Hunting was the main story after the government had to bow to MPs’ pressure and the story was that we were heading for a total ban. Gay marriages [proposed same-sex civil partnerships] were going big. I got good feedback from Peter M, Philip and Jonathan who all felt the forward-plan note I had done was strong. The Times had stuff on Dyke being in charge. The Guardian said the BBC would offer an apology for what was inaccurate if it was accepted they were justified in the broader context. The Telegraph had an Alan Cochrane [Scottish editor] piece pro me, a leader [column] on the fence. There was a vile piece from Hugo Young [Guardian] who said the BBC had behaved impeccably. Defending the indefensible.
I sent a letter to Charles Moore [Telegraph editor] re his leader. Lots of letters were coming in in support of what I was doing. Nice one from Joe Ashton [Labour MP]. Letter to Dyke re his letter to TB that ‘if we make mistakes we will admit we were wrong and apologise’. The intelligence from the BBC was that they were going to fudge the two dossiers in their response to the FAC report, and say there was sufficient concern re abuse of intelligence to justify the story. Meeting with TB. He asked where it was going. I said Birt told us yesterday – a defeat for BBC. I put to him a plan to use this to isolate small parts of the BBC and the Mail as the real cancers in our media. ‘How are we going to get back on to domestic politics?’ TB asked. I said this was part of the answer. We had to change the media dynamic and this was part of it. Get back to honest public service broadcasting, etc. He was not totally against it.
I gave him a plan which I thought would help him get into a better place. One, we get through the FAC. Two, we brief that TB has asked AC to put together a new A team of fresh blood including a new policy head and a replacement for me before I work myself out of the job. Three, I leave but we say I will come back for the election in a different position. He seemed up for that. I said to him that I sometimes felt he hadn’t really defended me properly and I had to do a lot of this myself. Yes, he said, and I’ve let you! He said ‘You’re motoring again, which is good.’ I was clear though I was still going. He said he felt there were two problems with the media and GB, but they were better problems to have than a recession or a national crisis. Re the BBC, Peter M was asking me not to get too heavy with Greg Dyke. Rebekah Wade came to see me and said Murdoch had asked why the Sun wasn’t doing the story properly. Research [and Information Unit] was going through the worldwide coverage of it all so that we could show just how far the original story had gone round the world. I had a meeting with David Omand. He said he was worried re Gilligan saying the source was clearly someone fairly high up.
The BBC row was lower in temperature. Then news came from Westminster of a very bloody meeting of the FAC yesterday, the Tories going very political, Richard Ottaway [Conservative MP] saying he wouldn’t endorse anything that exonerates me, [Sir John] Stanley putting down lots of amendments and saying they may do a minority report. It was clear it was going to go line by line and was difficult. Also I didn’t realise Ottaway had replaced [Sir] Patrick Cormack [Conservative MP] who was much more with us on this.
At the PMQs meeting, TB was clearly unhappy with our position on hunting. The PLP really wanted the ban, but TB didn’t. It was tough though. Meeting with John Scarlett and Clare Sumner. John S had agreed with Jack S that Jack would send a note, also cleared by C, that made clear the intelligence for the second dossier was cleared. I argued strongly that it would also help if they said the attacks on me were an attack on their integrity too because it suggested they connived and colluded with me. John was worried, felt that really was him moving the JIC tanks out in front of me. John was being helpful but didn’t want to be political support. Ditto C, who put his name in support of a Straw letter that introduced the thought that if the allegations persisted they were also aimed at the agencies. The MoD were putting out a letter of complaint re Gilligan claims that he had checked his story with the MoD press office. We were still on top but if the committee split on party lines it was going to be very difficult for us. This was taking up too much of my time.
PMQs was OK. IDS hopeless, [Charles] Kennedy did a bit on me – crap – and then back for a meeting of the Iraq Communications Group. The guy from the DIS was just back from Iraq and said things were getting worse not better. Gerard Russell [Islamic Media Unit, FCO] was really worried about the Arab media operation. I had a meeting with Gavin [Millar, QC, Fiona’s brother]. He said the BBC had broadcast a libel but that I wasn’t named at first. It was the Mail on Sunday that did the libel. I could sue the BBC for aggravated libel because of all the other media who supported the story. He felt I could go for Gilligan but though the BBC would not want to litigate he felt the Mail on Sunday probably would. He undertook to read all the papers, felt it would be OK but I had to be clear what I was getting into. They could mount a wider defence. On balance he felt probably don’t do it, but the most important thing was to be cleared by the inquiry.
Meeting with Peter M. He was worried it would be really bad for TB/trust if I did not get vindicated. It was not going to be easy and everyone said it was getting tribal. I spoke to [Nicholas] Soames, who said he would defend me and attack the Tories for undermining the intelligence agencies. Peter M felt that we had to get some kind of deal with the BBC, but Gavyn Davies [BBC chairman] had gone into his shell and would do nothing to – allegedly – undermine BBC journalism! Peter M felt I had to get victory without humiliation for the BBC.
The Guardian splashed on my memo to the FAC. They did it dead straight, quite helpful to me. Greg Pope [Labour MP, FAC member] decided to confess that he leaked it. I had no idea he was doing it. I thought it was a disaster but Hilary A and Bruce [Grocott] said it would be fine and not to worry. Soames had called me late last night to say he had run into C and asked him straight out if the story against me was true. C said no, and Soames said can I say so? Yes, said C. He was a bit pissed when he phoned and basically said he would do anything to help me, adding ‘Especially if you stop TB using the Parliament Act on hunting.’ He wanted to go on the media, called the Today programme and seemingly told them ‘You are dozy, dishonest cunts and I am coming on your programme to say so.’ He was, though, serious that he wanted to go on and make the point that this was an attack on the intelligence agencies as well as on me. [Andrew] Marr did the interview and was now redefining the allegations as us having given ‘undue prominence’ to the 45-minute point. Total bollocks. C called me after the interview to say he was surprised Soames had gone public, that he thought he meant he was going to speak to Tory MPs on the committee. But he added ‘Secretly, I’m pleased that I’ve been outed.’ I said ‘We will keep your pleasure secret, C.’
Then to a strategy meeting with TB, GB, JP, Douglas Alexander, Ian McCartney and David Triesman. TB said he would give the Cabinet next week a political sitrep and then have a polling and political discussion. JP said we needed a lot more than that, and there followed a positive and good discussion. JP’s main point was that we didn’t do enough to promote what we had done and talk about our values. The party felt itself on the defensive because that’s how we came across to them. GB said we had to think forward to the election, the issues, big choices and values dividing lines, and then think back, then plan from here to then. He felt there was so much focus on reform that we were losing sight of values, that the messages were too technocratic. It was exactly what I had been saying. But TB was worried it was a bit of a JP/GB stitch-up to block some of the reforms. He said if we didn’t have reform we would not be New Labour. We would look like we were running out of steam.
I said I still felt we could put together a clear single strategy based on the establishment of delivery, motivation of the party through values and dividing lines, then the next steps on future reform. What is the point of suddenly launching ID cards or LEAs [local education authorities] reform on an unsuspecting world? The ground work has to be about the values. GB made the point that the stuff running today on Lottery reform was fine, OK on its own, but not remotely strategic. Jonathan felt afterwards it was a hopeless meeting but I felt it gave us the right parameters of a better strategic approach.
Then Cabinet, during which I was only half listening because I was rewriting Pat McF’s draft of TB’s speech for tomorrow [in Liverpool, on public service reform], trying to reassert values and politics. I got a call from Hilary A around 12 to say the committee had agreed the report, with some amendments from [John] Maples [Conservative MP], but [Sir John] Stanley had been seen off. She felt it would be OK on the BBC issue, and that I could say that I was in the right, even if they didn’t want to say that the BBC were in the wrong. So it felt fine and I felt we were back on top. But the BBC reporting then moved either on to the second dossier or whether the select committee system could be fair as it was run by the parties, etc.
Long chat with Peter M re strategy. He felt we should not reveal tactics, keep our powder dry and see what happened. The BBC was panicking according to everyone now. JP came to see me for about an hour, first re politics, saying TB had to stop dropping massive reforms on us that we hadn’t had a chance to think through. He really felt we should get rid of some of his policy people. He also wanted to discuss the plan for him and Pauline [his wife] to come out with Pauline’s child from way back.64 He was a bit nervous but I assured him it was the right thing to do and agreed the plan he had worked up with his kids and Pauline.
TB called a couple of times from the North-West where he was doing a Granada TV special on the NHS. We were mulling over the debate on how to respond to the FAC. Jack S wanted to do a Commons statement, which I didn’t think was very clever. I felt we had to get it all pinned on the BBC story and go for that and that meant it could be better that I did the media on the day. There was of course a worry that if I did it, the story would become me/spin rather than HMG.
Off to [broadcaster] David Frost’s party, people generally supportive, including Frost. I avoided Dyke and Davies. I had a good chat with [General Sir] Mike Jackson who wanted me to kill Gilligan. At the Hillary Clinton book launch at the Orangery [Kensington Palace], Jim Naughtie [BBC Today programme presenter] was urging me not to do a big attack on the BBC generally, saying it was not the majority view that we were anti war, etc. I said I had a very good case in having a go at them. Chatted with Bill and Hillary Clinton a bit, both still very supportive. It was a nice enough evening but I was getting very down at Fiona’s constant portrayal of me as having brought all these problems on myself. Peter M called to say BBC were trying to shift the terms of the story in all their reports and we had to lodge that.
Got Ben Bradshaw to do another letter to Sambrook pointing out how they were changing their story, and at the 11 Godric did the same, also pointing out that Hoon had been refused an appearance on the Today programme. I spoke to Robert Jackson [Conservative MP who later defected to Labour] who had called saying he wanted to help. We eventually agreed he would do an article for the Sunday Telegraph, getting out the line that I was not totally opposed to the BBC but to this strain of reporting that was anti politics and anti public life. I had a series of long chats through the day with TB and Jack re how to handle Monday. JS wanted a Commons statement. I said it was crazy because it put the onus on the Tories rather than us. I said we had to get it all on to the BBC/forty-five minutes.
I spoke to Hoon who said that a man had come forward who felt he was possibly Gilligan’s source. He had come forward and was being interviewed today. GH said his initial instinct was to throw the book at him, but in fact there was a case for trying to get some kind of plea bargain – say that that he’d come forward and he was saying yes to speaking to Gilligan, yes he said intelligence went in late, but he never said the other stuff. It was double-edged but GH and I agreed it would fuck Gilligan if that was his source. He said he was an expert rather than a spy or full-time MoD official. GH and I agreed to talk tomorrow.
I was meanwhile doing my letters re BBC behaviour as well as a bit for TB. TB [public service reform] speech went OK but low-key. I was talking to TB, Peter M, Ben Bradshaw and later John Scarlett. We needed to work out our strategy for Monday. Godric said there was a case for us simply saying we had been cleared, the ball was now in the BBC court, and wait for their response before further action. Peter said we should be nice about the BBC and get ready to go for them on Monday. TB wanted closure. Peter M was being extremely helpful at the moment, and I was grateful that he was turning his mind to it. Ben Bradshaw ditto. Soames was in a bit of a panic after his interview and saying nobody must know that I helped him set it up, because I was such a bête noire for the Tory Party. Meeting on EMU, in which I was falling asleep the whole time.
The BBC story seemed to be moving our way. The governors were to meet tomorrow to discuss it. The BBC started briefing aggressively that they would stand by their story and warn the governors it would be the end of BBC independence if they backed down. I spoke to TB and we agreed I should send a fairly emollient letter to the governors, and a file, to set out our side of the story vis-à-vis the BBC, and say it was not about attacking independence, or a broader attack, but dealing with one specific set of allegations.
Jack called a couple of times to say he felt he should do the bulk of Monday’s media, and I should be low profile. I was not so sure. He later called to say the FAC was going to be in Rome on Monday, so no point in a Commons statement, but we had to work out a line. I agreed with Jack that it had to be about the BBC story because that was where the focus was. There was a case for saying nothing and going up to do discussion stuff, e.g. do we do a phone-in or discussion with BBC. Catherine Rimmer went into the office to put together the file for the governors. Meanwhile I was dealing with the car, which had been broken into, then took the boys to various sports events, then saw Gavin [Millar] again, who having read through everything felt I had an open-and-shut case for libel but that we should wait and see what the BBC said on Monday.
I was out running when Martin Sheehan [press officer] called to say the Sunday Telegraph were doing Dyke presenting new evidence to the governors to justify the story, the Observer saying that C met [John] Humphrys and [Kevin] Marsh [editor of Today] shortly before the Today programme story. I organised a conference call with C and a colleague of his. C said – and I knew this – that he met them a few weeks before this story, but when Humphrys recently said in his interview with John Reid that he had sources too, C’s colleague got on to Humphrys to be assured he did not mean C. We agreed that they call the Press Association and BBC – or get the FCO to – and say they discussed nothing that would add to Gilligan’s story and they should stop digging. It was a big So What. C agreed we should say it added nothing to the story. It looked like the last desperate throes, but it was possible the governors would go for it and back Dyke. C wanted to get Humphrys to deny the story.
I ran home, exhausted, and got the papers. They were pretty tricky. It was also still not clear whether the FAC would clear me or not, or had split on party lines. Alex F called from the women’s final at Wimbledon, said he had been at the same table as Gavyn Davies, who seemed pretty out of sorts. Later I did a conference call with Tessa and Ben Bradshaw to go over their interviews tomorrow. Tessa called later to say she had really tried to speak to me but I never returned calls or messages. It was true that I was to a large extent trying to rely on my own resources.
Ben Bradshaw did well on GMTV. I called Hillary Clinton before she did Frost, so that she had the full picture. TB’s Observer words on the BBC and me were leading the news.65 I spent much of the weekend talking to TB and Geoff H re the ‘source’, the man who felt he was the source because his colleagues said he sounded like what Gilligan was saying. He had come forward earlier in the week to confide that he’d seen Gilligan in a hotel, that he’d made some of these comments, but not others, for example about me. GH, like me, wanted to get it out that the source had broken cover to claim Gilligan had misrepresented him. TB and I had a long chat about it and TB was worried, felt that he or GH ought to tell the FAC about this. His worry was that it could lead to them reopening the inquiry. I wanted, as GH did, to get it to the BBC governors that we may know who the source was, that he was not a spy, not involved in the WMD dossier and was a WMD expert who advised departments. TB was fine about that but backed off after speaking to Omand, who felt the guy had to be treated properly and interviewed again. GH and I felt we were missing a trick.
I suggested to GH to speak to TB to try to persuade him we should do this and maybe GH should speak to Sambrook and tell him that he was a nobody re the dossier. GH said he was almost as steamed up as I was. TB said he didn’t want to push the system too far. But my worry was that I wanted a clear win not a messy draw and if they presented it as a draw that was not good enough for us. We were getting the files to the BBC and when the governors arrived, the BBC put out a line that they never said we lied, so we hit back on that. Michael Howard on Sky said I was the most malevolent influence ever. TB felt that we should not push [MoD permanent secretary] Kevin Tebbit/David Omand too hard, and could maybe bring it out tomorrow if we needed it. TB was also feeling that we had to have something for the ISC to go for and that could be this. Jack – who’d spoken to Donald Anderson – said that the Tories had not supported the report so it was going to be split on party lines, and unclear and very messy.
As the governors met, it was clear we were heading for a bad day tomorrow. TB said we had to get it on to the issue of the UK media culture. ‘It is a disgrace the BBC are behaving like this, it really is.’ He said to me how are you feeling about it? I said fed up about the whole thing. He said don’t be fed up. It’s important and we have to keep to it. All this media stuff is really important and we had to stick to it. I was suddenly feeling stressed, exhausted, deflated. Tom Kelly was briefing and said the press were bored with the story. The problem was I’d felt we were going to win and it was going to be a messy draw at the FAC.
Source idea went nowhere as he had to be interviewed again by Martin Howard [deputy chief of Defence Intelligence], DIS and Personnel. TB called to tell me not to worry. Martin Sheehan called after the BBC governors broke up and I listened to Gavyn Davies’ statement. Dyke had got them on to the same line, defending the story, extending it to general issue of coverage. It was pretty poor, but clear they were all going along with the BBC line, if not defending the story. TB and I agreed the line that would put the focus on the claim that they never said we were lying, and we made clear what the central allegations still were.
There was a demo outside the house. I slept badly. Endless FAC blurb on the radio. I spoke to Peter M before going out, and did a good clip before getting into the cab. I felt it could go any way really. I was feeling a bit under siege, and very tired. Up to see TB. We were not clear what it was going to say, but he said we should make clear that we were not going for BBC independence, but they had to correct the story. TB’s feeling was that we had to press ahead with it and be robust, but also look for a way out with the BBC. We met in my office – Jack, his officials, Clare Sumner, Godric, John S – to wait for the [FAC] document to arrive. A first reading seemed fine for me but less brilliant for the government as a whole re WMD. It was pretty clear-cut re me, but with Tory amendments. But even those did not support the BBC story. I did a quick skim read, some good, some bad.
Then round with Jack and John S to see TB who was meeting Kevin Tebbit, Omand and others re ‘the source’. He was an ex-inspector, who advised the government, was aware of information going into the dossier but not involved in drawing it up. He’d once sat next to Jack as an expert at a select committee. Kevin said the guy claimed he never mentioned me. He was a bit of a show-off though. Felt that maybe Gilligan just put in the stuff about me. It was agreed he should be interviewed again, and then we should get it out that the source was not in the intelligence community, not involved in drawing up the dossier. Agreed we should be saying the source was misrepresented by Gilligan. TB was keen for Tebbit and Omand to be in control of the process. I watched the FAC press conference. Donald Anderson very clear re me. [Sir John] Stanley said I was a sideshow, Bill Olner and Gisela Stuart [Labour MPs and FAC members] were supportive. Tories and Andrew MacKinlay not too bad for me, and overall the impact was pretty positive.
TB said we have to be forensic about getting up the main points about the BBC allegations. Just before Jack [Straw] was due to go out in the street, John Stanley said the BBC was ‘wrong’ re the central allegations against me, so we put that into Jack’s clip and he added that they must apologise. Sambrook was up defending the BBC, saying the report justified the decision to broadcast the story as the parties were split, etc. Everyone at our end said he came across as pathetic, but the problem was that the public probably believed them. TB was wanting to calm things down. For example, I wanted to do a discussion programme with Sambrook, but TB said do a letter instead. Then, when I did the letter, I got good advice from John Birt, who said claim victory and don’t rejoice. He said the BBC would not apologise and therefore there was no point pushing it. I should be magnanimous. He said they look ridiculous, they can’t answer the question if it’s true or not. Birt said he knew what it was like to be on the receiving end of injustice, which is what this was, but you have to live with it. He said the biggest worry was where these wretched weapons were. TB rewrote my statement to be a bit more emollient. It was not strong enough for me or the team. Hours of coverage all day. I felt it was OK for me but others thought it was too muddy.
Several chats with MoD, Pam Teare [MoD director of news], then Geoff H re the source. I felt we should get it out through the papers, then have a line to respond and let TB take it on at the Liaison Committee. TB felt we had to leave it to Omand/Tebbit judgement and they didn’t want to do it. We had to go for natural justice. GH said there was a problem that the source once gave evidence alongside Jack Straw. We were briefing that the BBC would eventually apologise. Wall to wall all day, source issue not moving. More calls for public inquiries. All went fine for me, but there were lots of difficult questions for the government as a whole. Jack was at home with food poisoning. Tessa good, Margaret B good on the media. The story was moving from me to WMD issue generally, on which not so good for us. TB was working up for the Liaison Committee tomorrow. I called my mum to tell her it was all going fine. She said she had not watched or listened to any of the news all day.
I was beginning to think I should say I’m going soon, maybe even this week. Source going better but not necessarily him. We were OK. John Scarlett was a bit worried that people felt I was running intelligence meetings. The agencies didn’t come out great. Lots of unanswered questions. The problem for TB was the Iraq WMD were not found. GH wanted to get up the source, Tom and Godric felt it was best to wait until tomorrow, we had to do it right. The story on the FAC report was the whole of The World at One, ten to fifteen minutes on news, thirty minutes on Newsnight – Donald Anderson was strong.
The papers were disgraceful. Even for me, though cleared, they managed to muddy the waters, e.g. the Telegraph saying they would constantly call for my resignation. Mail vile, and left press not that great. It was even worse for TB, and of course the issue was moving quickly on to WMD rather than BBC. Up to see TB in the flat who was preparing for the Liaison Committee. He said the papers were unbelievable, ‘It is truly Orwellian the world that we live in, I just don’t know what to do with this constant rewriting of history and moving of goalposts.’ Meeting with TB, JS, Scarlett, DM, etc. to go over the Liaison Committee. It was still not clear how we were going to handle the case of the MoD official.
Halfway through the TB evidence, I called Geoff Hoon. He was not remotely on top of the case. He said he had not checked out where we were on it. Also admitted he’d been crap on Today programme when asked who wrote the dossier and he hadn’t seemed to know it was John Scarlett. Said he should get going on the source issue, TB clear that we should leave the bureaucracy to deal with it. Scarlett on good form as ever. TB off to the House, did pretty well. Gave no quarter on Iraq/WMD/kitchen Cabinet. He was a bit dozy on the issue of Europe, didn’t push on the euro, OK on the reshuffle, overall a bit tired but OK. He came back and continued to try to sort the source issue. He met Scarlett and Omand and agreed to try to resolve it through a letter to Ann Taylor [ISC chair]. Word then came back she didn’t want a letter on it. That meant do it as a press release.
Jonathan, AC, Tom and Godric, John S and Kevin Tebbit went to Godric’s room and wrote a press release. Tebbit drafted a letter from GH to Gavyn Davies offering to give him the name of the source. Martin Howard had interviewed [Dr] David Kelly [government scientist and weapons expert], and was pretty convinced that he was the source, though of course we could not be sure. Tebbit took the draft away to the MoD and had to clear it with David Kelly, who was on a motorway. Then out by 6 and briefing mainly on the fact that the BBC put out a non-denial denial within two hours.
I told TB I still wanted to leave and why not now? Said he was really against it, it was the last thing he needed, and at the moment there would be meltdown in Parliament and that we should wait until Commons was not sitting. I said but I’ve only got two weeks left. Political strategy meeting with TB, GB, JP etc. PG presented the latest poll, which was bad. TB felt we had to get up delivery, get an acceptance of progress made. But he was tired and unfocused and GB’s response was pretty brutal. He said we had no strategy to deal with the right-wing press, no clear plan for the election, no decision on election dividing lines. TB then asked him to circulate the strategy paper he had sent to TB, which he said he agreed with. GB said he wouldn’t circulate it until he had the raw polling – to which he always had access anyway if he wanted it. It was one of those meetings in which whatever TB said, GB then said something slightly different. JP pitched in with a warning about putting too much new policy out there. It meandered on for about half an hour but got nowhere.
The BBC story was going away because they were refusing to take on the source idea. There was a big conspiracy at work really. The biggest thing needed was the source out. We agreed that we should not do it ourselves, so didn’t, but later in the day the FT, Guardian, and after a while Mike Evans [defence corrrespondent of The Times] got the name. It was going to be difficult to keep it going and of course the politicians really wanted out of it. The story was moving away and as the source row grew, I felt I’d lost. Brendan Foster [former Olympic runner] came to see me, and he said TB was still the best there was. He said he would be amazed if I ever left the job until TB went because there couldn’t be a better job and in many ways he was right.
TB went to the PLP and everyone said he did well. Then PMQs. I wanted him to turn the heat on the BBC but he wasn’t really up for it and IDS and he ended up with some pretty vicious exchanges about WMD. Strategy meeting. Stan [Greenberg] went through the polling detail and though we were still ahead, it was a gloomy picture. Peter M, Philip and I put forward our tired responses and it all felt a bit jaded. TB felt WMD/Iraq was hurting him personally very badly and of course it was. Re GB, he said there was no point pretending that we would ever get back to being one big happy family, so we had to work around him as best we can.
By the time I got home, I felt really tired. Heat, pressure and stress, the problem of knowing when to leave, it was all pretty grim really. TB was not really engaging with me re my departure. Andy Marr led the news, massively ramped across all channels, with a story about senior sources saying we were unlikely ever to find WMD. It transpired the source was Jack Straw. JS apologised to me later saying he thought he was just chatting for background, not that Marr was going to do a big story. It was an outrage the way the BBC was now using its reporters and outlets to promote its line on the issue.
Marr WMD story still going big. [Robin] Cook on Today, John Major at 8.10. TB said the BBC coverage was actually a scandal. It was like dealing with the Mail on this, not the BBC. It was like Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and all that. I got Ben Bradshaw on to TV re the WMD story saying this was a BBC diversionary tactic re the source. The FAC met and agreed publicly to call Dr Kelly [to the committee] and privately they were writing to Gilligan, so this was still moving in an uncertain direction. Geoff Hoon got a letter of apology from Sambrook about the claim they’d put the allegations to us.
Political Cabinet at 3. TB did an OK introduction but once Philip’s polling was done they had what Douglas [Alexander] called ‘a meeting of government by anecdote’ designed to promote views we already knew they had. Alistair Darling on the Libs, Andrew Smith on local campaigning methods, Pat H on targets, DB wanting more ASBOs, Charles Clarke on green issues, Hain on the need at least to think about tax. Not a good discussion. JR was the only one who really said anything worth taking on board. GH also spoke quite well, echoing John in the line that we needed to keep on with reform as a way of holding the middle ground but do it according to our values. GB was not as impressive as usual, started well with his line about working back from the election, then seemed to run out of steam a bit. JP was very passionate, defended TB saying that he alone must not take the blame for Iraq, because it was a decision we all took and we all had to stand by it.
TB spoke better summing up and he was very open about the conundrum – that we needed reform to make change but the individual changes could always be unpopular till they got through and made an impact. It was a tired Cabinet and a tired meeting and we were going to have to raise our game. TB looked tired. Both JP and GB had big bags under their eyes. There was no real drive or energy in there. TB felt the coming fight would be a very traditional left/right one. Asylum, immigration, Europe, tax and spend. We have to get to acceptance of a minimum basis of delivery. But we have to show we have the only viable long-term strategy for the future. We must not concede the intellectual and political dominance we have in the political debate. But the values must be clearer. On the issue of trust, WMD – lack of – is obviously a problem. But trust is best addressed by reconnecting with people on the issues they really feel strongly about – crime, antisocial behaviour, health, education. It is through the values that we get the dividing lines and through detailed policy that we highlight them.
Charles C agreed with the analysis, but said the party as a family feels ill at ease with us and we have to make the party feel more involved. Alistair Darling was on his usual worry re the Libs, said he would relish a traditional left/right fight but we needed to be clear about how to handle the Lib Dems within that. In Scotland tactical voting was now common. We must not underestimate the Lib Dem threat in some areas. The argument has to be that they are not risk-free. Jack S felt the position was more difficult than PG’s polling suggested. He felt we were kidding ourselves if we thought trust was just policy-based. We are delivering a huge amount of what we promised, but a lot of people don’t like us. Part of the problem was that too often we defined ourselves against the party. We alienated our own people. We sometimes win the vote without being clear about winning the argument. He said he was all in favour of being at our best when at our boldest, but there was no point picking fights for the sake of it. Jack was being pretty tricksy at the moment and TB was very deliberately raising his eyebrows and making sure people clocked his reaction. Andrew Smith said people on the [social housing] estates felt we were pursuing Middle England at their expense. Pat H said values not management were the key. It goes deeper than the language we use. All people hear is targets, efficiency, all fine but limited. They need to hear values. Talking about users of public services like they were customers was also alienating. There were too many confusing initiatives, too many targets, not enough willingness to listen and engage. GH was clearly worried about the general drift. He said it would be a disaster if we in any way abandoned the middle ground. Both the traditional working class and the middle classes are better off and ‘I’m worried that if we listen too closely to party and unions, we get pushed to making a false choice.’ TB nodding.
Bruce [Grocott] said the party was not so much rebellious as moribund and he felt that was worrying. Peter Hain – music to my ears – said we had to generate a bigger debate about the future of politics and the dire impact of the modern media. Hilary A was cogent and intelligent as ever. She said to TB ‘You warned the PLP that division was the death of all previous Labour governments. But you have to realise they feel the only way they get listened to is by being difficult, including voting against the government.’ She was worried it was becoming habit-forming. She said to be fair TB spent a lot of time every week talking to backbenchers and he is the busiest of all of them. Yet a lot of ministers just don’t bother.
There was a coffee break and TB was not terribly happy at the general tone and tenor, felt they were all conceding too much and also in some cases coming up with the wrong answers. JR spoke first, and said though TB ‘took the trust issue on your own shoulders’ it was about all of us and they had to do more as a group to address it. He spoke well, if for too long, about the need for themes rather than policy initiatives to drive our politics. He felt the strategic audit should force us to agree the overall priorities, and we should not just be fighting our own departmental corners. He also said we should not get too despondent. We were six years into government with a massive poll lead. We had made mistakes but we were basically seen as competent and delivering. Nor should we be amazed at the forces ranged against us – the right-wing media hate us because we’re in power. The ultra left hate us because we’re moderate and sensible. Sacked ministers have their own grievances. We have to build the alliances to defeat them in argument.
GB agreed, said it was an amazing success story that we had stayed dominant for six years. We know how we did it and we have to carry on with the same rigour and discipline. He felt the Tories were following a Bush strategy – try to shut down debate on the traditional right-wing issues. Try to get people to forget the Tory past. Try to get the economy taken for granted. They want to spread disillusion in public services and then move to tax cuts and privatisation. He felt we had to work back from the next election, agree the themes and dividing lines and then plan back. He felt on the economy it should be stability and enterprise. We need a strong public services dividing line. Another on the nature of progressive change. Families. The state of Britain and national identity.
JP did his usual speaking up for TB. Through some of the contributions TB had been drumming his fingers. JP seemed pretty irritated too, maybe not because of the content but the lack of balls being shown by a fair few of them. He said TB had ‘done a very noble thing’ in accepting responsibility for the trust issue. But it was not just his problem. Trust was the responsibility of the whole Cabinet. He felt Iraq would, long term, be seen to be the right thing to do. 300,000 people in mass graves – never let people forget it. He said in the PLP we had nearly fifty people there permanently trying to poison fifty more, plus they could always call on the Lords, lots of our own people included, to damage us. We had ex-ministers feeding it all the time. We have to fight back harder, get into the kind of mode we’re in for elections. It was good rousing stuff and lifted the mood.
TB said he had listened carefully. He said that being in government did not fit easily with the party’s culture, which prefers to campaign than to govern. We have done a lot but we are not the government of the party’s dreams. No government ever will be. But they need to know if we divide, if we go back to the ways of the past, we will be out again. Also if we lose the capacity for renewal, we will go out. New Labour is not a finite thing. It means a Labour Party constantly renewing to meet the challenges of a world of change. He said ’97 to ’01 was all about establishing credibility to govern. We did some terrific things – but a national minimum wage does not transform the country. We did the basics well. But in a second term we are challenged more. The country and the party want more. But in meeting the party’s demands we must not yield up the middle ground because that is where the country is. It is not just about what Middle England wants, but the challenges of today are best met in the middle ground. There are some policy solutions that neither party nor government will like. But we have to do what we think is right for the long term.
He said the unspoken message from some – and he was looking at GB – was to go easy on reform because it would anger people. GB said ‘I’m not saying that,’ but TB ploughed on – ‘There is no division in my mind between the need to reform and staying true to our values. It is not inconsistent. We are being true to our values in making the reforms needed to improve life for the people we represent.’ He said he wanted people to think over the summer about how that applied to their departments. Think long term. We could avoid a bit of political pain by opting out of difficult policy decisions. But it would be a mistake for the long term. I was left thinking he was the only one there who could speak like that. JP had warmed it up well but the bulk of the contributions had been either tired or timid and distinctly lacking in leadership.
Douglas [Alexander] was good on the new politics. If he didn’t look so boyish, he would make so much more of an impact because he talked a lot of sense. But listening to them, I did feel that a lot of our problems about lack of strategic capacity were caused by the fact that for a while now I had not been fully engaged. Also on policy, as Bruce G pointed out, most of the good things we had done were from the first term. Dan Bartlett called me later from Air Force One, said his sense was we were winning.
Still a lot of focus on Iraq and intelligence and whether it was poor, or wrong. Fiona and I went to the unveiling by [Nelson] Mandela [former President of South Africa] of a blue plaque at [South African politician] Joe Slovo’s old house in Lime Street in Camden. The Milibands were there and I had a nice chat with Ed about how much he enjoyed his time out in America. I shared a car with him to the office and he agreed there was very little direction and strategy.
To the Ritz where I was having lunch with Clinton, with Peter M and Philip. Mary McCartney [photographer] was taking some pictures. BC had had just two hours’ sleep after getting in from Greece. He was dressed in golf-type clothes. He was a lot thinner than the last time I had seen him. Doug Band [Clinton aide] had organised lunch, which seemed to be a succession of different meals, and Clinton was eating a lot of them. First a plate of eggs, then bacon, then hamburgers. First we talked about Bush. We talked a bit about the US scene. I asked why he never stayed in embassies when he travelled. He said Bush had some mean people round him. ‘I could, but I’m not sure about the welcome.’ He said he was not much for having things named after him but there had been a Clinton Fellowship for Israeli and Palestinian students and at first the Bush administration changed the name and then they took away the money. ‘These are ruthless people you are dealing with.’ On Marc Rich [indicted in 1983 for illegal oil deals with Iran and tax evasion] and the controversial pardon [by Clinton on his last day in office], he said that Cheney’s chief of staff [Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby] had testified for the guy. ‘You have to understand that what they care about is power. They control the press, they control the agenda and they hoard power ruthlessly.’ They were changing the law to allow the White House to be more secretive. He said the view in DC was Bush had put all his [Texas] governor papers into his father’s presidential library because that meant they couldn’t be got at.
He said Bush liked TB because he stayed with him but if somebody came along they thought would help them more, they would go for them. He was speaking very slowly, calmly, matter-of-factly, probably conscious that we were on the lookout for signs of bitterness, but there was precious little of that and it was pretty compelling. He felt Bush had lost an election and having ‘won’ it he was now behaving as if he had walked it. But they were clever, and so was Bush. He was good at dealing with opponents. I asked him what Bush would do with the BBC. ‘If he could kill the governors, he would. But he can’t, so he would do a deal.’
On Iraq, he said the Bush lot had never been keen on Blix. He said Powell was the one who really wanted to let the inspectors work, and now it was looking bad for them, but because they still had control of the media, Bush was not yet under pressure. September 11 had changed the American people’s psychology. Bush understood that and the Democrats had not worked out how to respond, how to fight it. He was angry about Bush, philosophical about the campaign [Al] Gore fought, hopeful for Hillary.
Peter M had to leave to do an interview. Philip, BC and I went over to the sofas and out poured something of a masterclass in political strategy. He followed our politics closely, and I asked him what his remedy would be for our problems. He said he was touched that we trusted him so much that we could openly lay out the problems we had. He said first, you have a weak Opposition. Keep them weak by coming up with the forward policy positions and push them where you want them. Second, TB is about as good as they get. Keep reminding everyone of that. Third, on the press, he said you need a strategy to get back credibility. He said he’d followed my troubles and was sympathetic. He said that I’d always been the number two target after TB and that I’d taken a lot. I’d been right to fight for myself and I did a great job, but now move on. Don’t keep digging the hole. Let others do it. Go back to the media and say I didn’t lie, but maybe I missed something. I always strove to tell the truth but I’ve thought deeply about it all. I’ve got a job to do and so have you, and it’s best if we can do it without regarding each other as subhuman. He said the problem was they felt it was a pattern of behaviour – manipulation and bullying – and that I had to show them I was real again. He said they don’t like me in part because I was one of them and now I’m not.
Next, a strategy for the PLP. Understand their lives and reach out to them. They have shitty lives. You guys go to DC. You have real power. They get a weekend in their constituency. Give them some romance. They think you guys have gone Hollywood and they want more local. It’s about their psychology. It’s the same with the press. Some you will never win but others you will if you are nice to them, involve them. Your MPs know TB is better than them but that doesn’t mean they are nothing. Fifth, you have to reconnect. People are falling out of love with Tony because they think he has fallen out of love with them. He’s a statesman and that’s great but their world is here and now and they are paying him to sort out their world, here and now. They know he has to do this other stuff but they want to know he cares about them, here and now. Sixth, the Third Way is fine, but it has to be a third way with liberal values. Don’t just push a reform message. He has to have good old-fashioned left causes too, for the poor, whatever. It’s about values not reform.
It was the same argument I had been having with TB. I said so, and he said yes, but maybe he thinks you are just beating up on him. It’s all about balance. He has to balance the Third Way message for his new coalition with the liberal message for the party. You have to balance frank advice with real support. On TB himself, he said he had to rediscover his joy in politics. He needed new stimuli without throwing everything out. He had to keep change with continuity. He came to the point about me not beating up on Tony. He could see for example why I thought Carole [Caplin] was a problem, but other people’s emotions and psychology are not always the same. ‘My brother was a cocaine addict and the word to remember for addicts is HALT. Yes, it means stop. But it also means I’m Hungry, I’m Angry, Lonely and Tired. You usually find the reason in one of those.’ Clearly talking now about Monica Lewinsky [White House intern with whom he had had an affair], he said ‘I wasn’t hungry but I was angry, lonely and tired. I was being beaten up by everyone. Ken Starr [Independent Counsel, prosecutor] was trying to put me in jail. Friends were leaving me and enemies were killing me. Hillary was angry with me. This ball of fire came at me as I felt H, A, L, T.’
He said he sometimes thought Tony wanted a blue ribbon and a gold badge for the work he does, ‘but the ribbon and the badge are the JOB. It’s a privilege. It’s a great job he’s got and yes it’s tough but who says it shouldn’t be? Get his juices flowing again.’ So he summed up. Keep the Tories weak. Get back credibility with the press, remembering that you are the best and that’s why they judge you so harshly. It’s the same with Tony. You’ve got to show you’re real. Get your troops back in shape by loving them a bit. Reconnect with the public by showing it’s about them. Get TB to rediscover his joy in politics. He told a story about the first woman he ever loved, how he left her and drove her into the arms of a friend and she ended up hating both of them and it always bugged him. Years later when he was president he made contact with her and they talked it over, and he felt happy that he had resolved an important thread in his life. Another story about a friend he fell out with but then when he became president they rediscovered that friendship. So keep your friends, get some joy back into your politics, get a left liberal cause.
Philip then asked him what he thought I should do, whether he thought I should leave the job. Again, he was terrific on the analysis. A long pause, then said these are the factors: 1. Is it hurting you more than you’re getting out of it, especially for Fiona and the family? 2. Is it hurting Tony more than you are putting in? 3. Can anyone else do it? 4. If you stay can you deliver a new strategy? Only you know, but remember it’s a great job and I don’t like to think what could have happened if you had not been there. He also thought in some ways Fiona would blame herself for having let Carole take Cherie over, but she shouldn’t. Really warm and friendly. He took me to the door and said ‘Hang in. There are three centres of power in your politics. You guys, the Tories, the press. You have an affirmative programme. The others don’t. Their job is to stop you doing your job. Don’t let them. Raise your eyes above them, and stay with it.’
As we left, both Philip and I observed that he was about as near to being a political strategic genius as we knew. Philip asked if it made me want to stay and it did but I wondered if TB was up for the change needed. I told TB later what Bill’s analysis had been and he agreed with most of it, apart from some of the liberal stuff. We finished the [Third Way conference] speech and then headed for the Metropole [hotel]. Lynn Forester [Lady de Rothschild] told me she had been at a dinner recently where C had really stuck up for me during a row with Lord Carrington [former Conservative Foreign Secretary]. Bill C said he had really enjoyed our lunch, hoped he had helped, but on my own situation, he said only I could know.
TB’s speech was OK without being brilliant. He told a very funny story about an early experience canvassing and asking a woman in Hackney what she thought about getting rid of nuclear weapons and she said ‘I don’t have nuclear weapons, I have rats and I want to get rid of them first.’ Bill gave a terrific speech, very hard on the Republicans, strong on why our values were right for today and said that we had to fight the resurgent right. Think. Feel. Fight. We had to understand that there was indeed a Fourth Way, namely aggressive conservatism. These people want real change and we should be the ones resisting it, winning the argument for our own agenda for change. They want more power for people at the top. They want America and her allies to dominate everything. He told about how they ran smears against people who even asked questions of e.g. their policy in Afghanistan. He said the Third Way worked and we had to stick with it and fight for it.
It was a really good speech, easily the best I had heard for a while. I don’t know why TB was so reluctant at the moment to do the values. I loved Bill’s line about the Fourth Way. He was also very funny in parts, like when he told of how he had to cut into a meeting with [Viktor] Chernomyrdin [former Prime Minister of Russia] on nuclear arms control because Turkey and Greece were about to go to war over an island with 200 sheep on it. In the car later, TB said he agreed with Bill’s analysis in many ways and on some of it we should act. Re me, and the four questions BC had posed, TB said three answered themselves. He said his one worry was about whether he could get a real replacement.
The Guardian ran a piece on the front about me maybe leaving. There was also a lot of coverage on the theme that TB’s position was becoming perilous. Clare Short did a pre-record for GMTV saying TB should go. There was a lot of noise from the unions digging away at the Third Way conference. We also had the bizarre resignation of Michael Wills, who resigned in interviews without actually telling TB or anyone at Number 10.66 The BBC row was weakening but would come back on Tuesday with the FAC.
TB called a couple of times. He had spent a fair bit of time with Bill C who had given him pretty much the same analysis.
WMD was still going big. The BBC were operating a news blackout on the source issue. The Scotsman had a page 1 story about GB preparing to take over. The drums were definitely beating. GB was getting marked up the whole time, and TB marked down. GB was making clear he wanted to visit Murdoch in the States during the holiday. TB press conference in Surrey went OK, but it showed up further evidence of the BBC simply driving their own agenda. They cut away from initial questions and instead ran a commentary alongside saying all the UK media was interested in was WMD/Iraq. Guto Harri [BBC] was claiming that TB didn’t answer the question about whether he backed the intelligence. He did. I got John Sawers to call Trevor Kavanagh who was doing a two-page spread on Iraq being better than everyone says.
TB came back, and had a meeting with John Scarlett, DM, Clare Sumner, Jonathan re his upcoming session with the ISC. Then to the den to discuss what TB would say at the reception for [former Labour leader] Michael Foot’s ninetieth birthday. I said to him that I felt he needed at some point to make clear what his plans were for himself in the future because people were making assumptions about him going, and were therefore starting to peel off and take licence. Michael Foot arrived around 6 and although physically he wasn’t in great shape, mentally he was all there, and determined to have a good time. Speeches were fine. I had an interesting chat with John Cole [former BBC political editor] about the BBC. He felt BBC journalism was not in good shape, but didn’t really want to get involved.
Ran in, forty-five minutes. We were looking forward to [David] Kelly giving evidence to the FAC, but Godric, Catherine Rimmer and I all predicted it would be a disaster and so it proved. Despite MoD assurances he was well schooled, a mix of the MPs’ malice – Tory – and uselessness – our people – was going to give us a bit of a headache. By the end of the day, we were down as usual. I tried to have another discussion re a successor with TB. We had both spoken to David Hill again and it was clear he would come. There was a slight problem in that a lot of people were urging me to stay, but I had pretty much decided. Gerard Russell showed me a two-page spread on me in an Arab newspaper. There was even stuff in the press today about my haircut, so it was getting more not less ridiculous.
There was a good atmosphere at the office summer garden party, where I played the bagpipes on the balcony, much to the amusement of GB and the people he was entertaining at Number 11, including John Edmonds [GMB general secretary]. The FAC, despite a big row on the committee today, were saying that Kelly was probably not the source, thereby spectacularly missing the point. I had an hour or so with John Scarlett and Clare Sumner to go over ISC inquiry issues. TB did it this morning and all was fine, but Clare was a bit worried because TB said that he wrote the foreword [to the dossier] when in fact I did the draft.
I got a cab in and the driver had also done the marathon, so we chatted away about that. We thought the Tories would do a mix of FAC and NHS and TB/trust at PMQs but when it came to it IDS went for me, as did one of their backbenchers. IDS quoted the Mail on Sunday made-up story of me saying TB couldn’t cope without me. I bumped into Rod Gilchrist [deputy editor, Mail on Sunday] at a party for Michael [Foot] later, and thoroughly enjoyed telling him he was scum.67
TB was pretty down today. PG, Sally, Pat McF, Peter M and I had a long meeting specifically to discuss TB and how to get him back in shape. We were all a bit tired and the whole operation needed a blood transfusion, new energy. I did a note based on the discussion and later saw TB in the flat. It was ragingly hot. He looked a bit ridiculous in a sleeveless grey vest, matching shorts and flip-flops with ‘Bermuda’ emblazoned on them. Unlike me, though, he loved the heat.
PMQs had been fine, but he agreed the whole operation was a bit tired. He felt on policy, on media strategy, and on systems for reaching out to the party, we had to improve. GB was motoring in the party and there was a danger that we were leaving the field to him. We had a pretty tired meeting with Ian McCartney and the party people. We went round in circles. We were pressing TB to focus more on progressive causes, but he felt he really had to be the one constantly emphasising the hard edge of New Labour.
I had a long chat with Dan B who said Bush was finally taking a bit of a hit on Iraq. He had picked up on the fact that the Tories were calling for my head and said Bush was unimpressed at the way the Tories had behaved. At Michael’s ninetieth at the Gay Hussar, which Fiona had pretty much organised, there were a lot of the Old Labour people urging me to stay. Bostock [AC’s GP] had said earlier he was worried I would crack up again if I suddenly went from all-out activity to doing nothing.
In for a meeting with Clare Sumner and John Scarlett, before my ISC appearance. Clare discovered that I’d said to the FAC that I did see JIC assessments so we had to agree a line on that. John was concerned I had to make clear that I was not chairing intelligence meetings. I was due to give evidence from 8.30 to 9.45. I went over with Clare and Catherine Rimmer. I went in with Ann Taylor [chair], who joked that I had two minders, whereas TB had only had one. It was more relaxed than the FAC. I got them laughing telling them the story about how John Sergeant didn’t want the PM to come down the plane to see the press because he was watching a film.
Michael Mates [Conservative MP] was very friendly, made a joke about a bet we once had and also said he had no doubt I did not put the 45-minute point in the dossier and he hoped the committee would say so. Gavin Strang [Labour MP] was interested in whether we should use intelligence publicly at all. Ditto others, but I felt it went OK. Mates put to me that C had said that no intelligence should be used with other material but I was not aware of that and said so as it didn’t accord with my memory. It was over in just an hour. The clerk asked me via Ann T if I thought Gilligan should go to jail. I said don’t get me going.
We then left for the airport, and on the plane [to America], TB was working on his speech [to Congress, where he was being awarded the Congressional Gold Medal]. He was very keen for it to be a pro-US as well as pro-EU speech. We didn’t bother seeing the press on the way out. We flew over Guantanamo Bay, and agreed it was best to play it low profile but argue for change. The speech was strong and between us we made it stronger.
Cherie was in friendlier than usual form but meanwhile back home John Burton [Blair’s constituency agent] had got a tip that ‘enemies of CB’ were going to meet at the Hilton Olympia in Kensington, and Fiona asked Mark Bennett [Labour press officer] to check it out covertly. It turned out to be a meeting in the bar between Ian Monk [PR] and Paul Dacre. Mark somehow got close enough to hear them, make notes and he reported back a lot of detail re their discussion about Carole [Caplin]. I did a note to TB which also included the fact that Monk sent a statement to PA re Cherie’s clothes in Washington. I felt bad that I was going to be leaving him when things were getting tougher not easier. Also GB was really motoring now.
We landed and straight away I had a rash of messages re Gilligan’s evidence to the FAC. Basically Donald Anderson went out with John Stanley and Andrew MacKinlay and then said that Gilligan was an unsatisfactory witness, that he had changed his story re me, and there was a danger of unfairness to me. So we were pretty happy about that. We had a discussion about whether I should say something. Godric and I thought maybe but TB felt it was better that I stay out. We went up to Congress, where we had a discussion and then a conference call about it. It was clearly the best news we’d had for ages, and Tom K in London said it was running very much for us and against Gilligan and I should stay out. TB got an amazing reception at Congress. It was interesting to watch which parts of the speech went down particularly well with Democrats, and which with Republicans. It was a good speech though. Our press were obsessing about his line ‘if we are wrong’ re the WMD/terrorism link, and saying it was moving the goalposts.68
Then up to the White House. As we walked into the Oval Office, Bush was very friendly, said ‘Hey, congratulations, you took on the bastards, and you did great.’ He said he had seen some of my testimony and that Dan [Bartlett] had kept him informed. ‘You did great. You showed that if you are in the right, if you believe it, and you give no quarter, you can prevail.’ He kept coming back to it during the meeting, almost embarrassingly so. Cheney was as impassive as ever, [Colin] Powell was chirpy but looking tired, while Condi was more subdued than usual. At the press conference Adam Boulton gave TB a full toss on the BBC but TB didn’t really hit it to the boundary.
We went out for a drink on the balcony overlooking the lawns. The mood was pretty relaxed. They did a bit of substance on Iraq, but not much. They agreed that [Paul] Bremer needed a lot more help. On the [Guantanamo] detainees, Bush said his big worry was that one day one of them got out and killed someone. TB at one point asked him about Libya and it was clear from the answer that Bush thought he meant Liberia. GWB was now smoking a massive cigar and producing huge amounts of smoke. I was also struck by his shoes, which looked phenomenally expensive. At the dinner, I was seated between Powell and Dan. Apart from a fairly interesting discussion on Africa, it was mainly small talk. I had enjoyed the trip, but was also glad that I was now heading home rather than going on with TB to the Far East. I headed to the airport with Sally and Alison, who had a selection of very good cuttings about Gilligan from the first editions. There was a Tory MEP at the airport who said he was proud to be British listening to TB’s speech to Congress.
We landed at Heathrow about 9am, and we sat there for ages. I turned on the phone, and got a message from media monitoring that Kelly had disappeared. Then a message to call the Number 10 duty clerk, very urgent. I was told Kelly had gone for a walk yesterday and his wife [Janice] had reported him missing this morning. I felt sick. I called Tom. It took ages to get off the plane and when we did I felt dreadful. I told Sally and Alison, who were both shocked. I could sense a juggernaut moving my way. Terry [Rayner, Number 10 driver] drove me home. I spoke to Hoon who said [Kevin] Tebbit would handle it initially but he would go up on the media if needed. He said he felt it had to be properly handled from the start. I then spoke to JP in Cyprus. He said he felt he should come back, and I was grateful. In part it was about himself. He said he was worried that with TB out of the country, they’d come looking for him on a beach, and he also said he could be back to steady things. He felt GH and JS were a bit too close to it all and I should stay out of it. I said what will Pauline think about it, and he said don’t worry, I’ll sort it.
Then Tom told me that a body had been found. This was getting more and more grim. Tom did the eleven o’clock. Then TB came on from the plane. I said I’d really had enough. He said we should announce a judicial inquiry now. I said I really wanted to go and felt I should do it now. I had been determined to clear my name, I was always going to go now, it may not seem the time to do it, but it’s exactly the time to do it because I was clear it had all gone too far and we needed to step back and think. Philip came round to the house and was in two minds. He felt wait until tomorrow. TB said it would be a disaster for me if I did that. Charlie Falconer [Lord Chancellor], who called me re the inquiry, said I would be mad to do it. All people would remember is Dr Kelly killed himself and AC went. They would not hear your arguments and they’d think you were making it about you. TB called a couple of times and said we have to be really strong about this. I said I’m fed up being strong, I want to get a life back. There was a mass of photographers outside by now.
I called Neil [Kinnock] who clearly didn’t know about Kelly and was telling me that Gilligan was done for. I told him re Kelly and he said Jesus H. Christ. I said what to do. He said hold tight, be strong and don’t let the bastards take you as a scalp. He said he would support me whatever but felt I had to do that. Peter M came on, said I must not go, now or in the future, because that was what they all wanted. You must hang in. John Scarlett called and we had a long chat about the whole thing. He was very supportive, said that even though he’d had a bit of flak, he felt fine. Charlie F said I’d be mad if I quit, Peter M said I’d regret it, TB thought it would be really bad for me, Godric that it would look like my fault.
Jonathan called from the US, said he felt physically sick, and should he come back to help? I said no, he said don’t do anything rash. Rebekah [Wade] sent me a nice message, you’ve done nothing wrong, told the truth, more principles than these other people. Just hang in and don’t give them the satisfaction. Piers [Morgan] was not totally unsympathetic but felt there was no escape for me or for Tony. He felt the mood had just turned, and people would keep going on it. I was the story and that was that even though it was unfair. Fiona was desperate for me to go. So was I now. But I wanted some honour and dignity. Things quietened down but then I wept because of the pressures I was under, and the sadness I felt for Kelly’s family. JP called after his return and said he would be around to help if needed. The rolling news was relentless and really grim. Everyone feeling grim about it all. I said to journalists who got through on the phone that I was shocked and felt dreadful, it was about our media culture, but I had done nothing wrong.
The papers, as expected, were totally grim, the Mail needless to say the worst, pictures of TB, Hoon and me and ‘Proud Of Yourselves?’ Lots re me and suggestions that I would get the blame. The Mail was disgusting, the Telegraph less so. The only person who came out well was Kelly. There was not nearly enough directed towards the BBC. Cameras started gathering outside at 6 and by 9 there were four or five film crews and a dozen or so photographers. We had to go through the elaborate charade of getting the kids and Fiona out first and then being driven to meet them. I got Mel [Cooke, a neighbour] to drive me away, and she said she had always had a fantasy about being a getaway driver. The mood of the hacks was reasonably sombre but they still asked if I planned to resign, and later that cunt Jonathan Oliver [Mail on Sunday reporter] asked TB if he had blood on his hands.
During the day, lots of people called with messages of support. John Reid, who said his secretary was really angry and hang in. Kim Howells – don’t let the bastards get you down, because lots of our people love you. Margaret Beckett said she was really angry the media could blame me when this was about the media. Blunkett – solidarity and support. Bruce Grocott of course, Syd Young [former Mirror journalist], Richard Stott, [Roy] Greenslade [both former Mirror editors] who all said this was about the curse of modern journalism.
But the most important conversation was with JP. He’d come back yesterday and did a little doorstep at the Policy Forum. I asked him what he thought I should do. He said I hope you stay because you’re a vital part of the team and I think TB still needs you. But everyone will be giving you advice because of what THEY want, not what’s best for you. You’ve been under massive pressure for years, paid a big price and so has Fiona, who has lost her sparkle. I’ve noticed you’ve been a bit detached and so has she and you should do what you think is right for you. I asked if he thought I could go before the inquiries were completed and he said no. But then as with David Mills [husband of Tessa Jowell], he came round to it being possible. Everyone I spoke to felt I was in the right, but maybe that was because of the kind of people who phoned me. JP and I also discussed TB/GB and he said it was bad on both sides. He was pissed off that TB wanted Douglas and Hazel Blears on the NEC rather than GB. TB had complained GB had not even discussed it with him, but JP felt they were as bad as each other. TB did the press conference in Tokyo and looked dreadful.
Clive Hollick [Labour peer and media businessman] called me, said he’d been to a BBC do last night and they were all very bullish, behaving arrogantly like it was their duty to bring down the government. He said Dyke was defensive and non-apologetic, but did say they were thinking of making clear Gilligan’s only source was Kelly, and they wanted to know what we would do about it. I said we would not make any comment, and TB later said we must not cause them any mischief. TB was looking haggard and unshaven as they arrived in Japan.
The body was formally identified, Clare Sumner was checking out what kind of an inquiry it would be. She spoke to the secretary [to the Hutton Inquiry, Lee Hughes] who said it would be MoD people first, then the BBC. I said it was important we send them our side of the story and try to get the facts clear early. I was feeling very down by now. Much of the press gunned at me. Brendan Foster called and said he felt TB should do more, be more human and emotional, make clear nobody wanted this to happen. He told me the story of a journalist who killed himself, and at the time a colleague got the blame but in fact it turned out the guy’s wife had left him with their four children. He said the point is that people who kill themselves are disturbed, and they say things in suicide notes and final conversations that can haunt other people forever. He felt strongly that I should not do anything rash and hang in for now.
Philip said Peter M was spooked about me going because of something GB said to him once, namely that TB was a weak person with two strong people – me and Peter – propping him up. He felt that once we were gone, TB was gone too. The Kelly family issued a statement which basically said everyone should think deeply about the fact his life had been made intolerable. This would obviously be a hard time. TB called. It was 5am there. He said he couldn’t sleep, he felt grim and was about to do an interview with [Adam] Boulton, which he didn’t want to do. He said I had to stay and we had to fight this through.
I didn’t read the papers but by all accounts they were pretty grim. The main focus was on the Kelly family statement, alongside lots of commentary about us, very little of it nice. I went for a run and felt myself moving towards saying something about it. I went through my argument and the various scenarios. I had a long chat with JP. He said he was glad he came back, said he’d thought about my position. He felt I’d done my bit for TB and the government and should be allowed to decide the next part for myself. I said maybe long term it was the right thing for Tony because he’d be able to reorder things for the future. JP said you’ve obviously decided to go. I think you deserve to do what you want. We discussed the call from Clare Sumner a few moments earlier that the BBC were about to make a statement that Kelly was the source. JP agreed I had a window and should seize it and go for it if I felt it was the right thing to do. The BBC statement went out. Sky really going for the BBC, but the BBC’s own coverage was like Pravda.
I spoke to Godric on the flight from Korea to China to tell him I wanted to make clear publicly that I was going to go very soon, say that it was agreed with TB ages ago, and the family had had enough. I said to GS that I would quite like to do it tomorrow, with the BBC on the back foot. TB called from Shanghai on the way from the airport to the hotel, and said it was a mad idea. I said it was not. It was a good thing for me and a good thing for him. He said don’t do it. I know what you’re worried about, you’re worried that it’s not going to happen, that you’ll go at a time not of your choosing, with them hounding you out. But it’s a big moment this, and if you don’t do it properly, it will be a real problem. It’s just mad. They’re on the defensive, let the stuff about the BBC sink in and then do it when I get back. If you do it when I’m out of the country it will be even worse. It will look like I was not involved and you bounced me. If you want to do it, fine, but I promise you it’s not a good idea. I said I really had to know I was getting out on my terms. I said I was confident about the inquiries but I was also confident about FAC and a fat lot of good that did me. He said don’t forget that in the end we’re all in this together and we have to help each other. He said ‘When you leave I want to be able to say that there are two ACs, the one parts of the media portray and the one I know who is a great person.’ He said it was better we do that at the end of the week or after you go on holiday. I said OK but I wanted a guarantee. Sky was really going for the BBC though Boulton was still being a total cunt, e.g. in saying I was not totally exonerated because I was chairing intelligence meetings, etc. ITN was OK, but the BBC was like a house magazine. Geoff H called, said he was determined to go to the [British] Grand Prix because he was not having his life dictated by the worst excesses of the British media. Quite right. Once the dust settled I would have to deal with the BBC etc. and I would have no stomach for it all. I hated these people. The BBC/Mail link was now beyond the pale.
We went for dinner at the Goulds’, joined by Charlie and Marianna [Falconer] and Peter M. Charlie felt I now had a window to go. Marianna was not sure I really wanted to go and said I should just take a holiday to think about it. Peter felt I was the one person in Number 10 who gave TB muscular advice which he listened to. I still felt I could do a fair bit from the outside. Peter M was unconvinced. He said three things will happen: 1. the media will rejoice; 2. champagne will flow in Number 11; 3. there will be panic in the PLP and ministers will become even more useless. I found it hard to see how I could stay in a position related to the media when I had such total contempt not just for a few of them, but for most of them, and certainly for the media culture and prevailing style. Charlie was clear that once I went, though I would still be able to help, I would not be able to pull the levers and that was a problem for TB, though he completely understood why I wanted to go. What was important was that we gave TB good replacements quickly.
The papers were finally turning to the BBC, but the Mail was vile and Robert Harris [author, former journalist] had a vicious piece in the Telegraph. I had to fight my way through a [media] scrum to get into the cab. I was feeling shit and keen to go. I had a nice cabbie who was basically onside, and felt the thing was moving towards the Beeb. Bruce, who had been persuaded that my leaving was the right thing to do, came back and said don’t do it because 1. you are TB’s last line of defence, and 2. they’d say it was an admission of guilt. [David] Bradshaw, Peter H were saying much the same thing. Jonathan came back from the States and he, Sally and I met discuss how to do it and what I would say. Jonathan said he probably agreed it was the right thing, but we needed a replacement sorted first.
The day was largely taken up with going through the Clare Sumner/Catherine Rimmer file. [Lord] Hutton was announcing his plans at 10.30 and it was clear he would go as wide as he wanted and do most of it in public.69 He looked far too Tory for me, though as Fiona said, that might mean he was pro war whereas a left-wing judge almost certainly would not be. Peter M was terrific on Today, skewering Humphrys on what he said on May 29 about the Gilligan story and Humphrys was very defensive. Clare Short came on with her usual whine. Geoff Hoon was page 1 of the Mail for being at the Grand Prix. He said to me last night he didn’t really want to do the job if his family had to live life according to the morals of the immoral Daily Mail.
The first big meeting of the day was with Jeremy and Jonathan, Sally, Catherine Rimmer – Clare now away – and John S to go through chronology. It was very hard to remember all the comings and goings and toings and froings about the whole thing. CR had dug up all the emails and the ones that caused possible problems, one from Jonathan asking me or Sally to speak to Ann Taylor. Also one from me that the ISC should delve into the source, Gilligan and me. But it was OK really.
Omand came over at 3 for another meeting at which he was much more formal and said Hutton would want us to send a consolidated account but each person would have to give evidence on their own account. There was a real possibility of this going in any direction and of course the BBC were clearly now going to suggest that Kelly did say all these things. Clive Hollick called to say would it be sensible for me to see Greg Dyke for a private chat. I felt probably not. The press was trying to put the focus on who put the name in the public domain and going for the fact that the MoD said they would confirm the name if it was put to them.
Tom Kelly did the eleven o’clock with a fairly straight bat. Meetings for two hours or so. Omand setting up a little team to work full-time on the inquiry while we were on holiday. It was going to be tough. The BBC were trying to maintain that the Susan Watts [BBC Newsnight journalist] story was the same as the Gilligan story. It wasn’t. It was a softer version. Ditto Gavin Hewitt [BBC journalist]. I had a long chat with Graeme [AC’s brother] in Poland who said that every time he turned on a TV channel, I seemed to be on it, whatever the country.
Fiona has a real downer on me at the moment. I said surely you can understand the pressure I’m under at the moment. She said a lot of it was of my own making because I went from one obsession to the next and she feared I would never change. She was ducking out of the decision re timing of departure though. Neil, Sally, Charles Clarke, Mum, Godric, lots of others I spoke to, pretty much all felt that if I went on Friday it would be taken as an admission of guilt of some sort. Neil said I should wait till September, maybe go after the ISC.
Godric called me after TB’s Q&A in Shanghai. TB was not happy with the positioning of the media on the inquiry after Tom’s briefing which was being taken as a hit on GH. TB said we had set up the inquiry and now had to shut down on all this, stop commenting, stop engaging with the media on it. But then, later in the day, he went down the plane to talk to the hacks, despite me warning Godric no good would come of it. And he said he did not authorise the leaking of the name. He had been caught on a classic ‘When did you stop beating your wife?’ type question and rose to it. But it meant more pressure on me and Geoff Hoon. I could not believe he had done that. I was pissed off with him, and with the people with him for letting him talk to the hacks. There was just no point in the current atmosphere. He should do the formal press events and nothing else.
I also felt it would make it much harder for me to leave on Friday. JP called. He said he had been thinking about my situation. It was obviously a case of when not if I was leaving now and he just wanted to say I should make that judgement in my own interests. He said I had given a phenomenal amount to the government and the party and I was owed that at least. I should decide how and when to depart, and he would be around to speak up for me whenever that was. He also called Fiona with the same message. I called GH, said I couldn’t believe TB had dropped us in it like that. I don’t think he meant to, but they were all taking his statement as HE didn’t authorise it but someone else – GH or AC – did. I saw Bob Phillis [chief executive, Guardian Media Group] and told him I would be leaving. His view was that it was good for me, a tragedy for TB.
Later came news that Uday and Qusai [Saddam’s sons] were dead. Charles Clarke called. He said you should not leave. There is a lot of respect for you out there, even among the people who attack you, and I think you will regret going. I set off for King’s Cross then off to Retford. Mum looked really bad. She had lost half a stone in the last few weeks and was clearly worrying herself silly about me. I said I’m not losing sleep or losing weight so there’s no need for anyone else to. But she was finding it tough. She said every time she turned on the telly news or the radio, someone was having a dig. She said she wouldn’t be happy till I was out of it. She wouldn’t have that long to wait. TB called from Hong Kong. ‘Well, you dropped a bollock today,’ I said. He said I know, I should never have gone down the plane. Paul Eastham [Daily Mail] had said ‘Why did you authorise the leaking of the name?’ And he got provoked.
It was leading the news, a great frenzy unleashed around it. The atmospherics meant it was terrible if anyone ever suggested the name should have been out there. Truth was there was a case for it being said – what WAS Kelly doing talking to journalists? Did he in fact say more? TB said the whole thing felt Dreyfusian. I felt it was a cross between Kafka and Orwell. He couldn’t work out what the public really made of it. It wasn’t good but he felt they would know there was something wrong about the media reporting of it all. He agreed it was impossible for me to resign on Friday now. He felt at the end of the holiday, or around publication of the ISC report, or maybe announce in August, and go at conference because I was still popular in the party.
He intended to go ahead with the public service delivery press conference on Wednesday. He felt it was important the public saw we were still focused on the business of governing. He had spoken to Charles Powell [former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, brother of Jonathan] recently who told him of the day they told Thatcher the Tories had slipped to third in the polls during the Westland helicopter scandal. You just have to keep going. I put him on to Mum and they had a nice little chat. He said people underestimated the toll on families when someone was going through the media mill. She said she had lost half a stone with worry but he was doing a great job and keep going. It cheered her up a bit and she was telling everyone that he’d been talking to her. It was an odd irony that Paul Eastham had inadvertently postponed my departure. Shame I couldn’t let the silly fucker know.
Had a really bad night because Grace was up with asthma and hay fever. Mum seemed better and Dad was looking stronger too but they were both worried about everything. I read some of the papers and now everything was being recalibrated away from the notion that it was inevitable Kelly’s identity would become public, to the sense that anyone who spoke about him to anyone else was effectively responsible for killing him. It was all part of the new hysteria. I did a note setting out the need to reframe the debate by getting people to see events through the eyes of then not now. I talked to Charlie F who said he felt it was very hard for a judge not to be influenced by the one-sided nature of the media debate. He said that even he, after TB’s ridiculous outburst on the plane, assumed it meant that what he was saying was that HE hadn’t authorised leaking the name, but Geoff or I had via a strategy put together without TB’s knowledge.
I was genuinely shocked. I said ‘Christ, Charlie, don’t tell me you actually believe it?’ He said what he knew was that we were losing the PR battle. That was because the media framed the debate the whole time to suit the BBC line. It was also because we had announced the inquiry and then vacated the field, whereas the BBC were at it the whole time. He felt we should be explaining the broader context – Kelly’s fear it would come out, his worry about a cover-up, suicide not something anyone ever imagined would happen. Jonathan said there was no way Tebbit would do that kind of statement. He felt we just had to trust the judge. He felt there was a chance the judge would be getting irritated because it was so obvious what the media were up to.
I was worrying about whether me having told The Times that the other papers had the name would become a problem, whether it would be thought to contribute to the outing. I knew I’d done nothing wrong but in the frenzied atmosphere it could so easily be misinterpreted. The BBC briefed that Susan Watts had Kelly on tape and we were able to say we thought that would be good for us because her story had been very different to Gilligan’s even though the BBC spin machine was trying to make out something different.
It was all getting nasty though. Fiona was getting letters saying what’s it like sleeping with a murderer. Liz [Naish, AC’s sister] was getting abusive phone calls. I was getting letters with fake blood on the envelopes. And they wonder why I get angry. I was working on the overall narrative note Catherine Rimmer was co-ordinating. Geoff Hoon visiting Mrs Kelly was the main story. The media were on autopilot, presenting it as her having a go at him over the way the MoD handled him. He called me later and said they had had a really good chat, she was very friendly and very strong. He said she wanted to get a message to me that the way I was being hounded by the press was an outrage. I was really touched by that. I thought again about writing to her but worried about how she would feel about that now the inquiry was on its way. Geoff said he found the meeting really moving. She was friendly, the family was nice and he left feeling a lot better than when he went in. Not that that would remotely be reflected.
In to finish my various notes to send to the Hutton Inquiry. Catherine R had put together a huge folder and was working away. TB called me up to the flat and said he felt pretty chirpy, that apart from the press they had a good trip. He was in two minds about whether I should go now or a bit later. He was clear it had to be planned properly, and seen to be as much about the nature of the media as about us. He said what the media had managed to do was define me as the epitome of a political culture that they represent and which I had spent my career fighting – distorting, manipulating, lying, spinning control freaks. He felt they had to be challenged on that basis.
Both he and Godric felt that once I had gone there was a chance of getting the debate on to that basis. TB said his and my interests on this were convergent – I wanted to be able to go in a position where people felt I had something to say that was significant, and he wanted me to be able to do that too, and give him the space to make change and challenge the culture. He said to me later that there was a part of him that felt I WAS being driven out by the media, or at least by the state of my relations with them. He was a bit gobsmacked at how offside Fiona was. He was perfectly nice but a part of him was obviously calculating how to use my departure while at the same time keeping me on board should he want to call on me. He said he would be very surprised if we didn’t end up speaking most days, and most weeks that he would hope I would put something down on paper. He saw Geoff H, told him he had no worries about his future, that we would tough this out.
Geoff came to see me afterwards and I told him I had agreed with TB back in April I would go and nothing had happened since that made me want to change my mind. He said if I went, he felt it would be a disaster. TB was great, so were lots of people around him, but ‘one thing that people know about you is that you give good advice and you’re never afraid to say what he doesn’t want to hear’. He felt TB was becoming a bit remote and he was worried if I wasn’t there everyone else would be telling him he was the emperor and one day he’d be left standing with no clothes. I said that my mind was made up and I was telling him because I knew the media would try to up the pressure on him without me there. He was pretty much a total Blairite, a decent bloke. I felt I was dropping him in it a bit.
On Kelly though, he said he was absolutely confident of the outcome of the inquiry. I then did a ring-round of the people in the know to get their views on us doing this tomorrow. Fiona said yes, Tony said yes. I called Neil, who said everything in him said no. I called in Godric and Tom. They said no, that it would be seen as an admission of guilt to go right now. I had a chat with Phil Webster [Times], who felt the same. Then to a TB meeting with Omand, Scarlett, Jonathan, Jeremy, Matthew Rycroft [private secretary, foreign affairs], Catherine R, Tom and Godric.
There were mixed reports of what Hutton was like. Jonathan said [Gerry] Adams and [David] Trimble were united for once – in saying he was dreadful. Scarlett said he was an Ulster puritan, but nobody knew if that helped or hindered. He was a conservative with a small c. It was a fairly sober meeting, because the truth was none of us knew where or how this would end, and it was fraught with risk. We went over all the background material we would need, and the areas we would need to prepare on. I called Ann Taylor as she was about to board a ferry in Newhaven and told her in confidence I was going to leave. I was thinking about when, and felt that if the ISC report was going to clear me, that might be the time to do it. She said she was hoping to publish during the two weeks in September when Parliament was sitting. She couldn’t go into content but we could speak nearer the time.
Dennis Skinner called to tell me that the NEC had turned on Tony Robinson [TV actor and NEC member] who had said we should be nice to the BBC. Skinner said they had to support AC ‘because he’s probably against the war anyway’ and the party should support him against all the lies and distortions against us. He’d also had a pop at Mark Seddon [editor of Tribune and NEC member] for writing for the Mail. ‘I’m not listening to anyone who writes for the fuckin’ enemy.’ My own mailbag was running around 6 to 1 in my favour though there were some pretty unpleasant ones among the antis. I knew Mum would be getting upset, called her and she said she’d been losing weight again. Truth be told she didn’t have that much to lose. She said she wouldn’t sleep well again until I was out of there. She said every time she turned on the radio or the TV someone seemed to be having a go. I said it was fine, that I was doing fine and in in any event it is not going to go on for ever. Joe Ashton [Labour MP] called, said the PLP was strong for me. He said it pissed him off how the papers liked to say the party was against me. He said the party knows you do a great job for Tony, and they know that your enemies are your enemies because you do their job better than they do theirs – and that goes for Tory MPs having a pop as well as all the journalists doing the same. I got a similar message from Dale Campbell-Savours [Labour MP]. He said he was sure I could convince myself that I actually wanted to leave, but I needed to think about who would be happiest about that – our enemies.
Bruce [Grocott] popped in for a chat, and said something similar. He said he didn’t know what my plans were, and he knew he couldn’t believe the papers, who were probably speculating about me going because that’s where they wanted the story to go, but he really hoped I stayed. He said it must be hard at the moment, but it has always been hard, and you can get through this. He said he knew I could convince myself that actually it was in my interest to go, but it wasn’t. He said it was what our enemies want and they would be the happy ones if it happened, not me. Bruce had always been such a strong support and I felt like I was letting him down, as well as Tony, in even thinking about going right now. He said he had seen day in day out how much TB relied on me, how much the whole operation did. He said there are going to be real storms ahead and I needed to be there to help him through them. ‘You are strong. I can see how horrible this is but just don’t give your enemies any satisfaction at all.’ I said I thought I was too far gone. The family was very clear they’d had enough and after all they had done for me, I owed them this. My relations with the media were also now pretty poisonous and I felt there had been times when I had done TB harm as well as good. He said that was nonsense – which is pretty much what TB had said, saying we conceded too much on the whole fuss about spin. He said I think it will be bad for TB and the government if you leave, and therefore bad for the country. ‘These people going on at you don’t think about things like that. I’m the last person to try to persuade you not to listen to arguments from your family, but if you go, it is a victory for people who actually don’t care too much about the country, but about the next story or the next attack.’ I said it meant a lot to me that he said all this, but I had pretty much made my mind up about it. I confessed it had felt pretty lonely and brutalising at times but it helped to have people like him giving such strong support.
The FAC put out a statement saying that at Gilligan’s request they would not be publishing a transcript of his evidence in the private session but sending a copy to Hutton. I bumped into Gisela Stuart. She said it would be terrible to publish it now because it showed both Gilligan and Kelly had got it wrong, though Gilligan was worse. I got home and Fiona was walking down the stairs as I walked through the door. ‘I’ve been fired,’ she said. ‘What?’ She said CB had called and said she felt she ought to leave soon. She accused Fiona of briefing against her, which Fiona said was ridiculous though she accepted there had been a breakdown of trust between them. Fiona said she did believe Carole was a menace but it was not true that she had ever briefed against her, let alone against Cherie. She was really upset that CB could think as she did. She was due to go out to the ballet and I said just try not to worry about it, Cherie will regret what she said. I watched the [BBC] Ten O’Clock News, and Marr opining that a world without me – i.e. post spin – would be the best thing for both the media and Number 10. Not a word about the Gilligan transcript. Marr had become a PR man for the Beeb, nothing else. So the news was basically GH not commenting, followed by a tendentious two-way about me.
Philip called and said don’t fight it any more, you know you are going so just think of that, and don’t fight. Get out ASAP. I was being inundated with nice messages, ninety per cent from party people, a small number from hacks. JR and DB called, saying don’t go. Darren Murphy [special adviser] said don’t give the Mail and GB the pleasure. He said I was the ONLY person GB feared – and that included TB and JP – and he would rejoice at this.
As part of their continuing obsession, Today led on the story that I was planning to leave. We had the ‘wishful thinking’ line in the mix but it was clearly true and though they got details wrong – e.g. saying I would not go till Hutton reported – I was baffled as to how they got hold of it. Peter M called. I asked whether he thought I should do a clip on the way out. He thought not. Audrey [Fiona’s mother] was staying with us, said don’t give them any satisfaction at all. I walked out, said simply ‘Dream on’ and went on my way. I went up to Les Hinton’s house. Though I didn’t go into timings I told him I would not be there much longer. We discussed a few options with News International. I was most interested in doing something on sport for a bit. He of course was most interested in books and political columns.
I went in and told TB about CB’s call and said it was unforgivable that she spoke to Fiona like that after all she’d done for her. He said people were too fraught at the moment and Cherie was feeling under pressure. I said she needed to apologise, otherwise there would be badness between them that helped nobody. He said the problem at the moment is that the public will begin to wonder whether we are governing the country. All they hear is all this stuff about personalities, process and the rest and they start to wonder if that’s all we do. There was a case for me going right now, but I was tired and I needed a holiday to marshal the arguments and get things in a better place first. He said he was still finding it hard to imagine life without me being around the whole time. I said I would be available to help, but in a different way. He once thought he needed Peter around the whole time, but he didn’t, provided he could call on him. It would be the same with me.
Peter M joined us and he and I were chatting away while TB was just looking out of the window, a bit vacant. After a while, he said ‘I can’t see the way to rebuilding trust unless we find WMD. And at the moment I don’t see how we regain momentum.’ Peter and I said things would look very different after a break, also that he needed to get focused on conference, where we always seemed to get things back on an even keel. We agreed that for Wednesday’s press conference he should say the focus was public services and anything at all re Iraq he should just say wait for Hutton. Peter M was being very helpful and supportive, albeit in his usual spiky way. He said it was poignantly ironic that he should be helping me plan my departure when I had so spectacularly been responsible for his ‘defenestration’. It was to his credit though that apart from the odd joke, he’d never really shown bitterness at his second resignation, and still helped when I was the one needing support.
I drafted an email to put round the building telling people what was going on but TB, Charlie F and Jonathan talked me out of sending it. They felt it might leak and thought it best just to let the media say what they want but not fuel it. Catherine R was doing a great job getting the materials together for Hutton. David Omand seemed a bit too laid-back, saying everyone should go away and have a good holiday. The BBC were still spinning away madly and of course would carry on using their output to help shape their case. It would take a very strong mind not to be influenced. Dyke wrote to TB claiming a Cabinet minister had told Marr there would be ‘revenge’. TB drafted a pretty rough reply which Peter felt we shouldn’t send.
Peter M asked if I was going to conference. I hope not, I said. ‘Who will write your speech?’ he asked TB. ‘Alastair and I will,’ he said. ‘He’ll have more time if he’s not doing everything else.’ TB went off to Chequers and I called in all my staff. I said that they’d all have been hearing and reading all this stuff. I wanted them to know I was going to use the holiday to decide what to do. I said whatever decision I took, I was proud of the team I had built and grateful for the phenomenal support they gave me, but ultimately a decision like this had to be for me and the family, and a holiday was the right place to make it. I could tell that they knew where it was heading.
[David] Bradshaw came to see me later, and seemed close to tears. He said people in here would be devastated if I went, that I underestimated how much of what they all did they did for me, because I made it a great place to work, and I took all the hits for them, and let them take risks. He said nobody ever understood how I managed to do the job the way I did, but he was worried if I stopped doing it, the place would collapse. Gone was his usual mickey-taking Scouse humour, and in its place an impassioned plea to stay. But I think he knew it would fall on deaf ears, though I was really touched by his warmth and trust.
We went for dinner at the Blackburns’ [David and Janice]. Peter M there too and we were really going for a couple of people there who were close friends of Tom Bower and Veronica Wadley [husband and wife, Mail journalist and Evening Standard editor]. They seemed shocked by the strength of our hatred of Dacre. I said your friend Wadley works for the most poisonous influence in British life. He and his papers are evil. They add nothing of good to the world whatever. I was confident of being cleared by Hutton but wish he’d had the Mail on Sunday in there too. They hid behind the BBC. David Blackburn got the plot re the BBC, had followed it closely and could see all the holes in their arguments. He said he felt it was possible that I would be vindicated but also that Gilligan would not be condemned. I felt relieved it was more out in the open that I would be going. Catherine MacLeod [Herald] had done a piece making clear I had agreed with TB on May 28 that I would go. I felt I would be free to do lots of different things but also stay involved in a different kind of way, less intense, less demanding, with less contact with the media.
Writing by Philip and Gail’s pool. Everyone has gone to Vaison to get bikes. Feeling a pretty big sense of foreboding. Catherine Rimmer just texted me to say the first question at TB’s press conference was about me and my future. No doubt they’re going to try to keep me as a big issue for him. JP very nice about me on the Today programme apparently. Michael Barber [head of the Prime Minister’s delivery Unit] did his delivery slides presentation at the press conference, and did it well by all accounts, but it was unlikely to get much coverage. They couldn’t give two tosses about the public service agenda. CR said the public services slide show had been excellent punishment for the hacks. The other major soap event was Carole C who had done a big picture spread in Hello! magazine, which the press were going big on. Sally called me, said she had been to see TB yesterday and told him ‘that woman’ is going to destroy you if you do not sort it out. She said TB went mad at her, saying it was ridiculous how we were all against Carole. I think TB just liked her, and liked the fact she had been a help to CB, but there wasn’t one of us who didn’t find it a bit odd. I was feeling fairly detached. I was moving on psychologically and there were plenty of options to consider. News International were pressing pretty hard. I wrote I was keen to do sport before politics and based on a few chats with the boys I started to work up an idea for a series on how to decide who the greatest sportsmen of all time were.
TB called me the day I left but then we had radio silence for a while. Peter M called for a few chats, not least re the Sunday Telegraph when Gavyn Davies wrote a piece on how we were allegedly threatening BBC independence. This followed the letter from Dyke to TB claiming Marr had received a call from a Cabinet minister warning that we planned to get revenge. Marr’s behaviour in all this had been disgraceful, and he had just become part of the BBC’s lobbying and PR operation, which was going on relentlessly. I spoke to Tessa [Jowell] before she did The World at One and also did a note saying we had to make clear there was no link between the row and [BBC] Charter review.
Meanwhile there was more coming out about Kelly and his contacts with the press. The BBC were successful in keeping things focused on how Kelly’s name came out, and pretty much ignoring other more relevant issues. On the drive down through France I’d had a worried call from David Hill. He said someone was getting to TB over the Order in Council issue [the ruling allowing AC and Jonathan Powell to direct civil servants]. It was probably a mix of senior civil servants, who would be keen to use my departure to rein back, and Peter M who was keen to use it – for the right reasons – to give a sense of a post spin era. Bruce Anderson [Independent] was already on to the theme that we were now spinning non-spin as the new spin. But I was worried a change would weaken DH in the job. I told him I felt it was imperative that he keep it, particularly as the [Bob] Phillis [review] team was split on the issue and Bob needed support.
PG meanwhile was worried we were nearing a tipping point re TB. He had just been to the US with Ian McCartney, Pat McF, Douglas and Alice [Cartner-Morley, pollster] and came back both awestruck by the professionalism and ruthlessness of the Republican operation, but also alarmed at how people had started to talk of TB almost in the past tense, and focusing more on legacy than forward agenda. We drove down via a stopover in Paris to see John and Penny Holmes [UK ambassador to France and his wife]. Penny was very alarmed at the CB/Carole situation. John [Blair’s former foreign policy adviser] said of TB. ‘You must do something to try to distance himself from Bush. Nobody here believes Tony will do anything that Bush doesn’t want and he is seen as even more right wing and unpopular here than he is in the UK.’ He felt TB gave Bush very strong support early on and Bush has exploited it. He does not get enough back in return and his European policy is paying a price. He felt the two GBs were Tony’s big problems – his foreign policy was foundering on his closeness to Bush. His domestic policy was stalling because GB kept his foot on the brake the whole time. Also, he said the thing I managed to give him – grip and good presentation – was now likely to weaken. He felt TB didn’t grasp the scale of the challenge at the moment. He had let things drift – never tackled Gordon properly, never really worked out a proper euro strategy, never dealt with Carole and the lifestyle image issues. He was paying the price and there were the beginnings of a feeling of decay. Philip felt the same.
We had a more or less painless journey down and the kids were on good form. I had meanwhile decided that I would pretty much leave as soon as we got back from holiday, the reasons as per the note I had done earlier. I felt I could continue to advise from outside on strategy and maybe do election planning. I would make speeches to make a living, write on sport and politics after a while, also do more on the leukaemia fund-raising front and motivational stuff for the party. I had a vague notion of getting involved with the ad agency. Maybe do a chat show but it might be difficult because part of the public argument I intend to make is how awful modern TV has become. I was thinking a lot about the media culture and its impact on the health of democracy. The balance had gone from being a good check-balance to just creating a culture of negativity.
I spoke to Richard Desmond in Majorca at one point. He said ‘You can’t go because Tony needs you too much.’ I said people always underestimated Tony. I told him I might do a film on Dacre and [Lord] Rothermere and he was very up for it. ‘How much do you want? We’ll do it.’ I was not going to be short of offers but I had decided no to the consultancy and lobbying route. Just not my thing. PG felt I needed to strike while the iron was hot re the US speaking scene. Nice call from Jonathan Prince [Democrat strategist], who was working for [Senator John] Edwards [Democrat presidential hopeful]. He said there was a fair bit of coverage of my travails in the States. ‘Just hang in there. They only hate you because you’re too good for them.’ I was getting a lot of ‘hang in’ messages, but my mind was set. I was clear I had to go.
On the Saturday I had a long chat with Alex F who was out in the States, raving about the Nike training centre. I told him I was definitely leaving now. ‘Give my congratulations to Fiona,’ he said. ‘Maybe I gave you the wrong advice. Maybe you should have left when you first thought of it, but the one thing nobody can ever take from you is that you know you’ve done a great job, and you should now do what is right for you and the family. You’ve given enough.’ Fiona was still detoxing on the CB stuff, still angry about Carole but the more there was about her in the press in a way the better it was for Fiona as she tried to shape a new professional future too. Catherine Rimmer was keeping me in touch with the Hutton team. It now seemed Hutton would read himself in, then take witnesses from the 11th to the 18th, first the MoD, then the BBC, then others, then reflect, maybe re-interview, report maybe in October. So it was definitely going to be another interrupted holiday. Also the whole conference season would have Hutton as the backdrop.
I was now reaching a settled feeling about leaving – I felt excited at the prospect of new and different things to do. It would be nice for the family as a whole that I travelled less, saw them more, and could earn decent money. I sometimes felt I had been pressured by Fiona, but equally I knew she had my interests as well as her own at heart. But I also knew I would need to stay involved in some way, not least because I still felt at my best I was the best, and could make a contribution. It’s just that I hadn’t been at my best for a while. I also felt sad at the thought my team would break up. As I whirred things round in my mind it was clear for the first time I was thinking more about my own future than TB’s. I would help if I could but he would have to help himself.
The weather was beautiful and I was pretty much running every day, including a couple of big ones. We didn’t see that many papers. Philip felt the combination of no WMD plus Carole would get the party unnerved. I was getting into my stride on the sports series and by the weekend had written four or five articles. The Mail were still going at me hell for leather according to Catherine R. Sad fuckers.
Catherine Rimmer kept the faxes coming thick and fast. Matthew Lewin [journalist neighbour] did a piece for the Press Gazette about the press in the street outside the house and general BBC standards. Bill Hagerty [editor, British Journalism Review] did a piece attacking the BBC. The Hutton hype was winding down in advance of him saying tomorrow how he intended to proceed. I had a long chat with Jonathan who said TB had finally seen the light re Carole. ‘I know we’ve heard it before but Hello! was the last goodbye.’ After the call Catherine R called again to say that Hutton wanted to see me and Jonathan on August 21.
I had been hoping to be able to see out the holiday but no luck. We now had to work out how best to get myself fully briefed and also properly psyched up. It put a real dampener on things and Fiona was even more pissed off now. Ross [Kemp, actor] and Rebekah [Wade] came over and we had a nice enough time with them. They, along with Gail and PG, felt I was on strong ground but I felt Hutton would feel he had to make some criticism of everyone. Philip felt TB had panicked in calling an inquiry. Kelly killed himself because he killed himself and we should have held our nerve. He was pretty down on TB at the moment.
Ditto Rebekah who felt public services were going backwards, though as I kept telling the News International lot, they tended not to use them. She and I discussed a number of News International options going from occasional columns up to a deal across titles. TB felt the Sunday Times was the paper to do a column in. PG felt the Sun. The Hutton traffic was fairly steady, with people calling regularly. Tom K and Catherine both felt the order of witnesses was good for us – MoD, then BBC, then us, then TB, then Geoff H and then John Scarlett who I felt sure would be a very strong witness.
Catherine R called again re flights as we felt there may be a case for her coming out to brief me. She was very happy with The Times which did a big number, and the Guardian had the Gilligan [FAC hearing] transcript which did not do him much good and suggested he was backing off the central allegations against me. John Stanley and Eric Illsley [FAC MPs] gave him a very hard time on it. Rachel Kinnock was due out so I was getting a new package of briefing material to come out with her. Truth was the holiday was pretty much going down the Swanee but hopefully it would be the last to be like this. Also I was pretty desperate to be cleared and so I had to keep my focus the whole time. I needed to be at my best when I reached the witness stand and a lot of the preparation had to be done now.
Hutton was doing his stuff at 11 and it would dominate the media all day, plus everyone was saying it was important I stay hidden away on the day of the funeral. I was finding it easy, and quite therapeutic, to do the sports series and had done the concept and the first few drafts in a matter of days. But I was not plugged into the political scene apart from re Hutton though I suppose that was about the only politics going at the moment. Neil was hilarious on the sports greats idea. I told him about the idea over dinner on the evening they arrived and for pretty much every sport he had a Welsh name to suggest. He was adamant John Charles [Wales and Leeds United striker] was better than Pelé or Maradona. He had a Welsh boxer better than Muhammad Ali.
By now I had a huge Hutton file to read. Hutton did his opening statement which seemed to be pointing heavily towards the BBC but it was also clear the manner in which Kelly’s name came out was going to be a big part of it. I felt the weight of it all building again. Catherine felt the statement would worry the BBC more than us. PG felt Hutton came across as clear and strong and it was important I came over as being clear and strong. Later I spoke to Omand and Charlie F. CF said he felt there was no need to be too nervous but Hutton was not someone to be pushed around. Omand felt GH was the one who might be in difficulty and said they were all getting a bit jumpy at the MoD. I’d felt the name should come out and that Kelly should appear before the FAC and ISC and that it was important we knew what was what. I felt comfortable in that position but it may be others would see it very differently. I told Neil I was very nervous about it all. He said there was no need because if I told the truth it would be fine. He felt Hutton would just want facts.
Neil was being very supportive, though he was also in a rage re a few EU situations. I was working on a witness statement which meant going over the whole thing again and again. I wasn’t sleeping well. I called Joe Haines [Harold Wilson’s former press secretary] for a chat. He felt I had to maintain control of my own exit, don’t go under a cloud or looking like I’ve been harassed out. He said what had happened was awful, that Gilligan should be ashamed. The coverage of the Hutton statement was OK but there was still an awful lot being pointed at me.
I read the Kelly MoD interviews, which were pretty good for our case. I had had another night waking up, tossing and turning. I then just lay there waiting for the church bells to ring, and every time came the thought that they’d toll for me. Fiona was being very supportive and keeping the kids’ spirits up but it was like we had a big dark cloud over us the whole time.
Peter M in the Sunday Mirror had said TB was clear we would be OK. I sent a message round the system saying we should all just shut up. The Indy yesterday splashed on Number 10 describing Kelly as a Walter Mitty character.70 I told the office we had to disown it very forcibly at the eleven o’clock, which Anne Shevas, who hated doing the briefings, duly did. But it emerged that it was Tom who had said it, when chatting to Paul Waugh [Independent]. He had been going over the questions Hutton would want to look at, had not remotely intended it to run as a story and now it was the latest frenzy. I said he should apologise and drop a line both to Mrs Kelly and to Hutton. PG and Gail thought it was a bad idea to involve the widow because we had no clue as to how she would react. I had earlier drafted a letter to Mrs Kelly myself and discussed with JP whether he thought I should send it. He felt the sentiments were fine but you could never tell how people in grief and shock would react. He said he would take it to the funeral and make a judgement then as to whether to give it to her. There was no other major story around at the moment so several of the papers splashed on Tom on the Tuesday. He was feeling wretched and I called him to say not to worry too much about it. I got a message through to TB to call him too.
Jamie Rubin [former US State Department chief spokeman] called to offer support. He said he assumed that I knew the BBC were in the wrong but they got into a ‘won’t back down to him’ situation and it all got out of hand. Pretty much. Even out on holiday, Philip was doing notes for me. He was seeing and reading more of the media than I was, I having pretty much given up on reading the papers. He felt that what came through, even in the ones who hated me, was a sense of really deep commitment and professionalism and work ethic and it was important that side of me was what came over to the judge. He felt I should strive to de-personalise, de-emotionalise my own role. Be focused and professional.
The office sent through my ISC evidence which I had to sign off. Again I felt confident in the facts. Neil could tell though how nervous I was. He said I could not bottle up something like this and if I wanted to talk to him at any time, he was there. He was very warm and supportive and also lifting a lot of the pressure on the family too. Even though Fiona and the kids were still doing all the things we do on holiday they were clearly feeling the tension a fair bit. Philip felt the problem was that the media were effectively running this as the government on trial. The press were helping the BBC to reframe the debate in their favour, without vacating the field, so that they were both player but also ‘neutral’ spectator. Not. JP went to Kelly’s funeral and called me afterwards. He said Mrs Kelly had been fine with him, had not been seeking to blame the government for his death, which made me feel a lot better. I was starting to work on my own statement. I was not impressed with the advice we were getting from the Cabinet Office about lawyers.
We had dinner in Malaucene with Ian and Andrea Kennedy [personal friends]. I was looking forward to getting some hard-headed and objective advice from Ian about how to approach it. His chairing of the Bristol babies inquiry [into baby heart deaths at Bristol Royal Infirmary, begun in 1998] had been seen as pretty good, and he was always very good on problem solving generally. He felt, based on what he had read in the press, that I was fine on the substance. But he was amazed that I did not already have my own lawyer, and he was really pressing me to get my act together, or get the Cabinet Office to get theirs together. He said he had advised everyone involved in Bristol to have their own lawyer.
What would happen, he asked, if the nub came down to a difference of opinion between, say, me and Geoff Hoon, or me and John Scarlett? Was I really saying there would just be one government lawyer representing everyone? He thought it was ridiculous. I was already feeling pretty sick, having heard from the inquiry team that the judge wanted me to give him my diaries, or at least any relevant extracts. The request came as a real shock. Sandra Powell [secretary] had called me to read through all the various areas he wished to ask me about, and as she ran through them, I felt absolutely fine. It was only when she faxed through the letter that I noted at the end this request to see anything from my diaries. Ian thought it was probably just a fishing expedition but now not only was I worried – as I said to Fiona, Christ knows what I’ve written in there – but I was also beginning to panic a little about what Ian had said re the need for my own lawyer. I was very pleased Ian would be around.
Ian got hold of Alan Maclean, who had been one of his legal team for the Bristol inquiry, and made arrangements for him to come out next week. I called the Cabinet Office and asked for a list of lawyers to choose from. Rosemary Jeffreys [Treasury Solicitor’s Department] gave me a list but of course what we didn’t know was who was available and this was the worst time imaginable to be trying to find one. I put a call into James Goudie [QC] for his advice, also Charlie F and Derry, and TB. Charlie in particular thought I would not get on with Jonathan Sumption [QC], who was the one Alan Maclean and Ian were recommending. The general view was that he was right wing, a bit quirky and someone who would want things done his way. Charlie felt we were both strong characters who would get on each other’s nerves. Ian was strongly of the view that if Alan was saying he was the best, and also as his reputation was so strong, we should try to get him.
Alan got on to his clerk. It transpired Sumption was staying at his place in France, and had indicated immediately he was keen to do it. I was also trying to sort the shipping out of my diary for this year. The summer holiday is the one time of the year where I don’t take it with me, and instead just scribble a few notes every now and then when I feel like it. Poor old Audrey had to get into the house, root around under the bed and then get the book to Number 10. Originally the plan was to get it shipped out with books that were being sent out for Gail but her stuff was coming out late so Number 10 had to sort it out. I was now finding it really hard to sleep. The request for my diaries felt like a hostile act to me. I suspected I was the only one being asked to do this. And why – because the papers had said I kept a diary. Why isn’t everyone asked if they keep a personal diary, and to provide any relevant bits?
I had received the request for my diary on Thursday and now, finally, this year’s was being flown out by Peter Howes [duty clerk]. As I left the house, and said goodbye to Fiona, I did actually wonder momentarily whether it would be the last time I saw her, whether what I discovered on reading my own diary would be so awful that I would want to top myself. It was only a passing thought, but it was there, and it came back several times as I drove down to Marseilles. I knew I had done nothing wrong, but in this climate, things had gone beyond reason, it was like a drama or a novel, and nobody had control of events. I tried not to be in a panic on the drive down, but I was. I couldn’t remember what I wrote in my diary the minute I wrote it. On the few occasions I ever looked back, I was always surprised at things that happened, things I said, things other people had said. I just didn’t know.
I met Simon Lever [UK Consul General in Marseilles] as we waited for Peter to come through. I managed to hide any nerves I had from Peter, who was dressed like he was just having a nice day trip to an airport on an aeroplane. But inside I was feeling sick. He handed me the package and I set off back to the car. I put it on the passenger seat, thought about opening it there and then but the car was hot and I wanted to get away from the airport. I drove for maybe half an hour and then pulled into a service station. It was now unbelievably hot. I opened the envelope slowly and then pulled out the diary, put it down again and just stared at it. What I had written in there, or so I felt, had the capacity to deliver vindication or destruction. One bad word, and who knows, for me, for Tony, for the whole bloody government.
When I thought of some of the things I’ve said in there about ministers, about colleagues, about the press, about the BBC. By the time I finally started flicking through it, I was sweating. It was now so hot that even in the shade of a few trees, the sweat was falling down my face. I found the various sections on the dossier. At first glance, it seemed fine, and I started to feel a bit better. There was certainly nothing I could see that would mean I would have to resign straight away. A few bad bits, a bit too colourful in parts, but overall manageable. The best thing was that in terms of all the facts in there, they supported what we had been saying about events.
It then suddenly dawned on me I had made a terrible mistake. I had been so focused on Kelly’s death, which was after all the subject of the inquiry, that I had only got this year’s diary sent out when of course it was last year that the dossier was put together and it was clear from the inquiry team’s letter that was absolutely central. I felt sick all over again. What an idiotic thing to do. As I sat there, feeling a mixture of relief that my cursory flick through had revealed nothing terrible, and anger at my own stupidity in not getting both diaries sent out, the phone went.
It was Number 10 with Godric. When I told him what I was doing, he was horrified. He said he thought it was unbelievable that he [Lord Hutton] was asking for my diaries. Like me he saw it as a hostile act. Maybe, he says, it shows he basically buys into the media line on us. Godric was so principled and proper, and a believer in playing fair, that he seemed if anything even more shocked and upset than I was. He made the same point I had – why hasn’t everyone been asked if they keep a diary? But anyway, we were beyond that. He then got more and more anxious as I told him what I was organising on the legal front. He said that he had heard nothing from the Cabinet Office other than the fact he would have to give evidence. He had had the same conversation I had had with Omand on the day Hutton set out his terms, namely take a bit of a break and see what happens. It was, as Charlie F had also observed, a bit Heath Robinson.
Godric was asking whether I thought he should go back straight away. I could tell that I had ruined his holiday, if it wasn’t already ruined. I got home, and we went out to Villedieu for the evening. Ian [Kennedy] said he really thought I should put my fate in the hands of a good team of lawyers now, stop trying to make all the decisions myself, stop relying on the government or the Cabinet Office. He said Alan was terrific. Sumption was now on board and he described him as having ‘a brain the size of a planet’. I also now had Adam Chapman from the Treasury Solicitor’s Department. After Fiona and the kids had gone to bed, I went back through the diary, read it all more slowly and in more detail. The thought of it all being put before the inquiry did not exactly fill me with joy, but it wasn’t the disaster I feared. I was kicking myself though re not getting 2002 sent out. I wasn’t even sure where it was, so poor old Audrey was going to have to look around the house and we’d have to go through the whole process again.
Ian had really acted as a fantastic catalyst in getting a proper legal team together. Alan Maclean was staying with the Kennedys at Faucon and I met him briefly last night. He said he, Sumption and Adam Chapman had read the papers on the train from Toulouse to Avignon, where the other two were staying overnight. He said they had concluded that there were only two fundamental questions for me: 1. did I play around with the dossier on the 45-minute point, and 2. did I play a part in a conspiracy re Kelly? He said they all three of them felt, based on all the material they had read, that the answer was no to both. He said Sumption was very clear about it. ‘He has pretty much decided that you are the cowboys and the BBC are the Indians.’ He said Sumption was reflecting overnight on how we handle the issue of the diary request. I went over to the Kennedys’ this morning. Alan and Andrea were getting the printouts on the inquiry from the Internet.
We were into the third day and the BBC case appeared to be falling apart. Gilligan by all accounts a poor witness, Susan Watts to her credit refusing to toe their line and so making things worse for the BBC. The MoD seemed to be doing OK in stressing that they did what they could for Kelly. Sumption and Adam Chapman arrived a bit late. He was not at all what I expected. I’d expected someone rather overbearing, tall, smooth. He seemed a bit shy and nervy, as though a comfortable holiday home was not really the place for this kind of thing. He had a mass of all-over-the-place grey hair. His clothes didn’t quite hang together. He was carrying a biography of [John Maynard] Keynes [economist]. We got down to business straight away and I took to him fairly easily, despite all the warnings. He was sharp, to the point, and very clear. He repeated the view Adam had expressed, about the two main questions, and said matter-of-factly ‘I don’t think you have to worry about that.’
He was also very direct about my diary. He said the prime minister has established an inquiry, Lord Hutton has been appointed, the PM has said he and his staff will co-operate fully, and this is an example of the judge asking for full co-operation. He felt it would be a very bad move to refuse to provide it, or to seek to frame an argument as to why I should. He said the judge would not appreciate it, so I should just accept I would have to do it, and take whatever heat came from it. It was what I had been expecting to hear, and in any event I had already gone through the pain barrier on that one.
On the draft statement I had done, he felt it was fine, in that all the relevant facts were in there, but both he and Ian felt it was too personal and too emotional. All the judge would want is fact. Adam and Alan worked on my statement while Jonathan S and I sat at the dining room table and went through my diary. He felt that he would have to be the judge of what Lord Hutton would deem to be relevant to the inquiry. In terms of what went in, and what stayed out, even though we did not know what Hutton intended to do with this stuff, and even before Sumption knew what I had written, he was at the broader end of the margin. I was sort of hoping that his attitude would be ‘when in doubt, keep it out’. It was the opposite. He clearly felt that the more open we were, the fairer the judge would be. I read through page after page, putting pencil marks through the bits he felt were irrelevant, but also making notes in the margins of the vague subject matter to show he had been through it.
Occasionally he would have a doubt but would usually say ‘No harm including it.’ Some days there was nothing relevant at all, on other days a line or two. At other times, virtually everything would go in. Obviously TB, other departments and the agencies were going to have to see this, and that would maybe have its own problems, but I had now pretty much decided that I was going to take Ian’s advice to take this guy’s advice, unless it clashed with TB’s interests, and as the day wore on, that seemed less and less likely. I found the whole experience really stressful though, going over all the same ground again, not just Iraq, but the other big policy nightmares, TB/GB, Cherie and Carole, also some of the rows with Fiona, some of the guilt at not being there enough, some of the other political stuff, the hatred of some of the media, the pressure, the agonising at my own situation.
When the kids came round later in the day, I also felt a growing sense of injustice that I was the only witness having to do this, when I wanted to be having a normal holiday with the family, and after they went down to the pool, I just started sobbing. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said to Sumption, whose expression didn’t really change. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I totally understand why this is difficult.’ I said I don’t understand why this is happening to me. He said ‘If I were you, I would feel that too. It is dreadful that you are being asked to bare your soul when in my view you have done nothing wrong. But the prime minister set up the inquiry and you have to co-operate with the judge when he asks for this. If he thinks your diary may contain something which helps him, he is entitled to ask for it, warts and all.’ I composed myself pretty quickly, and we went back to the task in hand.
It took five or so hours, and I felt totally drained at the end. ‘So how was that voyage of discovery for you?’ I asked him. ‘It was certainly a discovery. I have read so much about you. Now I think I know you. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever learned so much about someone so quickly.’ He writes books on medieval history and he said ‘I wish there had been people keeping records like this in those days. It would make my life so much easier.’ He felt there was something ‘wonderfully Victorian about it’.71 He said it would one day be an amazing service to historians, ‘but I can see why that does not hold much appeal to you right now’. It was an odd experience, to have sat down with a total stranger, and gone through so much detail of my own life and work, and at the end of it to be talking as though we had known each other for ages. I noticed he hadn’t shaved properly, and as the day wore on his clothes seemed to get scruffier, but I felt by the end of the day that I was with someone who knew what he was doing.
In the ensuing days, first Jeremy [Heywood] – on TB’s behalf – and then TB himself came on to say they didn’t agree with Sumption’s strategy re the diaries. They felt it was unfair, but also wrong, to ask someone to submit a private diary to a public inquiry. I could tell TB was really worried about it, not least by the number of times he told me not to worry. But Sumption resisted the pressure. TB’s argument was that we should fight harder for me not to have to do this. Sumption was adamant that would backfire badly with the judge – on me, but also on the government. Although he did not articulate it in this way, I saw his strategy was maximum openness for minimum disclosure.
We now had to work out process. I was thinking I should probably go home, but Alan felt I should stay here for as long as possible, that if I went back, I would be miserable without the family, would follow the inquiry the whole time, which at the moment I was managing to avoid, and he felt I would do better on the stand if I stayed here than if I went back. I called Alison [Blackshaw] and asked her to come out and join us, so that I could get the diary extracts properly typed up. She arranged to come out tomorrow. We went for dinner at the Goulds’ and I felt so much better. Sumption went off again. I don’t know if it was a joke or not but according to the others he ‘owned a village’ somewhere in the south-west of France. As he left he said I could call him at any time, but he really believed I had nothing to worry about on the substance. I was really worried about the fact I had told The Times two other papers had the name but on my first meeting with Sumption, he said it didn’t matter.
Though I felt more at ease with the process, and more confident now I knew I had some decent lawyers involved, I was still not sleeping well, and was feeling real stress not just about the obvious, but also the idea that Fiona and the kids weren’t really having much of a holiday with all this going on around them. Every morning now, I was waking up at 4 or 5, waiting for the next ringing of the bells at the village church, and from time to time the old ‘ask not for whom the bell tolls . . .’ lodged in there. It was impossible not to imagine the worst. The kids kept me going really – the thought that eventually we would get a proper family life back again, and the knowledge that no matter how bad it was, apart from the occasional fleeting moment, I did not think of doing what Kelly had done.
TB was calling regularly now, and was clearly getting more and more anxious re my diaries. At first he had been dismissive, saying it was a fuss about nothing, but I sensed that was him trying to make sure I didn’t get too worried. Now he was getting more agitated and angry, and strongly disagreed with the Sumption strategy. He felt we should be fighting harder for non-disclosure. I explained Sumption’s strategy as I saw it – maximum openness for minimum disclosure and on the substance he thinks on balance that, whilst there are difficulties in there, it helps our case. Yes, said TB, but you are dealing with lawyers and we are politicians in a political situation. I said yes, and part of the politics is that he set up an independent inquiry and promised full co-operation and we cannot now be seen not to co-operate. What is more, if we refuse and it becomes known, then all hell will break loose again and a lot of it around me. I said I was confident that Sumption’s strategy was right and I thought we had no choice. He asked me several times ‘What’s in these things?’ I explained that I was getting Alison out to help me transcribe, but that in Sumption’s view there was nothing catastrophic. There was a fair bit of bad language. ‘How much?’ A fair bit. ‘Fuck?’ Yes. ‘Cunt?’ Probably, can’t remember. ‘Bloody hell, Alastair.’ He asked if there was anything disparaging about him, or about ministers. Nothing too bad re him. Lots of criticism of Clare [Short], yes, one or two others. Bits and bobs re him and GB. Me thinking of leaving. Fiona and Cherie. ‘What?’ Yes, but Sumption did not think any of that needed to be put in. We ended up swapping notes on the extent to which our respective holidays had been ruined. He also said I shouldn’t worry, that the diaries sounded more embarrassing than damaging, though by now he was back in ‘let’s keep AC calm’ mode.
He called every few hours now, chatting over various things, and eventually I said please let me get on and finish the transcription, and then we can make a judgement as to how bad or not it all is. But he was generally reassuring in these circumstances. He said it was horrible for me, and horrible for all of us, but I should take strength from the fact I had done nothing wrong, and he was confident we would come through this. He said ‘What is the worst thing that can be said against you – that you went over the top? But you had every right to, because these were allegations made directly against you, not just me, and you had every right to defend yourself.’ He felt that there was a chance Hutton would decide this was as much a story about our rotten media culture as the nature of government.
The inquiry was certainly not going well for the BBC, no matter how hard the media tried to spin it their way. But none of us could really gauge which way Hutton was going. We just had to get on and make our case as best we could. Alison arrived, bringing with her my 2002 diary, and a quick flick through that also reassured me, in that it showed how much care we had put into the September dossier, and it showed in terms how I tried to ensure the agencies were happy with every word and every part of the process. Alison and I started to go through the stuff I had gone over with Sumption. It was not as bad as I feared, though there were one or two points where she winced, usually when I was swearing or saying something derogatory about someone, though it was all stuff she had heard before.
We set up in the dining room/lounge bit of the house and worked on it most of Thursday night, all day Friday, when the lawyers went back to London, most of Saturday, as Alison and I travelled back to England by train, and I finally got a full typed version to Sumption at his house in France by Sunday pm, well ahead of the Monday 5pm deadline, though a lot of people would want to see them before then. He had initially secured a delay to my deadline because of the work required transcribing the diaries but then they came back and said no, the original timetable stood, so we had been working flat out to get through it. Thousands of words and he was trying to reach a deal with the inquiry that it would not be submitted as evidence as such, which would then have to be published along with everything else, but as a supplementary statement.
Fiona and the kids had adapted pretty well considering, and were just carrying on doing everything around us, while I was trying to grab a half-hour here, a half-hour there. It was great having Alison out at the house. The kids liked her and once we got going, I realised it was not going to take quite as long as I feared. When I left for home, and my appearance at the inquiry, Fiona was pretty cold with me, said good luck, but with a ‘if you’d listened to me, you wouldn’t be in this mess’ look on her face. ‘Sorry for ruining the holiday,’ I said. She smiled, shrugged and just said do your best and get back as soon as you can. She was understandably angry that the holiday was being so disrupted. Grace was crying, and later apparently asked the boys if I could go to jail. Rory went off on a bike ride, I guess to avoid saying goodbye, though he and I had had a good chat earlier. Calum was putting on a brave face and playing the hard man. ‘Never forget you’re a Campbell, and nobody messes with our family.’
On the train, we had a table to ourselves and so were able to carry on with the transcription, but it meant me whispering into Alison’s ear as I dictated and I am sure there were people on there who thought I was at it with her. Then some creep from the Daily Telegraph, who I don’t think could believe his luck that I was on the train, came up and started to make small talk, pretending to be an ordinary passenger. He was not very convincing. ‘Which paper are you from?’ Er, the Telegraph, I wondered if I could do an interview about your coming appearance at the inquiry, blah blah. ‘I’m busy.’ Alison had typed for hours and hours on end, God knows how many. Her view was that it wasn’t great – particularly the language – but that it did show the kind of pressures we were under and also that we were most of the time just trying to do our best. I had not been seeing the papers at all, had been binning the media briefs, but the impression I got from Philip, who was following it more closely via the Internet, was that it wasn’t going well for the BBC. Ian K emphasised to me again and again that I should trust Sumption, who would be focusing on one thing only – the judge. I had decided to do just that, and though Sumption was happy to argue over a point, and accept my view on things, equally I was happy to listen to him and trust his judgement.
I arrived home and decided to go in through the Farthings’ [Michael and Alison, neighbours] back garden so that the press in the street didn’t know I was there. Audrey was looking after me, and had been reading every word. She felt it was not going well for the BBC. But they were really gearing up for me, and they were desperate for me to fail. Peter M called, and said did I have any idea how much the media wanted me to be a disaster in the witness box? TB was calling more regularly from Barbados now. Before the diaries got out to him, he kept asking me the same questions re content. All I could do was give him Sumption’s view. He felt they were neither good nor bad. But on the positive side, they underlined our side of the story. They showed I did nothing wrong re the dossier. They showed I got very angry re the BBC, and made very clear why. They did show I wanted to put out Kelly’s name, but didn’t and instead did as I was told by him. As for the bad language and the loose language, Sumption’s view was that the judge would not take it amiss. This was a private diary and he would understand.
The point of substance I was worried about related to where it looked like Geoff Hoon was suggesting a kind of ‘plea bargain’ [see July 4]. It was becoming clear to me that my lawyers were very much trying to get me to think of myself rather than the government as a whole, and particularly GH. If he had said that, and I recorded it, and it was a problem, it was a problem for him, not me. But I found it hard to think like that. I saw this still as the government under attack, me included, but also the government as a whole. They felt GH could use a ‘cut-throat defence’, and go for me, and therefore it was better I go for him, but I was not comfortable with that.
I called him on the Thursday or Friday, not sure which, and warned him about the line in my diary that they were calling the ‘plea bargain point’. He was in the States on holiday and said he felt a lot better having gone away, despite the advice to stay. I felt he was under similar family pressures to my own. He said he had indeed been intending to throw the book at Kelly when it became clear he was Gilligan’s source, but then calmed down and felt his honesty was to be commended and even rewarded in some way. He said he was grateful for my call and did not give me the impression he was worried about his own position. The only journalist I was talking to at all really was Phil Webster. The Times were about the only paper left covering the story from all sides so far as I could see. Most of them were totally with the BBC, but my sense was their case was falling apart.
I was into the office early to go through a mass of material prepared for me by Clare [Sumner] and Catherine [Rimmer], who were both absolutely brilliant. They were so on top of the detail, and so driven by a belief that we were in the right. The diary extracts were circulated internally and also to a few in other departments. TB thought they were fine, though was worried about one or two observations made re him. Jeremy was still passionately of the view that it was just wrong that I had to do this, and we should have fought harder to stop it happening, but things had really moved on from that. I was trying to avoid adding to the big build-up to Tuesday at the inquiry, so I got back home via the neighbours’ garden network again. I guessed if they had no new pictures they would give less space.
Had they had a camera in the garden they would have got a nice shot of me ripping my trousers, and cutting my leg, on the Farthings’ trellis fence. I decided as well that tomorrow I would stay in Number 10, let the press continue to think I was at home, in a hotel, or wherever, just avoid being seen until I have to be. I had a nice dinner with Audrey, just chatting away about the whole thing, what Bob [Millar, Fiona’s father] would have made of it, the effect it was all having on my mum and dad. Audrey was a hundred per cent full-on supporter, didn’t believe a word against me, hated the BBC for what they’d done, and was not that sympathetic to Kelly, felt he should never have got involved with Gilligan in the first place.
I felt OK but reckoned I had now averaged three hours’ sleep a night since I got that wretched letter re my diaries. I was going to have to rely on a mix of real preparation, nerve and adrenaline to get me through. TB was working on his own witness statement and remained confident. Catherine R had collated all the various comments from departments about the diaries, and the requests for further redactions from some, including TB. She and I then did a conference call with Sumption, and went through them all. Some he accepted but the bulk he didn’t, and he was absolutely clear he was not taking something out just because the prime minister wanted it. Jonathan [Powell] was back to give evidence, and I got the feeling he had very deliberately not allowed it to ruin his holiday. The downside meant he was not terribly well prepared and I was worried he was a bit cavalier.
He had also grown his usual summer holiday beard and I was urging him to shave it off as it looked a bit ragged. Hutton did not strike me as a beard man. But Jonathan was adamant he was not changing anything just because he had been dragged back for this. He was nervous though, as was I. I noticed at one point a slight shake in his hand, and when the two of us were alone, without the lawyers and researchers around, he let the front down a bit and seemed really quite anxious. He went off and by all accounts did fine, though he rather dropped Tom Baldwin [Times] in it by indicating that Baldwin was the one who briefed me re the Sambrook lunch. I said I would have to find a way of rebutting when I gave evidence tomorrow.
Stephen Parkinson [government lawyer] came back with Jonathan and then sat down with me for a really helpful, but quite gruelling, Q&A session. I felt by now that I had every word and every argument just about right, and there were no questions I absolutely dreaded. I felt on top of the facts. It was still not clear how the judge or the QC [James Dingemans, senior counsel to the inquiry] intended to use my diaries which was still a bit of a worry. But there too, I felt confident I could defend myself, even though there was the odd embarrassment or difficulty in there. I was getting a lot of Good Luck messages coming through, and there was definitely the sense on the media that after TB, I was the one they were really waiting for. In fact for some of them, I was a tastier target than he is, because the thing was coming over now as being about government vs media. I was impressed by Parkinson, very calm, very clear, tested my answers well.
I was getting lots of advice, not least from TB, re how to deport myself. Always answer the question, not the question you want to answer. Make your answers short answers. Do not waffle or lecture. Don’t be worried about pausing, or asking for time to reflect. If you cannot remember, say so. Call him ‘My Lord’ regularly. Look at him even if he is not looking at you. Be polite to all the lawyers. Above all, do not get riled. I remembered him saying the same thing before the [Rupert] Allason trial. ‘And you won,’ said TB. Yes, but not before the fucking judge gave me a sideswipe.72 I called John Scarlett and made sure he was OK about the various references to him. He said he was fine. It must be dreadful for someone whose entire life has been about secrets, and dependent on staying low profile, now to be so out there in the public domain. He said he wouldn’t have wanted it that way but he was sure we had done nothing wrong and it was important we were vindicated. He wished me luck. I said when the lawyer or whoever first uttered the words ‘your diary’, the press would get out their todgers and have a great collective wank. I went out for a quiet dinner with Gavin [Fiona’s brother], Alan Maclean, Clare and Catherine. By the end we were the only people in the restaurant and we had a good laugh, but I was now as nervous as hell. The Number 10 staff had made me up a bed in John Birt’s old office. It was fine, but slightly surreal. I got a message that there were people queuing outside the court [Royal Courts of Justice] overnight to try to get in. The thing had become a bloody circus.
I woke up to the sound of Big Ben. I heard four chimes but looked at my watch, and saw it was 5. I knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep. It was so quiet now. I thought of Fiona and the kids asleep in Puyméras. I thought of Mum and Dad, and wondered whether Dad would see out the year. I thought of all the people who had been such a help in recent weeks. I thought about Mrs Kelly, really wished I knew what she really thought about all this. I was nervous but I had gone over everything fully, I was confident there wasn’t a single difficult question we hadn’t thought of, and I was confident my answers would withstand questioning. I scribbled a few thoughts – push hard on the dossier, express depth of anger at the BBC without getting angry, admit I wanted Kelly’s name out, but emphasise I did nothing to make it happen.
I got up and went to TB’s gym for a run on the treadmill. I just wanted to work up a sweat, without getting too tired, so ran for twenty minutes. I went down to the press office. The TVs were on and on both news channels there were people outside my house saying they were expecting me to leave any minute. I called Audrey, who was so proud of herself that we’d managed to go through the whole three days without any of them seeing me. There were snappers covering every exit from Number 10. I had a shower and got dressed in the office and as I came out the first person I bumped into was Bill [Wells] the messenger, who had also been the first person to wish me luck on the day of my FAC appearance. There was something wonderfully Dickensian about Bill. The conspiratorial wink, the little smile that was always there, the walk that wasn’t so much a walk as a shuffle. He said to me ‘Whatever happens, whatever anyone says about you, you’re a good man and that’s a fact.’ I found it very comforting. I felt almost that it was a positive omen of some sort, he having lodged in my mind from the FAC day too. Everyone was supportive. Bill making tea, Felicity [Hatfield, secretary] making toast, Alison sorting my flight to Marseilles, Catherine R and Clare S coming in, their arms as ever full of huge, perfectly ordered files and folders, just going over the same old Q&A material.
Adam Chapman and Alan Maclean arrived. Alan had unsettled me a little at dinner when he said that my diary extract re ‘we didn’t do it ourselves’ [’We agreed that we should not do it ourselves’, July 9], could be read as saying we got others to do it. We went over how to deal with that. He knew it was innocently meant but said it was the one part he would zone in on if he was looking for a bit of a forensic challenge. Finally we left. Dave Borritt [Number 10 driver] drove us down there. I didn’t want to arrive with an entourage so CR, CS and Alan got out early and went ahead. I drove up as close as we could get to the court entrance.
The demos were far bigger than we had been led to believe but I was glad we had turned down the chance of going in the back. I walked straight through. They were shouting and screaming, some through loudhailers, but I had got the blinkers on, got into my best Roy Keane mode and just walked on, Adam at my side. There was a bank of cameras to the right, and I ignored them too. I caught sight of the odd placard, one saying ‘Ban the Campbell, ban the bomb’. I reached the door and CR looked like she was crying. I was taken by the cops and an usher to a little room upstairs. Within seconds, text messages were coming in. It had clearly gone out live. ‘Entrance the stuff of legend’ from Martin Sheehan. The court official said she had never known anything like it. People had been queuing since 1 to get into the marquee. She said there were journalists in there from all over the world. I bumped into Harry Arnold [ex-Mirror colleague] on the stairs. Another lucky omen. I looked out of the window and saw a group of journalists I knew. It dawned on me that the little group was made up of people I actually liked. Another one.
I was feeling OK. I was pacing up and down this tiny little room, making a few black-humour jokes about executions, drinking tea, when someone from James Dingemans’ team came to see me. He said that Dingemans intended to refer to my diaries but not read from them. He would refer to them in questioning and if I wanted to read from them, I could, or I could paraphrase. I was fine with that. I was taken through by the usher, who was really looking after me. There were dozens of hacks around and I made a point of not looking at any of them, not letting any of them catch my eye, just talking to the usher and getting to my seat. Once I was there, I looked around at the lawyers, all chatting away to each other, and the people in front of the judge’s bench, including a beautiful young woman just a few feet from me. She smiled really warmly and I smiled back and decided whenever I felt my hackles rise I would just look at her.
Hutton came in, everyone stood until he had settled himself, and away we went. Dingemans went through things very carefully and methodically. After the first couple of answers, I felt I was OK and that I just had to relax now and rely on my knowledge of the detail of everything. Listen to the question. Answer it. I had the file in front of me but I was really relying on the short list of points I had made to myself, and also the witness statement. We focused on the dossier right up to lunchtime. Hutton came in at several points and it took me a while to work out that didn’t necessarily mean he was probing or trying to catch me out. On the contrary, on one occasion it finally dawned on me that if I looked at my diary extracts I would see the answer I was searching for. Dingemans was very clear and polite and helped my nerves settle quickly. I later thanked him for handling the diaries so sensitively. There were a few lighter moments, e.g. when I said [press officer] Danny Pruce’s comments were above his pay grade, or that I didn’t always respond to Jonathan’s emails, and when I said at one point TB’s comments were not taken on board. But I felt totally confident on the dossier and the overall impression was surely one of very good working co-operation with the spooks.
On the BBC again I felt Dingemans was fair in the way he took me through the correspondence with Sambrook. Here I think it helped that Hutton had my diaries because he had the full picture about the reasons for my rising anger and frustration. It was also clear that this was not some rampage for myself but for TB and the government. On Kelly, I felt comfortable with what I was saying. I was clear and straightforward, said it would have been much better if we had been clearer at the start rather than put in place a process that allowed the press to control when he was identified. I said in a way I was pushed to the margins of that decision and so did not really say, in the way I normally would perhaps, what I thought, because others involved may think I had a clear vested interest. Hutton was interested in why we didn’t just batten down the hatches, why did he have to appear at the committee, to which I said it was inevitable and it would have been better if we had all faced up to that at the start.
By the time we broke for lunch I felt I was in good shape. The lawyers and CR/CS came to see me and said the tone was spot on, just keep going as you are. I had a coffee and a sandwich with CR and CS and was now worrying that my evidence would take us into another day. But we whizzed through the second half of my statement and the second session wound up fairly quickly and I could head back to France. There was an interesting moment when Dingemans, referring to a point in the diary where I said Gilligan would be fucked [July 4], where I answered in a way designed to convey the meaning without using the word, and I could see a little smile at the corner of Hutton’s mouth. So he didn’t mind the occasional in-joke. I felt that he and Dingemans had both been fair. However, they hadn’t raised the admission I had thought about briefing the press (re Kelly’s name) before TB appeared at the Liaison Committee. That meant when Godric got in there tomorrow, it was a problem for us. At least it was there in my statement, so it would not be news to the judge, but it would be new to the media. I felt it went OK and that was what all the talking heads seemed to be saying by the time I got back to the office.
There was a very warm reception as I got back in. I felt pretty tired and was desperate to get back to the family. I saw Tom and Godric before I left for Gatwick. I think my doing well had given them a bit of confidence too. I said the most important thing was to remember it is not a lobby briefing. They are not out to get you. Unlike the lobby, they actually want the truth. The only dramatic moment had been when they showed me an email that Gilligan had sent to David Chidgey [Liberal Democrat MP] re Kelly which I said was ‘unbelievable’.73 Dingemans said ‘Don’t make a speech on that,’ but the fact the BBC had not disclosed this meant Gilligan was in big trouble now.
When I was on the train, TB called. He said everyone seemed to think I had been the perfect witness. He said that after the initial panic – in which I had shared in spades – the diaries had actually worked in our favour. He said he had said a prayer for me this morning. So had Cherie, who sent me a note saying well done, and how sad she felt that she and Fiona had fallen out, and was there anything she could do? TB said he felt confident re the outcome. He also felt Geoff Hoon would be OK too. He had been reading up more of the background from the inquiry so far. Hutton would not be impressed by the way the BBC handled it all. He would probably also think Kelly was a bit at fault – something I had picked up from the judge as well. TB had felt throughout that the fact I lost it at times was OK, in that the judge would see why, because he would understand the seriousness of the allegations against me, when maybe those who made them did not. I had lost count of how many times TB had called in recent days, particularly about the diaries and his worries about Sumption’s strategy. He now accepted it had been the right strategy. I had been totally open. Sumption had redacted parts he thought irrelevant to the inquiry. But when we had finally handed them in on Monday at 5pm, nobody could say we were not being open. They had been gentle with me in the way they questioned me on them. There had been no reference to my bad language and only the phrase ‘plea bargain’ was specifically picked out.
I called Sumption from Gatwick, as I sat in the departure lounge bar, with the news blaring away, endless coverage of my evidence. He said he had been following it on the website all day and I did well. He sounded genuinely pleased. I thanked him, said I could not have had better advice and support. He said the next part of his plan was not to push for lots of cross-examination of the other witnesses. It was tempting to want to tie the BBC people in knots, but he reckoned Hutton would have probably made up his mind by now. I said it seems an age away that I was sitting crying my eyes out at Ian and Andrea’s dining room table, going through the last days of July in my diary. I watched ITN and Channel 4 News in the first-class lounge. The general view was I did fine. It had been a pretty extraordinary holiday so far. The first few days great. Then starting to get stressed as I worked on my witness statement. Then the dire sinking feeling when that letter came through with the list of areas to cover – fine – and then the bombshell request for my diaries, and suddenly feeling like I was in some awful Kafkaesque nightmare. Neil trying to assure me it wasn’t a hostile act. Then Sumption and the lawyers coming on the scene. His legal advice clashing with TBs political instincts, and me backing the lawyer. Then Alison coming out, then home for the final preparations, and now all done, and on a plane back to France.
I finally got to Puyméras at midnight. It was fantastic to see the kids, and Fiona and I seemed to get on for the first time in ages. I was trying to switch off now but the message coming from London was that both the broadcasters and the press were overwhelmingly positive. As expected we had a problem when Godric went through his evidence and he was asked about the idea I had had for briefing before TB went to the Liaison Committee that someone had come forward and even though it was in my witness statement, I had not been asked about it yesterday; he was, and so the media went off on one about me having misled the inquiry. Of course Hutton knew that was balls but it meant more crap in the press. The Tories were also on to me re what they claimed was a discrepancy re forty-five minutes in my evidence to the FAC, and now this. Also, the Chidgey email was going big as a problem for Gilligan, but Catherine R was worried because she had done research for the whips. The BBC case having been poor, and us having so far thought to have done well, they were now working up the line that Kelly was caught in a mincer between the two of us. Philip had a load of the cuttings sent out and I did seem to have done OK. Even the Mirror and the Independent were not that bad. I had prepared better than for the FAC, partly because more was at stake. Also, I was more nervous and that had helped. On the diaries, Dingemans had been particularly kind in that he gave the impression I had volunteered them. I went to see the Kennedys to thank them for all their help, then sent a stack of thank-you letters. PG was worried that Peter M was moving in to fill the vacuum that would be there when I left. He felt it would kill stone dead any chance of using my departure to put spin to rest as a problem.
I called Geoff H in the States. He had read my evidence online, felt I did well and accepted that contrary to what some of the media tried to say, I did not drop him in it. He felt able to deal with the ‘plea bargain’ point. I was somewhat suprised to hear Kevin Tebbit had said he couldn’t recall saying that Kelly didn’t want to be named in the first wave of publicity. He also apparently gave a little soliloquy at the end which people didn’t think was very clever.
David Hill called me, said TB now seemed seized of the need to get rid of the Order in Council. Clearly people were getting at him. I was pretty sure Peter M was on that track. I felt very strongly that it was a mistake, that my departure would be enough to signal some change, but that he should not allow his central operation to be further depoliticised. PG was increasingly of the view that TB was a bit out of touch and remote.
I was struggling to pack a whole holiday into a few days, and failing. TB called. He said he had read the transcripts of everyone’s evidence to the inquiry. He thought I had been ‘brilliant’. He said he honestly felt it was word-perfect and he was sure the judge would have been impressed. ‘I think you just put it so much clearer than everyone else.’ My worry was that Hutton, based on some of the interventions he had been making, seemed to think it would have been possible for Kelly’s name not to come out, and we didn’t. TB said he was going to have to use his own evidence to be clear with him the nature of the media world we have to deal with. His worry was that Hutton may in the end just feel he has to have a balance of blame, rather than just state the truth, which is the whole thing stemmed from the Today programme broadcasting what they did and then refusing to back down. Though I was still getting an OK press for my own evidence, the focus re me had moved to what Godric said. It was irritating, though if Hutton was reading the press, it would give him another example of how they worked. Some of them were saying he looked amazed to hear what GS said re me. It had been in my own bloody statement.
TB and I discussed when was the best time for me to leave. He said if I was totally decided, it was probably better to go sooner rather than later. We discussed the Order in Council. He said he was not sure it mattered as much as my note suggested. In the end people in the system would know David Hill was his person. Yes, but the Order in Council makes explicit that he can instruct them. This weakens him from the start and that therefore weakens you. It was an important symbol and symbols should not be underestimated. He said he felt he had to signal change. I said my leaving would be the change. Yes but though David may not be you, he is still a Labour spin doctor.
He said he hoped I would continue to advise him informally, and that we would be able to speak regularly and go over things. He said there were not many people who were both good at strategy and good at tactics. Re conference he now accepted Hutton would overshadow it but he still felt we had to get back on to the domestic agenda. Philip felt he had to explain Iraq better than we had so far because that was the source of most of the negativity about him. I felt he had to make the affirmative case for progressive politics. He said he had had a good meeting on holiday with Murdoch, Elisabeth [Murdoch], Les [Hinton] and Irwin Stelzer [Murdoch adviser]. He said he knew most of us had had a crap holiday but he had enjoyed himself despite everything and felt rested. But he knew the knives were sharpening for him and once I was gone he would have lost his main lightning conductor.
I had managed to get in a couple of nice and reasonably relaxing days, Fiona and I getting on well, but it was still on balance a pretty grim holiday. I had hoped to have time to think through what to do after I left, but the Hutton business really put paid to that. We set off for Troyes today to break the journey back. TB called when I was in the hotel gym. He was now back in the UK. He felt that whereas my evidence was good, Jonathan’s was a bit loose in parts. John Scarlett was up today and I had called him last night. He was very calm, very proper, focused but anxious. He said he was sure he had done nothing wrong and would be fine. He felt we had a good story to tell but he would rather that he didn’t have to be there to tell it. His evidence, needless to say, went well. So did Omand’s.
TB felt having looked at all the interventions by the judge that he was closer to our arguments than the BBC, whose evidence had been poor. He felt if there was one area where Hutton may have problems with the government it was over whether the MoD took sufficient care of Kelly. He was moving towards a line on Thursday of saying he accepted responsibility for everything as PM. He really hoped Hutton would draw a line and we would regain the space to get back focused on the domestic agenda. It was far from certain that would happen. PG told me the groups done recently were dreadful. I’m not sure TB got the scale of how bad public opinion was in parts. Philip and Peter H were both worried now that Peter M was TB’s main influence re strategy and communications, and also responsible for reorganisation of the office. TB felt I should get a column, make money speaking and basically keep helping him but in a different way. There was big coverage of the memo I wrote him from New York [June 3]. It was actually a good piece of work, but they were using it to show I was pulling the strings etc.
Scarlett got a terrific press. Hoon did badly, gave the sense he was trying to blame everyone but himself. We got home about 6 so that Rory could watch Man U vs Wolves [1–0]. I spoke to Alex [Ferguson] who said he was now sure it was the right thing for me to leave. He had followed the whole thing and felt I would be fine. TB was being briefed by the lawyers and seemed fine. He felt he should go big on the seriousness of the allegations and how those making them failed to see that and make sure he took responsibility for difficult decisions.
Geoff H got a dreadful press; now it was TB’s turn to take the stand. I missed his first briefing meeting, felt it far better he see the lawyers first and then work out what if any thought we needed to give re the media. He asked me what the desired headline would be. It was somewhere in the area of TB taking responsibility (which GH had not done) whilst defending the decisions we took. It was also an opportunity to lay out what it is like making some of the decisions he has to. People felt GH did very badly, and gave himself some real problems. We had done well so far because everyone had been clear about the facts, even where they were difficult. But Geoff had opened us up. I felt he had ensured that more of us would be called to the second phase of evidence-taking than might otherwise have been the case. John Scarlett and I were already pretty much settled to the notion that we would certainly be called back. David Omand then said he thought I did really well. Re the diaries he said ‘I hope you have all your diaries safely locked up somewhere – otherwise the men in black might come looking for them.’ I was not entirely sure whether he was joking or not. Probably not.
TB set off and everyone, including the media, said he did well. He said on his return he had felt totally robust, and the facts didn’t frighten him on this. No doubt his legal experience helped a bit too, and he felt that even though the inquiry team were in the driving seat, they were conscious of the fact that he was, when all was said and done, the prime minister. There were no attention-seeking histrionics, just more of the same fairly painstaking probing. He was clearly pleased it had not gone badly. I said that my evidence had gone well, his evidence had gone well, and I felt I should go tomorrow. It is the right moment. He looked really taken aback, but when I said we had agreed it would happen soon, why not now? Everybody is expecting it soon, but nobody is expecting it this soon, so why not? I was keen, within the limited room I had, to maintain an element of surprise which would help me shape the mood around it. He then started to warm to it. He said I should use it to get up a big argument about the nature of the media. I felt not yet, that I should just do it, be very nice about him and the government, make the case for progressive politics, but then be pretty low-key until Hutton was over. I had agreed with Jeremy Heywood that when Fiona and I left we would have five weeks’ notice to work out. I told very few people what was happening – Godric, Tom, Anne, Alison – who all seemed both shocked and not shocked. My real desire was to keep it all quiet till tomorrow.
We had a meeting with Sumption and team in the Cabinet Room to go over the plan for the next stages, and in particular Sumption’s note re what we should aim to get from the inquiry. Again, he made an interesting strategic call. He did not think we should press for lots of cross-examination. Nor did he think we should be saying to Hutton that the BBC should be criticised. All we would ask for was an acceptance that the story was wrong and that we were justified in challenging it. Also on Kelly, he obviously thought it would be wrong to attack him, but equally he hoped to steer the judge towards accepting that Kelly did wrong. TB was as near to deferential towards Sumption as I had seen him with anyone for ages. He knew his reputation for being very clever if a bit awkward, and we had all been saying how good he had been so far. It was interesting how much the legal side of this was actually about presentation too. A lot of the points made by the lawyers were tactical presentational points, but with the audience the judge, not the press or public. What I liked about Sumption most was that he didn’t seem to care what the press or public were thinking about all this. He was totally focused on the judge.
I slept in a bit, having had a bit of asthma through the night. In to finalise my statement. TB didn’t want any sense in there that he kept persuading me to stay. He thought it would be weakening. He wanted to write his own words about me, that there are two ACs, the one he knows and the one the media likes to portray. I left him to it, put changes into my own statement and then made a few calls. I told JP, who was very supportive, thanked me for everything and said he would like to do the media on it once we’d made the announcement. I called Margaret B, DB, JR, Tessa, Charles C, Ian McC, Pat H, GH and a few others. I decided not to call GB because I didn’t trust his operation not to get it out ahead of me. Later – once it was out there and loads of messages were coming in – there it was on a long list typed up by Alison. ‘The Chancellor’s secretary called to say he wanted to thank you for everything you’d done for the party.’ He couldn’t even bring himself to call.
MB was very nice, said she really valued the way we had always worked together, that I had done a great job but there was a limit to what anyone could take. JR said he had been at a party meeting at the weekend and when he did a big defence of me, he got a great response. Ian McC put out some really nice words. So did Robin C. JP said his main line on the telly would be that I had decided I wanted a change, spend more time at home, that I was steeped in Labour and would be badly missed. I got a message to Hutton as I didn’t want him to hear it on the media first. I told Dan [Bartlett], who said Bush would be disappointed because he was ‘one of your biggest supporters’, and I told Clinton and thanked him for his recent advice.
Once I finished my statement I got Alison to send out a message that I wanted to see all my team and anyone else in the building who was around. They knew what was coming so they weren’t exactly shocked, but there was a lot of sadness in there. I said they knew I had been thinking about going and today was the day. I had had a great time and it had been an amazing privilege and one of the things that meant most to me was the team I had built up. I could not have done any of it without them and certainly in recent weeks I could not have asked for more by way of support. I said everyone was replacable, I would leave with nothing but good memories of them, but Fiona and I desperately wanted to get a life back for ourselves and the children.
I suppose I knew it would go quite big but it was ludicrous just how big it went. Someone told me PA gave it the same Priority tag as a royal death or prime ministerial resignation. For several hours, once they did the breaking news Whoosh, they did literally nothing else. They had some so-called intelligence expert in the studio when it broke and they had him blathering away without knowing what on earth he was talking about. Matthew Doyle and Mark Bennett [Labour press officers] organised JP in Leeds, JR for later bulletins and some good backbenchers. The Tories put up Ann Widdecombe [former minister], Theresa May [Conservative Party chair] and eventually IDS. They looked shrill and ridiculous, trying to make it a disaster day for TB.
I gathered my thoughts again before doing a round of interviews with the broadcast political editors. They came in one by one and I used pretty much the same messages – great privilege, downside all taken by family, big on values, make the case for politics. It was also going big in the States and across Europe. Graeme [AC’s brother] said he had been channel-hopping in Poland and found me simultaneously on Russian, Polish, French and Portuguese telly. The news channels were going with it hell for leather in the outer office and the endless two-way blather reminded me why I had got fed up dealing with them all. They just went on and on and on until another talking head was found. It underlined how out of hand the whole thing about me had got.
TB said even he was surprised how big it was going. He said I was a big personality and even though some of them hated me, they knew it was a big personality leaving the centre of the stage. Some of the hacks were trying to build it as a huge blow to him – could he cope blah? – which must have been a bit galling. Peter H was now also talking of leaving. He was worried Peter M was moving into the gap and it would not help us. My worry was more that there would be a concerted Civil Service retrenchment effort. All in all, things went fine today. Lots of nice messages, most media people saying I did well, even if I had become a problem.
The announcement re Fiona was in there though buried in all the avalanche of coverage re my leaving. It was a real sadness to me that she was leaving on bad terms with CB and with Tony too. But she was clearly happy we were on the way, and maybe surprised I had brought it to a head so quickly. They were straight on to what would I do in the future, and making assumptions I would make a fortune. The truth was I didn’t really have a clue what I would do. I didn’t speak to many journos. It was all kind of on autopilot. Boulton was pretty sour as ever, Marr OK, [Nick] Robinson [ITN] a jerk. Andy Bell [Channel 5] and Gary Gibbon [Channel 4] pretty straight. After a while they started to cover the coverage – the fact that it was so big abroad, that so many foreign hacks came into the street when the statement went out, the Trevor McDonald [ITV] special, US network websites doing it as number one or two and Boulton et al. saying they couldn’t think of any official who would ever have sparked this kind of interest by announcing his departure. Catherine Colonna [Chirac’s spokeswoman] called and said ‘Tu es un star mondial, tu sais. Il faut saisir le moment.’ [You are a global star, you know. Seize the moment.] She said the president ‘te salue’ [salutes you]. It was all a bit weird. Twenty minutes on ITN news, fifteen on the BBC, hours on Sky, the Sundays preparing to do pages and pages on it.
I cleared my desk. Went on a last walk round the building to say a few thank-yous and goodbyes, met Fiona and then we walked out together. I didn’t look at the hacks and I didn’t bother to listen, let alone answer. I just wanted to get out, and get home. There was a horde of media waiting in the street when we got home, more than I think we’d ever had. We parked at the top of the road, then walked down and we were swarmed as we tried to walk down the pavement. Fiona got left behind a bit and I kept looking back and she had virtually disappeared. I stopped and yelled at a few of them and she caught up for a bit. The live reporters were describing what was going on, others shouting, snappers falling over each other. Ridiculous.
We got it and Audrey was very upset I had gone. She felt it was the right job for me and I should have stayed with Tony to the end. I was cheered by a message from Hutton. I had earlier asked Clare Sumner to tell Lee Hughes [secretary to the inquiry] what was going on and that I was keen he understood I would be doing interviews but would not talk about anything being investigated by him. The message came back now that he was very touched that I took the trouble to tell him in advance. I was probably reading too much into it but I had felt giving evidence that he felt I was an OK personality and I felt the same from the tone of his message today. I also thought that if he had watched any of the coverage, he would see once more what a nightmare culture we dealt with. I had a hunch that the diaries will have had a similar effect. TB felt the same, that the diaries gave an insight into what it was like trying to handle these big decisions surrounded by the 24-hour media trying to trip you the whole time.
Neil, Glenys, Rachel [Kinnock] and the Goulds came round for dinner and I think shared some of the relief. Rachel had been one of the first suggesting I leave ages ago, feeling it was time I stopped taking hits for others. Neil and PG were ambivalent but agreed it was the right time for me. TB called a couple of times. He had seen some of the news and couldn’t believe how much coverage it was getting. He felt it was partly about the size of my personality but was also a reflection of their obsession with themselves. Philip had been following it all day and said I should get the tapes of the live coverage. ‘You’d have thought the Pope had died.’ We had a nice evening and Fiona was definitely more relaxed and I sensed the kids, though annoyed at all the bollocks in the street every time they came and went, were feeling a change for the better was happening. My asthma was bad though, partly the air, partly the current stress, also maybe a bit of anxiety about the total lack of certainty about what I would now do with myself. People were telling me I could make a fortune on the lecture circuit, but I can’t say it held that much appeal. The most important thing was to try to get things at home on a better keel, rest, and then take stock. As I left, TB had said ‘You do realise I will phone you every day, don’t you?’ I said yes, and I hope you realise sometimes I won’t be there.
To be continued . . .
1 Six men were arrested after a police raid in Wood Green, North London, on suspicion of manufacturing ricin with the intention of attacking the London Underground by releasing the poison in airborne form. The only subsequent conviction was of Kamel Bourgass, who had already been sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Stephen Oake.
2 Special Branch officer Stephen Oake had been stabbed in the heart by Kamel Bourgass, in a raid connected to the January 5 ricin raid. Bourgass received a life sentence for the murder of Oake and seventeen years for his involvement in the ricin plot.
3 UN weapons inspectors had found eleven empty chemical warheads at the Ukhaidir depot, seventy-five miles south-west of Baghdad.
4 3,000 pages of documents detailing the process of producing enriched uranium had been removed from the Baghdad home of a leading scientist. The notes – on creating the substance using lasers – dated back to the 1980s.
5 The Community Charge, or poll tax, was a system of local government funding that moved away from the rateable value of property and placed a blanket levy on individuals. It was introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1989 in Scotland and 1990 in England and Wales. It provoked significant anger, even leading to riots. Thatcher had chosen to front the policy herself. Her stridence on the issue contributed to her political demise.
6 John Merritt, Campbell’s closest friend, had died of leukaemia in 1992, as had his daughter, Ellie, six years later. Merritt’s widow, Lindsay Nicholson, and Hope, their surviving daughter, attended the launch of Campbell’s marathon run, which would raise funds for Leukaemia Research.
7 At a press conference marking the fortieth anniversary of the Franco-German post-war friendship treaty, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder announced their decision to co-operate against a US-led invasion of Iraq.
8 Though no agreement had been reached, France was pushing for EU travel sanctions against Mugabe to be eased to allow him to attend the Franco-African summit in Paris.
9 The far-right British National Party had won a council by-election in Calderdale, West Yorkshire, pushing Labour into third place.
10 To Cook’s chagrin, Blair had said the true options on Lords reform were either a wholly elected or wholly appointed House of Lords. He told Labour MPs ‘I personally think a hybrid between the two is wrong and will not work.’
11 The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated over Texas during re-entry to the earth’s atmosphere. All seven crew members were killed. President Bush addressed the United States, saying ‘This day has brought . . . great sadness to our country . . . the cause in which they died [space programme] will continue.’
12 Blair told MPs ‘Eight weeks have now passed since Saddam was given his final chance. Six hundred weeks have passed since he was given his first chance. The evidence of co-operation withheld is unmistakable. He has still not answered the questions concerning thousands of missing munitions and tonnes of chemical and biological agents unaccounted for.’
13 Benn described the interview as ‘Very historic for all of us’ and asked Saddam to ‘Help me see what the paths to peace may be.’
14 The three-week-old ‘top secret’ document stated that the ‘aims [of al-Qaeda] are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq’.
15 Both Houses of Parliament had voted on the future make-up of the House of Lords. Eight reform options were defeated in the Commons, while the Lords voted for the status quo.
16 Channel 4 News had broken the story of what was dubbed the ‘Dodgy Dossier’, a briefing paper compiled for the Sunday papers by CIC civil servants. Cambridge academic Dr Glen Rangwala recognised plagiarised passages from writings available on the Internet, particularly ‘Iraq’s Security & Intelligence Network: A Guide & Analysis’, an article written by political scientist Dr Ibrahim al-Marashi, and published in the Middle East Review of International Affairs in September 2002.
17 Eid-ul-Adha, ‘Festival of the Sacrifice’, the Muslim festival commemorating the prophet Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son for God.
18 Der Spiegel reported a Franco-German plan, ‘Project Mirage’, to prevent war by sending UN regulars into Iraq to strengthen weapons searches, declare the whole country a no-fly zone and increase trade sanctions. Iraq would have become, de facto, a UN protectorate, forced to disarm.
19 Blair told Labour delegates ‘It is still possible for Saddam Hussein to prevent military action by co-operating, and fulfilling his obligations as set out by the United Nations.’ Blair dismissed Saddam’s invitation to South African officials to visit Iraq to advise on disarmament. ‘The concessions are phoney, the weapons are real.’
20 Police estimated that at least 750,000 people had taken part in the London march. Organisers put the figure at nearer two million.
21 The ten East European and Mediterranean countries due to join the European Union in 2004 had signed a letter of support for the US stance on Iraq.
22 Payment made by an individual, usually at the time a service is received, to offset some of the cost.
23 Blair told MPs ‘The intelligence is clear: [Saddam Hussein] continues to believe that his weapons of mass destruction programme is essential both for internal repression and for external aggression. It is essential to his regional power. Prior to the inspectors coming back in, he was engaged in a systematic exercise in concealment of those weapons.’
24 The amendment arguing that the case for military action against Iraq remained unproven was defeated 393 to 199.
25 Dr Rowan Williams had been anointed as the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury.
26 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been captured by the Pakistani secret service in Rawalpindi.
27 Angola, Cameroon and Guinea supported continued inspections, but were thought to be against taking a stand on disarmament by military action.
28 Blair told the MTV audience ‘If we don’t act now, then we will go back to what has happened before and then of course the whole thing begins again and he [Saddam] carries on developing these weapons . . . dangerous weapons, particularly if they fall into the hands of terrorists.’
29 Lord Goldsmith was later to tell the 2010 Iraq Inquiry that he had strengthened his legal view of the Iraq War after a visit to the US, for discussions with lawyers there. He described suggestions that he did so because of political pressure as ‘complete nonsense’. The former Attorney General said he had believed it was ‘safer’ to get a new UN resolution but gave the ‘green light’ after deciding force was justified by UN accords dating back to 1991.
30 The tests demanded: a statement from Saddam admitting the concealment of WMD and undertaking not to retain or produce WMD in the future; that at least thirty scientists and their families should be delivered for interview outside Iraq; the surrender of anthrax, or evidence of its destruction to be provided; all al-Samoud missiles to be destroyed; all unmanned vehicles to be accounted for, including details of any aerial devices for spraying chemical and biological weapons; all mobile chemical and biological production facilities to be surrendered.
31 A special summit would be held at the Lajes airbase on Portugal’s Azores islands, attended by Bush, Blair, Aznar of Spain and Barroso of Portugal.
32 This was the interview from which would emerge one of Campbell’s most oft-quoted statements. When, at the end of a long interview, Margolick asked Blair about his religious faith, an impatient Campbell interjected, ‘We don’t do God.’
33 Blair told MPs ‘This is the time for this House, not just this government or indeed this prime minister, but for this House to give a lead, to show that we will stand up for what we know to be right, to show that we will confront the tyrannies and dictatorships and terrorists who put our way of life at risk, to show at the moment of decision that we have the courage to do the right thing.’
34 Saddam had urged Iraqis to attack the US and British enemy: ‘O Iraqis, fight with the strength of the spirit of jihad . . . strike them, and strike evil so that evil will be defeated.’
35 Ali Hassan al-Majid, military commander and chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, who had deployed chemical weapons in attacks on the Kurds. Later convicted of war crimes and hanged.
36 The UN Oil for Food programme had been set up in 1995 to enable Iraq, despite economic sanctions aimed at demilitarisation, to sell oil on the international market in exchange for food, medicine and humanitarian supplies. The programme was suspended by Kofi Annan prior to the invasion, and eventually terminated in November 2003.
37 Treasury official then leading work on the assessment of the five economic tests.
38 Chalabi and his organisation the Iraqi National Congress provided the US government with intelligence material about weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda, the majority of which was used in good faith in making the case for military intervention. It later turned out to have been fabricated by an Iraqi defector codenamed ‘Curveball’. Chalabi would be appointed president of the interim governing council of Iraq in September 2003. He would later dismiss the fabricated intelligence, saying ‘We are heroes in error. As far as we’re concerned, we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the Americans are in Baghdad.’
39 Blair became the only head of government to guest star in the animated comedy series, welcoming the Simpson family to London in the episode ‘The Regina Monologues’.
40 Romantic comedy film starring Jennifer Lopez.
41 Zelig, the mysterious title character in Allen’s 1983 mockumentary, who sidles into camera shot for most of the major events of the twentieth century.
42 Ali Ismaeel Abbas, a twelve-year-old Baghdad boy, had lost both arms when an American rocket fell near the family home, killing most of his family. His case became a symbol for media and other commentators of the suffering of ordinary Iraqis during the invasion. He would later be flown to Britain for treatment.
43 Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, had urged non-Iraqi volunteers to take up arms in support of the Saddam Hussein regime.
44 In a BBC radio interview, Short had been asked if she thought Blair had acted recklessly. She replied ‘I’m afraid that I think the whole atmosphere of the current situation is deeply reckless; reckless for the world, reckless for the undermining of the UN in this disorderly world, which is wider than Iraq . . . reckless with our government, reckless with his own future, position and place in history.’
45 Three people were killed and sixty injured in the blast at a bar in Tel Aviv. Asif Muhammad Hanif, the suicide bomber, and Omar Khan Sharif, his accomplice, were both British citizens. Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades of the Tanzim Fatah declared joint responsibility.
46 Short suggested that, by failing to prevent looting at the National Museum, US troops had violated the 1907 Hague and 1949 Geneva conventions, which required occupiers of countries to maintain civil order.
47 Labour lost 833 council seats, the Conservatives gained 566, taking control of Birmingham and Coventry, and the Liberal Democrats gained 193. The far-right British National Party gained eleven nationally, giving them a total of thirteen.
48 Blair warned the audience of newspaper executives that Labour rebels voting against NHS reform and foundation hospitals would be ‘a collective mistake of historic proportions’, and that reforms would give more freedom to bring ‘new providers into elective surgery to reduce waiting times for NHS patients, whether those providers are from the NHS, the private sector or abroad. For the first time giving patients real choice to go elsewhere for treatment, paid for by the NHS, if they are waiting too long.’
49 In 1969 Harold Wilson’s Labour government issued a White Paper, In Place of Strife, that proposed the reform of industrial relations. Divisions in Cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party over the proposals led to them being dropped.
50 Cherie had agreed to give a speech to the Bermuda Bar Association and intended taking her mother and children.
51 Baroness Amos, FCO minister, became the first black woman in the Cabinet.
52 The Press Complaints Commission editors’ code calls for respect for private and family life, including health.
53 Mandelson was quoted as saying ‘Gordon Brown is a politician right down to his fingerprints, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Tony is not. If he was as obsessed with politics he would not have let himself be outmanoeuvred by [his] Chancellor in the way that he potentially has.’
54 Edenham High School in Croydon, South London, had unilaterally decided to send 720 pupils home because wages for temporary staff could not be paid. Changes to schools funding from government had been cited as the reason for sudden budget deficits in some schools.
55 Blair described making his maiden speech in the Commons with a single reporter in the gallery. Afterwards, he recalled, ‘I saw her later in the corridor and asked her what she thought of the speech. She said: “I’m a Hansard reporter. I just transcribe speeches. I don’t listen to them.’”
56 Andrew Gilligan, had alleged on the Today programme that Downing Street ordered the transformation of the September 2002 dossier on WMD in the week before it was published. He claimed it had been ‘sexed up’, including via the insertion of information Downing Street ‘knew to be untrue’ and against the wishes of the intelligence agencies.
57 Blair said ‘For Britain and Poland the lesson is the same: accept the European Union as a modern reality, join it wholeheartedly, fight to make it, economically and politically, an instrument of future strength and prosperity for the nations within it.’
58 Bleach, a British-born mercenary, was serving a life sentence for involvement in the Purulia arms-drop case. In 1995, a large consignment of unauthorised weapons had been dropped by aircraft in West Bengal. He would be pardoned by the Indian government in 2004.
59 Gilligan had written ‘I asked him [Gilligan’s then unidentified source] how this transformation happened. The answer was a single word. “Campbell.” What? Campbell made it up? “No, it was real information. But it was included against our wishes because it wasn’t reliable.”’
60 Taylor would chair the Commons Intelligence and Security Committee Inquiry into the published intelligence assessments of Iraqi WMD capacity, including the claim made in the September 2002 dossier that WMD could be launched within forty-five minutes. The committee’s eventual report would describe the 45-minute claim as ‘unhelpful’, lacking context and assessment. Though the ISC would conclude editorial changes had been made within Number 10, Campbell would be exonerated from Gilligan’s charge of having ‘sexed up’ the document.
61 Though the two clubs announced a possible deal, Beckham subsequently went to Real Madrid for a transfer fee of £25 million.
62 The offices of Secretary of State for Scotland and Wales were combined with other portfolios, Alistair Darling taking Scotland and transport, and Peter Hain taking Wales and Leader of the House of Commons
63 The intruder, Aaron Barschak, self-styled ‘comedy terrorist’, had gained easy access to Prince William’s twenty-first birthday party, dressed as Osama Bin Laden in a ball gown.
64 At the age of sixteen, Pauline had given birth to a son. The boy, given up for adoption, had been identified as Lieutenant Colonel Timothy Paul Watton OBE.
65 In an interview, Blair had told the Observer ‘The idea that I or anyone else in my position frankly would start altering intelligence evidence or saying to the intelligence services “I am going to insert this”, is absurd. There couldn’t be a more serious charge, that I ordered our troops into conflict on the basis of intelligence evidence that I falsified. You could not make a more serious charge against a prime minister. The charge happens to be wrong. I think everyone now accepts that that charge is wrong.’
66 Wills resigned as a junior minister (for information technology in the criminal justice system), vowing to campaign for the abolition of the EU Common Agricultural Policy. He claimed every UK family paid £70 per year to support Europe’s cattle.
67 The next Sunday, Gilchrist wrote of the encounter: ‘Campbell, his newly cropped convict haircut – which gives him all the charm of Magwitch – on public display for the first time, thrust his face within an inch of mine and declared: “You’re scum.” I said I wasn’t, but why did he think I was? His response came quickly. “And your paper’s scum, too.”’
68 Blair said, ‘Can we be sure that terrorism and weapons of mass destruction will join together? Let us say one thing: if we are wrong, we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive.’
69 Lord Hutton, former Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, would chair what was formally known as the ‘Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Dr David Kelly CMG’.
70 From a 1939 story by James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, dealing with the imagined adventures of a mild-mannered dreamer.
71 Sumption’s vast multi-volume The Hundred Years War between England and France would be described by journalist Allan Massie as ‘an enterprise on a truly Victorian scale’.
72 Campbell had been sued by Allason for malicious falsehood in 1996. Mr Justice Drake, the judge in the trial, said of Campbell ‘He did not impress me as a witness in whom I could feel one hundred per cent confidence’, had not been ‘wholly convincing or satisfactory’ and had been ‘less than completely open and frank’. The comments were resurrected by the media in advance of Campbell’s Hutton Inquiry appearance.
73 Gilligan’s email named David Kelly as Susan Watts’ source for a BBC Newsnight story.