30 Days: A Month at the Heart of Blair’s War

Thursday, 13 March

Morning headlines … Tony Blair gives six tests for Saddam Hussein … Washington threatens Moscow with consequences of veto … Tony Blair denies that British place in war depends on new UN resolution …

‘It’s Cabinet time,’ says a voice from the diplomatic knights’ zone.

‘Oh, yes,’ comes the unenthusiastic response.

The arrival of some twenty-five men and women from various government departments, however regular on a Thursday morning, is not welcomed with joy at Number Ten. Cabinet days are like Christmas at a great country house, when all the relatives who think they own the place – who do in certain circumstances own the place – descend for their share of the inheritance. The master and his servants greet the guests cheerfully enough; they can hardly turn them away, but they are mightily pleased when they are gone.

If the Secretaries of State want to make a visible entrance (which mostly they do) they are driven up to the front door, get out of their car with just a slight turn of the head to see if a TV reporter might ask them a question, and go in past the policeman. It then takes just a few seconds to walk straight ahead, past the Henry Moore and three small paintings of rural scenes, and into the back hall where the early arrivals will already be drinking coffee.

Most of the decoration in this corridor is exactly what you would expect in a prosperous house inhabited by people who do not care too much for art. But there is one stark picture, of a cottage freshly blasted as though by some clean, bright light. The roof is off and the walls are smashed, but none of the wood is charred. It is dated 1940, but there is no name-plate for its artist. Sometimes visitors give this painting more than a single look.

The shy, the about-to-be sacked or anyone who happens to be in the neighbouring office on Whitehall can enter from a side door, past the office of Jonathan Powell and the Duty Clerks. Gordon Brown, the second most powerful man in the country, comes to Cabinet from the other side, along the corridor from Number Eleven that he shares with Alastair Campbell, into the front hall, left turn and down to his colleagues.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer seems cheerful, almost jolly this morning. But no one here would make much of that. His relationship with Tony Blair is one of Downing Street’s greatest mysteries. The team knows that today he will go out and talk to TV and radio and support the Prime Minister. How this was agreed they do not know.

Every day or so there is time blocked out in Tony Blair’s detailed appointments diary with simply the initials ‘GB’. What happens in these meetings, no one else knows. No one else is there when the Lord of the House and his disinherited brother plan what needs to be done on the estate.

The stability of the British government since 1997 has depended on a pact whose terms have never been revealed. Even its existence is not always admitted.

Before Labour’s previous leader, John Smith, died in May 1994 there were two rising stars in the slowly changing party, two friends, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair. Brown was the senior, the more intellectual, the more passionate speaker; but he was a Scot, and had a narrower appeal to the English Conservative voters whom Labour needed to attract.

Brown was persuaded not to stand for the leadership. But he did not give up his hopes of attaining it one day. He felt he had a deal whereby he would take the Treasury and run British domestic policy, which for the most part he has, and would succeed Tony Blair at some point in the future, not too far in the future – which so far he has not.

Every time there is political trouble, it is whispered by someone that Gordon Brown is behind it. It is whispered today that ‘Gordon is behind what Clare is doing,’ that ‘Gordon did not exactly incite Clare to call Tony reckless, but hopes to benefit from it.’ Even the team members most charitable to the ambitions of the Chancellor say only that ‘He is biding his time.’

What is clear to everyone is that Clare Short, in penitent white scarf but not looking otherwise apologetic, is taking her coffee with her friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There are eyes too on Brown’s long-standing rival, the Leader of the House of Commons and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook; the two have a mutual distrust stretching back to power struggles for territory in Scotland decades ago.

Brown is like a large planetary mass, attractive to satellites. Cook is a small, bare rock, sparking huge energy at high speeds but leaving less that is permanent behind. ‘Robin looks shifty today, but then Robin always looks a bit shifty,’ says a rare close friend of them both.

If Tony Blair falls, there will be winners and losers here. Gordon Brown still has the best chance of taking over the house which he thinks he has already in his grasp. But no Chancellor can escape blame when the voters begin to feel more taxed and less prosperous, as at the moment they do.

If Brown is careless, or is seen too clearly to have wielded the dagger, there are others. Alan Milburn, the smooth-faced, smoothtongued Health Secretary, has been assiduous in condemning Clare Short.

What if Tony Blair wins the vote but the war is a catastrophe? Might a resignation from Robin Cook now win him power later?

Some of the Cabinet Ministers most fiercely in support of Tony Blair are those originally from the farthest left of the party. John Reid, Party Chairman, lapsed Glasgow Catholic and Communist, stumps around the hall as though looking for a head to stamp on. He sees Saddam Hussein through a prism of Scottish politics and Scottish football. He lets his leader concentrate on Iraq. His concentration is on the bad guys and back-alley chancers who are trying to chop his leader down. This wary teetotaller and gum-chewing giver-up of cigarettes is Tony Blair’s top enforcer. He talks freely this morning to the only other claimant for that title, John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister, long-time trade unionist and famous square-faced strangler of the English language.

Prescott found new fame during the 2001 election campaign by punching a protester in the face. Like a boxer who has proved himself and is gracefully approaching retirement, he looks a little less the pugilist now. He makes no claims to know whether the policy on Iraq will work, but every claim, quietly but forcefully expressed, that his Cabinet comrades should support it.

After an initial display of coffee-sipping amity, entertaining only for onlookers and junior family members, the Cabinet assembles around its traditional long table, each in an allotted place. Both inner and outer doors are shut. A messenger sits guard to ensure that none of the team outside, the people who really run this heart of government, makes too much noise.

In the waiting room to the left of the front door of Number Ten is a sallow, elderly man with a long lock of hair twisting down over his left eye. He has heavy gold rings on his fingers and is pointing at a report in the Daily Mail of the new ‘final tests’ which Britain and America have set Saddam. If the Iraqi leader is serious about obeying UN calls to disarm, let him show it by meeting these ‘benchmarks’, destroying his weapons and telling the world personally that he has done so.

The visitor does not seem impressed. He smiles, sits back, strokes his thigh, pushes back his skein of hair and waits. His eyes circle around the orchids on the table, the loud-ticking clock, a child’s picture of food parcels falling by parachute and a set of large framed photographs illustrating the shipping forecast. ‘Southwesterly veering Northwesterly 4 or 5’: some Asian women are playing cricket on a beach. The man looks mildly mystified until he is rescued from his reverie by Sir David Manning, jacketless in pink shirt and light maroon tie.

‘How nice to see you again,’ says the diplomatic knight, recognising the Indonesian envoy from past encounters.

‘The President sends you her best regards,’ replies his visitor.

‘Let’s go up and talk,’ says Tony Blair’s man. It was Manning, writing at his round table under the maple-leaf window last Sunday, who devised the new ‘benchmark tests’ in order to keep the dying flame of diplomacy alive.

‘Thank you,’ says the representative of one of the many Muslim countries which are sceptical of British and American motives,

When the Cabinet Room doors open there is the sound of brittle laughter. Clare Short’s presence, after she has broken the laws of collective responsibility, has unnerved them all. Tony Blair has taken a risk in keeping her here. If she can criticise his policies and keep her job, why should not others be emboldened to do the same?

The mood is one of nervous mockery.

‘It was good of Clare to offer Tony that advice on getting the second UN resolution. He would never have thought of such a clever idea himself.’

‘What is Robin suggesting? That the whole war would be illegal?’

‘The French must not be forgiven for this.’

‘When the Prime Minister said “Good Morning,” who said “Bonjour“?’

There is general jollity but not much good will.

Clare Short herself, straight-backed, big-bodied, scarf trailing down, is also talking cheerfully. The subject is ‘new jobs’. She suggests that ‘We all soon may need one.’ For the moment, though, the Cabinet is intact. The International Development Secretary has not been sacked and the Leader of the House of Commons has not resigned.

Tony Blair takes the back stairs next to his den, the main staircase in this back-to-front house, and goes up, past the photographs of his predecessors, past the place where his own photograph will one day be (at this point, who knows how soon?) and into the White Drawing Room to see the envoy of the Indonesian President.

The Prime Minister sits facing his guest across a low table, accepts the Indonesian’s thanks for agreeing to see him at a ‘difficult time’, and, as he has been doing all morning, listens to worries.

‘Ours is the largest Muslim country in the world. Now the moderates are in control. If war breaks out and lasts a long time it could be extremely difficult.’

Tony Blair nods.

‘Is there anything that a third party can do? The non-aligned nations have had success before in convincing Baghdad. We have shown results.’

The nods turn to a polite but doubting gaze.

‘Is there any way we moderate Muslim countries can talk to both sides? We agree that Baghdad must stick scrupulously to the first disarmament resolution, 1441.’

Tony Blair thanks him for that final bit of his message and says what he has just told his Cabinet. ‘We are still pursuing every avenue. Everything is made much more difficult by France. It is only by the credible threat of force that Saddam has ever responded at all. We have set new tests. Anything that the Indonesians can do to get them through to Baghdad would be important.’

The envoy has done what he came for. He says he is going to Paris next. He wants to make sure that no signals are being misinterpreted.

The Prime Minister’s tolerance of diplomatic language is reaching its limits. ‘The bottom line has to be that a strong, united message to Baghdad from the rest of the world means peace. A weak message means war.’

Host and guest walk out into the upper hall. On one side of them is a huge painting of an empty cinema which bears an eerie resemblance to the front cover of the Labour-supporting New Statesman magazine this week. The cover, though not the item from the Government Art Collection, bears the slogan ‘Blair Bombs’.

Downstairs in the Campbell zone, the news has arrived of one of Robin Cook’s answers to routine Business Questions from MPs. There is to be a debate on war next week. ‘Would the Cabinet share collective responsibility on a decision to go to war?’ Cook was asked.

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Collective responsibility will apply to all those who are in the Cabinet at the time of the debate.’ Those last thirteen words are given careful and fearful thought.

Robin Cook did not like losing his job as Foreign Secretary to Jack Straw, but he bore the demotion to Leader of the House of Commons with dignity. He has always been highly respected in Parliament. If he argues that the result of war will be a weakened UN, a collapse of moderate Muslim states from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, more extremist places for terrorism to flourish, more dead Iraqis to enrage potential terrorists in Israel and elsewhere, he will be heard with more respect than many others mouthing the same views. The Leader of the House is pointing his way out – and may take others with him.

Tony Blair’s sense of what war will bring is wholly different. He sees a UN which frees itself from helpless torpor, a lesson to extremist nations that terrorism will be met by massive force, a message to Palestinians and Israelis that America will not tolerate conditions of permanent instability.

Neither man knows whether he is right or not. Each knows what he thinks.

The Prime Minister stretches his arms above his head, doing light exercises against the blue leather backdrop of the Cabinet Room doors. ‘It’s all the broad sweep of history now,’ he says to Campbell.

‘The papers say you’re in a lot of trouble,’ his adviser, the one who is in genuine athletic training, replies.

‘It will be tough,’ says his boss, picking up a green apple and wiping it on a napkin. Before he takes a bite he gives the skin two more careful wipes, polishing away every last spot.

History seems to be much on his mind. Two weeks ago he told a newspaper that ‘History will be my judge.’ He was not only drawing comparisons between those who want to appease Saddam Hussein now and those who appeased Hitler in the 1930s. He was also, and rather more usefully for himself, drawing attention away from the many adverse judgements on him at the present time to future verdicts, all of which are unknown and some of which may be better.

Historians will one day consider whether Tony Blair is more like a wise Winston Churchill or a rash Anthony Eden, just as historians are filling pages of newsprint now with argument about whether Saddam Hussein is a Nazi or a Nasser, whether we are in 1939 or 1956. But for the moment, it is better to call on judges who may not yet be born than on those who are waiting for him in the House of Commons.

It means almost nothing to say that history will be Tony Blair’s judge. But that does not make it a stupid thing to say. When Blair is safely retired, his decisions in these days will be analysed closely. Questions will be asked about his influence on George Bush and George Bush’s influence on him. This is familiar territory for students of the transatlantic relationship.

Churchill, it is generally agreed, had many great virtues. But honesty about the ‘perfect understanding’ between him and Franklin Roosevelt was not one of them. He exaggerated it – to others and to himself.

Harold Macmillan had an Ambassador to Washington who was part of the Kennedy family. Macmillan had clear influence on the young President but did not, as he claimed, take part in, and share responsibility for, Kennedy’s ultimatum to Moscow to remove its missile bases from Cuba.

Historians will examine Tony Blair and George Bush and judge them in the same light. Was the policy right? How much was it a British policy?

Tony Blair was both a political and a personal friend of the previous President, Bill Clinton, and had worked with him, publicly and privately, over many shared problems. Central to their understanding of the world and of each other was the task of persuading traditional left-wing activists and voters to support new, less collectivist policies.

These two men talked to each other for hours about the Third Way – and bored others for hours about it too. They shared the same thoughts, and similar student experiences at Oxford University. They both had academic lawyer wives whose lives had not always been made better by their own.

How was it possible that Tony Blair could switch so quickly to a close relationship with George Bush, a Texan conservative with whom he shared almost nothing in his life and barely a single belief about how a country should be taxed and run? The only powerful belief they seemed to share was Christianity – and surely, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, religious beliefs were the most dangerous of all?

Was it true that the two men prayed together? Did George Bush genuinely believe that God guided his hand? Tony Blair did not go that far. He was a more traditional English Christian, High Anglican, almost Catholic. He was knowledgeable about Islam and sympathetic to its adherents. What did he and the President say to each other about their religious beliefs, and what difference did it make?

History will judge Tony Blair, whether he asks it to or not. Today the immediate task is to write a speech for the House of Commons debate. The Prime Minister may need the comfort of history for that. He needs to build the case for a new approach on the success of approaches in the past. He needs to make the most effective historical comparisons just as he needs to give his troops the best weapons. It hardly matters whether those comparisons are justified or not.

He is not calling history to be his judge in any other sense than as a practical preparation for war. Every other judgement is for a future which now seems far away.

Tony Blair continues his stretching exercises and his fruit lunch in the den until a note arrives from the Duty Clerk. The Polish Prime Minister, Leszek Miller, is waiting on the phone. ‘Here is a man with a good sense of history,’ says a jovial voice from the outer office. ‘Poles have not forgotten 1939. This one is a tough guy, a good guy and very anti-French.’

The Prime Minister leans back in his swivel chair. His friend from Warsaw, like his friend in Washington, is worried first about the House of Commons vote.

‘Yes, it will be tough for me,’ he says. ‘I will take the case to Parliament and, hopefully, win it.’

Is the Second Resolution losing its life?

‘It may be, Leszek, but we can’t tell at the moment. There are good reasons why the diplomacy has to continue, not just diplomatic reasons but presentation reasons too. If it wasn’t for the French, we would have the swing-countries behind us.’