The End of the Party

by Andrew Rawnsley

  bad vibrations observed one of his staff. ‘He took this view that you can’t give way anywhere.’33

  By late July, international condemnation of Israel had reached an even more intense pitch. Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, condemned the ‘excessive use of force’ to inflict ‘collective punishment’ as a violation of the Geneva Convention.34 Blair’s posture put him in a more belligerently pro-Israeli position than the Tories. William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, condemned the Olmert Government’s attacks as ‘disproportionate’ and damaging to ‘the Israeli cause in the long term’.35 Labour MPs, already upset, were further aghast to sit in the Commons and hear the Conservatives condemn the death and suffering in Lebanon in stronger terms than their own Prime Minister. Chris Mullin, a former Foreign Office minister and erstwhile admirer of Blair, spoke for the great majority of his colleagues when he called it ‘shameful that we can find nothing stronger than the word “regret” to describe the slaughter and misery and mayhem that Israel has unleashed on a fragile country like Lebanon’.36 Keith Hill, whose job as PPS to the Prime Minister was to read the mood of Labour MPs, saw that ‘his refusal to come out with a condemnation of Israel hyped up a lot of people, angered MPs across the board.’37

  Yet Blair remained defiant in his growing isolation: ‘Some people will want me to go further in condemning Israel, say if I don’t condemn Israel it means I don’t really care about Lebanon. All of that means absolutely nothing but words.’38 For a man who had made his career from words, this was remarkably cavalier about their effect. Everyone close to him begged Blair to at least recalibrate his language and nuance his position. ‘The party could not understand why he would not use a set of words,’ says Matthew Taylor. ‘What possible harm was there in using a set of words?’39

  Sally Morgan no longer had an official position at Number 10, but she remained close. She repeatedly rang Blair to warn that he was haemorrhaging support among Labour MPs. She told him directly: ‘This will do for you.’40 Phil Collins, a very loyal member of his staff, observed later: ‘He didn’t think it through. It was a massive error. Those political antennae that usually worked so well – he just turned them off.’41

  On Thursday, 27 July, the Cabinet convened for their last meeting before the summer break. David Miliband, who had never before at Cabinet criticised Blair, warned that the refusal to call for a ceasefire was causing swelling uproar in Labour’s ranks.42 That weekend, Jack Straw, having failed in private attempts to shift Blair, went public with his opposition. In a statement to Muslim leaders in his Blackburn constituency, Straw said that ‘ten times as many’ Lebanese civilians had been killed or injured as Israelis and warned that ‘disproportionate action only escalates an already dangerous situation’.43 Number 10 was bombarded with letters and phone calls from angry Labour MPs, many of them mainstream ministers and backbenchers who had no previous history of animosity towards Blair. Tessa Jowell, one of his most loyal supporters in the Cabinet, privately implored him to adjust his stance.44 She told Ken Livingstone: ‘There’s no-one – not even me – who agrees with Tony about this.’45

  His lonely position aligned him with a view in Washington that even suggested that the mounting casualties in Lebanon were something to celebrate. Condi Rice went so far as to claim that the bloodshed represented the ‘birth pangs of a new Middle East’. The neo-cons were now trying to find a virtue in what they called the ‘creative chaos’ unleashed by the invasion of Iraq.46 It was certainly chaos; it was harder to see what was creative about the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians.

  Blair became more isolated at home and abroad than he had been on Iraq. He stuck to his deeply unpopular position not oblivious to the fury, but in spite of it. The Lebanon crisis delineated the arc of his premiership. A leader who loved to be loved in his first term had morphed into a leader who didn’t seem to care whether he was hated. He almost relished being stubbornly defiant of opinion internationally and in his own party. It had got to the point, says Matthew Taylor, where ‘you could convince him to do something’ not by saying it would be popular, but ‘by saying it’s a really unpopular thing to do. He’d be more likely to do it.’47

  At the end of July, he was back in America. During a news conference with George Bush, neither man made any call for restraint by the Israelis.48 From Washington, Blair flew west for a long-scheduled trip to California. The idea was to highlight climate change and hi tech. He was also keen to spend time with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the action movie actor turned state governor, whom he found an intriguing figure. He was joined on the six-hour flight to the west coast by Sir David Manning, who had become the British ambassador in Washington. Manning joined the trip in the hope that he could get Blair to grasp that he was committing a terrible error over Lebanon. They sat together in the first-class cabin along with two of the Prime Minister’s aides, Justin Forsyth and Liz Lloyd. In his soft voice, Manning spoke bluntly to the Prime Minister. ‘This is crazy – it’s undermining everything you want to achieve in the Middle East.’ The Israelis had invaded the Lebanon three times before and each time it was ‘a complete disaster’. Manning argued: ‘For us to condone it is a great mistake.’ Blair responded that Hezbollah started it: ‘You can’t expect the Israelis to sit there and keep taking it.’ If he joined the condemnation: ‘I’ll lose my leverage.’ ‘What leverage?’ asked an exasperated Manning. ‘We can’t send any troops.’ All they were achieving was the alienation of the Arab world.49 Here was his most senior ambassador and a foreign policy adviser he hugely respected telling the Prime Minister that he was wrong. As Manning battered away, Blair became ‘chilly’ and ‘resistant’ to hearing any more.50

  On the last weekend in July, it was reported that an Israeli strike in Quana had killed more than fifty people, many of them children. As the death toll rose over 1,000, even the Americans got cold feet. They started to work with the French, not the British, to frame a UN resolution, which was passed on Friday, 11 August.51 It called for a cessation of hostilities by both Hezbollah and Israel. On the same day, a letter of protest against Blair’s stance was delivered, in his absence, to Number 10. The letter was signed by a hundred Labour MPs. Downing Street shrugged it off. Sticks and stones could hurt his bones, letters could surely never hurt him.

  The UN resolution came far too late for those already dead and maimed in Lebanon. It was also far too late for Tony Blair to repair the grave damage he had done to his already fragile position. Later, reflecting with friends, he came to see how badly he had misjudged the Lebanon crisis and was ‘rueful that he brought about the end of himself by what he did that summer’.52 He looked wilfully and pointlessly isolated when he refused to call for a ceasefire. He seemed insensitive when he would not condemn the killing of innocents in Lebanon. He had once again bound himself to a hugely unpopular position taken by George Bush for no obvious purpose or gain other than of cleaving to the White House. The Lebanon crisis reinflamed the unhealed wounds of Iraq. Frank Dobson, a member of Blair’s Cabinet in the first term, had become one of the most vocal agitators for his departure. Dobson is in no doubt what finally shattered Blair’s hold on power: ‘It was Lebanon that did it. There were only three countries in the world against a ceasefire. Israel was one. The United States was another. And we were the third. People were nauseated.’53 Peter Hain, a member of the Cabinet, remarks: ‘Loyal colleagues who’d never voted against the Government – many of them would have described themselves as Blairites – were expressing an unease that I’d never seen before.’54 Huw Evans, a senior member of the Number 10 staff, agrees that ‘Lebanon was the last straw’ for the party.55 Sally Morgan concurs that it was then ‘that he lost mainstream Labour MPs, the core people’.56

  On 8 August, Tony Blair left for his delayed holiday in the West Indies having been briefed that a major event was about to happen in Britain. The following evening, there were raids and arrests at addresses in London, Birmingham and High Wycombe. Soon afterwards, it was announced that the police and
intelligence services had foiled an audacious terrorist plot to use chemical bombs, secreted in items such as shampoo and medicine bottles, to blow up at least seven airliners flying to North America from British airports. John Reid thrust himself in front of the cameras to take charge of the response. He had replaced Charles Clarke as Home Secretary in the spring reshuffle. Reid’s pugnacity, authoritarianism, proficiency and loyalty all commended themselves to Blair. So did the idea that he could be a potential challenger to Gordon Brown for Number 10. Reid was more complicated than he looked and liked to suggest that he was more sensitive too. He had a doctorate. He was married to a film-maker. He liked to weave into his speeches quotations from Bertolt Brecht and Eduard Bernstein. He took it as an affront, or at least pretended to, when he was routinely described as an ‘attack dog’. His political teeth were certainly sharp. John Prescott was nominally in charge of the Government while Blair was on his summer sojourn in Barbados. Prescott was elbowed aside by Reid, who made himself the face of the Government. The airline terror plot was an opportunity to maximise his image as the tough guy of the Cabinet and demonstrate that he could grip a crisis. The plot was big: twenty-four suspects were arrested. According to the authorities, if the conspiracy had succeeded it would have resulted in mass murder on a greater scale than 9/11.57

  Airports and airlines rushed to stiffen security and implement much tighter restrictions on hand luggage. There were chaotic scenes at Heathrow and other airports which didn’t have the staff or equipment to cope with the new measures. Tens of thousands of travellers suffered long delays, often stretching into many days. Some families lost their holidays altogether. While the airports overflowed with delayed and distressed families, the press published pictures of the Prime Minister tanning himself in the West Indies on a loaned ‘luxury yacht’ called Good Vibrations. The ‘luxury yacht’ was, in truth, a relatively modest catamaran. Blair was in daily contact with Reid. He was content that the Home Secretary was on top of things and pleased to give this ally the opportunity to build his profile as a potential leader.58 In his early premiership, Blair would probably have come back to Britain, if only for presentational reasons. In his late period, he could no longer be bothered with what he now dismissed as gesture politics. His return would have had little practical use. But perceptions always matter in politics, as the past master of image once understood. ‘Crisis? Yacht Crisis?’ mocked the Daily Mail.59 While thousands of his fellow citizens were contemplating ruined or truncated holidays, Blair was pictured in floral swimming shorts improving his tan. This was the last thing any adviser would recommend to a Prime Minister already accused of being out of touch.

  *

  Before his departure for the Caribbean, his closest allies had counselled him that he would have to come back from holiday with a strategy to manage the rising clamour from Labour MPs for clarity about how long he intended to go on as Prime Minister. Blair remained hugely reluctant to say any more about this in public on the grounds that talking about it would just lead to ‘another Hiroshima of speculation’.60 His silence only made his critics more voluble. The issue grew hotter after the defeats in the May elections and the arrest of Lord Levy, and was now even more sensitive because of his isolation over the Lebanon crisis. There was a major debate with his aides at Chequers in April and another in July. Jonathan Powell was the leader of the diehards. The Chief of Staff believed that Blair should still be planning to remain at Number 10 at least until 2008.61 Phil Collins took his side. So did David Hill, mainly on the grounds that the media would try to drag him forward from whatever deadline he set.62 That chimed with Blair’s own feelings. ‘Whatever date I give, my enemies will come back and demand a date six months earlier,’ he told his aides.63 Collins observes: ‘He was always reluctant to give the date. That was the only thing he had left.’64

  Matthew Taylor was the most persistent advocate within Number 10 for a precise timetable. He argued that Blair would squash the endless speculation, silence his enemies and snuff out Brownite plots if he was publicly clear that he would leave in the summer of 2007. ‘Matthew was always for clarity’65 and ‘very keen on naming a date’.66 Ruth Turner tended to agree because she was ‘getting it in the neck from Labour MPs and the Cabinet all the time – he’s got to tell us, he’s got to give a date.’67 There was a strong dimension of Blair, the side of him that was anxious to avoid the fate of Margaret Thatcher, that wanted to leave Number 10 with dignity. That was in contention with the other side of Blair, who meant it when he said he wanted to serve a full third term and hated the idea of handing the crown to Brown under duress. He would talk ‘in almost mystical terms’ about how ‘he had made a contract with the British people to serve a full term.’68 Whatever view they took, there was near universal agreement among his senior staff that Blair had to be more precise about his intentions. Even the ultras like Ben Wegg-Prosser could now sense that ‘it was going to be difficult to get beyond 2007.’69 The current vagueness offered no fixed point for his allies to rally around while providing ammunition for the Brownites and other Labour MPs who were saying that the uncertainty damaged the Government.

  As the pressure mounted, some of Blair’s closest confidants were increasingly worried that it would all end badly for their friend in Number 10. One of them mournfully remarked to me that summer: ‘Prime Ministers never get their departures right, do they?’70

  What no-one else knew was that John Prescott had presented Blair with a stark ultimatum. The two of them met alone in July shortly before Blair went abroad. Prescott was a very weakened figure, but he still retained one weapon, the threat of revelation, that he could use on Blair. The deputy had long been telling Blair he had to announce his departure date. Prescott also believed that it was only fair to give Brown two years as Prime Minister to establish himself before a general election. When they met that July, Prescott told Blair that he must make a public declaration that he would leave by the summer of 2007. He said Blair had to make that announcement in his speech on the Tuesday of that autumn’s party conference. If he didn’t deliver, Prescott threatened, he would announce his own resignation in his speech on the Thursday and reveal that he was quitting because Blair had broken the promises to Brown witnessed by Prescott. ‘I will make it clear that you are to blame,’ Prescott menaced the Prime Minister.

  Blair protested that this was unnecessary. He had already given assurances to both Brown and Prescott that he was secretly planning to leave in 2007 anyway. But this time his deputy was not willing to be smoothed into submission. Prescott responded that private promises like that weren’t good enough any more. ‘Gordon doesn’t believe you. And I don’t fucking believe you.’71

  24. A Very Brownite Coup

  ‘What’s the line then, Phil?’ asked Tony Blair as lunch was served by the RAF stewards who wait at table at Chequers. Philip Webster, the Political Editor of The Times, and his colleague Peter Riddell had just conducted the first post-holiday interview with the Prime Minister. He’d invited the journalists to eat with him afterwards. Webster replied: ‘It’s Blair defies the Labour Party.’ ‘Right,’ said Blair and flicked his eyes to his aides.1

  Jonathan Powell looked pleased. David Hill frowned with concern. They’d prepared for the interview by trying to find verbal formulations that did not concede any ground to Blair’s enemies while not sounding so stubborn that it would inflame further opposition. But the issue of when Blair would go was now too hot to be nuanced. ‘What we were trying for was a delicate balancing act,’ Hill subsequently lamented. ‘It turned into a “Here I stand.” ’2

  Blair returned from the West Indies in an uncompromising state of mind, which was nearly always his mood when he’d had prolonged exposure to Cherie and her adamantine opposition to giving an inch to Gordon Brown. That expressed itself in the interview which he gave holding a mug with the legend: ‘You’re the man who’s in charge.’ Blair told his party to ‘stop obsessing’ about his departure date and drop the ‘absurd’ speculation. ‘I’
ve said I am not going to go on and on and on, and said I’ll leave ample time for my successor,’ he added without offering any definition of what ‘ample time’ might mean. ‘People have to accept that as a reasonable proposition and let me get on with the job.’3

  After the men from The Times left, Alastair Campbell, Philip Gould and Sally Morgan arrived at Chequers. These three long-standing confidants came with a single message: he would be in serious trouble unless he named a date for his departure at the party conference. They decided they had to go together to make him listen. ‘Are you sure?’ asked Blair as they sat in the sun-dappled garden. He was still highly reluctant to accept that he had less than a year left in power. ‘Are you sure it will strengthen me rather than weaken me?’ They pressed their advice only to later learn what he had said in the interview. ‘We all went spare.’4

  That evening, the Prime Minister threw a ‘back-to-work party’ at Chequers for Downing Street staff to mark the beginning of the new political season. He and his senior aides were by now increasingly anxious that the interview ‘had gone wrong’.5 Hill confirmed that The Times would splash with the headline: ‘Blair defies his party over departure date’.6 The Press Secretary began a frantic ring-round of political editors to try to spin down the idea that an unyielding Blair was challenging his critics to come and get him. Ruth Turner and Ben Wegg-Prosser also made ‘endless calls’ to journalists and Labour MPs.7 It was too late. The headline in the Independent was ‘Blair risks party’s wrath by refusing to reveal his exit strategy’.8 The Daily Telegraph went further: ‘Labour at war as Blair refuses to name date’.9 Scanning the front pages, David Hill sighed to colleagues: ‘I’m afraid that didn’t work.’10 Keith Hill, Blair’s PPS, regarded the interview as ‘a tactical balls-up’ and ‘a provocation’ to Labour MPs.11 Some of Brown’s supporters instantly ramped up the pressure. ‘The debilitating uncertainty over the leadership can’t go on,’ declared Andrew Smith, a former Cabinet minister and hardcore Brownite.12 Don Touhig, another Brownite MP, accused Blair of ‘bleeding the Labour Party at its heart’ by clinging on to power.13 Members of the Cabinet could sense that ‘feeling in the party was building up quite explosively. There was uncertainty over the departure timetable and you could feel it around you,’ says Peter Hain. The ‘unwisely judged’ interview ‘had given the impression that he would go on forever. The boil had to be lanced.’14