The undercarriage of the 777 was already down, preparing to land in Tokyo, when Godric Smith emerged from the first-class cabin to brief the accompanying media. He told them of the Prime Minister’s ‘distress’ and briefly sketched the plan to hold a judicial inquiry. When the plane landed, the journalists were kept from Blair. Looking gaunt and unshaven, he was rushed straight to his hotel late that Friday night. ‘It was an absolute low spot for him.’93
The Prime Minister ‘barely slept’. His wife had ‘never seen him so badly affected by anything’.94 He called friends. Michael Levy found: ‘He was in a state of absolute depression. He was questioning himself.’95 While he sat awake in his hotel suite in Tokyo, in Number 10 the mood was ‘grim, really grim’.96 There was feverish activity to make it possible to announce the full details of the inquiry as soon as possible, in the hope of pre-empting what they knew would be one of the most threatening episodes of Blair’s premiership. ‘We all knew this looked very, very bad.’97
Within days, Geoff Hoon went to see the Kelly family, who could be highly dangerous to the Government if they started to point accusatory fingers. Hoon told a hugely relieved Blair that Janice Kelly did not blame him personally for her husband’s death.98 On his return to Britain, Blair invited the doctor’s widow and daughter Rachel for an unpublicised meeting with him and Cherie at Chequers. Blair expressed his personal apologies and that was sincerely meant. Death often weighed on his mind and the more so as his premiership went on. But he was also making a calculated effort to improve his odds of surviving this affair. The Kelly family had the capacity to inflict huge, potentially lethal, damage on him if they were to publicly accuse the Prime Minister of killing the doctor. He needed them kept quiet.
A grim and drawn Prime Minister delivered a formal statement on the Saturday morning in Tokyo in which he declared himself to be ‘profoundly sad’ about the death of the scientist, ‘a fine public servant’.
He signalled his hope that the announcement of the inquiry would close down media questions about the role he and other key figures at Number 10 had played in the events leading up to the scientist’s death.
‘We shall set aside speculation, claims and counter-claims and allow the due process to take its proper course. In the meantime, all of us, politicians, media alike, should show some restraint and respect. That is all I am going to say.’99
Though his entourage tried to keep him insulated from the journalists accompanying them on the trip, it was unavoidable that he would have to take questions when he appeared at a joint news conference with the Prime Minister of Japan. It was there that Blair was ambushed with one of the questions he most dreaded. ‘Have you got blood on your hands, Prime Minister?’ demanded Jonathan Oliver of the Mail on Sunday. ‘Are you going to resign?’100
In normal circumstances, Blair was smoothly accomplished at shrugging off the slings and arrows of reporters. On this occasion, with the nonplussed Japanese Prime Minister standing beside him, he struggled to locate a response. He stood there in staring silence for several seconds until Japanese officials stepped in to end the news conference. Looking utterly defeated, he just walked away. When Sally Morgan talked to him on the phone ‘he was in a pretty bad state.’101
On Sunday, the tour reached South Korea. The Blairs attended mass at Seoul’s Roman Catholic cathedral. As they went in to say their prayers, they were confronted by a couple of local anti-war protestors who waved a banner bearing a picture of the dead man and asking: ‘Who killed David Kelly?’102 There was no escaping his ghost.
By Tuesday, 22 July, they had flown on to another leg of this Far Eastern tour: China. A photo opportunity was arranged in a hot Beijing warehouse which was exhibiting an installation of terracotta figurines by Antony Gormley. The Prime Minister squatted alone amidst the six-inch soldiers. Then Cherie appeared and embraced him from behind. Out of the earshot of the photographers, she tried to ease her husband’s torment. She whispered: ‘You are a good man.’103 At Tsinghua University, the students asked him about Kelly’s death. They then hit him with a request for a song. Cherie stepped in to sing a Beatles number, ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’. Her haggard husband almost looked that old. He was an entirely different man to the bouncy Prime Minister who had bounded aboard his plane when it left Washington. Even to his loyal wife, ‘Tony seemed to age ten years and the stress was written on his face, however much he tried to keep up appearances.’104
That stress was multiplied by Campbell, who was ‘going to pieces’ back in London.105 Philip Gould went round to see Campbell at his north London home and found him ‘ashen, totally ashen. He felt enormous remorse.’106 In highly charged telephone conversations over that weekend, the Prime Minister tried to calm down Campbell and persuade him not to quit immediately. That would make them both look guilty. But he had also finally reached a conclusion about Campbell. After a suitable interval, he would have to go.107
By now the press back at home was in a frenzy about the extent of the Prime Minister’s personal culpability in the events that led to Dr Kelly’s death, though none of them knew then that Blair had presided over the decisive meeting which authorised the ‘naming strategy’. Long-standing foes in the right-wing press lacerated him.
More devastating for Number 10 was the magisterial savaging handed down by Hugo Young from his judge’s seat in the Guardian. The doyen of liberal columnists had previously admired Blair. In condemnation of the Kelly Affair, Young charged the Government with being ‘willing to abandon all sense of proportion’ and use ‘every available particle of state power’ in order ‘to score political points against its critics’. Blair, he said in another column shortly afterwards, should quit.108 Blair was sufficiently wounded by that to respond with a long and impassioned handwritten letter to Young trying to persuade him that he was not too tainted and spent to carry on as Prime Minister.109
The Far Eastern tour approached its next destination. As his 777 descended towards Hong Kong, the Prime Minister came through the curtains shielding him in first class and walked back to where the reporters on board were sitting. Paul Eastham, the deputy political editor of the Daily Mail, got in his face, demanding: ‘Why did you authorise the naming of David Kelly?’ Blair responded: ‘That is completely untrue.’ He was then asked: ‘Did you authorise anyone in Downing Street or in the Ministry of Defence to release David Kelly’s name?’ ‘Emphatically not,’ said Blair. ‘Nobody was authorised to name David Kelly. I believe we have acted properly throughout.’110 And yet it was true, emphatically so, that Blair presided over the 8 July meeting at Number 10 which authorised the naming process.111
An approaching typhoon provided a convenient excuse for Blair to return home early the following day. High winds and heavy rain lashed the plane as it rumbled down the runway. Alarms suddenly sounded in the cockpit and lights flashed: ABORT, ABORT, ABORT. ‘I’m going to try again,’ said the pilot. This time the 777 achieved takeoff, made a steep ascent over a churning China Sea, banked and headed for London.112 The Blairs remained cocooned in their first-class cabin all the way home.
On 11 August, Lord Hutton called his inquiry to order in a cramped court room at the back of the Royal Courts of Justice on the Strand. The twenty-four days of testifying and cross-examination over that long hot summer were a peculiarly British affair. Some American and French journalists marvelled that the Prime Minister had placed his own integrity on trial. Neither George Bush nor Jacques Chirac, they observed, would subject themselves to such a public ordeal.113 Others wondered at the shabbiness of the dirty carpet, nasty chairs and cheap bookcases.
The first of seventy-four witnesses who would give 10,000 pages of evidence was Martin Howard, the deputy chief of Defence Intelligence. Powerful figures who normally remain in the shadows, such as him, John Scarlett and Sir Kevin Tebbit, were briefly thrust into the spotlight before returning to the dark. Sir Richard Dearlove remained a man of mystery, giving his evidence incognito through a voice link from an undisclosed location.
> The Kelly family gave moving accounts of the last hours of his life and their distress at his death. Their QC, Jeremy Gompertz, described the scientist as a victim of a ‘cynical abuse of power’.
All other business at Number 10 was virtually frozen as Blair and his aides took extensive advice from lawyers. Alastair Campbell was compelled to produce fragments of his diary. He was made uncomfortable when questioned about what he had planned when he wrote that he was going to ‘fuck Gilligan’. Even as the documents published on the inquiry’s website revealed the number of changes he had successfully introduced into the language of the dossier, he made the claim: ‘I had no input, output or influence upon them [the Joint Intelligence Committee] at any stage in the process.’ He even claimed about his diary: ‘It is not intended for publication.’114 It was published, for an advance of £1 million, a month after Tony Blair left office.
Tom Kelly had to account for why he had speculated to a journalist, in what he thought was an off-the-record conversation, that the scientist was a ‘Walter Mitty’ fantasist.
The slew of internal Number 10 documents made available exposed the frantic way the dossier was thrown together. The manipulation of the text was revealed by the publication of the torrent of e-mail traffic that pinged between spin doctors and intelligence officials the previous September. For a while afterwards, some people inside Downing Street stopped communicating anything sensitive by e-mail and resorted to Post-it notes for fear of later exposure.115
A pitiless light was shone on Blair’s way of making decisions at unminuted and often haphazard meetings with small groups in his den. The inner wiring of his Government was laid bare. A blowtorch was taken to New Labour, burning off any remaining mystique about how it operated.
On top of that, ‘there was the psychological pressure of the media coverage over many months.’116
Much of the press coverage was shriekingly partisan. Papers and commentators who had opposed the war or had other reasons for disliking the Government amplified every revelation that was damaging to Number 10. For them it ‘laid bare the tangled web that politicians weave when first they practise to deceive’.117
The Daily Mail buried its usual hatred for the BBC because it loathed Blair more and used the inquiry to prosecute its editor’s case that this was a uniquely corrupt and mendacious government. Papers that supported the war and were still sympathetic to the Prime Minister savaged the BBC, none more energetically than the Sun.
The Government looked bad. But as the proceedings wound on, it should have also become apparent to the BBC’s senior executives that things were not going to conclude well for them. They had been warned. Before Hutton started sitting, there was an internal BBC exercise to test the corporation’s defences. Greg Dyke was interrogated before an audience of his senior colleagues. Dyke’s inquisitor at this private BBC session was the right-wing journalist Andrew Neil, one of the BBC’s more robust interrogators. Neil tore Dyke to shreds. ‘My heart sank,’ says one BBC executive who witnessed this. ‘I knew then we were in big trouble.’118
Dyke was badly roughed up in front of Hutton.
Andrew Gilligan’s broad contention that the dossier was ‘sexed up’ was correct, but Hutton was not interested in that and the reporter had to withdraw the specific allegation that the Government knew at the time of publication that the 45-minute claim was false. Gilligan had a torrid time in front of Hutton, who displayed signs of distaste for the media and naivety about the civil servants and politicians. One senior Whitehall figure noted that the judge was ‘politically innocent’.119 He was about to encounter a witness who was anything but.
‘Good morning, Prime Minister,’ said the judge.
‘Good morning, my lord,’ responded Tony Blair, giving Lord Hutton a little smile. It was the Prime Minister’s turn to appear in Court 73 on Thursday, 28 August. He arrived at the Royal Courts of Justice looking glossy with a healthy tan acquired at Sir Cliff Richard’s villa in Barbados. Blair had come out as someone who needed reading glasses. These he clutched in his hand when he sat down in the witness box. He gave a hint of nerves by twiddling with the glasses and taking them off and putting them on during the first five minutes of his examination. Then he swiftly and visibly relaxed. ‘Never forget that Tony is a lawyer,’ his aides would often remark.120 He had a great capacity to master a brief and a well-honed ability to argue any case, however dodgy. Earlier in the month, he had overtaken Clement Attlee’s record. This was now the longest ever period of continuous Labour rule. The ranks of gold-plated QCs in the court would have to be very good indeed to land a knock-out on a politician who had ducked and weaved his way through many searching interrogations on television and radio and in Parliament over the past six years and four months. Being a lawyer himself, he was also well-trained at dealing with his kind. He came over as reasonable and rational, presenting himself as a man only ever concerned to do his sincere best in a difficult situation.
For those who knew how to read him, Blair became twitchy only once during his testimony. This was when he was questioned about the outing of the scientist. That was dangerous territory for the Prime Minister – the ‘smoking gun’ of the affair for him – and he knew it. He started to wave his hands about, his sentences became tangled and his accent more estuarial. ‘Whenever he goes “y’know, y’know” he’s uncomfortable.’121
He led the court on a winding diversion about his ‘quandary’ about what to do about Kelly. He was never pinned down about his role sanctioning the outing. The QCs moved on. Blair relaxed. He left the witness box looking comfortable with his performance.
The day after Blair gave evidence, Number 10 announced that Alastair Campbell was resigning. ‘He is a strong character who can make enemies. But those who know him best like him best,’ said the Prime Minister’s rather ambiguous formal farewell to the man who had been his closest aide for six years in government and three years of Opposition before that.122
The truth was that Campbell had not wanted to resign now. He hoped to stay at Number 10 at least until Hutton reported, believing the judge might yet provide the vindication he yearned for. ‘You could tell by the way he went that he wasn’t someone wanting to leave the stage,’ thought other Number 10 staff.123 But Blair had determined that Campbell had outlived his usefulness. Public trust in the Government had collapsed and Campbell was the figure most associated with the spin that was so corrosive to its reputation. Relations between Campbell and his partner and the Prime Minister and his wife never properly recovered from the savage internal battles over Cheriegate.124 His reckless battle with the BBC had kept Iraq, the dossier, spin and Blair’s integrity in the headlines for month after searing month.
‘In the end Tony had to chop him off,’ says Barry Cox. ‘It had gone too far. He did get rid of Alastair.’125
The inquiry wound on until mid-October. There was some alarm in Number 10 when Sir Kevin Tebbit, the Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence, gave late evidence directly pointing to Blair’s deep involvement in the outing of David Kelly by revealing that the Prime Minister had chaired the ‘decisive’ meeting at which the ‘naming strategy’ was agreed. It was hard to reconcile that with Blair’s denial on the plane: ‘I did not authorise the leaking of the name of David Kelly.’ Yet Lord Hutton did not seem to read any significance into Tebbit’s testimony and it did not attract the airtime and headlines it would have got back during the long, hot August. Media interest in the affair was flagging and much of the press was now more focused on the latest travails of Iain Duncan Smith and the Tories. Tony Blair always was a lucky Prime Minister.
He was not on the list of the witnesses recalled for further examination. Blair voiced an increasing confidence to his aides that Hutton was going to be ‘all right for us’.126
A Law Lord and some of the most expensive QCs in Britain had not proved a match for him.
13. Dinner for Three
The Labour Party gathered in Bournemouth in September 2003 for a familiar ritua
l. The pattern of the opening days of the annual conference was so well-established by now that it was almost as traditional as the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. For more than a decade of their double act, Blair followed Brown as surely as Tuesday followed Monday. Two men, two speeches, two visions of how Labour should govern, two ideas of who should be governing. Some of it was about content, as much was about style, and a lot was about ambition. Gordon Brown always performed just before lunch on the Monday. He would thunder out a speech crafted to project his power, align himself with the traditional passions of the party and wink his dissent with New Labour by suggesting that he was the champion of True Labour. As Sunder Katwala, the General Secretary of the Fabian Society, puts it: ‘He was always the person who could rouse the Labour crowd with the Labour argument.’1 Every year it was the same, the only difference being how subtle or crude the Chancellor was about prosecuting the rivalry. ‘Gordon always positions himself five degrees to Tony’s left,’ complained people around the Prime Minister.2 This was the obvious place for Brown to put himself in order to create some differentiation between the two. As his allies liked to point out, there was not really any space to Blair’s right.3
On the Tuesday afternoon, the Prime Minister would respond with a reassertion of his pre-eminence in the Government, a display of his superior talent for talking to the country, and a restatement of his commitment to the New Labour approach. Brown would hurl down the gauntlet; Blair would dash it back. In some ways, this annual battle of the two speeches was a benefit. The competition pumped up both men to give a maximum performance.
The End of the Party Page 33