Monday, March 10

“SO THEY are all against me, is that it?” Tony Blair is sitting back on a swivel chair in his “den” with his finger on a list of names. Around him is his “team”, squashed on the sofas, leaning against the table, hungry-eyed on the silver fruit bowl, perching uncomfortably against a window into the Downing Street garden.

An honest answer would be: “Yes, Prime Minister.”

Alastair Campbell does not say anything. The Director of Communications and Strategy does not need to.

Tony Blair knows already. He has asked ITN for an opportunity to counter the fears of women opposed to war, women like those who are today shouting outside his house that he is a traitor to the Labour cause, a killer of children and a nearly war criminal. He calls it his “masochism strategy”.

The “all against me” question is no sign of paranoia. Virtually everyone who wants to speak to him this week is against him. The leaders of France and Germany, the Leader of the House of Commons, the leading figures in the trade unions, about half his own MPs, including Cabinet Minister Clare Short, all oppose war against Saddam Hussein.

The paper in front of him now, propped up on his desk between a banana and a picture of his three-year-old son, Leo, is part of the challenge he has set himself to change minds. It lists the names and life stories of the women chosen for the Trevor McDonald television special tonight. If they were not “all against” him, they would not be there.

“There seems a lot of military?” he queries.

“Yeah, they’ve lost sons in the last Gulf War; they’ve got husbands in Kuwait now; they’re worried that no one at home thinks the war is justified this time.” This bit of rough comfort to the man about to face the television lights is Campbell’s first contribution to the briefing session.

He speaks slowly with a slight drawl, looking down at his mobile phone for news. He is seated on the arm of the sofa, the seat closest to the Prime Minister, in front of the tall blue leather doors which lead to the Cabinet Room. “And there’s a girl from Australia who lost her boyfriend in the Bali bomb and a woman whose husband is a human shield at one of Saddam’s power stations.”

The Prime Minister stares hard at the list, twisting it as though to find its weakest point. There is only the barest chance now that war can be avoided. The vital need now, he says, is that everyone of goodwill, at home and abroad, keeps up the pressure on the Iraqi leader. When his International Development Secretary articulates the worries outside and describes his policy as “reckless, reckless, reckless”, it is a hindrance as well as a challenge.

“And how is Trevor going to deal with Clare?” he asks sharply. “He is going to get her over with first,” whispers Campbell as though the very name were a curse. “But look at it this way,” he goes on. “The bulletins are only going to want the stuff on her. So you can just keep the rest nice and general.”

Before facing the fray, Tony Blair faces the long mirror that fills the wall between the two windows onto his garden. It is hard to know what he sees. What his team sees is a man who is thinner-faced and darker-eyed than six months ago. What journalists see, and describe almost daily now, is a man under impossible pressure, whose skin colour declares sleepless nights and anxious days.

Officially, he has a cold, a virus “that won’t go away”. There is a make-up man outside waiting, whatever the cause of his troubles, to adjust their worst effects.

“It’s all very well being a pacifist,” the Prime Minister says suddenly, still with his back to his team. “But to be a pacifist after September 11, that is something different. It is all new now, terrible threat, terrorist weapons, terrorist states. That is what people here have to understand.”

He returns to the list. “How many anti-Americans?” Campbell punches out a text-message on his phone in a manner suggesting that the answer is obvious.

For the first time Jonathan Powell shows an interest. This boyish former Washington diplomat does not always seem as dominant as Campbell or as personally close as the Political Director, Sally Morgan, currently propped against the front of the desk. But Powell is the Chief of Staff.

Ten Downing Street is his domain. He does not want to talk about ITN. He has UN problems, Chileans and Mexicans and a Security Council member in Africa whose leader is ill, can barely even be spoken to by telephone and may need a visit.

Tony Blair makes most diplomatic calls in this “den”. Civil servants do not recall a Prime Minister who has “worked the phones” so much. Whenever he is firmly in control or is gently keeping a friendship warm, he has his feet up on the desk. If he has his head hunched forward, he is making a case that his hearer does not want to hear.

Powell’s characteristic position is to be listening in at his desk outside, ear-piece jammed to the side of his head. He has to concentrate intently on every “Hi, George” against the murmur of news from a flat-screen television on the wall.

This is not yet time for an office sandpit and model tanks with flags. The prime and most pressing battlefield is at the United Nations, for the so-called “second resolution” requiring an invasion of Iraq if Saddam does not disarm. The second is for Labour support, which will be needed for war whether the second resolution is won or not. The third is for public support, particularly from those groups who most hate what seems certain soon to happen.

In the mirror on the wall of the den the Prime Minister can see all the faces in the room. If there is a common feeling here, apart from fatigue and the need for lunch, it is impatience. Everyone works together but each has a different bit of the battle that comes first. Morgan sees war through party eyes; Powell sees through foreign eyes; Campbell has the eyes of the media. Tony Blair looks down at the fruit bowl, takes a green apple and chews it very slowly as though obeying some half-remembered health hints.

Campbell’s pager buzzes. He glances down and announces that an anti-war Tory whip has just resigned over his party’s support for the Government. “In fact he hasn’t just resigned. He decided to quit last Wednesday but thought he’d keep back the news till a quieter day.”

Everyone laughs. The tension is relaxed. It may not be the sharpest piece of political irony but it is a joke that the team can share.

Mocking Conservatives is where everyone here began; and opportunities at the moment are scarce. If the French or the Russians frustrate the efforts at the UN, and if Clare Short’s cries inflame more Labour opposition, a victory in Parliament may be possible only with Opposition support. Tony Blair, for seven years the toast of his party, could soon be“toast” or, as Americans put it,“history”.

The first words from the make-up man confirm every immediate fear. “I’ve just come from doing the women,” he says, putting down his transparent plastic eyeliner case. “They are very angry. They’ve been stuck in the room for ages. The camera lights are on and they’re very hot and . . .”

He pauses to deliver what is, in his view, by far the worst sign of prime-ministerial danger — “hardly any of them wear make-up”.

After Tony Blair’s forehead has been powdered for the cameras and the most analysed facial lines in Britain have been hidden beneath kindly “concealer”, there are a few last points. “Shall I say anything about the UN timetable?” The den is suddenly filled with overlapping cries of “wiggle room”, “full and immediate compliance” and “dramatic change of mind by Saddam”.

“Am I frustrated by Clare Short’s action or distracted?” he asks. This is just filling time till the three-minute stage call. The ordeal may be in the Foreign Office Map Room. But this is theatre now. Campbell and Co are the producers, wishing they had a better audience, cursing modern television for seeing ranters and emoters as the only “real people”, but helpless to do much about it. The bums are already on the seats. The star has to perform.

The “three minutes” extends longer than would be allowed in the West End, almost up to rock star levels of lateness. The Prime Minister is still at his desk, not so much now “working the phones” as being worked by them.

There are anxious calls now, not just from the White House but from Labour politicians, all of a seniority requiring a Prime Ministerial chat, all wanting to know “what Clare — and he — are bloody well up to”.

The Blair column eventually assembles in the hall behind the 10 Downing Street door. The decoration at this end is dull, almost domestic, by comparison with the Cabinet room and den. The black and white tiled floor is piled with tempting replenishment for the fruit bowl: boxes of oranges, apples and bananas. This was originally the back entrance to the office and it is still where the “Sainsbury’s to You” van comes.

The team goes first, ignoring shouts from reporters about its leader’s future. The Prime Minister is told to wait 20 seconds to let everyone else keep out of his camera shot. The small patch of sky above is grey and cold. But by this stage he is reminded of the rising heat and sweat ahead.

He catches up quickly. “The boss didn’t want to wait,” says the detective apologetically as together they all stride up to the room. Portraits of Wellington and Nelson look down there on a sight that neither of those great British heroes would have seen as very pretty.

Nor was it very pretty, the inquest back in Downing Street agrees nervously. The slow hand-clapping was a disgrace. Maybe ITV wouldn’t broadcast that bit. OK, so probably they would. But there were only four slow-handers. And they were about as representative as a Socialist Workers’ circus. Trevor McDonald couldn’t control them. One woman was suspiciously expert on Yemen. Not even Nelson in his hero-of-the-Nile days could have handled the humidity. Had Blair thought when he first joined the Labour Party that he would end up sending B52s over Baghdad? What sort of question is that? And as for “I married a human shield”, God help us.

Tony Blair seems the least bothered of anyone by the fiasco. At least no one will ever be able to say that he slunk in his bunker. He had to preface almost every answer with the phrase “I know I am not going to change your mind but . . .”

He had a fresh powdering at each commercial break and would have benefited from more.

Why does he do it? He has desperately wanted Saddam to crack without a war. He is desperate that there is now so small a chance of that. He knows that George Bush will not wait long enough for diplomats and persuaders to do everything that they want to do. But he will not stop being a persuader and diplomat. He sees those arts as virtues in themselves.

In his first years as Prime Minister Tony Blair was always anxious about how he appeared. In his second term he has cared less. Campbell, communicator in the first phase, strategist of the second, shrugs the McDonald mess away. The rest return to answer “slow-handclap” questions from the press and “no UN support, no support from me” threats from MPs.

By the time Tony Blair is back on “the phones” again, a bigger would-be peacemaker has begun to make war almost certain. President Chirac, it is rumoured, will commit himself on television tonight to vetoing any second resolution that permits an automatic attack on Iraq. The Prime Minister does not like to be angry, still less to show anger.

But he is angry now. “This is such a foolish thing to do at this moment in the world’s history. The very people who should be strengthening the international institutions are undermining and playing around.”

Why should Chileans or Africans take the risk of voting for war at the UN if France is going to ensure that their vote is never counted? This is “irresponsible”. He goes upstairs to the flat to see Leo.

Other bits of Downing Street life do not stop. This evening Tony and Cherie Blair are hosts to “special needs” teachers. By 6pm the state dining rooms are thronged with educators of the word-blind, the half-deaf and the behaviourally challenged. It is the first reception for them ever held here.

The Prime Minister barely mentions Iraq. “Domestic delivery” must survive foreign demands, he insisted in an NHS reform meeting at breakfast today. He is drumming out the same message at the end. He denies fiercely that he has embraced the moral complexities of “abroad” because he is bored now by better health and education.

“Special needs” turns out to be a field that is hardly less full of mines and feuding than the borders of Kuwait. Some party-goers want children with “learning difficulties” to be educated separately; some want their teaching to be in the same schools as other children; all want more government money; most think that government money would be better spent on their own project than on the project of the woman with the cheese straw across the room.

With his mind split between the fleshy bulk of the French President, broadcasting his veto now somewhere in Paris, and the tiny fragile interpreter for the deaf, to whom he offers the stool from which he has already begun to speak, he gives an address which, as a man at the front says to his neighbour, gives something for everyone without giving anyone really anything. This admirer sees political mastery. “I don’t know how he does it. If I were him, I would be on Lomitol now.”

Is that some new chemical cosh for the classroom? “No, it’s the stuff you take for food poisoning. I’d be shitting myself right now if I were him. God knows how he sleeps at night.”

Friday, March 14

THE most important phone call today is about to be put through to the den.

Diplomatic calls are set up like meetings — by comms-men and clerks. There are top-security “Brents” for the White House, which are wheeled about from place to place. But some lines seem no different from BT standard.

The first buzzing comes at an unused, finger-marked phone-extension pushed into the corner beneath Leo’s birthday plate. From outside there is a cursing and a scrabbling. Finally, the receiver on the desk rings.

“Hello, Mr Chairman. It’s Tony Blair here.”

The Prime Minister leans forward for the latest word from the West Bank.

“It’s good to speak to you, and how are you?” Tony Blair nods as though neck movement might force the words through the noise.

He looks much stronger today. If the Palestinian leader were to ask in return “How are you, Mr Blair?” he could receive an honest “Better, thank you” in reply. The cold has subsided. Any last traces of his panda-look are hidden under full make-up for his next event, a televised press conference for journalists from the Middle East.

“We’ve got to take this forward, Mr Chairman.”

There is a gentle pleading in the Prime Minister’s voice.

The “this” is the so-called “road map” to a hypothetical place in 2005 where there will be two peaceful states instead of Israel and the Palestinian camps. The map has been drawn in Washington, Moscow, Brussels and the UN. In Jerusalem it is not much liked. In the West Bank it is not much trusted. President Bush has announced a few minutes ago that he will publish it as soon as Arafat has handed effective power to Abu Mazen, the new Prime Minister.

Whatever Yassir Arafat says is overheard by an intent Jonathan Powell through his earpiece outside. This is a short call but one which might easily go wrong.

George Bush will not talk to Arafat. The man with his elbows hard against the Downing Street desk has to do reassurance for two. After a few minutes the receiver at the other end is handed to Abu Mazen, the symbolic shift as Tony Blair hopes it will be.

“Congratulations,” he says to Abu Mazen, relaxing visibly now that he is working the phone with a man he can do business with instead of an awkward legend. His aim is to ensure that the road map is not torn up on the Gaza Strip before it is even seen.

“I know, I know,” he says impatiently when Arafat returns to the line.

“Yes, Mr Chairman, this is precisely to end the suffering of the Palestinian people.”

He rubs the side of his face where the make-up is irritating at the neck of his bright-pink shirt. He listens for several minutes more. “Thank you, Mr Chairman.”

He puts the phone back on its cradle, picks up a fresh tie and goes to face the cameras.

The sitting area outside the State Dining Room, decorated with paintings of scientists, as many as possible of them women scientists, is packed with Arab and Israeli reporters. A green-and-gilt set of chairs, the pride of the Downing Street furniture supervisors, is strewn with tripods and lens caps.

Thirty minutes later Tony Blair is walking by the flat-screen in front of Powell’s desk. The press conference is over. He has managed to turn most questions to the Middle East and away from Iraq. The road to a Palestinian state may be long. But it is also the necessary short road to reassuring his own MPs in the war vote next Tuesday. To abuse a Blair phrase, he must be “tough on terrorism and tough on the causes of terrorism”.

There is another awkward necessity, too. His most immediate journey is to the Azores on Sunday. The President is insisting on a 24-hour ultimatum to Saddam. This could have as bad an effect in Parliament as any good that might come from success with Arafat.

Tony Blair is keen to know from his spokesmen whether the Azores or the road map is going to be the main story of the evening. His aides, like all political aides, like to give their boss good news. But a “War Council” in the middle of the Atlantic, they suggest, will have stronger appeal.

The Prime Minister looks up at the television picture in which a Palestinian representative is damning Bush’s motives. “They’ve got to be told, Jonathan,” he says. “This is their chance. If they don’t use it they’ll lose it.”

He turns into the den by himself and closes the door.

Sunday, March 16

“You look all right. You’ve got to go.”

The flat, friendly tones of Sally Morgan sink from the top landing of the flat into the hall. In the half-darkness the rooms resemble the site of a hastily finished children’s party. The Thomas the Tank Engine train set is overflowing its box. At the bottom of the stairs, as though beguiling the Prime Minister to stumble, is a baby-sized drum kit with BAND in large letters on the bass. The music on the piano is the second page of “I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat a Creeping Up on Me”.

Morgan’s voice is tense. Everyone this morning has been tense. A flawless guide to the mood in No 10 is Vera, the laughing Irish “messenger”, normally in her newly issued government uniform, today in a generous brown jumper.

Messengers are more than tea-makers and paper-movers here. They are continuity and a kind of comfort. “If you want to know who really keeps this place, here she is,” says the Prime Minister of the woman who now walks through with a cup of coffee, moving her free outstretched hand like a balance, palm down. Something dangerous is going on. Later tonight, when news comes in from the Azores, the result has somehow got to be more support for “my boy Tone”, who is in his bedroom now changing from Sunday morning clothes to his summit suit, not more revolt.

At this morning’s meeting for the team, Party Chairman John Reid, in leather jacket and builder’s jeans, was facing Gordon Brown, black-suited fresh from Breakfast with Frost. Others showed off a startling range of “smart-casual” and marathon kit. It looked strange but the mood has made the Prime Minister feel a little better at a time which, he admits with understatement, has become unexpectedly “tough”.

While Morgan waits to give the final check to shoes, shirt and tie, she gives him the most optimistic political report that she can. The whips are “on course” to win Tuesday’s vote. But they have not won it yet.

This is the lowest point so far. A visit to church has not calmed him much. When worship is accompanied by detectives, and at random places selected for daily reasons of security, even prayer is not what it was. He is restless, wanting certainty before there is certainty to be had.

He is leaving today on a road to war which is not the one he planned. He long believed that he would have the United Nations securely behind him and thus the great majority of his party securely behind him. Outside Downing Street it is a rumour that Robin Cook will resign from the Cabinet tomorrow; inside, it is a certainty.

Now the problem is presentation. The time is past when he could think that Saddam was serious. But it is vital that no part of the trip today, neither the communiqué nor a careless word at the press conference, makes war absolutely inevitable and makes more ministers want to follow the Leader of the House. There has to be an ultimatum to Saddam; there also needs to be a way out, though not one, he concedes, that the Iraqi dictator is likely now to use.

Tony Blair appears at the top of the stairs. Behind him is a family photograph of his friend Bill Clinton, whose failed and cautious second term is held as a permanent reminder of what he does not want for himself.

In the same picture is Jacques Chirac, now his fiercest foe, with Leo as a baby, “symbole du Royaume-Uni”, as the French President’s handwritten inscription runs.

He pauses as though he is about to make a sweeping entrance, remembers his soft brown leather bag, clean shirts, new ties, and sets off out the door with his political director behind.

The last politician to shake his hand before he climbs into the green Daimler is John Reid who promises him, with somewhat weighty Glasgow wit, that he “won’t have resigned” before he gets back home. The Prime Minister responds to his leather-jacketed enforcer with a look of tired leaden irony of his own.

An hour later, in the first-class cabin of the 777 bound for the Azores, Tony Blair studies papers for the summit under the inquisitorial eye of Sir David Manning, his chief foreign policy adviser, and the more playful, permanently amused gaze of Matthew Rycroft, the Foreign Office private secretary, who is finishing negotiations on the words for the final communiqué.

The balance between politics and diplomacy has shifted. When the Prime Minister listens to Campbell and Morgan he is a man hearing news from home; he knows most of it already. When he listens to Manning, he is hearing news from far beyond himself, probabilities and problems that he does not always know. This veteran of Moscow and the Middle East peace process, soon to be Ambassador to Washington, is slight in body, the palest in a group of often very pale faces. When Tony Blair calls for him, his voice rises a tone. He does not like him to be far away.

Alastair Campbell is now exchanging faxed drafts of Robin Cook’s resignation letter and the Prime Minister’s ritual thanks. This reply has to be seen as generous, enough perhaps for Cook to hold out hopes of preferment as a European Commissioner if Tony Blair survives. The seat marked “Baroness Morgan of Huyton” is empty. After her early morning of sartorial and political reassurance, Sally Morgan has stayed behind to battle for votes.

British Airways has decorated the cabin with a black-and-white photograph of shifting desert sands, a thoughtful touch to relax a traveller ticking his way through Iraqi telegrams. No one has felt the need to remove the in-flight magazine, Shopping the World, from the side pocket. Back in Westminster that is exactly what opponents think Tony Blair is doing today, saving his relationship with George Bush but shopping the rest of the world without a care.

Tuesday, March 18

THIS is the speech which, commentators say, has to be the best of Tony Blair’s life. Sally Morgan worries that the arguments in the draft text are too academic. David Manning is worried about details that may cause problems when it is read in the White House and elsewhere. No one thinks it is exactly as it ought to be.

The words in the file under the Prime Minister’s arm as he enters his House of Commons office were first set down last Saturday, the day before he survived the passage to the Azores. If he had not started then he would not have had any quiet time to think about them at all. He has written the speech alone, in longhand in blue ink, high in the small sitting room of the flat, surrounded by books on Islam and John Lennon CDs.

The thoughts behind the speech go back farther, to September 11, 2001 and before. Those MPs who are surprised to find themselves lobbying their leader against war have not been listening to him carefully enough. They are like friends of a man who has long said he is leaving his wife or taking holy orders. He has given every sign of doing what he has decided is the right thing. He has rearranged his bank accounts and spoken about his plans to anyone who cared to listen. But few did care to listen because few believed that he would actually do it.

There are about 50 MPs on the final “wobbler” lists of Hilary Armstrong, the grey-suited Chief Whip, and David Hanson, the patient Welsh Parliamentary Private Secretary. There is no point now in bringing in either those who have always hated Tony Blair or those who have hated him since he sacked them from their jobs. The MPs who will be invited later to pass by Hanson’s beleaguered desk and on to the Prime Minister’s sofa are those who have come to see themselves as Blairites but have been left behind by what Tony Blair has become.

The Prime Minister and his team are partly to blame for these misunderstandings. There is less “spinning” of stories to press and Parliament now; but some MPs have moved directly from not believing Blair speeches to not reading them. Partly the problem is in the language demanded by the prewar negotiations: acronyms, paragraphs and numbered resolutions are not matters for passion.

But most incomprehension of Tony Blair by his parliamentary colleagues comes from their preferring their own view of him, a man with a magic instinct for winning elections, to his own view of himself, a man prepared to use what he has won to back his own instincts. He has built up what he calls “layers of toughness” and not everyone has noticed.

It is just before midday. There are 30 minutes left before the speech must begin. On the refectory table, in the long side of the L-shaped room, the Prime Minister sits staring at a typed text, a fountain pen and a dozen bottles of whisky. The bottles are for signature not sustenance. Every week, whether they like their leader or not, MPs send up bottles and photographs to be signed for supporters. Perhaps some of that wristwork and ink (there is a certain dexterity required to write one’s name against a curved piece of glass) will bring an extra vote or two tonight. In the meantime each new signature is a pause between waves of thoughts.

Suddenly there is a sound of rustling paper that is almost orchestral. As pages with blue-inked amendments are pushed out to the typists outside, everyone has a point to be made. Manning does not like the word “concessions” for “the pages of incomprehensible Arabic” offered to the UN by Saddam. Morgan still thinks it takes a long time to get any rhythm.

With 15 minutes remaining, Tony Blair stands up and asks: “History, in or out?” There is a long section in the text about appeasement in the Thirties. Some like it. Some don’t. There may be veteran Labour MPs, those who did their thinking early in the Spanish Civil War, who will support a war dressed in anti-Fascist clothes. But there are no votes to be won in attacking “new appeasers”; there are too many of them. Perhaps a “general link between then and now” may do some good, says Manning. His look suggests the result would not grade highly in an Oxford historiography paper.

Ten minutes before the deadline, the Prime Minister asks what precisely Chirac said about the UN veto and when. He does not get an immediate answer. There is no raising of voice. An e-mail is sent — and to general amazement is returned in some 90 seconds.

This is where Tony Blair, the parliamentarian and Prime Minister is separated from Tony Blair, the leader of a Downing Street team. He alone has to make the choices based on the audience in the Chamber down below. He is not focused on Campbell or Powell now. At other times they seem to be managing him. At this time they are only watching him.

Various dates and details are still in dispute right up until the moment that Morgan calls “That’s it”. The difference between Monday nights and Tuesday mornings has become clouded by fatigue. Santiago time? Washington time? No more time. Tony Blair takes the text out of the room in the same file in which it arrived. Some of the words are different. Many blue wrinkled lines remain.

When the opening of the debate is over and the commentators are penning their praise (“. . . never made a more difficult speech, or a more important one, or a better one” — Ben Macintyre in The Times) the mood in Hanson’s office is flat, deflated, still anxious. The team has heard all the lines before. Morgan wonders aloud whether MPs abandoned the usual dramatics of debate in deference to the seriousness of the occasion. Most of all, the job is not over. There are votes to be turned and people to be seen.

Later that night, when the debate is over and the reporters are writing that the Government has both suffered an enormous rebellion and prevented a catastrophic rout, the mood in Hanson’s office is still muted.

There is relief but hardly triumph. Tony Blair thanks everyone. The whiskies are signed but none is opened.



Thursday, March 20

“How should I start?”, Tony Blair is sitting at the same desk, staring at the same person as he was when preparing to meet the women of ITN. But this time he wants Alastair Campbell to give him an answer.

George Bush has begun the bombing of Baghdad rather earlier than his best ally expected. The members of the newly formed War Cabinet have held an 8am discussion of how they heard the news, whether they were reading Red Boxes in bed, watching football or enjoying the sleep of the just. It is a little like that 1997 election night game “Did you stay up for Portillo?”.

The Prime Minister is working on his broadcast announcement to the nation that British troops will tonight be engaged from “air, land and sea”. How should he begin it?

“My fellow Americans,” suggests Campbell.

Tony Blair does not even begin to laugh. There follows a testy discussion of whether “tonight” will seem the right word when it is rebroadcast in Korea. “But it doesn’t matter if the Koreans misunderstand the bloody time.”

“What about the end?” asks the Prime Minister, impatiently scratching the side of his face. He is now being made up so that he can deliver the message, as soon as it is complete, to a TV crew upstairs. He then has to fly to Brussels and a meeting with President Chirac.

“I want to end with God Bless You,” he says.

There is a noisy team revolt in which every player appears to be complaining at once.

“That’s not a good idea.”

“Oh no?” says the Prime Minister, raising his voice.

“You are talking to lots of people who don’t want chaplains pushing stuff down their throats.”

“You are the most ungodly lot I have ever . . .” Tony Blair’s words fade away into the make-up artist’s flannel.

“Ungodly? Count me out,” complains speechwriter Peter Hyman, who is Jewish.

“That’s not the same God,” the protesters insist.

“It is the same God,” says the Prime Minister, scribbling fiercely on his text.

Outside Downing Street there is much discussion of whence comes Tony Blair’s certainty on this war. Is it from the realpolitik requirement to follow a US President (the poodle principle), from religious concepts which he and George Bush share, or the thoughtful weighing of argument (Weapons of Mass Destruction held by Dictators of Mass Destruction versus the unavoidable bombing of children)?

Inside Downing Street when they ask themselves the question at all, it is to recognise that the Prime Minister has less patience than he had when they knew him first. He does not want to be (and cannot be) in No 10 for ever. Career statesmen are, in that sense, the same as career businessmen. They want to get things done before they move on. And the less they worry about losing their jobs, the more determined they may become to follow a judgment, a vision, however unpopular that may be. Tony Blair thinks that the Clinton error, which went far beyond the absurdities of Monica Lewinsky, was not to make that change.

For his team, however, the reason for the certainty is much less important than the certainty itself. Tony Blair takes small pieces of advice; the broadcast to the nation ends not with God but on a lame “thank you”. But confidence that the boss is not going to change his mind on the big issue gives everyone the concrete on which everything else is built.



Friday, March 21

News of the first dead Britons comes when the Prime Minister is asleep in Brussels. He comes down to breakfast at the Ambassador’s home looking troubled and anxious. The black rings around his eyes have all but gone but he is still pale. At the Heads of Government dinner last night, well reported by now, he and Chirac barely spoke. Their handshake was of the lightest, shortest kind, the category known by diplomats as a Robert Mugabe.

Later in the morning the French President is not among those giving public condolence on the British deaths. This is also beginning to be reported.

The murmurs in the corridors are beginning to resemble a party where the host and hostess can be addressed only separately, each without even reference to the other.

The French want the EU to regret that the war has begun. The British want to regret that Saddam failed to disarm. In the end they regret nothing.

This is the Piaf summit. Then rumours filter from a session on economic reform that Chirac has passed a note of regret for the casualties. That is some small progress for those who judge progress by good manners and goodwill.

Just before the meetings are over for the day, the unmistakable back of the French President can be seen among a thin crowd of chatting officials.

The great bulk turns. He briefly withdraws. Perhaps there are still too many witnesses to what he wants to do. When he comes back out of the room, he draws Tony Blair away from Alastair Campbell as though by simple force of gravity. He takes him along the empty corridor, settles the British Prime Minister against the half-lit wall and makes his points.

French aides approach and are motioned away. To some observers it is like the meeting of a gangster with a man who owes him money. But most diplomats are more emollient. The hosts of the house-party are out in the garden, sorting out their differences, or so it seems. Few people are there to see the scene itself. But everyone who can decently watch does watch. German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, who gave initial support to the stance of his friend Tony Blair until his voters told him otherwise, looks at his colleagues and seems to be wondering, as is everyone else, who will win and who will lose.



Monday, March 24

Leo Blair waits until the War Cabinet is well over before beginning his deliveries. A fortnight ago it was said that one clear beneficiary of a Blair defeat would be the Blair family; Downing Street, whatever anyone loyally claims, is not the ideal place for an independent wife and teenage children to live their lives. But for three-year-old Leo today it does not look bad at all. Once the ministers have gone back to their departments and the language of the house is fit for impressionable ears again, it is a place full of possibilities, yards of old soft carpet, calming decoration (grandeur does not begin till far above his height), staff who find him amusing and a father who, however busy, is close at hand.

Before 8.30am, while John Reid is abusing the media for obsession with “friendly fire” and Iraqi civilian deaths, while the Intelligence Services deal patiently with politicians who want Saddam dead immediately in front of their eyes, while health and education advisers complain that their coffee routine has been interrupted by war, the youngest Blair stays in the flat upstairs with his large collection of stuffed “Leo the lions”.

But later, unless there is a delayed emissary from the days of diplomacy, a Russian or an Indonesian, or an urgent visitor from Ireland, there can be hours of near calm when a boy may safely distribute gifts.

Now that the war has begun, the action against Saddam Hussein is not directly run by the Prime Minister. There is still no tempting sandpit of tanks for father or for son.

But Tony Blair is still happy to take the opportunity to postpone other tasks that he never wished to do anyway.

At 11am Blair Senior is sitting back on his balcony outside the Cabinet Room. There is shelter here from the sight of the “Not In Our Name” protesters, if not from their cries of “Tony, Tony, Tony, Out, Out, Out”.

There is also a sight of the sun which, according to Vera, is vital for the best “my Tone” morale. This is the view over St James’s Park that the planners of the house intended its occupants to have, not the orientation on to Downing Street, one of the coldest, most wind-blown alleys in London.

While the Prime Minister prepares to report to MPs on Saddam, Jacques, Gerhard and other subjects from Brussels, there is an unseen visitor in his den. Tony Blair, face up to the sky, asks anyone who is in earshot a question about what the Chief of the Defence Staff said this morning.

On the desk from where he is due to talk soon to President Bush is a chocolate Wagon Wheel that was not there before. This is not the kind of confection served at Brussels summits. The Prime Minister takes a bite and brushes away the dry crumbs that fall on to his Statement for Parliament.

He hands what remains to Campbell, who takes another bite. Campbell passes the relic to Jonathan Powell, who decides that this rite of initiation has gone far enough.



Thursday, March 27

Guests at Camp David get a cream electric golf buggy to carry them from cabin to cabin through the President’s retreat. Some buggies have girls’ names; some have government department names; one is today labelled “Prime Minister of Great Britain”.

George Bush has just told a press conference that “America has learnt a lot about Tony Blair over the last weeks, that he is a man of his word, a man of courage, a man of vision and that we’re proud to have him as a friend.” After a few brief questions, both generous host and lauded guest are hurrying up the incline to Aspen Cabin, the Bush family base.

“This is my little piece of heaven,” the President tells the late arrivals. Since Tony Blair is still changing into the clothes suitable for the scheduled “mountain walk”, praise of him can flow even more unstinted than it did down below. “Americans admire character and courage,” he says, loosening his tie. “And Tony Blair has true character and courage.”

“I know about world leaders,” he goes on. The security men look sharply as though they know all about world leaders too. There are those who have looked the President in the eye and said yes and meant yes. And there are those who have looked him in the eye and said yes and meant no.

A junior aide nods and wonders if it is time that the President changed into his walking clothes to meet his guest. George Bush is not in any hurry to leave the sun, which is high now above his “piece of heaven” and casting shadows on an army of thin grey trees.

The talk goes on. While French Fries have been replaced with Freedom Fries from California to the dining rooms of Congress, France’s world leader does not seem, yet at least, to be in the ranks of the Camp David damned.

Whatever the President’s fellow Americans and British visitors may feel, Chirac never gave anyone his word. He is French and takes a different view.

From US State Department to British Foreign Office, the assumption about Germany is different to that about France. Relations here, according to conventional wisdom, can relatively easily be patched up after the war. The Camp David mood here does not seem so forgiving. Chancellor Schröder looked America in the eye. Then he had an election.

So Sauerkraut may soon become Salvation Cabbage? The British view is that there must be a “reckoning” but that eventually things will be “fixed”, with France and Germany. The host campers seem to agree. As for the UN, the main point of argument both at the press conference and inside the cabins? The verdict here is less certain. It depends what the UN wants to become and whether, in the short term, it is prepared to put someone serious and practical up for its top job in Iraq.

The Prime Minister has learnt both the limits of working alongside the new overwhelming American power and the possibilities of doing so. A walk with the President, time alone to ask difficult UN questions and judge genuine determination about the Middle East, is the most important part of the trip for assessing where both limits and opportunities lie.

When George Bush returns he is in blue tracksuit and trainers, as though for a power walk not a stroll in the hills. The two set off along the path, alone except for a security buggy with a faulty horn. “Peep-peep, peep-peep” sounds the escort in perpetual distracting cry, as they map out next steps for a nervous audience around the world.

Wednesday, April 2

A man in a loose suit, probably a civil servant, possibly from the Department of Health, looks hard at a newspaper photograph on the waiting-room table. It is not the main front-page picture. It is a small detail of a larger tableau, the last depiction of a dead Iraqi child, said to be a bomb victim, kohl around his eyes, blood in the crease of his nose, his tiny body taped into a shroud. “I wonder what he feels when he looks at this,” he asks quietly.

The speaker leaves almost immediately for a meeting somewhere in Downing Street’s domestic zones. This is a quiet day but not so quiet that Tony Blair will spend long staring at a down-page newspaper picture. There are Questions to the Prime Minister later this morning but the chances of the “he” having to answer such a question in the House of Commons is slight.

Preparation time for this weekly examination is concentrated on free parcel post for soldiers (known as the “Pot Noodle point”), Saddam’s attempts to destroy Shia places of worship and blame the British (the “shrine point”) and the antics of the “traitor” Labour MP, George Galloway.

After the session is over, Tony Blair is back at his usual place at the long table, signing bottles and photographs. Life has returned almost to routine. It seems a different place from the one where he put his job on the line.

I stop and ask him what that visitor from beyond the war wanted to ask.

What does he feel about the deaths of children that are the direct result of his own decision? The man in the waiting room did not want a public answer, an administrator’s calculation which weighs hundreds of thousands of child deaths caused by Saddam against the many fewer caused by British weapons. He could do that for himself. He wants to know how the Prime Minister feels about the simpler moral problem, the deaths caused by one’s own avoidable act?

Tony Blair looks up at me from his seat. He finds a few words, though hardly his most eloquent ones. “It really gets to you,” he says, as though he were talking about someone other than himself. His voice is strained.

Down in his eyes there is a pale shudder, perceptible for the flash of a moment like a touch of wind across water. “It does really get to you,” he says, looking at me directly as though challenging me to disagree.

He puts down the fountain pen. Behind his gaze there is a momentary blankness. Aides have spoken of how much he has felt the responsibility of shedding blood. He speaks of being ready “to meet my maker” and answer for “those who have died or have been horribly maimed as a result of my decisions”. He accepts that others who share belief in his maker, who believe in “the same God”, assess that the last judgment will be against him.

In all these days I have not seen the commonly held evidences of feeling, no tears or head-held-in-hand. And yet, if I meet that man from this morning again, and if I am asked whether the Prime Minister, as well as feeling the political risk of war, feels powerfully and personally its worst individual results, I will say he does.

Wednesday, April 9

A hollow metal statue of Saddam Hussein has been hauled down from the centre of a square in Baghdad. “Not exactly Trafalgar Square, more like Camberwell,” says a dismissive voice in the Downing Street corridor. “It’s just one statue,” says the Prime Minister. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about.”

Tony and Cherie Blair have begun visits to military bases, helicopter tours of halls hung with yellow ribbons.

Yet this is VI day, whether the intelligence chiefs, the generals, the diplomats and the Prime Minister like it or not.

Peter Stothard’s book, Thirty Days, based on this project, will be published by HarperCollins on July 7

Blair casts himself as EU president candidate

Speaking on French TV, Tony Blair sang the praises of the EU and sketched his agenda for its future, all in fluent French

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