felt I would do it better than any of the other names being touted, but I felt it was a non-starter. Glenys felt the problem with the reshuffle was that it felt like we weren’t gripping things in the way we used to, and she thought that was because I was fed up with it. Peter M called, said much the same and added that the problem was not just the presentation but the substance of the reshuffle and he blamed ‘Baroness Morgan of Huyton’ [Sally Morgan]. He said her main talent was to undermine and she had poisoned TB against his return and got others to do so. I said TB had been thinking of bringing him back but he felt that both his speech to the women’s lobby and his ‘apology’ at the PLP made it very difficult. I suggested to him he still had a judgement problem about himself.
Charlie Falconer was on Frost tomorrow. We agreed things had not been well handled but we had to get it back on to some proper dividing lines. The Sundays were on to the theme that the reshuffle shifted the balance to GB but it overlooked the fact that Clare had gone. Charlie asked me what my own intentions were. He said he was very worried that if I left, there would be a new template created by the media for the government, namely TB fucks up after AC’s gone, and creates more space for GB.
Charlie fine on Frost. TB was pretty down though, felt the media was vile at the moment. It was just one of those periods of malaise and we had to get through it. Jack Straw called re the dossier Q&A for the FAC, which was going to be the next big dumping on me. There was a lot of shit coming my way again. George Pascoe-Watson [Sun] called and asked me outright if I was planning to leave in the next few months. I dodged it. I had decided I was just going to pick a day soon, and go for it. The consensus in the Sundays was that the wheels were starting to come off a bit. TB said ‘They’ll go into total hysteria when they know you’re going.’ Maybe.
The reshuffle was still rumbling on. GB’s people were briefing that he had secured positions for Scotland and Wales in Cabinet. Hoon, Hewitt and Tessa were all saying to Sally that it was a dreadful mess, but she took that to mean they had all wanted health. But the truth was that we hadn’t really thought it through and now we had problems of definition. We also had the PLP getting a bit jumpy re competence. Whatever else they said about the centre, at least they thought we usually ran a pretty efficient operation. TB seemed a bit down at his morning meeting and was asking what he could have done differently. Anyway, it was done and now Charlie F had to make the thing work, and Reid [replacing Milburn as Health Secretary] had to establish himself for competence and leadership.
What we had really lacked was political narrative and momentum which was why I was arguing for a proper political speech [to the Fabian Society] tomorrow. Peter H and Patrick Diamond [policy adviser] had done what everyone thought was an excellent draft. Everyone, that is apart from TB, who felt it risked sparking a reaction similar to the [September 1999] forces of conservatism speech. He felt it was too simplistic about left and right. We argued about it on and off through the day, using a draft of my speech-briefing note. It started with us talking about closing the progressive deficit and ended with a top line that he was holding firm to reform, which was kind of heard-it-all-before territory. He never wanted to go for the right in isolation. Through the afternoon, the draft went backwards. Peter and Patrick had based it on the progress made on the themes of his ’94, leadership acceptance speech, but he wanted the basic argument to be all about commitment to future reform.
As I was about to leave for home, I bumped into TB who had just seen a group of MPs. We went into his office. He said he was really worried about the reshuffle because we had mishandled it and it was really unsettling the troops. I felt he was overdoing it, and exaggerating how bad it was. He said he was feeling very discombobulated, about me going, about Peter M – they had dinner last night – and by the constant feuding with GB. He felt tired and couldn’t get focused. Tessa had also warned him that there was a feeling he didn’t really look after his own in a way that GB looked after his people, the same point Brian Wilson had made. He looked pretty ground down. I felt really bad now about leaving, but I still knew it was the right thing to do.
We had managed to get TB’s Fabian [Society conference] speech up as a lead story but inevitably they were seeing it as a post-botched reshuffle attempt to get back on the front foot, and with Robin and Clare giving evidence to the select committee we were never going to get an easy run at it. I kept trying to assure TB that it was all a bit of a frenzy that would pass, but he seemed really worried. The PLP was definitely edgy. Hilary [Armstrong] told him that if he didn’t bring back the Hunting Bill for a third reading soon we would not have a hope in hell of winning the foundation hospital vote. TB said sane people just will not understand how we can put at risk our whole public service agenda over hunting. Hilary said he had to understand that hunting went deep, and was symbolic, also that even with it we couldn’t be sure of winning on foundation hospitals. She was very straightforward with him, and a very solid citizen. She was one of the few people I knew who seemed able to combine being close to the end of her tether with total niceness. Even Jack Cunningham [former Cabinet minister], who called me for some briefing for interviews, said we looked really ragged, that it felt like ‘the opposite of the Midas touch’. He said we had to get a grip pretty damn quick. Mark Mardell [BBC] even talked on the news about ‘a whiff of decay’.
TB said he wasn’t clear about a way forward at the moment. The atmosphere was about as bad as it could be for the speech he was making. Rory got his first byline doing work experience at The Times on a story about Gaddafi’s son and was enjoying winding them all up about the fact he had known in advance Milburn was leaving. I had a flare-up with Rebekah [Wade] because Trevor Kavanagh, absurdly, was trying to run the line that the speech was a warning about future tax rises.
We set off for the speech. ‘I suppose “Blair relaunch backfires” will be the headline,’ TB said. Probably. I watched the speech but I could tell it was going to get a bad press. The most important thing now was that we get IDS on the floor tomorrow, paint them as the people who resist all change that benefits the many. TB was very down, and hinting again it was because of me going. He called again later. Even if we had fucked up the reshuffle, the reaction was totally overblown. He said the press has become a real drag on the country, but I’m not sure what we do about it. It sometimes feels like living in the reverse of a police state. Anything the government does it automatically bad, anyone who attacks us automatically good. Tomorrow was going to be tough. He had to wipe the floor with IDS or we could be in a bit of trouble.
The speech coverage was pretty crap, tax being the line in several papers, ludicrously. TB was pretty fed up with it all. We all pretty much accepted the reshuffle had been fucked up and we now needed to get into a good old-fashioned tribal war with the Tories about it. He looked pretty nervy before we went over [for PMQs, then a statement on changes to government functions caused by the reshuffle] but he did fine. IDS was dreadful so the focus was on him in the end. I had a bizarre email exchange with Richard Desmond [Express proprietor]. I complained about the Express splash on the speech – Blair knifes the middle class – and sent him the speech, asked him to read it, and tell me how they get that headline out of it. He sent an email saying he totally agreed and signed it off ‘Fuck editors, fuck Brown, yes to Tony and Alastair.’ I had a meeting then with David Hill, Hilary C [Hill’s partner] and Fiona to discuss whether he would do my job.
Then up for a meeting with TB. Peter M was there, and said when you boiled all our problems down, they went to the TB/GB fault line. TB said you either had to manage it or use the nuclear option but we had to realise the nuclear option had the potential to be disastrous for all of us. He felt in the end he had to manage him, get him to agree to his strategy. He certainly felt the ground had shifted a bit and that the Cabinet was different post reshuffle. Peter also felt we had to separate out the total oppositionalists from the malcontents. Above all, Blairites had to get a sense he still had energy and policy worth fighting for. Peter felt there was a lack of project, a lack of politics, a lack of communication strategy. Party and government were too much in silos. He was right, and what I felt in myself was that I lacked the energy to do it all again. Got home in time to see the news on GB’s Mansion House speech. Back to square one re the euro.
TB got a fairly good press out of yesterday’s reshuffle statement but there was no doubt there was something of a sea change going on. TB set off [for Greece, EU summit at Porto Carras], pissed off that neither I, nor Sally, nor Jonathan, who was in Belfast, was going with him. The morning meeting was focused on Greece and the coverage of Beckham was massive after his transfer to Real Madrid. Just before Cabinet, David Hanson told me that his intelligence was that the FAC were looking to clear TB and Jack but have a go at me, particularly over the dodgy dossier. He said he feared an all-party whack at me would be really bad news. I had a bad feeling about it, sensed they were really going to go for me.
I talked to Neil [Kinnock], said I was ready to go and felt instinctively that I had to do it soon. He said I should ride it out. But when I told him my worries about the FAC, he changed his tune, said maybe do it sooner because ‘with our ridiculous media they will treat it like a mini Nagasaki near the Thames’ and it will wipe everything else out. He said if he was TB, he would be shitting himself. He said his feeling was always that I should have been doing Jonathan’s job and overseeing somebody else doing mine. He felt me leaving was bad for TB but right for me. ‘You’re taking too much shit and you don’t need it or deserve it.’
Cabinet was dull and short. We were facing difficulties putting legislation through because of the Lords. Gareth Williams kicked off by saying ‘I bring you greetings from the men in tights.’ But GB wasn’t in the mood for joking, as he was still raging at them trying to get more powers over his taxation. Jack briefed on the European Council issues. He described [Romano] Prodi as ‘a rampant federalist’ who seemingly had said ‘I want to kill myself’ when he saw the draft Convention, because it wasn’t federalist enough. There was quite an interesting discussion about how we counter, via patriotism, their attempt to use Euroscepticism to hit the patriotic buttons.
I had a good long meeting with Peter M and we agreed an outline plan based on the policy ideas coming forward. He felt TB had slightly lost the values part of our big arguments. Andy Marr called to warn me the Sundays were doing a story that I was planning to leave. I said nothing. Then he called me again later and said he had been told by a member of the government that I was definitely going to go. I said nothing had been finally decided. Meanwhile the FAC, because some Labour MPs were missing, voted to summon me because Gilligan said he’d seen documents showing that I’d asked for changes, and also re the second dossier. I called Tom Kelly who was with TB in Greece. TB said to hold firm, get Andrew Turnbull to reply to the committee and say that I should not go. TB said we should co-operate with the ISC and that was that. I meanwhile had done a note to Jack S re how to handle the dossier issue. I told TB of the rumours doing the rounds that I was going to go in July or September. He said ‘Why can’t you deny it?’ I said that’s difficult and clearly people are talking. Very curtly, pretty cool, he said ‘I’m afraid that’s what happens.’ Both Fiona and Godric were of the view that some of us were being bugged by someone flogging stuff to the media, or by the media per se. It was extraordinary how many private conversations were getting out.
Just when we thought things might be calming down a bit, I woke to the radio news leading on Peter Hain saying that we should look to raising the top rate of tax. He had briefed the Mirror in advance of his Bevan lecture and they had splashed with ‘tax the rich’. He had also briefed the FT on his continuing support for PR [proportional representation]. Why do we fucking bother? If there is one thing we didn’t need right now, it was disarray, on an unnecessary debate about tax. I called Hain, who was still in bed and I said this thing was raging, leading the news and [Michael] Howard was out saying it showed Labour red in tooth and claw. He sounded a bit detached from it all, said he was just trying to get up a debate about inequality and he was amazed it was going so big. I said we should call Today and offer to go on, make absolutely clear we are not going back to tax and spend and this is all part of the problem of a political debate conducted constantly in the media at the level of frenzy and hyperbole.
He went on and pretty much regurgitated the same message. The problem was he was relying on the offending paragraphs that had been pre-briefed and I told him we would have to rewrite the speech making clear no minister can undermine HMG tax policy in this way. I agreed with Balls and Austin that we would have to turn it into a story about process and discipline. I spoke to TB who was about to do a doorstep. He was not happy. Our top line was a clear commitment not to raise the top rate, and TB said he had not spent ten years changing the Labour Party to go back now. The problem was it just looked like another dent in TB’s authority. Then the frenzy got worse when Charles Clarke seemed to say – though in fact he didn’t – the same thing. Pat McF’s view was that Hain never said anything without thinking it through whereas Peter M was more of the view that it was stupidity.
I did a long note for TB setting out what we needed to do in the next few weeks up to conference. He was aware of how bad things were but clear that he could see a way forward. Philip’s view was that we had lost any sense of political project and that the party was getting silly and complacent because there was no sense the Tories could get anywhere near us. By the time we had finished with Hain’s speech, all of the difficult stuff on tax and PR was out. There was a bit of talk around that he was trying to position himself as a possible future leadership challenger from the left. I was pleased with the note, eight pages, emphasis on values, the need to reimpose strategic themes, tying in existing and future policy and events. TB got back late, though he left the summit before it finished. The Europe stuff had gone well but Hain gave us a problem we could have done without. For once the phone was going infrequently, though the Sundays were still chasing me re departure.
I hadn’t slept well. I was avoiding answering the phone other than to the office because by now all the broadcasters and half the Sundays were trying to ask me if I was going. Now was probably not the right time. It would be seen as bad for TB and bad for me if I went under a cloud. The Independent on Sunday had a story with quotes from Eric Illsley [Labour MP on FAC] that they were going to go for me personally re the Iraq dossier and I felt the best thing for me to do was to go to give evidence and get my retaliation in first. I was sure of my ground, so why not? I did a note to Jack saying that when he gave evidence, there were two central points that needed to get over re the dodgy dossier. One, I was unaware of the plagiarism. Two, that it had nothing to do with the people named in the email about it, like Alison [Blackshaw]. We desperately needed to reposition on this and I was thinking the best way was for me to surprise them by saying I positively wanted to give evidence.
I did the Hampstead 10k in forty-six minutes. Tough, but really enjoyed it. I had been up early to do a note to Jack S on the Independent on Sunday, and called re the same. I spoke to TB, first re the general scene, on which he felt we had been here before and we could get out of it. I said we had to keep going on the long term and ignore the media. I also said I was worried about the FAC and thought I should go. I sent him a note explaining why, and copied it to Jack. I said to TB I feared none of the questions and that we had to get to a point where they accepted we did nothing wrong regarding the first dossier, made mistakes re the second. I said I was confident, really felt I should take the heat on it and get it into a better place. If not, the report would come out the day before the Liaison Committee and that would be a real problem for him as well as me. I thought the best thing to do was a note to TB, which I did, giving the reasons why we should break the convention and then give it to Donald Anderson [Labour MP, FAC chairman] as a letter. Jack S agreed with me I should appear because it was clear that a lot of the evidence given so far related to communications issues. TB was persuaded first by me and then by Jack that it was the right thing to do. Jack spoke to Donald Anderson and we agreed a process, that he’d write to Donald, and I subsequently gave him a memo.
TB sensed that me going to the FAC would go very big, but I was in no doubt I had to do it, try to get my reputation in a better place and I felt more confident if I could do that myself. Melanne Verveer [Hillary Clinton aide] came round for tea, advising Fiona she should get out because Cherie had made her position untenable, advising me to get out and get going on memoirs. She thought I could do well on the US speaking circuit. She said Bush was still getting away with murder because he had brilliantly hijacked the security issue and the Democrats didn’t really know how to handle it. Clinton’s view was that Bush was a far better politician than people gave him credit for. There was an intruder at Prince William’s twenty-first birthday bash which gave us a massive news sponge.63
The William situation was still the main attraction but by the time of the eleven o’clock, it was clear I would be a strong second. I had redone a memo and Jack’s letter to the FAC. At the office meeting, TB looked dreadful and there were long pauses as he went through his weekend note, the usual list of the usual subjects, the usual hits on departments. He was getting more and more frustrated at what he called the lack of radical policy direction in the public services. Andrew Adonis would say that we were doing this, trying that, pushing on this, but TB was irritated. Geoff Mulgan [policy adviser] had meanwhile done an excellent note, which was a brutal assessment of our lack of long-term strategy on policy. He said we had lost authority at the centre, that Number 10 had got bigger but less effective, and that our overall narrative was no longer clear. He gave lessons from other midterm governments around the world, and said that they sometimes got renewal through brutal changes of personnel.
As I read it, eight pages of pretty good stuff, I noted Jonathan could hardly keep his eyes open, I was moving on in my mind already, and the contributions around the table were pretty rambling and anecdotal. It was pretty dispiriting. Towards the end I said to TB ‘For God’s sake try not to look so miserable. It’s not as bad as all that. When we have an agenda and we just get on with it and ignore the press, we are always strong.’ But he just kept asking if the overall plan was OK. Pat and I were arguing that we needed a clearer message – it was not about choice but about our values. Then I said: are you OK for us to announce me going to the FAC and he said he was not so sure any more. Someone had got at him, but I enlisted Andrew Turnbull, who persuaded him it was the way to avoid the Liaison Committee being about me/WMD/trust.
So Jack and I then finished the letter to Donald Anderson and got it in time for the eleven o’clock briefing. TK briefed on it, and it ran for most of the day. We had a party meeting, TB again casting around for support and Hilary A being very clear about problems in the PLP. I was now totally focused on FAC, reading lots. Clare Sumner and Catherine Rimmer [Number 10 Research and Information Unit] were doing lots of work for me. Then to a meeting with Michael Jay and Dickie Stagg [FCO official] to go through what MJ would say tomorrow when he appeared with Jack, then back to see John S, Clare Summer, Tom and Godric to begin to go through the difficult questions.
Alison [Blackshaw] was back from holiday and getting me out all the files and I was beginning to work out all the answers to the difficult questions, for example [Ibrahim] al-Marashi’s claim [as the plagiarised source for the February 2003 dossier] that his life had been put in danger. Hilary A said some of our members on the committee were worried. They felt I could easily deal with Gilligan, but al-Marashi was not so easy. Clare had established who in the CIC was responsible for not telling people where it all came from, but we agreed I would take responsibility at the FAC.
Fairly big coverage of me going to the committee. Vile in the Mail needless to say but not bad overall. I spent most of the day with Clare and Catherine, who were terrific. Clare had got to the bottom of the whole [February 2003 dossier] thing. I spent several hours going over and over again the text of my memo which we eventually got to the FAC by 6.15pm. Jack S was keen that I apologise upfront. I agreed, but later came to the view that I should not and said it was because I was worried it would leak. My strategy was to apologise to Dr al-Marashi for the mistake and then demand an apology from the BBC not just for me but for the PM, etc. John Scarlett was getting my memo put through the agencies.
I saw TB, whose main interest seemed to be how the FAC would impinge on him. He gave little advice at all. At least Jack was suggesting changes and improvements. Jack also came over, very friendly, said the most important thing was that I was nice and polite and didn’t go for them. Then to a series of TB meetings on political strategy. He was infuriating me going on about our lack of plan, and I could tell he was as infuriated with me as I was with him, because I was constantly banging on about values, saying he was too technocratic on reform. TB said we had alienated the left on Iraq, the right on Europe, the party on public service reform. Yet he felt on all three we were in the right. Our problem was we weren’t explaining it properly – blah – we didn’t have a proper communications plan for it – blah – so on and so forth, blah blah blah. I was pretty heavy with him, and he with me. Peter M was very good at seeing all the points where actually we agreed and by the end we kind of knew what needed to be done, by way of changing the draft plan from the weekend.
I then spent four hours with John Scarlett and Dickie Stagg to go over all the questions, etc. Meanwhile, six UK RMPs [Royal Military Policemen] were killed, which was really grim. I discussed with Neil [Kinnock], with Fraser Kemp [Labour MP] and a few others how to approach it. They all felt go for the BBC but be clinical and be forensic. John S was keen that I didn’t include the agencies in any general attack on the BBC. Jack’s evidence didn’t go brilliantly. He said I had commissioned the paper, and the BBC said that undermined me before my appearance. But I felt confident.
Jack had set me up badly by saying that I had commissioned the dodgy dossier and it was ‘a complete Horlicks’. He called me while I was preparing for the committee with Clare and Catherine. I said I didn’t want to speak to him but I would see him at the House before PMQs. There was quiet a lot of build-up in the news, full of the usual agenda stuff. TB asked me up to the flat. He said he really wanted me to stay calm at all times and treat the committee with respect. We had worked out the right strategy, concede the apology to Dr al-Marashi, be as detailed and as full as possible, go on the BBC, broaden it, demand an apology and get up the big-picture message about the cynicism of people who say that the prime minister would go to war on the basis of this. TB and I agreed that the media were a real democratic problem, but he didn’t really want to do anything.
It was an odd feeling to go out from Number 10 with lots of good wishes and with the media there for me, not TB. PMQs was pretty low-key. Afterwards TB had another private word. He said look, this is the reverse of the usual. I am telling you that you have to be calm and not get peevish. Clare S and Catherine R were brilliant in preparing me, going through the difficult questions again and again. Meeting with John Scarlett, Godric, Tom, etc. Over at the House, feeling not bad, long walk to Boothroyd Room, there were crowds outside the room, and I had to wait around the corner. I got in, slow start with [Sir] John Stanley [Conservative MP] before a break for a vote at 4. Three hours in total. I picked up after a while. I got most of my lines in, and it went pretty well. I thought the Labour MPs were reasonably helpful, I think they were glad I apologised and they went for the BBC thing pretty well. I cut my hand on the sharp object in my palm (a paper clip). It was gruelling, and I walked back exhausted, followed back by cameras, but there was a nice round of applause when I got back. I felt a lot better. Flank opened on the BBC.
Then to the Leukaemia Research reception and we got the cameras in, partly to get coverage for the charity, partly to give fresh pictures of me looking a bit more normal and less wound up than I was at the committee. The kids were brilliant. I did a good speech, and they gave me a great cartoon as a present for having raised so much. David Davis [Shadow Deputy Prime Minister] came, which was nice of him. By the time I got home, I was totally shagged out. There was loads on the news. It had been live on the news channels plus CNN. I felt the tactic of going myself had worked. TB called late, said ‘Everyone was saying you did superbly, which you did. There is no Cabinet minister who could do that as well.’ Audrey [Millar, Fiona’s mother] called, said she liked [LBC radio talk show presenter] Nick Ferrari’s line, that I don’t pick fights I can’t win.
Huge coverage in the papers and some great cartoons. Generally I was thought to have done well, though the BBC were still focusing on dissent and opposition to me. During the morning we put together a letter following [BBC director of news, Richard] Sambrook’s interview in which he made further contradictory statements. I put together a letter, and got Clive Soley [Labour MP] to do a letter saying that the source should speak to Donald Anderson and, if not, Gilligan should be recalled. We were on a roll, all right yesterday and today, we had good messages of support coming through. I was up at 5 to work on the letter that I was to send to the committee to deal with their extra requests. It took hours and hours and hours. I went through all the different exchanges of correspondence with John Scarlett. It took hours for me, John, Clare and Catherine to get it sorted. I also wrote to [Greg] Dyke [BBC director general] and to Sambrook and put the Sambrook letter out to the press. I was going to nail Gilligan completely, and then the Mail.
Pre Cabinet, Jack S came up to me and I was very short with him and did not engage. Later I told Michael Jay I took it very personally, felt betrayed, that the FCO had basically been interested only in protecting JS and the FCO. TB called me in before Cabinet. ‘You did brilliantly.’ ‘No help from ministers,’ I said. ‘You have to understand these guys are not as used to pressure as we are,’ he said. ‘They panic.’ I said I’d taken a lot of shit for these people and got very little back. I’d thought JS was a bit different.
At Cabinet, I was working on my supplementary letter to the FAC. They were mainly discussing Iraq and TB talking about the general situation. Ian McCartney did me proud, said that yesterday I had shown passion, values, conviction and humility and an awful lot of ministers could learn from that. He said he had watched it on the news and he hoped every party member had seen it because it showed that we believed in something. JR said something similar and then had a real whack at Peter Hain for ‘launching a debate’ on tax. Putin was in for lunch, which was OK as was the press conference, though it didn’t really fly. The media were still obsessing about me the whole time, though we were doing pretty well. The BBC letter went well though and I felt it was turning our way a bit. TB’s demeanour about the whole thing had changed. I had never had so much coverage as in the last few days but TB said it was the right thing to do, I’d have been hung out to dry if I hadn’t done it. We had a farewell dinner for David Manning [moving on to be UK ambassador to Washington]. I had a nice chat with John Scarlett and his wife. Condi was over, which was quite a tribute to David. He was such a nice guy, and TB rightly paid him a very warm tribute.
Ran in, thirty-one minutes. I had been going through the FAC memo until late last night. Early in to go through it again. John Scarlett had a lot of cuts and a few changes and he was really good. We had a long discussion about whether we should be specific that I had previously pointed out an inconsistency between the text and executive summary of the 45-minute description. I decided to put in a general line in relation to the ironing out of inconsistencies. I had to leave for a speech meeting with TB, at which Peter H and I were trying again to tilt the balance towards values and away from the technocratic side of reform. TB was keen to get back on public services but we had to cut short the meeting because Derry arrived to see TB. They had bumped into each other at a state banquet recently, where Derry completely blanked him. He looked totally forlorn as he waited outside and I chatted to him for a minute or two before he went in.
Clive Soley and Phil Woolas [Deputy Leader of the Commons] were doing media defending me. There weren’t that many ministers out but I don’t think that meant they weren’t behind me. Audrey [Millar] did however remind me of the observation that if you want a friend in politics, get a dog. I did the final memo with the last changes then sent it to Clare Sumner to get ready to send while I went with Calum and Charlie [Calum’s friend] to Wimbledon. I lost my rag in the morning watching Jack’s live evidence, where he was umming and aahing and when asked whether the 45-minute claim was in the first dossier, looked shifty. He did not just say yes. I had even talked to him about that point in the morning when I spoke to him at the request of John Scarlett to let him know that I HAD probably made a point to John S re forty-five minutes but it was not a request. So what the fuck was going on?
I suggested to Danny Pruce to get a note to Ed Owen [Straw’s special adviser] saying that the answer was yes, and why didn’t he say that? I said that I felt badly let down and this was what happened when a department cared about itself, not the government. John Williams [FCO] left a hurt message on my mobile saying it was not deliberate, though I was not so sure. But I sent him a softer message back. At Wimbledon, C called me to say he thought I’d done brilliantly at the FAC, that I’d moved the debate on and people in the agencies felt I’d done well. He said we had to win this because it was so unfair and wrong. We went for lunch at Wimbledon. Julie Kirkbride [Conservative MP] was at our table. She said she was totally supportive of me re the BBC and she agreed with pretty much everything that TB said. I said I was determined to get an apology. We watched Andy Roddick and Venus Williams [US tennis players], but I was constantly being called out.
Jack S called me after his private session at the FAC, said it went well. He asked me to understand that he’d not done it deliberately. We went in for tea when news came through that Sambrook had replied. It was real sophistry. Their line now was that it was OK to report a source even if you didn’t know what he said was true. He said I had a vendetta against Gilligan and that I was intimidating the BBC. He also had a line that they would express regret if story turned out to be false. So they were both blustering and on the run. I wrote a very angry response, probably too angry. ‘Weasel words, BBC standards debased beyond belief,’ I really went for it. Once it was drafted, we had a conference call to discuss it.
We drove back and I listened to the BBC Six O’Clock News in the car. It was a total PR job on the BBC letter, and a straight hit at me. I got in to the office and Jon Snow [news anchor] had asked me to go on Channel 4 News. Hilary C had said no but I was tempted because I knew the story inside out. The office was split, half in favour, half against. Jonathan feared it would make me the story even more. I spoke to TB, who said do you really want to do it or don’t you? I said I do. OK, be calm and be careful. The important thing is you do what is appropriate and don’t go over the top. I got into the car and headed there gathering my thoughts. I was taken straight to the studio. Snow seemed not to be expecting me, but there I was. I felt I won it re the words and was able to pick him up on fact a couple of times, but I did get a bit too angry. The clips used in later bulletins were good though.
Lots of calls of support came in, including John Reid, Neil and Glenys, Philip. The office was OK, but TB said he felt I was too angry and Fiona was livid I’d done it at all. She did one of her ‘you never listen, never acknowledge anyone else’s views’ numbers. Peter M called and said get a strategy for the weekend, keep calm, get friends and don’t lose it. The Tory line on Newsnight [BBC] was that I’d flipped my lid and was a liability. But we kept going and I was sure we were going to win. I had the idea of calming it down by saying that we would go to the BBC Complaints Unit. Tom Kelly said it would suit their purposes, not ours.
I was up at 5.50 and did a note to Fiona apologising that I had sent the kids home on their own and gone on. I felt it was the right thing to do, but if she thought it was a mistake, please understand the pressures, and the need I feel to be vindicated, and understand that I’ll get out as soon as we are through this. I listened to Ben Bradshaw [fisheries minister, former BBC journalist] on the Today programme who was excellent. [John] Humphrys [presenter] was getting very childish and petulant and Ben got him to say that Gilligan DID check it with MoD. The MoD press office told us that he didn’t, that all he had said to them was that he was on talking about an interview with [Adam] Ingram [Armed Forces minister] re cluster bombs, said he had a WMD story but it would not bother them. So we got Ben Bradshaw to put out a statement plus a letter to Sambrook, which was running later and kept them on the back foot.
I got some very supportive phone calls through the day. Rory answered the phone to Nick Soames [Conservative MP], who before realising it wasn’t me went off on one – ‘You sex god, you Adonis, you the greatest of all great men’ – before Rory said ‘I’m his son.’ Soames was totally supportive, said keep going, these people are total shits. He said in part we had created this monster, seen it as a beast and we fed it well. But it was now out of control and we had to get the control back. He said bad journalism is like pornography. Every time you fail to check it, it gets closer to being the norm. ‘Do you think my grandfather [Winston Churchill] had a spin doctor? Course he fucking did.’ He said we had to win but he would be happy to speak up for me at any point. He was in great form. ‘Tell the prime minister that the next time I’m called at PMQs I intend to say “What is a lifestyle guru and do I need one?”’ He said he had once said that the Royal Family was like a great tree and if you hack at the roots hard enough eventually the tree will die. That is what’s happening to politics thanks to our wretched media. Keep going, because they don’t like it up ’em.
I spoke to Robin Oakley [CNN European political editor, formerly BBC] who said the same, that he had always considered I was straight and what was happening was wrong. Geoff Hoon called saying he wanted to be out there supporting me. John S called to say he was a bit worried about my interview. He felt I’d done so well on Wednesday, maybe I should have quit while ahead, but he also said he had spoken to C and they were all really pleased they had such a loud champion of the spooks. I told him of the extraordinary moment yesterday, like something out of a film, when I was dictating my response to Sambrook from the marquee at Wimbledon and who should walk by but a spook I recognised.
I felt we were in a much better position. I did the Sunday broadsheets. I spoke to Neil [Kinnock] and got some nice words out from him, also Alex F, Soames and Oakley. John Reid called, keen to do something, ditto Bruce Grocott. Letter from Blunkett saying don’t quit. Ben Bradshaw was brilliant on the media and I told him so. He said he felt it really strongly and we really had to make this stick. TB said keep going hard for another day or two, then we leave it to the committee.
Gilligan called the MoD press office in a bit of a flap to say that the call to the press office of May 28 was indeed the only one he made. We had media outside the house the whole time but I decided to go out for a run anyway. Home for dinner with the Goulds and the Kinnocks. Neil was in one of his wonderfully over-the-top, often comic rages – at the BBC over me, at Glenys over Iraq. His big rage was at the idea of Peter M going to Brussels. The papers came. They were mixed. Some of them had MPs saying I would be cleared, others that Gilligan intended to sue. Fiona seemed a lot happier. I felt very lucky that I had friends like Neil and Glenys, Philip and Gail [Rebuck], Alex, the handful of others who were calling the whole time to help me through. I did a conference call for the Sunday broadcasts with John Reid, Margaret B, Douglas, Valerie Amos, Geoff H. JR did most of the talking. The agreed top line – one month in, one question remains, is the story true? This was getting clearer.
TB wanted to work out an exit strategy. John Birt [former BBC director general] had suggested that I put it in the hands of the FAC and say I’ll do nothing until after that, which was probably the right thing to do. He said it was important that I didn’t let my emotion come into this too much. Birt drafted my letter to Sambrook, which we got out by 4pm. By then Sambrook digging in deeper by saying that they never said TB lied – what the fuck do they think saying something whilst knowing it to be untrue means? Sambrook said we’d acknowledged their source was right (!) and that the real question was where are the weapons. They were beginning to look silly and defensive.
The BBC were trying to move the goalposts to the ‘dodgy dossier’. Peter M said [Greg] Dyke was personally masterminding it and had written parts of Sambrook’s letter to me himself. Peter said they’d got themselves on a hook, whereby they felt their independence was under attack but they’d parked on very weak ground. I went up to see TB who said he didn’t want it going beyond next week. His rationale was that he didn’t want every single media organisation against him. I said we had to get it absolutely proven that we were right and use that to force a rethink of the political journalism culture. I could see he was up for suing for peace. He/Peter M wanted to get it stitched up in advance.
TB wanted desperately for us to get back on the domestic agenda. At the office meeting we had a decent enough discussion of the plan I put forward. The message he felt most comfortable with was that we were doing things that would make us unpopular in the short term but deliver results in the long term. I still felt we were too short on values. I did a revised version on the next four weeks and resubmitted it later. I talked to a few editors and commentators to try to explain this was about BBC journalism not WMD. Dennis Skinner called on his first day back in Parliament after his illness. He said keep at it. He thought I was brilliant on Channel 4, the MPs were totally behind me and ‘I’ll tell [Andrew] MacKinlay [Labour MP on FAC] he has to back you because TB needs you. I’ll tell him he’s worth ninety-nine Roger Liddles [special adviser] and TB is surrounded by twats whereas AC is fine and probably against the war anyway.’
[Peter] Kilfoyle was the only Labour voice apart from [Bob] Marshall-Andrews, who I didn’t count as Labour, to be offside. I spent the rest of the day with Clare S, Catherine R and David Bradshaw trying to agree lines re next steps. The BBC guidelines were shot to pieces by this story. Gilligan issued his threat to sue. I had been quoted as saying: If that guy sues, I’m a banana. Tony Parsons [columnist] had a supportive column in the Mirror, attacking the Beeb. Ben Bradshaw was piling it on to Sambrook and did a letter to the BBC governors about where guidelines were broken. I had a sense of it motoring. I hoped that Scarlett might send a letter of support to the FAC, or maybe C. The jury still out on Channel 4. I got some good feedback, but both [John] Birt and Scarlett thought it had been a bad idea. Mum phoned and said she had lost half a stone in the last few weeks. A friend from Ayrshire had called her to say the vicar yesterday had said a special prayer for me because I was standing up for truth against lies. Seven-mile run.