Blair Tony - The Alastair Campbell diaries. Volume 4, The burden of power: countdown to Iraq

Contents

Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yorkshire in 1957, the son of a vet. Having graduated from Cambridge University in modern languages, he went into journalism, principally with the Mirror Group. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, Campbell worked for him first as press secretary, then as official spokesman and director of communications and strategy from 1994 to 2003. He continued to act as an adviser to Mr Blair and the Labour Party, including during the 2005 and 2010 election campaigns. He is now engaged mainly in writing, public speaking, consultancy, and working for mental health charities and Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, where he is chairman of fundraising. He lives in North London with his partner, Fiona Millar, and their children, Rory, Calum and Grace. His interests include running, cycling, playing the bagpipes and following the varying fortunes of Burnley Football Club.

Bill Hagerty, a former colleague of Campbells, was deputy editor of the Daily Mirror and edited both Sunday Today and The People newspapers. He is now a writer and broadcaster and edits the British Journalism Review.

The Burden of Power is the fourth volume of Alastair Campbells diaries, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited given the ground it covers.

It begins on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, and it ends on the day Campbell leaves Downing Street. In between there are two wars: first Afghanistan, and then, even more controversially, Iraq. It was the most difficult decision of Tony Blairs premiership, and almost certainly the most unpopular. Campbell describes in detail the discussions with President Bush and other world leaders as the steps to war are taken, and delivers a unique account of Blair as war leader. He records the enormous political difficulties at home, and the sense of crisis that engulfed the government after the suicide of weapons inspector David Kelly.

And all the while, Blair continues to struggle with two issues that ran throughout his time in government fighting for peace in Northern Ireland, and trying to make peace with Gordon Brown. And Campbell continues to struggle balancing the needs of his family with one of the most pressurised roles in politics.

Riveting and revelatory, The Burden of Power is as raw and intimate a portrayal of political life as you are ever likely to read.

To Philip Gould (19502011),
because friendship matters in politics,
and team players are the best players of all.

Many thanks once more to Bill Hagerty, who took over the task of editing these diaries after the sad death of our friend and colleague Richard Stott, and to Mark Bennett, who was with me in Downing Street and has also been with me on the long and sometimes tortuous road to publication.

Both through my diaries, and the two novels and ebook I have published, I have come to appreciate the professionalism and kindness of many people at Random House. I would like to thank Gail Rebuck, Susan Sandon, Caroline Gascoigne, Joanna Taylor, Charlotte Bush, Emma Mitchell and the team of spin doctors, Martin Soames for his legal advice, David Milner, Mark Handsley, Vicki Robinson, Helen Judd, Sue Cavanagh, and Jeanette Slinger in reception for always ensuring one of my books is at the front of the display cabinet downstairs at least when I am visiting the building. My thanks, as ever, to my literary agent Ed Victor, to his PA Linda Van and to his excellent team.

I want to thank Tony Blair for giving me the opportunity he did, and thank the many friends and colleagues who have helped me in good times and bad.

Finally, thanks to my family. As these diaries show, the pressures of the job I did also fell on Fiona and the children, and I thank them for their love and support. I know that they too will be happy to acknowledge our debt to Philip Gould, to whom I dedicated this volume shortly before his death, and who was an enormous support to all of us.

At the risk of offending purists, pedants and history scholars, I have taken the liberty of beginning this volume with the same diary entry with which I ended the last one: September 11. Though this volume is the fourth in a series of the full diaries of my time working for Labour in opposition and in government, it also stands alone as a record of the most difficult and controversial period of Tony Blairs premiership. It is an intimate portrayal of Blair the war leader, with conflict in both Afghanistan and Iraq taking place during the two years covered, and September 11 is the most suitable place to begin that account.

The Taliban in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and the fear of terrorist organisations getting hold of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with the help of rogue states, had been on TBs agenda well before September 11. Indeed, subsequently Mike White of the Guardian reminded me that TB had raised the issue as a coming challenge at a meeting at the newspapers head office the day before the Twin Towers fell. But without the events of that day, it is at least plausible to imagine that neither war would have taken place, certainly in the way they did. As the ten-year anniversary showed, it is a date so much now part of the public consciousness, and so central to many strategic, religious and geopolitical debates around the world, that it seems almost otiose to add the year: September 11, 2001. More than a decade on, we say September 11, or its American variant, 9/11, and there are very few people who dont immediately know where, when and what you mean, and summon up images of planes hitting buildings, people fleeing in terror, families grieving in all parts of the world, politicians struggling to catch up. There have been terror attacks since, but none which has made such a powerful impact, which is still felt today.

World leaders are fond of stating, in the immediate aftermath of terrorist outrages, that we must and will not let the terrorists deflect us or change our way of life. But they can, and they do. It is something I reflect on every time I go through an airport security check. But September 11 did more than see increased bag checks, belt and shoe removals and toothpaste confiscation at airports. It recast the foreign policy of major powers. It tested relationships between them. It tested the UN. It brought to a head debates which had been simmering within and about Islam. Most importantly for this book, it came to be a defining moment in Tony Blairs premiership, George Bushs presidency, the relationship between the two, the reputation of both.

The day began with TB worrying about a speech he was due to make to the Trades Union Congress in Brighton about public service reform. It was being set up as something of a lions den moment. The speech was never delivered: the first attack on the Twin Towers in New York took place as we put the finishing touches to it in a hotel suite overlooking a calm and beautiful sea. The day ended with TB back in London directing the UK end of a global crisis management response, which would subsequently see the domestic side of his job dwarfed by the consequences of the attacks.