by Tom Bower
The party conference was held in Manchester. Brown arrived keen to solicit support, upset the polls showing the Tories ahead, and restore relations with Blair. In the middle of a clunking speech, he told the packed auditorium, ‘It has been a privilege for me to work with and for the most successful ever Labour leader and Labour prime minister.’ Outside the hall, Cherie watched a monitor and was heard by a Bloomberg journalist to remark, ‘Well, that’s a lie.’ Her words dominated the media, suffocating Brown’s emollient message. Cherie’s denial seven hours later – ‘Honestly, guys, I hate to spoil your story, but I didn’t say it and I don’t believe it’ – was mocked.
That night, the Blairs hosted a party in their suite. One floor below, the Brownites sat in fury, ‘feeling utterly sick’, according to Damian McBride.
‘She’s killed us, she’s killed us,’ Brown wailed, slumping against a wall.
The next day came Blair’s speech. It was a supremely confident finale. He started by thanking Cherie for her support and gave a flash of his showbiz genius: ‘I mean, at least I don’t have to worry about her running off with the bloke next door.’ What followed was a captivating description of his successes and his hopes that the reforms would continue, and an admission that ‘You make your own luck.’ Having held his audience in thrall, he ended, ‘In the years to come, wherever I am, whatever I do, I’m with you. You’re the future now. Make the most of it.’
The standing ovation appeared endless. Biting his lip, Blair seemed set to shed a tear, but his emotions were torn. He craved an audience, but he did not love those who cheered. On the contrary, he hated their ingratitude. He had never loved the common man. For their part, many in the audience wanted him to stay on but realised that he was too damaged to win the next election. Sleaze and Iraq had stained him permanently. A Mori poll put the public’s ‘satisfaction’ rating of Blair at 20 per cent, lower than Thatcher on the eve of her fall.
The following week, David Cameron asked Blair in a raucous Commons, ‘Do you back the chancellor as your successor? Yes or no?’ Blair did not reply.
During the whole of September, those engaged in the battle for Downing Street forgot the soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The 130th soldier had just been killed in Iraq, and a Nimrod surveillance aircraft had crashed in Afghanistan, killing fourteen crew. Their deaths were blamed on the government’s refusal to provide enough money to service the plane. To the country, Blair was a lame duck repeating that the troops should remain in Iraq ‘until the job is done’. Whitehall gossip did not restore any confidence.
In early October, during a visit to Downing Street to discuss the perils in Afghanistan, General Richards noticed that Blair was not listening. The war had been delegated to Stirrup. After their talk, Blair agreed to pose for a photograph. ‘You sit down,’ he said to Richards, ‘and I’ll stand behind you to show a coup.’
Dannatt’s frustration boiled over. While Richards was standing on the Downing Street steps, he inhabited the shadows. Since Blair refused to listen about ‘the army running hot’, Dannatt turned to the Daily Mail. In the published interview, he said that Britain should leave Iraq ‘sometime soon, as their presence was exacerbating the Islamic security threat to Britain’.
Blair was visiting Ireland when the general’s words were reported. ‘I wasn’t best pleased,’ he would write, understating his outrage. Dannatt, he complained, was a dogmatist scoring points at a politician’s expense.
Senior army officers expected the general to be dismissed for breaching the constitutional code, and Shirreff spoke for many by criticising Dannatt’s ‘crass own goal’. Throughout history, rebellious American generals had been fired by their president, and an immediate decision to remove a maverick serviceman would have silenced the hubbub between the chiefs and the civil servants, and even resolved the breakdown between the military in Afghanistan and the politicians in London. Blair could have received that instant recommendation from Stirrup, but the air marshal held back.
In Blair’s telephone conversation with Browne, Dannatt’s dismissal was not seriously considered. Instead, Blair coyly anticipated the media headlines should the draconian measure be taken. ‘If Dannatt’s fired,’ he reckoned, ‘the Mail and the rest of Fleet Street will turn against me. Their headline will be “A Very Honest General”.’ Signalling his dislike of confrontation, he told Browne, ‘I’m cornered.’ His only request was that Dannatt should accuse the Mail of distorting his words and demand a correction. Then he invited the general and all the chiefs to a lunch of sandwiches.
The scene in Downing Street was surreal. The conversations at all social meetings between Labour politicians and the military were strained, but on this occasion the atmosphere of cordiality was particularly contrived. Energetically circulating the room, Blair went to pains to show that his distrust of civil servants did not extend to people in uniform. The chiefs would not be given ammunition to whisper any criticism of himself to the Tories. During lunch, no one acknowledged that the army was engaged in its biggest battle since the Korean war some fifty-five years earlier. No one reviewed the contradiction of launching two wars in the name of nation-building. Both the chiefs and the politicians shied away from mentioning that the army was unable to protect Iraqi and Afghan civilians from slaughter or discussing Washington’s declining confidence in Britain’s fighting ability. Blair and the military were united in their strategy of just muddling through.
The theme of Blair’s short speech to his guests was, ‘We must all work together’ – or, as some quipped, ‘We all must hang together.’ He had admitted that Iraq was ‘so far pretty much a disaster’, but blamed Muslim extremists for preventing the majority of Iraqis from building a peaceful, democratic state.
That explanation was no comfort to Dannatt. With some justification he complained about his treatment, adding, ‘Blair didn’t look me in the eye,’ and that he had not been invited to say anything. Powell’s mistaken recollection was that the general did speak.
By the end of lunch, Blair had classified Dannatt as untrustworthy and unsuited for the job. But, assuming Powell is reliable, Blair’s interpretation of his own dilemma was similarly skewed. ‘We spent most of our time in government’, Powell would write disingenuously, ‘not fighting wars but trying to prevent them.’ He added that Dannatt’s use of the Mail would ‘make politicians think twice if military action is proposed in the future’.
The written apology Blair expected from his outspoken general did not arrive. ‘Dannatt’s no fucking good to you lot,’ Matt Cavanagh, Browne’s special adviser, told General Richards. ‘He’s toast in No. 10.’
Animosities flourished among the chiefs. ‘Everyone hated each other,’ complained an official. ‘Dannatt’s made everything difficult.’
The politicians and commentariat would blame successive chiefs of the defence staff for failing to inform Blair and the secretaries of state for defence about awkward truths in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, Dannatt was castigated for telling Blair just those truths. Newcomers like Cavanagh, a recent arrival at the MoD who witnessed the fractured relationships, blamed the military for having ‘lost sight of strategy’. He also blamed civil servants for having ‘simply opted out of the difficult arguments’ between the military and the politicians. He was unaware of Whitehall’s path to war in Iraq. From the outset, Blair had excluded those who offered unwelcome advice.
Even after nine years in office, Blair had a limited understanding of government. During a conversation with Stirrup while on a flight from Iraq, he referred to the importance of Europe’s military defence agreements. ‘It’s a joke, Prime Minister,’ said Stirrup. ‘When the Europeans spend real money, I’ll believe in it, but in the meantime it’s a fig leaf for doing less.’
Blair looked discomfited. Despite the setbacks he had witnessed in Iraq, he still believed passionately in intervention. He urged Stirrup to dispatch groups of special forces to solve humanitarian crises in Zimbabwe, Sudan, Darfur and other war zones in Africa. On
each occasion, Stirrup replied, ‘What is your strategic purpose? You don’t know how this will turn out. No plan ever survives the first contact with the enemy. The unexpected will happen.’
Once more, Blair looked disappointed. He appeared to enjoy warfare.
*
In December 2006, the prime minister, while visiting Kuwait, darted across to Basra on a day trip. Operation Sinbad was in disarray. Not only was the army failing to defeat the Shia killers, but there was also a breakdown in relations between the military and officials from the Foreign Office and DFID. British civil servants were refusing to work together or share transport around the city. DFID’s officials would not leave ‘Basra Palace’, while Foreign Office officials marooned themselves fifteen miles away. The antagonism that Blair had failed to resolve in London had erupted as a turf war in the midst of a real one.
The prime minister was greeted by the soldiers as a celebrity, and they were grateful when he posed with them for photographs. The odd man out was Shirreff. ‘We’re just dribbling,’ he complained to Blair, the only person who could resolve the problem. Under Shirreff’s command, nineteen British servicemen had been killed and 121 wounded. The casualties were higher than in the preceding months. ‘More could be done if you’d help with troops and resources,’ Shirreff told the prime minister.
‘Why don’t you write to me?’ replied Blair, speaking, Shirreff thought, ‘in a detached manner, as if he was a bystander chatting in a pub over a pint’.
Shirreff continued, ‘And there’s no co-operation between the army, Foreign Office and DFID. It’s so dysfunctional.’
‘Write to me,’ repeated Blair, staring into the distance.
Shirreff duly wrote, but his letter was never acknowledged. He returned to Britain soon after.
On his final trip to Iraq in 2007, Blair was asked by a reporter, ‘How long will it take for it not to be a mess?’
‘I dunno,’ he replied. ‘You can’t tell. It will resolve itself, it just will. People will get sick of the killing.’ The health ministry in Baghdad estimated that 150,000 Iraqis had died since the invasion.
During this latter trip, Blair also met General George Casey, the US commander in Iraq. America had committed 140,000 troops to a ‘surge’ aimed at destroying the militias, while Britain’s soldiers – soon to be reduced to 5,000 and embarrassed by the US’s technical superiority in counter-insurgency operations – wanted to leave. But Blair was waiting for Washington’s agreement. ‘We’re loyal supporters,’ he told the general, ‘and we’ll do what you want.’ For General Jonathan Shaw, Shirreff’s successor, Blair’s message symbolised the hopeless predicament he had created. To the public, in a television interview Blair declared that ‘the progress in Iraq is remarkable’.
Stirrup decided that Shaw should reverse Shirreff’s strategy. Rather than having to survive a further six months of attacks, the army would retreat to Basra airport, leaving the militias in control of the city. ‘I was redeployed not knowing who was left in charge,’ complained Shaw. ‘The withdrawal was dishonest.’ The British had been defeated, but Blair refused to admit it. Relations among the chiefs in London had deteriorated so badly that Stirrup refused to tell Dannatt that MI6 had brokered a deal with Muqtada al-Sadr, a terrorist leader in Basra, to protect the withdrawal. ‘You’re not security-cleared,’ Stirrup eventually told the chief. ‘It’s not a military operation.’ The one bonus for Dannatt was that more soldiers would be heading for Afghanistan, which, Blair belatedly recognised, ‘was just beginning to be a bigger problem’.
Four years later, unrepentant about invading Iraq, Blair wrote: ‘I was left with the feeling that had we believed in our mission more and not despaired so easily … we would have had a far greater part in the final battle.’ He did not admit that, as the supreme commander, he bore the entire responsibility for the military’s mood and resources.
FORTY-SEVEN
Self-Destruction
* * *
The deadline was agreed. During the countdown of the last nine months of his premiership, Blair demanded a frenzied schedule in order to prove himself as the master of his destiny. He would campaign in the May local elections, then announce his resignation and, on the eve of his departure on 27 June, attend two international summits. He would allow the curtain to fall only after his ‘reform’ agenda had been firmly established. This would both fix his legacy and tie Gordon Brown in to a winning programme for a fourth-term victory. The third, unspoken objective was to lay the foundations of a new career.
The mood in January 2007 was not conducive to a finale accompanied by rapturous applause. ‘I want to get on with the job,’ he said on television, oblivious to the hostility he was arousing. ‘I want to finish what I’ve started.’ With pride, he would describe himself as being ‘on top form … The only meaning was in being true to myself.’
Labour’s poll ratings were falling. In the media and the Commons, the government appeared indecisive about overcrowded prisons and whether Roman Catholic agencies should be banned by law from arranging adoptions because they discriminated against gay couples. Blair’s vulnerability as an undeclared Roman Catholic illogically added fuel to another Commons rebellion by ninety-four Labour MPs against modernising the Trident nuclear weapons programme. Once again, Blair was saved by Tory votes. However, after another passionate debate, Labour MPs did support Blair and voted against a comprehensive inquiry into the Iraq war. A week later, Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death, a judgement Blair opposed.
In parallel, the police were providing a running commentary to journalists about their investigation into loans for peerages. Senior officers regularly stoked the public’s anger. Ruth Turner was arrested in a publicised dawn raid, and certain members of the Downing Street staff were questioned under caution. To Gus O’Donnell’s dismay, the police were given access to Downing Street’s sensitive email servers. Soon after, a police source revealed the discovery of an email from Turner to Jonathan Powell. She had reported Michael Levy’s request for her ‘to lie for him’ that he had no role in the honours system; for his part, he denied any wrongdoing. Journalists quoting ‘police sources’ said that at least three Downing Street staff were likely to be charged. In that febrile atmosphere, Blair was formally interviewed on 26 February by two police officers. It was the second time. Throughout the interview, Blair casually dismissed their questions.
True to form, to bury the bad news, on the day of the interview the government media machine issued fourteen announcements. They included the long-awaited report by Lord Stevens, a former Scotland Yard chief, into the death of Princess Diana in Paris; the closure of 2,500 post offices; and Blair’s order to terminate in the ‘national interest’ a two-year investigation by the Fraud Office into alleged bribes paid by British Aerospace to Saudi Arabian power brokers to secure a huge weapons contract. Blair’s helpmate in closing down that controversy was once again Peter Goldsmith, the attorney general. Blair also chose that moment not to renew the contract of Alistair Graham, the surefooted chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The sleaze-buster was replaced by Rita Donaghy, a long-standing member of the TUC council. Her appointment symbolised Blair’s swift descent from the moral high ground. In 2000, Labour had passed legislation to prevent secret donations to political parties; and, in 2002, the government had outlawed bribes paid by corporations to foreign governments to win commercial contracts. Both acts had been circumvented. The public were disturbed. To Blair’s surprise, sleaze had made the British noticeably ungrateful for the benefits of his decade in power.
An hour after the police left Downing Street, their interviewee flew to Davos to mix with billionaires at the World Economic Forum, thence on to the Middle East, another certain location for his new life. He left behind an indignant party. Eleven weeks before the local elections, the opinion polls placed the Conservatives on 40 per cent and Labour on 29. The party was predicted to lose 600 seats and perform badly in Scotland. Blair urged Labour not to be rattled and
told the public, ‘I have taken absolutely no decision about my future at all.’ Single-minded, he appeared oblivious to all the distractions, although the symmetry of his life, described as the ‘final phase’, was not exactly following the scenario composed six months earlier by his Downing Street staff.
Blair’s farewell had been mapped out by Ben Wegg-Prosser, helped by Matthew Taylor and Philip Gould. Called ‘Reconnecting with the Public – A New Relationship with the Media’, the five-page memorandum proposed the orchestration of a glorified departure. Conjuring up images of a Hollywood melodrama, Blair was scripted to float on a wave of national euphoria. ‘He needs to go with the crowds wanting more,’ suggested Wegg-Prosser. ‘He should be the star who won’t even play the last encore. In moving towards the end, he must focus on the future.’ In searching for high visibility, the author suggested, ‘He needs to embrace open spaces, he needs to be seen to be travelling on different forms of transport, he needs to be seen with people who will raise eyebrows.’ There would be many newspaper interviews and TV appearances on Blue Peter and Songs of Praise. The downside, Wegg-Prosser anticipated, was Brown’s fury, while he described Iraq as ‘the elephant in the room, let’s face up to it’. He concluded, with remarkable honesty, ‘His genuine legacy is not delivery, important though that is, but the dominance of New Labour ideas – the triumph of Blairism.’
