Plans were drawn up by civil servants for John Prescott to take over as
Prime Minister in case Tony Blair was defeated when the Commons voted
on sending British troops to invade Iraq. The former Cabinet Secretary Sir
Andrew Turnbull now Lord Turnbull, made preparations for Mr Prescott to
lead a caretaker administration weeks before the vote by MPs in March 2003.
Mr Prescott, then Deputy Prime Minister, would have taken over in Downing
Street for at least the seven weeks it would have taken the Labour Party to
organise an election for its next leader.
Alastair Campbell records in his diaries: “Andrew Turnbull was quietly looking
into how a JP [John Prescott] caretaker premiership would operate.” Despite
the high stakes, he says that Mr Blair was philosophical and even resorting
to black humour, joking that his future lay in the hands of the ailing
President of Guinea, a rotating member of the UN Security Council, and the
diplomatic judgment of obscure Labour MPs, such as Jeff Ennis.
Iraq War
The diaries reveal how throughout the build-up to the Iraq War Mr Blair
remained unwavering in his belief that he must give public backing to President
Bush or risk losing influence over American policy. Bill Clinton
even warned him that he risked being used by Republicans in the US who saw
invading Iraq as a means by which President Bush could court electoral
popularity at home. The warning came during a visit by Mr Clinton to
Blackpool in September 2002 to speak at Labour’s conference, after a leaked
memo from Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s head of strategy, advising: “War is
the only issue that excites our base.”
Mr Campbell writes of Mr Clinton: “He was worried that TB was being used . . .
He said a lot of Democrats were up there asking, ‘Why is Blair helping Bush
so much?’ ” Mr Blair became ever more dismissive of his critics over Iraq. A
diary entry in August 2002 states: “He found it unfathomable that even the
bishops almost appeared to be defending Saddam as if he was some
great liberal.”
Shock and awe
Once the war was under way, the diary recounts Mr Brown’s frustration with how
it was being handled. “He said the War Cabinet meetings were hopeless. You
had Clare [Short] just blathering away, DB [David Blunkett, the Home
Secretary] and JR [John Reid, the Labour Party chairman] behaving like
armchair generals and giving out weakness vibes to the real generals,” Mr
Campbell writes.
He also records the mood as the realisation that the opening bombing campaign,
called “shock and awe” by the Americans, failed to lead to the immediate
collapse of the Iraqi regime. “Shock and awe had not really happened. So we
had taken the political hit of a stupid piece of terminology, and then not
had the military benefits,” he writes.
Mr Blair learnt about the death of eight British Marines on March 21, 2003,
while he was attending a European Union summit in Brussels. “TB had been
down at one point but bounced back quickly and won a surprisingly high
number of plaudits from fellow leaders here. On the way out to the airport,
he said: ‘God, it is awful, this war business.’ ‘Yes that’s why it is
usually best to avoid it.’”
Chain of office Gordon Brown
managed to lock himself in the lavatory during a discussion with Mr Blair on
who should take the Labour leadership after John Smith’s death.
Campbell recalls Mr Blair telling the story: “Minutes passed and TB was
sitting twiddling his thumbs and even wondered if GB had done a runner.
Eventually, the phone went. TB left it, so then the answering machine kicked
in and GB’s disembodied voice came on: ‘Tony. It’s Gordon. I’m locked in the
toilet’. They both ended up laughing about it. TB went upstairs and said
‘You’re staying in there until you agree.’ ”
Cheriegate Mr Blair shouted: “I am not linked to a conman,” as he
clashed with Mr Campbell at the height of the “Cheriegate” affair.
The diaries disclose how he mistrusted Cherie Blair’s friend Carole
Caplin, whose partner Peter Foster helped Mrs Blair to secure two
flats in Bristol, from the moment he met her in 1994. His diaries detail how
he clashed repeatedly with the Blairs over their friendship with the
self-styled lifestyle guru, whom he variously describes as “odd” and
“weird”.
The former Prime Minister’s wife was complaining that Mr Campbell was seeking
to control the Blairs’ lives long before they entered No 10, he reveals. He
details a series of tense negotiations over her role with one recurrent
sticking point. “Cherie knew what the real problem was between us: I thought
Carole was a problem and she didn’t,” Mr Campbell wrote.
The rows came to a head in 2002 when Mrs Blair at first denied that Foster, a
convicted fraudster, had helped her to buy the two flats. Mr Campbell
recalls “snapping” when it became clear that he had played a role.
He makes clear, however, that Mr Blair was angry with him for putting pressure
on his wife to apologise publicly. Mr Blair was “really angry . . . close to
the end of his tether . . . very agitato” about his spin-doctor’s handling
of the scandal, he writes. It was after Mrs Blair’s statement that the two
men had their biggest row, when Mr Campbell told the Prime Minister that he
was “linked to a conman”.
“He shouted at me down the line, ‘I am not linked to a conman’. You are, and
until Cherie dumps Carole or Carole dumps Foster, or preferably both, that’s
the way it is. And every day it’s like that, it hits your authority more,
both with the rest of the Government and with the public . . . If this goes
on much longer I’m off, out of here, goodbye.” Mr Blair defended his wife,
despite being unaware that she had bought not just one flat for their son Euan,
then studying at Bristol, but a second property as an investment.
Revenge
Eventually Mrs Blair asked for Mr Campbell’s partner, Fiona Millar,
to be replaced as her spokeswoman. Mr Campbell took his revenge yesterday
with a stream of anecdotes that show Mrs Blair in an unflattering light.
They include her anger at Mr Blair’s decision not to take the full salary to
which he was entitled. He writes that she said that she did not want “any
more of that populist nonsense” in 1996 and the next year turned on Peter
Mandelson saying: “It’s OK for you, swanning around with friends who
don’t need to worry about money.”
The claustrophobic nature of the Blairs’ relationship with Mr Campbell and Ms
Millar is laid bare in entries recording rows about such trivial matters as
the cost of a new kitchen in No 10. In January 1998 the Prime Minister and
his wife called the spin-doctor to a meeting at 6.30am. “They were horrified
that they had been sent a Cabinet Office bill for private use of his car, eg
going to play tennis and going to church.”
Mistaken identity
Mr Campbell also records some lighter moments, such as when an African leader
pinched Mrs Blair’s bottom at a Commonwealth meeting. “TB was regaling us
with a few stories from the reception. One of the African leaders pinching
Cherie’s bum and asking her who she was, then him jumping a mile when she
said she was Tony’s wife.”
