A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  Over time, however, I became increasingly resentful of how resignations were forced. And so much depended on the circumstances of the revelation.

  Unbelievably, a few days after Ron went, the News of the World trapped Nick Brown, whom we had moved from chief whip to be the Agriculture Minister in the July reshuffle, with someone who they said was a rent boy. When Alastair told me – and rather innocently I had never been sure Nick was gay – the room did sway a bit. Two gay scandals in one week. And there I am, completely committed to equality between gay and straight. Chris Smith had just bravely come out as the first openly gay Cabinet Minister. People knew Peter Mandelson was gay. I was a little alarmed at the public becoming a trifle wide-eyed themselves at everything.

  To be fair to the News of the World, they came to us with the story on the Thursday before the Sunday publication, and Alastair heroically persuaded them to run it with Nick coming out as a gay man. The result was the story turned from a sordid scandal into an honest confession and Nick was saved.

  He had been very angry at being moved from chief whip, and I knew he was more or less continually working for Gordon and against me, and had actually probably been doing so all along. But when the revelation came, he was saved, not least because he wasn’t chief whip, though mostly because we went out of our way to save him. And here’s where you just can’t get all aggrieved as leader. You would think he would be grateful. Not a bit of it. He carried on believing he had been hard done by and that I was out to get him, when, of course, I could have got him there and then and finished him off. But we didn’t because we were not like that. It was always odd to be described as having this incredibly ruthless machine, when actually we had plenty of ruth; indeed, on occasions far too much of it.

  Just before Christmas 1998 there was a huge resignation, one that in time I came bitterly to regret and in respect of which I still reproach myself, though when I reread Alastair’s diary on it and its accurate account of what the media furore was like, it is hard to see how it could have been toughed out.

  Essentially, Peter Mandelson had been given a loan by Geoffrey Robinson, the Paymaster General, to buy a house. The sum was large, certainly in those days: £373,000. Peter was Secretary of State for Industry, and the department was inquiring into Geoffrey’s business dealings, an inquiry established in response to a Tory complaint, and set up well after the loan was made. Peter hadn’t disclosed the loan to his permanent secretary. He should have. That he didn’t do so was, I had no doubt, nothing to do with being dishonest. In fact, Peter had had nothing whatever to do with the inquiry into Geoffrey, and neither would he have. If he had disclosed it, the affair would possibly have been manageable, though in the event the media just went for the whole thing rather than that one aspect.

  As was my wont with ‘scandals’ at that time, I pulled in the Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine and Charlie Falconer, who had until recently been Solicitor General, as two good forensic minds. Both thought it very difficult.

  I pushed the issue away for two days, and in any event was intensely preoccupied with the proposed US military action in Iraq at that time. The Guardian had broken the story, and the rest piled in. It was wall-to-wall mayhem. Several members of the Cabinet called to say it was hopeless. Good old Jack Cunningham, whom we had moved from Agriculture to be Minister for the Cabinet Office, went out to defend the position, but even he found it hard. At least Parliament wasn’t sitting, thank God.

  By 23 December, I felt I couldn’t sustain it. I steeled myself and told Peter, who accepted my decision with extraordinary grace. I also sacked Geoffrey. And I told Gordon that Charlie Whelan, his spokesperson, had to go as well.

  My feelings were beyond rage; more real sadness and a sense of doom. The truth is I don’t know that Gordon’s people leaked it – you never do know – but only two people were party to the agreement for the loan, and I was sure as hell Peter hadn’t told anyone, since he hadn’t even told me. And it was the Guardian, not the Mail or the News of the World, to whom the story had been given; it was therefore more likely to be a party source such as Charlie Whelan, since the Guardian was more or less the party in-house paper at the time.

  One thing was for sure: whoever it was had done it with complete malice aforethought. This was not a story, it was a political assassination, done to destroy Peter; but it was done also to damage me and damage me badly, without any regard to the impact on the government.

  I sat in Chequers that Christmas Day and contemplated. Peter was a brilliant Secretary of State, had real verve and imagination, and was loved by his department (and believe me this is pretty rare). He was an important part of the government, and a crucial part of New Labour. This would end his career. Knowing all that, someone gives the story to the Guardian. What is the mentality of such a person? Determined, vengeful, verging on wicked. It frightened me because of what it might mean. People always think politicians behave to each other like something out of a Jeffrey Archer or Michael Dobbs airport novel, but in my experience, they don’t. There is rivalry, backbiting, undermining, but little that you could describe as really dark. But this was.

  I knew, in one sense, sacking Charlie Whelan was unjust because, as I say, I really didn’t know that he was responsible; and to be fair, he denies it. I also knew, however, that if I didn’t sack him, then a terrible lesson, with possible momentous consequences, might be learned for the longer term. So, after a bit of toing and froing, he went.

  At the time I was certain Peter had to resign. Now I am not so sure. The trouble is, it’s impossible to appreciate fully what it is like to be at the centre of a media frenzy, unless you have gone through it.

  When they have decided to go for someone, they start with the story. That story may be true, but it is then embellished. If resistance is met, they just up the pressure until the frenzy is the journalists’ equivalent of the screaming abdabs. If resistance continues, they basically say: right, we will continue running this story until the person resigns. The problem then becomes not the story but the total submersion of the government agenda. Nothing but nothing gets through.

  Being prepared to wait that out is really hard, believe me. Towards the end of my premiership, when caution had finally been abandoned to the winds, I did tough it out (when there were calls for Tessa Jowell and John Prescott to resign), but it is a ghastly power struggle, and you worry as prime minister and leader of the party at the collateral damage and feel a responsibility to avoid it.

  However, I still wish I had sat it out. It was an early trial of strength with the media and I backed down. To be fair, I also felt Peter had been stupid and wrong in not telling his permanent secretary; as happened with his later resignation in 2001, he didn’t always help in the handling. But you know something? In the end that’s beside the point. The point is not actually one about friendship or loyalty. It’s about the country. There’s a limited pool of talent in politics. A special talent – and he was and is very special – should have been saved in order to serve. When Gordon was prime minister and Peter asked my advice as to whether he should go back into government, I answered affirmatively without hesitation. His absence from my government was a huge loss; his presence in any government is a huge asset. Simple as that. So it’s not just on policy that you learn in government.

  On Boxing Day, I went off to the Seychelles. Poor old Alastair. He would call me up saying the press were terrible, I was being panned, and I was sitting in the sun or on a boat fishing or just generally relaxing, playing football with the protection team and the locals. It would drive him crazy. He felt he was bearing the brunt when I was ‘swanning off’, but he never understood me and my holidays. The truth is I had had a bellyful, and needed some sun and an environment as far removed from Westminster, Whitehall, Downing Street and Fleet Street as could be imagined. Alastair tried calling a few times to sort out the details of the Whelan business, but eventually gave up in frustration. I had said Whelan had to go, and the details didn’t trouble me. He was going.r />
  The reason I had had a bellyful, however, was not only the rash of resignations. November and December 1998 had also been dominated by Iraq. On 11 November, I had met with George Robertson, the Defence Secretary, Robin Cook and the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Charles Guthrie. Saddam had thrown out the weapons inspectors, who had written a damning report on the outstanding issues relating to weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s continuing ambitions to develop a programme for them. President Clinton was contemplating a military strike. Charles took me calmly through the options and the likely casualties were we to participate. As ever, he was straightforward, clear and strong. The next day I took Cabinet through it, with George warning that this was the most serious development in respect of Saddam since the Gulf War.

  On Saturday 14 November, we met in Downing Street again in the morning. We were set for air strikes to begin at 4 p.m. Suddenly the news came that Clinton had decided to pause, since Saddam had sent a new letter saying he would readmit inspectors. Then we got the letter. It was full of holes, typical Saddam rubbish. Over the next eighteen hours, finishing at 4.30 a.m. on Sunday, I was in constant contact with Bill. The action was suspended, much to the relief of Robin, who had been troubled by it. I was determined to keep the US alliance intact and functioning at what was a crucial moment.

  The inspectors went back in, but it was clear Saddam was just messing about. Finally, when their report came in mid-December, it was damning again. This time Bill decided we had to act, and we did so with four days of aerial strikes in Operation Desert Fox. It was a nerve-racking time, and the operation was a limited success. The general feeling was that Saddam had got away with it again.

  EIGHT

  KOSOVO

  The awakening from Opposition to government lies in the tough nature of decision-making. In Opposition you can, if skilful enough, mask contradictions, conceal choices, blur distinctions, cast a cloak of ambiguous consensus over discordant, spiky and unpalatable decisions. So it looks smooth. In government, it is all jagged edges. The moment you choose and start acting on the choice, the edge starts to cut.

  My awakening on domestic policy took place over time. Probably I only fully found my voice on domestic reform in the last term. The awakening on foreign policy was, by contrast, abrupt. It happened over Kosovo.

  The categorisation of policy into foreign and domestic has always been somewhat false. Plainly a foreign crisis can have severe domestic implications, and this has always been so. Two things make the distinction even more misleading today: first, the world is far more integrated, so home and abroad tend to come together; second, as a global media develops, foreign crises are often played out in real time and graphically on our TV screens. They swiftly become domestic challenges. This can be because they impact on domestic life – as with the world economy or immigration – but also because people’s sympathies and emotions are involved. When Israel attacks Gaza, for instance, the vivid nature of war and its attendant suffering is displayed immediately in our homes in the remotest parts of Britain. We are engaged in a way that, decades ago, would have required a kind of Midlothian campaign to get people aroused.

  Yet even this description almost trivialises what is happening. It is not simply that people get affected by what they see; it is that they care about other people. Their feelings are genuine. They see starving children in Africa and are moved to act. They witness injustice and expect their government to help correct it. While they may care most about what happens within their borders, they are not indifferent to misery beyond them.

  The culmination of all these things, more forcefully today than ever before, is to make the world interconnected not just economically or in self-interest but emotionally, the heart as well as the head. When we talk of an interdependent world, we mean that we are linked, that challenges and solutions tend to be in common, that problems in one part of the world can easily trigger reactions in another; but also that we feel at a human level more connected across national boundaries than ever before. The space we live in feels more shared, more held in common. Travel, mass media, the Internet and modern communication all pull us in one direction: together. Personally, I like this. I am comfortable – no, more than that, excited – by a world that is opening up, allowing us to experience and learn more about each other. However, even if I resented it, I would have to accept it as a fact, possibly the fact, of modern politics.

  In the course of this, foreign policy and domestic policy interact and overlap; yet we still devote much to pretending they don’t. Having read widely, I knew a lot about history before becoming prime minister; but about contemporary foreign affairs, I knew little. The 1997 campaign was fought almost exclusively on a domestic policy basis. If you had told me on that bright May morning as I first went blinking into Downing Street that during my time in office I would commit Britain to fight four wars, I would have been bewildered and horrified.

  That’s the way it is. I can’t remember an incoming American president who fought a foreign policy campaign to reach the White House; or who didn’t, in the course of his administration, end up being preoccupied with it. The conventional wisdom among all political strategists is that to base a campaign on, or become immersed in, foreign policy is a disaster, the beginning of the end. (As I found out, to a great extent that is true.) The reason is that the public think it’s both important and at the same time very distant from their daily preoccupations.

  So, at one level, the public understand the need for the big international picture. At another, to them it is round after round of summits, banquets and political chummery. It seems so remote – ‘What’s it got to do with us?’ is the cry. What you come to realise as a leader is that although this feeling may be understandable, it is also wrong. The very nature of the interdependence makes it so. Globalisation pushes people together. The challenges are faced together, and the solutions – in part, at any rate – have to be found together. Therefore, it is unlikely that a challenge in continent A, if it is truly serious, will not lead to a challenge in continent B. The phrase ‘global community’ is a cliché, but it’s also true. It’s the way we live now.

  There is another consequence of the interaction between foreign and domestic policy: the foreign policy itself has to be conducted in a different way. Global challenges require global solutions. Global solutions require global alliances. Global alliances can’t be constructed on the basis of narrow national self-interest. They have to be based on shared global values.

  Take climate change, which is the global challenge. The solution is a global agreement. The agreement requires developing and developed nations – China and India, America and Europe – to agree. Their national interest lies in a collective bargain. That bargain won’t work unless it is fair to countries at different stages of development. By this process of reasoning, the national interest relies on a multinational accord that is based on a shared perception of fairness.

  The effect of all this is that a traditional foreign policy view, based on a narrow analysis of national interest and an indifference unless that interest is directly engaged, is flawed and out of date. I happen to think as Gladstone did that it is also immoral; but even if I didn’t, I am sure that in the early twenty-first century, it doesn’t work.

  This of course became the dominant debate over foreign policy during my time as prime minister. By the end, I am afraid, I was in a small minority when this thinking resulted in military action, but it was more widely accepted, at least in theory, when it came to the economy, the environment and other issues. It also utterly confused left and right until we ended up in the bizarre position where being in favour of the enforcement of liberal democracy was a ‘neoconservative’ view, and non-interference in another nation’s affairs was ‘progressive’. But more of that later.

  When Kosovo emerged as an issue at the end of 1998 and erupted in the first months of 1999, the jagged edge of foreign policy and decision-making was immediate and painful in effect.

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nbsp; Essentially, the problems caused in the wake of the break-up of Yugoslavia, following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, were still reverberating. The wounds of the Bosnia conflict were not fully healed. In particular, Serbia remained under the dictatorship of Slobodan Milosevic. Religious, ethnic and nationalist tensions abounded. Kosovo – a small territory about the size of Yorkshire or Connecticut, with roughly a million inhabitants of whom a majority were Muslim Kosovan Albanians – remained part of Serbia, which was a Christian Orthodox nation. Relations between the Serb rulers and their Kosovan subjects were dire.

  The outcome of the Bosnian conflict divided the former Yugoslavia into a number of countries according to the Dayton Agreement of late 1995, achieved by the energy and ingenuity of the American diplomat Richard Holbrooke. Though it had taken two years for the West finally to intervene – in which time more than 750,000 people died – when it did so, the partition allowed some sort of peace.

  In December 1998, Paddy Ashdown had sent me a note from his visit to the region. He reported that generally things were improving; but in respect of Kosovo, things were deteriorating. The KLA – the Kosovan paramilitary ‘liberation’ army – was rearming in the face of Serbian military preparations for what looked like an invasion. Paddy’s anxieties were reinforced by our intelligence people at the end of 1998, who reported strong evidence that Milosevic was about to authorise a major Serb assault. Already in the past months, hundreds of thousands of civilians had been displaced, and around 2,000 had died.

  In October 1998, a temporary agreement had been made, and some civilians returned under the assurance of the international community that it was safe to do so. But since then, displacements and killings had continued.

  This was ethnic cleansing. What’s more, it was happening right on Europe’s border. In the first two months of 1999, the international community started to crank itself up to act. There was a conference at Rambouillet in France that tried to broker an agreement. Resolutions were passed, statements were issued and daily declarations were made about the unacceptable nature of what Milosevic was doing, but the killing and cleansing carried on. On 15 January at Račak, a small village in Kosovo, forty-five civilians were executed. Further condemnations were sent forth. The cleansing only intensified. Thousands were now dying.