During the same period, his rival at the Treasury was put on the defensive by stinging reports criticising the maladministration of tax credits.58
In the early summer, Gordon Brown came round to Number 10 for a conversation which managed to remain civil. ‘What is the plan?’ the Chancellor asked the Prime Minister. Blair handed him a document setting out Number 10’s schedule for how they should time and sell their third-term legislative agenda.
Brown didn’t bother looking at it and demanded: ‘Yes, but what is the plan?’
Blair smiled impishly and succumbed to the temptation to wind up the other man. ‘Oh, you mean: when am I planning to go?’
‘No,’ protested Brown, shaking his head as if Blair’s departure was the last thing on his mind. ‘No, no, no.’59
20. Rules of the Game
Waiting to greet the Prime Minister at Singapore airport was Sebastian Coe, the gold medallist who was leading the British bid for the Olympics.
‘I just need a quiet word,’ said Coe and they went into a little room at the terminal.
‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news,’ announced Coe. Blair said he’d like the good news first. ‘We could win this,’ replied Coe. Blair smiled: ‘You can be honest with me.’ ‘No,’ responded Coe. ‘I really think we can actually win this.’ Blair then asked: ‘What’s the bad news?’ Now Coe smiled: ‘It’s down to you.’1
Blair started out a sceptic about launching a British bid to host the 2012 Games. Everyone was burnt by New Labour’s previous entanglements with expensive glamour projects: the fiascos of the Millennium Dome and Wembley Stadium. Those planning a London bid were frustrated that ‘we couldn’t get a decision out of them.’2
Two women were instrumental in converting the Prime Minister. One was his wife, who had a lifelong love of athletics. The other was the Culture Secretary, Tessa Jowell. ‘Just tell me how you answer this question,’ Jowell challenged the Prime Minister when they debated whether to back a bid. ‘We’re the fourth-biggest economy in the world, we’re a nation which loves sport and London is one of the world’s great cities. And we don’t dare bid for the Olympics?’ He looked at her: ‘I see what you mean.’3
Jowell’s enthusiasm was in defiance of the Permanent Secretary and other senior officials at her department, who were against the Games on the grounds of the risk and the cost. There were also many doubters in the Cabinet when the bid came before ministers in May 2003. David Blunkett was ‘very sceptical’ and John Reid was ‘dead against it’, but they didn’t say so aloud because they were allies of Blair and Jowell. ‘Those were the days when the Blairites could organise eight votes in the Cabinet.’4
Gordon Brown feared a repeat of those earlier expensive debacles, but he didn’t attempt to veto the Games. He was afraid that Number 10 would spin against him and cast the Chancellor as the killjoy who stopped Britain from hosting the Games.5 The Treasury signed off on the bid without subjecting the costings to forensic examination. Everyone assumed that this was a race that Britain was entering for show without any expectation of winning. Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, thought at the beginning that ‘it was a very long shot.’6 Blair did not really focus on the Olympic bid until the summer of 2004, when Cherie persuaded him to go to the Athens Games. It was after that, Coe believed, that they finally had the Prime Minister fully engaged. When the evaluation team from the International Olympic Committee made its visit to London, Blair spent quite a lot of time with them, the better to convince the IOC that the bid had the full-blooded support of the Government. He also locked in backing from the Tories and Lib Dems.
Coe, a Tory peer as well as a celebrated Olympian, was chosen as chairman of the London bid. Livingstone was also giving energetic support. The Tory lord and Labour Mayor were enthusiasts for different reasons. For Coe, winning the bid would be a glorious addition to his sporting achievements. For Livingstone, who had no interest in sport at all, the Olympics was a means of ‘getting billions for London’ out of Government for transport and regeneration in east London.7 The zeal of both men helped to fuel Blair’s enthusiasm. By spring 2005, the Prime Minister had entirely conquered his earlier hesitation. ‘He got religion about the Olympics,’ says Blair’s communications chief, David Hill. ‘By the end, he really wanted it.’8
The competition would be settled at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee in Singapore in the first week of July 2005. There were all sorts of reasons why Blair should not fly out. He was hosting the G8 at Gleneagles in the same week. If he went and Britain was beaten, as seemed the most likely outcome, he would look like a loser. Paris was the favourite. That raised the threat of being worsted by his old rival, Jacques Chirac.
There were similar debates throughout his premiership and it was Blair’s habitual response to throw caution to the winds. ‘He is one of the most instinctive politicians I have ever known,’ a senior civil servant remarked. ‘He just hurls himself at things.’9 Blair resolved the arguments between his aides by declaring that he would fly to Singapore, a decision that was even more emphatic once it was known that Chirac was planning to go to the Far East.
After being greeted by Coe, Blair and his party were driven to the Raffles Hotel, where the Prime Minister immediately switched into campaign mode. Coe’s ‘incredibly professional’10 team lined up IOC delegates outside Blair’s suite to come in at ten- to fifteen-minute intervals. ‘He just did it, hour after hour.’11 In the whirl of lobbying, there was the occasional mix-up. A Czech skater and a Norwegian skier turned up in the wrong order. Blair tried to impress the Czech with his admiration for Norway. Realising the mistake, one of the team in the room dropped a loud hint: ‘What’s the weather like at this time of the year in Czechoslovakia?’12
In the forty-eight hours Blair spent in Singapore, he held more than thirty face-to-face meetings with IOC delegates selected by Coe’s team for schmoozing by the Prime Minister because they were regarded as especially influential or potential swing voters. In the admiring estimation of Tessa Jowell, who was out in Singapore with Blair, ‘he’s pure rock star in circumstances like these.’13 This was Blair doing what he did best: charming, persuading, never bullying, subtly working on the delegates that Coe identified as crucial. Ken Livingstone thought: ‘Blair’s lobbying was absolutely essential. He was on top form. What I found impressive was that he was willing to be part of the team. How many world leaders would say: “What do you want me to do?” and then go and do it?’14 Cherie – ‘absolutely brilliant’ in Singapore in the estimation of Blair’s staff15 – arrived on the Monday and was deployed as another ambassador for the bid. One reason Blair ‘threw himself into it in such a frenzy’ was that he felt ‘guilty’ that he had to leave before the vote in order to get back for the G8.16
Officials in the rival French team became increasingly nervous that Jacques Chirac was only deigning to arrive two days after Blair. The French became more worried when they spotted that delegates were still streaming out of Blair’s suite as they were taking themselves to bed. When he did turn up, Chirac ‘blundered in conveying an air of utter self-importance’.17 He grandly decided that lobbying delegates was beneath him. According to a French official, he ‘did not want to be seen grubbing for votes, and wanted to appear more presidential than Blair’.18 That was a massive miscalculation. So was the impression of French hauteur created by Chirac’s dismissive attitude towards other European nations. The week before, he declared that British cuisine was ‘the worst after Finland’s’. That didn’t win France any friends among the Finns.19
The presentation on behalf of Paris was dominated by middle-aged men in suits. Much better designed to appeal to this multi-national jury was a London bid which projected Britain’s capital as a young, vibrant, multicultural and multi-ethnic city. Alain Danet, a French member of the IOC, later conceded that the British ‘message was so much more seductive than the image France portrayed’.20
In a speech recorded by Blair which was played to IOC members just
before the vote, he hailed London as ‘a global platform for the Olympic message to young people. Not just for the seventeen days of the competition, but for the years leading up to the Games and beyond.’21
By the time the delegates watched this pre-recorded speech, he was already fast asleep on-board his 777, flying back to Britain for the G8. London had moved from outsiders to serious contenders. ‘You may just have made the difference,’ Coe told Blair shortly before he left. But the Prime Minister and his party returned to Britain still thinking they hadn’t won it.22
Early on the morning of Wednesday, 6 July, the 777 landed in Scotland. The venue of the G8 was the Gleneagles Hotel, an elite golf resort set in 850 acres of gorgeous Highland scenery. The stunning views were not the main reason it was chosen for the summit. It was also regarded as a location that could be well guarded from both terrorists and protestors.
With the result of the IOC vote anticipated at lunchtime, a vast crowd gathered in Trafalgar Square in front of a huge screen relaying pictures from the ceremony in the Far East. Many other Britons were watching and listening on TVs and radios. Most of the Prime Minister’s party at Gleneagles were clustered around David Hill, who had a portable radio with him. He was shouting out the results of the preliminary rounds: ‘New York’s down! Moscow’s down! Madrid’s down!’ 23 That put London into the final with Paris.
Blair was displaying his idiosyncratic aversion to listening to the radio or watching television when something important was at stake. He and Jonathan Powell remained apart from the others. They stood in the main conference room with the doors open looking out on to the gardens.
At ten to one in Britain, ten to eight in Singapore, the President of the IOC, Jacques Rogge, appeared on the podium to announce the result.
‘The Games of the thirtieth Olympiad in 2012 are awarded to the city of …’ Rogge paused to squeeze maximum dramatic effect from the announcement. ‘… London!’ The crowd in Trafalgar Square went wild, as did Coe’s team in the Far East. Powell’s mobile rang with a call from SWITCH, the legendary phone operators at Number 10.
‘I think this will be the news we didn’t want to hear,’ said the Chief of Staff. ‘We’ve won!’ yelled the excited switchboard operator.24 Blair punched the air and gripped Powell’s arm. They did not embrace. ‘We didn’t do hugs,’ says Powell.25
Blair danced out into the garden and started to jig around on the lawn, leaving Powell thinking: ‘For Christ’s sake, what if the cameras see him?’26
It was a very close victory over Paris, by a margin of just four votes, which made Blair’s personal intervention look even more crucial. Jowell believed ‘we wouldn’t have won if he hadn’t come out to Singapore.’27 Coe, Livingstone and many neutral observers agreed. 28 So did the French. The Mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe, paid a bitter compliment to his rivals by complaining that his team was outmanoeuvred. ‘We should have gone to war, like the British did.’29
Once the initial triumphalism wore off, this victory would look more tarnished. The original costings of the British bid were hopelessly unrealistic. Jowell had to deny that the figures were dreamed up on the back of an envelope when no-one expected Britain to win. The bid ignored the findings of a confidential 250-page expert report, drawn up by her department and the Number 10 strategy unit, that the Games would not produce significant economic gains nor inspire more people to play sport.30 There were endless rows between Jowell and the Treasury about funding. This author was among those sceptics who long argued that the five-ring circus was a fabulously expensive folly whose legacy threatened to be like that of previous Games: unused facilities and huge debts.31
But the doubters were drowned out by the joy of the many enthusiasts on the day that the bid was won. For many Britons, it was a glorious 6th of July. There was ‘a terrific sense of elation’ recalls one senior civil servant at Gleneagles.32 For Tony Blair, it was an important tonic. ‘Those two days showed him at his best. He had put an enormous amount of personal energy into it and I think it made the difference,’ says Sally Morgan. ‘It was a crowning moment.’33 After his battering during the election campaign and his depression with the result, this victory boosted both his self-confidence and his public standing. He punted with his personal prestige in Singapore and the gamble was handsomely rewarded.
The next morning he woke up early and in good spirits. The press was fantastic, much the best Blair had received in years. The Sun celebrated ‘Our heroes’. At the top of its list, the currant bun put Tony Blair, ‘who made a huge impact’.34 Even his enemies at the Daily Mail gave him ‘full credit’.35 The Daily Telegraph commented: ‘It would be churlish not to acknowledge that Mr Blair has the qualities of a great statesman.’36
The Prime Minister’s mood was further lifted by the weather at Gleneagles. Thursday, 7 July was a bright, sunny day in Scotland. After breakfast, he went for a stroll around the hotel gardens accompanied by George Bush, who offered his congratulations on the success of the London bid. The summit would formally open in a couple of hours and there were still big obstacles to agreement. The British had set ambitious goals for the G8 to make progress on both climate change and financial relief for Africa. Blair set the bar high ‘despite a very clear recognition that they were going to be very unpopular issues with the Americans,’ says Sir Michael Jay, the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office.37
As Blair and Bush walked and talked in the secure Perthshire countryside, London’s tubes and buses were heaving with rush hour travellers, some of them nursing hangovers from the Olympic celebrations. At Luton railway station, four young men intoxicated with fanaticism joined the commuters bound for the capital.
At a quarter to nine in the morning, Blair and Bush came in from the gardens. By now, the quartet of suicide bombers was in the capital. The Prime Minister headed for a reception room at the front of the hotel for a pre-summit bilateral with the President of China.
Five minutes later, there were simultaneous explosions on three underground trains on the Circle and Piccadilly lines. London had joined New York, Bali, Istanbul and Madrid as the target for indiscriminate slaughter.
Jonathan Powell, David Hill and Tom Kelly, upstairs in a first-floor hotel room, were alerted by the rolling news on Sky. Almost immediately, Number 10 was on the line to confirm that there had been explosions. The cause of them was unknown. ‘There was real confusion. It was maybe gas, maybe terrorist.’38
As things became a little clearer, Kelly dashed downstairs and broke into the Prime Minister’s meeting to hand him a note saying it looked like terrorism. The Chinese President readily agreed when Blair told him he had to cut the meeting short. The Prime Minister came out looking grim. ‘It was always in the back of his mind, in the back of everyone’s mind, that something like this was going to happen.’39
After a brief debate with Powell and his press advisers, Blair decided they had too little information to make an immediate broadcast to the nation. That might simply cause a panic.40 George Bush emerged from his suite to find out what was going on. He then retreated back into his rooms for a video conference call with security officials in America, where he asked whether there were any indications of an imminent attack on commuters in the United States.41
A little less than an hour later, another bomb exploded, this time on the number 30 bus as it was making its way around Tavistock Square. This was a deadlier attack than had ever been managed by the IRA even at the height of the Provos’ bombing campaign of the 1970s. Londoners had not lost their lives to bombs in such numbers since the Second World War.
Blair proceeded with the official opening of the summit, greeting the other leaders as they came into the conference room, twenty minutes of the stilted formalities of an international talkfest contrasting with the bloody mayhem on and below the streets of London.
The leaders had just started to discuss the global economy when Blair received confirmation that it was definitely a major terrorist attack in the style of al-Qaeda.42 In real time
and without benefit of much advice, the eight leaders had to decide what to do in an emergency. The meeting descended into mild chaos as the leaders piled in with contradictory advice for Blair. The ineffable Silvio Berlusconi declared that the Prime Minister should immediately fly south and ‘all of us should go with you’ in a display of solidarity. That would have been a security nightmare: bringing every leader of the G8 to a capital in which the police were already stretched to maximum capacity coping with terrorist atrocities and unsure whether there were more to come. George Bush made a sensible intervention to that effect, saying: ‘You go, Tony. We’ll stay here.’ Jacques Chirac, for once in tune with the instincts of the American President, agreed that it would be both dangerous and silly for them all to decamp to London. One senior official present thought that Blair, Bush and Chirac stood out as the three leaders who knew ‘instinctively’ how to respond.43
The Cabinet had just started meeting in London under the chairmanship of John Prescott when it got news of the explosions. The meeting was hastily abandoned. Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, and other relevant ministers hurried down to the basement and along the tunnel into COBRA. The windowless room was soon fully occupied by all the key players except Blair himself. Along with Clarke and Prescott there was Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, and the Transport Secretary, Alistair Darling. Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, came over from Scotland Yard and they were also joined by Eliza Manningham-Buller and Sir John Scarlett, the heads of MI5 and MI6.
Details about the exact scale of the atrocities and the casualty numbers were still very foggy, not least because three of the explosions were underground. ‘There was massive uncertainty about what had actually happened,’ Clarke later reflected.44 Their first fear was that it might not just be London, but many other British cities too, which was under attack. With relief, they received a report from the London fire brigade that there seemed to be no evidence that it was a chemical or biological attack. But they would not be able to begin a rescue until atmospheric samples were analysed to be absolutely sure. Off-duty nurses and doctors were already coming in to hospitals to help with the casualties. There was a brief squabble between the ministers about whether they should call an immediate news conference. Prescott won the argument by saying they didn’t have enough answers to the inevitable questions. ‘We don’t even know whether it is over yet,’ he pointed out.45
The End of the Party Page 48