Inside Downing Street, in the days before the war, whenever there was frustration or fear, the talk turned to football. Pulling out my notebooks of life with the Prime Minister at that time has been like reading the transcript of a Radio 5 Live phone-in — irregular news bulletins interspersed with disallowed penalties, desperate substitutions and the masochistic fatalism of the touchline.

From March 10, when my “embedded” role began, to March 20, when the onset of “shock and awe” surprised even the most senior ministers in their beds, Tony Blair was on his campaign to change minds and win votes from Westminster to West Africa. Whenever the telephone rang — on his desk, by his sofa, from a sinister coil of wires in the corner with the children’s toys – he listened politely to opponents from places with the littlest-known names. He opened his doors to sceptical Islamic ambassadors, military mothers anxious about their sons, intelligence chiefs, historians of modern Iraq — and his windows to the protesters’ roar from the roads outside.

But what was the difference between Blackburn Rovers and Saddam Hussein? They both tortured people in the stadium. What was the difference between Jacques Chirac and Graeme Souness? The Prime Minister made a rare intervention to stop the answer to that one. For Robin Cook, speaking on the day that he resigned from the Cabinet, it was a “spectacular own goal” to wage a war that neither the British public nor the United Nations supported.

The language of Celtic and Sunderland was perhaps a way of making the abnormal normal. Who was the first black player to play for Wales? Thinking about that made the anger of Welsh MPs more manageable. Tony Blair had a personal sense of mission. Everyone else in Downing Street had to deal with a widening sense of impotence. They cursed and shook fists — like Premiership managers when the kick-off whistle has gone, waving their arms, abusing the media and making the occasional substitution.

Whenever the Prime Minister could escape his Downing Street rooms, he wanted to be outside on the back balcony. The fresh air and sunshine countered the feverish cold that he suffered for all of those warm March days in 2003. The never-ceasing shouts of “Not in our name” merely reinforced his choice to absorb attack without reacting to it.

Tony Blair became disappointed that his powers of persuasion had failed to deliver. But he was determined to go on. The act of persuasion was “a good in itself”, he said. He would not give up. The phrase “masochism strategy” was coined to meet that mood.

He welcomed envoys from leaders who thought that the conflict could be long and costly. The Indonesian President’s envoy, Nana S. Rutresna, was one who sought especially hard for some discussion of alternatives, twisting a long grey lock of hair while he spoke of the uncertainties of response from the factions within Islam.

The Prime Minister reassured Bulgarians and Poles that the French would not be allowed to beat them up for their support of the war. Paris and Berlin could not just “get together to poke the eyes of the Americans”. He reassured Yassir Arafat that all efforts were aimed at an “end to the suffering of the Palestinian people”. I asked him after a bruising phone call “how was it all going?” “It’s for the broad sweep of history now’” he replied, looking through the thick dirty windowpanes that were proof against both IRA mortars and protesters’ songs.

Mr Blair was not a natural fatalist. After six years in power, and many domestic successes over sceptical colleagues, he was at peak confidence in his ability to make a difference five years ago. He had listened to experts on Iraq who described its religious divisions. He believed that they had closed minds to the possibilities of freedom. Jacques Chirac’s fears of Islamist violence? “Poor chap, he just doesn’t get it”. The Canadian Prime Minister’s urgent desire to talk? “Everyone is keen to come on board with us now that they see the policy is working.’’

Mr Blaircould not make as much as he wanted of the moral case. “What amazes me is how many people are happy for Saddam to stay. They say, ‘Why not Mugabe, why not the Burmese lot?’ and I say, ‘Yes, let’s get rid of them all’. I don’t because I can’t but when you can you should.”

He “could” get rid of Saddam only because the Americans had already decided to do just that. He had advanced and supported their decision.

There was the danger, he thought, that without Britain and other allies, there would be a quick US invasion followed by a quick US withdrawal and a long-lasting chaos left behind. Was that what Donald Rumsfeld, really wanted? Maybe Dick Cheney too? The US Defence Secretary was the Washington bogey-man for No 10. ‘Where shall we put the Rumsfeld statue when this all over?’, rang the mocking voices in the wagon which carried us to parliament, past all the protester-proofed statues of Whitehall. The chief of staff, Jonathan Powell, was the adviser most committed to the future that Mr Blair had selected as better than the Pentagon’s. Grappling with neocon ideals and non-existent states was much less attractive, or even attainable, for others. At the weekends, when ministers and aides customarily appeared out of office uniform, Gordon Brown in a black-and-white striped rugby shirt, Alastair Campbell in marathon kit, John Reid in leather and low-slung denim, it seemed easier to detect that none of them, if the choice had originally been theirs, would have been doing what they now had to do.

Perhaps a man in shorts or jeans cannot so easily direct his mind to TV viewers, to people en masse, and more naturally considers the individual supporters, political and sporting, with whom he might have spent the day if there had not been a war coming. On a Saturday he is closer to the minds of all those millions in the country at that time who prefer to keep their illusions on the sports field.

It was on a Saturday that Mr Brown posed directly the “why Saddam, why now?” question, attributing it to “people outside” but speaking clearly enough about “people inside” too. He did not look very satisfied with Blair’s answer — while never ceasing to put out the most vigorous version of it. Blair’s certainty made it easy for his advisers to know where they stood. But few much enjoyed this time. Every night they had to leave the No 10 bubble, in which the policy had life, for homes, families and friends where it did not.

Peter Stothard is the former Editor of The Times, the Editor of The Times Literary Supplement and author of 30 Days: A Month at the Heart of Blair’s War

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