A JOURNEY

by Blair, Tony

  After George had finished, Guy said he understood what George was saying, but really the American problem had a very simple solution, one that would be good for the world, but also immensely beneficial for the inner well-being of the American people: they could cut their emissions significantly if they doubled gasoline prices by raising the taxes on it. Such an action would be bold, it would help wean the American people off their obsession with the motor car, and earn George the high approval of international political opinion, not least in Belgium.

  George had arrived bang on time for this first discussion and had not fully said hello to all the participants. He didn’t know or recognise Guy, whose advice he listened to with considerable astonishment.

  He then turned to me and whispered, ‘Who is this guy?’

  ‘He is the prime minister of Belgium,’ I said.

  ‘Belgium?’ George said, clearly aghast at the possible full extent of his stupidity. ‘Belgium is not part of the G8.’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but he is here as the president of Europe.’

  ‘You got the Belgians running Europe?’ He shook his head, now aghast at our stupidity.

  So to describe George as a sceptic on climate change would be an understatement. As time progressed he shifted his thinking, but did so too slowly – a quality of conservatives I don’t admire – and as much because he could see American dependence on carbon was putting their future into the hands of unstable and treacherous parts of the world. Once he had moved, he spent more on developing clean fuel than any previous administration. Actually, he also trebled aid to Africa. But as ever, because the world had come to have a fixed view of him, he got no credit.

  I once asked one of my backbench MPs why he hated George so much. This had been one of those embarrassing occasions that even cropped up with some of my close friends, who would ask in private what I really thought of George Bush. I would say I really liked him. It never failed to produce complete incomprehension. When I asked my backbencher why he hated him so much, he said, ‘Just do. Can’t explain it fully, but just do.’ I then asked if it would make any difference if he turned out to be right. ‘In that case I think I would hate him even more,’ he replied.

  So that was how it was with George. He had moved some way by the time of the July 2005 G8, but not as far as I wanted. He had constantly refused to say he would commit the US to being part of a deal on climate change. And although he had been really forward on Africa and had a really impressive record on funding action on HIV/Aids, we were asking big numbers – $50 billion extra over the coming years – and filling in details of how it would be spent. Instead of an agreeable but general set of discussions, we were putting real figures, real commitments and real deliverables on the table. George was nervous and I was absolutely aware that although others were going along, they were doing so in the belief that George would save them by volunteering to be the party-pooper. I also knew that if he agreed, no one else would dare disagree.

  I was putting real pressure on, to be honest quite a bit above and beyond what the other leaders thought was desirable or necessary. Without George’s backing, indeed, it would have been impossible. Even with it, there were limits, and I was significantly outside them.

  The US style of summit negotiation is to be really difficult, be prepared to crash it, argue over every last word, then come in at the end and make everyone feel grateful they’ve even shown up. It doesn’t win many friends but they know everyone hides in their slipstream. If they cave, no one will do their fighting for them, so they fight for themselves. It’s fair enough, but it causes anxious moments for any summit host, including me. I knew if push really came to shove I could probably square George, but we were going for both climate change and Africa and he might just think one was enough, whereas I wanted both.

  Also, once inside a process, people find it really hard to extricate themselves. George knew that from the moment he conceded, he was on a travelator that would take him a long way – as indeed he went, two years later in Germany. He knew that if he agreed this process now with a statement that acknowledged the seriousness of the challenge and the fact that it was essentially man-made, he was locking in the US. And he never hid behind Congress. If he said he would do it, he would actually try to do it rather than just agree in the knowledge that others would block and save him from delivering.

  The G8+5 was a crucial forum in which debate and discussion between the main emitters could happen reasonably informally. As I never tired of pointing out to people, it was a fat lot of good over a hundred nations coming together under the UN to agree a climate deal if the US wasn’t part of it, and India and China weren’t willing to accept any forward obligations to reduce emissions. This is why to this day, no matter how many countries have ratified Kyoto, very few – Britain being an exception – have met their targets.

  On Africa, I knew that without real figures it was going to be another ‘poor Africa, we care so much about you’ load of old rubbish in a communiqué that wasn’t going to fool anyone. Bob, Bono and the NGO alliance had mounted an effective campaign, essentially going to each main nation in turn and trying to frighten the pants off the leadership by demonstrating the breadth of public support for action on Africa. It was done cleverly, with them always giving enough praise to the leaders to encourage them. With Bob and Bono at the helm, there would be a sensible debate. If we delivered, they’d say we’d delivered. If not, they would condemn us. Fair enough. The Greens would be opportunist even if George came dressed in sackcloth and ashes, pleading forgiveness for his neocon past and said henceforth all Americans would give up the cars and drive wind-powered scooters.

  Over time, I’m afraid I came to dislike part of the NGO culture, especially the Green groups. NGOs do a great job, don’t misunderstand me; but the trouble with some of them is that while they are treated by the media as concerned citizens, which of course they are, they are also organisations, raising money, marketing themselves and competing with other NGOs in a similar field. Because their entire raison d’être is to get policy changed, they can hardly say yes, we’ve done it, without putting themselves out of business. And they’ve learned to play the modern media game perfectly. As it’s all about impact, they shout louder and louder to get heard. Balance is not in the vocabulary. It’s all ‘outrage’, ‘betrayal’, ‘crisis’. They also have their own tightly defined dogma and conventional wisdom which, if you challenge them, they defend fiercely – not usually on their merits, but by abusing your motives for challenging them. On Africa, I tried constantly to get them to see free trade, with aid for trade, as an essential African interest, but it was virtually impossible. Part of their coalition basically took the position that ‘globalisation is a rich-country conspiracy’, and challenging that was to fracture their support. So they resisted.

  It’s like the Greens over nuclear power. The case for nuclear power is now so overwhelming that frankly it is almost irresponsible – faced with an energy crunch and climate change – to oppose its development. I bet many of them know that privately, but it would be such heresy to say so and would divide the movement.

  The point I am making is that there’s as much politics in NGOs as in politics – sometimes more – and they are treated as objective observers when they simply aren’t. Partly they campaign for a cause, and partly for vested interests. However, this doesn’t mean that everything they say is wrong, and they are part of a healthy democracy (this time I mean it).

  At Gleneagles we were lucky to have some bright, warm weather, and would sit out in the sunshine – or at least the others did. I would get up in constant agitation, flitting from the detail of the G8 to the perpetual speculation about the Olympic decision eagerly awaited by crowds in Trafalgar Square and the Champs-Elysées. The first intimation of the result came through: Moscow was out, then New York.

  The tension was now very thick, and my staff gave up trying to talk to me about Africa and climate change since I was talking gibberish back to them. It w
as obvious from my many conversations with Latin American members of the IOC that if it came down to a contest between London and Madrid, they would back Madrid (Spanish speakers sticking together), whereas if it was London and Paris, they might well back us. It was plainly close. Like all electorates as small as this, there were naturally more votes pledged to the key contenders than there were voters. Every time Seb told me how many firm pledges he had, I would give a hollow laugh – as would anyone who had ever been through a Labour Party selection process.

  Around 10 a.m. the news came through that Madrid were out. It was us and Paris. It wouldn’t be long now. Jo and the team went off to watch the announcement on television, but I couldn’t bear to. I was outside when Jonathan Powell, who was irritatingly calm, joined me. I don’t think he cared greatly. When the talk in the office turned to football, as it usually did at least once a day, Jonathan would put his fingers in his ears as if to say please talk about this elsewhere, some of us have work to do. His phone rang, and he took the call with much indifference; then somewhat conversationally, as though he had just been told that the 4 p.m. appointment had moved to 4.15, he said, ‘Oh, we won, did we? Good, OK.’

  I, of course, shot up like a rocketing pheasant on one of the nearby moors. Oddly enough, at that moment I remembered the time when, aged twelve, I found out I had won an exhibition to Fettes, running round our garden in Durham in sheer delight and of course relief, the draining anxiety replaced by joy. I think I danced a little around Jonathan and then hugged him. Jonathan is not a natural hugger; but he was there, and he got hugged. Then the others came running through, and of course were very willing to be hugged.

  It was a great victory, a stellar victory indeed. To be honest, I knew also that although the G8 would naturally still be a big hurdle to leap, this was going to relieve the pressure on me. The phone calls of celebration were made, interviews given, the crowds in Trafalgar Square addressed. I could turn back to thinking about the G8 in an optimistic, confident frame of mind.

  One of the first to arrive for the summit was Jacques Chirac. I felt genuinely sorry for him – no, I really did. He had lost the referendum on the EU treaty, a terrible blow and I am sure a deeply felt, personal rebuff from his own people. Now this. And because I had been so high-profile in spearheading our bid and he had led his, it would be doubly humiliating. I would have felt gutted in his place, really low – beyond low, actually.

  But whatever else you may say about Jacques, he has courage and he is a pro. He turned up and was immensely gracious, congratulating me personally as well as the country, wishing me all the best and doing so with dignity and sincerity. I don’t know whether in the privacy of his room he chewed the carpet and beat his fists on the floor, but I suspect not.

  He had been a minister in the 1960s, and had been prime minister when I was a barman in Paris thirty years earlier. He has seen it all – in fact, he’s probably seen it too much, but one advantage is he’s not fazed. In defeat, he was rather magnificent. He also always had one great attribute, I thought: he looked like a president, spoke like one and carried himself like one. His policies – in my view – were another thing, but as a personality he was the part. When he fought Lionel Jospin for the presidency in 2002, Jospin being the socialist prime minister in the nonsensical cohabitational arrangement that the French system can give rise to, the polls were close. But I was always sure Jacques would win, and when people would ask me why, I could only say: because he looks like a French president, whereas Lionel looks like a French professor; and the French want their presidents to be, well, presidential. Like Mitterrand.

  The summit was to begin with a sumptuous dinner hosted by the Queen. Beforehand, George and I had a drink together with Cherie and Laura. I could see he was going to help and, of course, Cherie and Laura always got on really well. Our mutual friend Bill Gammell dropped by. Bill was becoming richer by the minute, having bought some oil concession off Bangladesh that no one else wanted and which turned out to be far better in deposits than anyone anticipated. ‘We made the wrong career choice, George,’ I said after Bill left. He agreed, but neither of us meant it. Politics is voluntary.

  As if Jacques didn’t have enough problems, a few days earlier he had reportedly joked about British food in some unguarded remarks to Vladimir Putin and Gerhard Schroeder, effectively saying that you can’t trust people whose cooking is so bad. For good measure he had also put the Finns in the same bracket. Personally I didn’t give a damn and thought it was quite funny, but of course everyone had to pretend to be thoroughly outraged and get very pompous. The fact that Jacques denied the remarks mattered not a bit, and various celebrity chefs, assorted cooks and general French-haters were wheeled out to condemn this monstrous attack; and the Finns, I think, really did take umbrage. The Finnish prime minister later told me solemnly that this had been a very big issue in Finland (I thought, Blimey, get a life).

  As we sat down to dinner with the Queen, the Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi hit on a great line of banter. Koizumi is one of the most interesting people I have ever met in politics, and certainly unlike any other Japanese politician I had met till then: a great leader, very lively, with an unusual personality. As he tucked into the first course, he said loudly in his halting English across the table to Jacques: ‘Hey, Jacques, excellent British food, do you think?’ followed by peals of laughter. Jacques looked at him a trifle acidly, forced to join in the joke, while protesting to the Queen that he had never actually said what it was alleged he had said. ‘Said what?’ she asked, being the only one not to have heard the story, thus necessitating the whole thing being explained again, much to everyone’s amusement – especially Koizumi’s, who realised he was on to a rich vein and exploited it mercilessly, punctuating each course, and at times virtually each mouthful, with raucous comments about the brilliance of the cooking, until I thought Jacques was going to take out his aide-de-camp’s gun and shoot him.

  These G8 dinners are always weird affairs. The leaders are usually a little jet-lagged, they have to keep an eye on the agenda and at Gleneagles especially so. The surroundings are invariably grand, but the publicity is always about how grand, and inevitably the question is raised about the cost of staging the summits. Of course the big cost is security, yet somehow this is the leaders’ fault for having the temerity to meet and talk about world affairs, rather than that of the motley variegated protesters who, unrestrained, could run amok. It’s kind of a mixture of a very fancy busman’s holiday, a workshop conference and a big political deal. And you are never sure how it will work out.

  The opening dinners tend to be fairly convivial – give leaders a drink or two and they are almost human – but as the crunch comes in the following days, they can get more guarded. This dinner was good. The Queen handled them all well, though some guests didn’t always quite know how to handle her. Some got matey with her. Now let me tell you something: you don’t get matey with the Queen. Occasionally she can be matey with you, but don’t try to reciprocate or you get The Look. I watched with some amusement those who understood the difference between a queen and a president and those who didn’t. Both are heads of state, but the Queen is the Queen. That’s royalty, not some jumped-up elected pleb. And don’t you forget it.

  After dinner I went back to the suite to work on the agenda. There was still a lot to do – people were apart on numbers on Africa and there was still stiff resistance on climate change. I slept not long but well, was up early preparing, still elated, but now really starting to focus.

  The first meeting was a bilateral with George. Pretty quickly we threw out everyone else and had breakfast together. I needed to get the feel for whether he would cross the line and agree to be part of a dialogue with the express objective of reaching a new post-Kyoto deal. He wouldn’t commit to a target now, that was understood, but would he be part of a process where eventually that would be on the agenda? He was more or less there on Africa.

  In handling the whole G8 agenda, I was sup
remely blessed by having a fresh and really capable team around me, including Sir Michael Jay, who had been ambassador in Paris and was now head of the Diplomatic Service. To my surprise and delight, he agreed to take on the role of G8 sherpa (i.e. the government point person for the preparation of the summit). This was way below his pay grade, as it were, but it demonstrated our commitment and the importance we attached to the summit. He had the right blend of experience, weight and conviction.

  He was supported by Justin Forsyth, who had joined from Oxfam. In other words, he was from the bête noire NGO movement. He turned out to be fantastic; he knew them all, was one of them, could spot their tactics, identified accurately their foibles and fault lines and was a really sharp non-political politician. He did the politics of the NGOs, Michael did those of the governments. And Sir Nigel Sheinwald, my foreign policy adviser at Number 10, kept his beady eye on it all and followed through notably with the Americans in the way only he could.

  George and I did a short press conference together. He had to explain why he had knocked over a policeman while he was on a bike ride in the grounds the evening before. It could only happen to George. Typically, he spoke to the policeman in hospital and was very self-deprecating about it, but naturally the whole thing had been treated in the media as if George had come to Gleneagles with the express intention of finding a Scottish bobby to knock over and probably that afternoon would be lining up a few more and mowing them down.