Speaking for Myself

by Cherie Blair

  Well, it wasn’t his decision. The main reason for the blind trust was that I was the sole beneficiary, and the more I thought about it, the more doable it seemed.

  I wasn’t much cheerier when the time came for Euan to go to Bristol. Within two months I had lost my last baby, and now I was losing my first. It may sound stupid and sentimental, but that was how it felt. It was thirty years exactly since I had pushed my poor old mum out the door of Passfield Hall, her face streaming with tears, and I remembered how embarrassed I had felt and how I’d just wanted her to go so that I could get on with my new life. Now here I was at another hall of residence. I didn’t cry when I said good-bye to Euan, although he clearly knew that tears weren’t far away, saying, “Mum, I think it’s time you left now.”

  Tony, who hadn’t been able to come to Bristol, wasn’t exactly sympathetic to any of this. Iraq was looming ever larger, and the tension both in the flat and in Number 10 was palpable. Leo, delightful though he was, didn’t make life any easier. The phone would ring in the night, and Leo would wake up and cry. I’d get up and go to his room to comfort him, and as often as not, I’d end up lying beside him and falling asleep, squashed uncomfortably into the wooden bed designed as a racing car, waking a few hours later with numb limbs.

  Shortly after I got back from France, Caroline’s friend Sheila got in touch, and we had an exchange of e-mails about what I was looking for in terms of a flat. I was thinking of two bedrooms, between £225,000 and £275,000. At the beginning of October she e-mailed me to say she’d found a development called the Panoramic, which I might be interested in, and she forwarded me the brochure. Although the list price for a two-bedroom, £295,000, was more than my maximum budget, she was thinking of buying one herself, and the builder had already quoted her a discounted price. As there were only five left of an original fifty-five, she was sure she could get this for me. And she did. On October 6 she said she’d negotiated a price of £269,000, a reduction of £26,000. She added that as a garage was included, the price could probably be structured to pay separately for that and thus get the flat itself below the £250,000 threshold, at which point certain taxes kicked in. Of course any such manipulation would clearly be tax evasion, and I couldn’t do that. Later it was claimed that I got a special discount, but that wasn’t the case.

  I then discovered that the Web price was only £275,000 and e-mailed Sheila to say that the reduction was, therefore, only £6,000, and presumably we could do better than that. I left it in her hands, as I was about to accompany Tony on a trip to Moscow. He would be meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin for talks about Iraq following the publication two weeks previously of a dossier based on various intelligence agencies’ assessments of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.

  In the meantime the protection people had to look at the security implications of the flat. From their point of view it was fine. They did say, however, that if possible, it should be bought in another name, preferably that of a company. I told them it would be bought in the name of the trust. I had already spoken in principle to the trustees, and they were happy to release £100,000. I would fund the rest with a mortgage. I hadn’t intended to buy so quickly, but the money was sitting there. As I couldn’t speak to Tony about it, I asked Fiona what she thought.

  “It’s a risk going to see it yourself,” she said. “Someone is bound to spot you.”

  “I could always ask Carole to go for me.”

  She shrugged and said, “Up to you.” Things between us were becoming really tense.

  It worked out perfectly. Carole told me that she was going to Bath the following weekend with a friend, and Bristol was just down the road. I contacted the developers and made an appointment for her to see the flat with Euan. After all, he was the one who was going to be living there. As it happened, I couldn’t have gone anyway, as I was in Bermuda for a week on a commercial case, leaving on the nineteenth. When I called Carole to confirm the time, she said that she might take her friend along — her new man, she confessed, an Australian called Peter Foster. I said fine. I had guessed there was someone around — I’d recognized the signs — though she had been unusually coy.

  She called me in Bermuda. She’d had a look at a couple of the flats and thought they were okay. Euan hadn’t gone with her in the end. “But,” she said, “I took my friend along. He’s a businessman and knows about these things, so I thought that could be useful. He thinks it’s a good deal. In fact, he’s thinking of getting one himself. Here, he can tell you.”

  The new man came on the phone, confirmed what Carole had said, and added that he thought I could get the price down. I knew that already, of course, but I didn’t say so. He also told me, just as Sheila had, how with a bit of manipulation with the garage, I could avoid some taxes. Again I made it quite clear that I wasn’t interested. I thought he sounded a bit pushy, but I thanked him for his help, and that was that. Or so I thought.

  Chapter 28

  Mea Culpa

  A week later, on October 28, the day after I got back from Bermuda, I had an e-mail from Peter Foster, the new man in Carole’s life, attaching copies of floor plans of the Panoramic. He appeared to have been talking to the developers on my behalf, which was ridiculous — Sheila Murison was handling all that. I supposed he had been talking to them anyway about his own possible purchase, and talking about mine as well strengthened his hand. In another e-mail, he put his mortgage broker in touch with me, and I passed the details on to my own accountant, whom I’d been with since 1982. Again there seemed little harm in it.

  The business of the blind trust was very difficult. I couldn’t discuss it with Tony, yet I couldn’t spend a quarter of a million pounds on a stranger’s say-so, however much Carole might sing his praises, which she did nonstop. So I made an appointment the following Saturday to view the property myself. I also contacted a couple of real estate agents and arranged to see another place the same morning.

  So I went. Two of the available flats were next door to each other, and it occurred to me that if I got both, I might trigger a discount. Then Euan could be in one, and I could let out the other. Mortgage rates were low, and I needed somehow to build up capital so we could eventually buy a house. I discussed the possibility there and then with the person showing me round and offered an overall figure of £430,000, which in the end was what I paid.

  The next day an e-mail arrived from Peter Foster. Carole was obviously relaying everything that was going on, but given that she had just told me she was pregnant, this wasn’t the time to be prickly. I knew how much she longed for a baby, and my heart went out to her. This was probably her last chance. Her boyfriend was obviously pitching for a job, but the truth was that I didn’t have any need of him. In one of his e-mails, he said he knew some rental agencies, so to keep Carole happy and him out of my hair, I said he could forward me their details. I was puzzled by his wanting to get involved and started feeling distinctly uneasy.

  The administrators of the trust agreed to allow £100,000 to be invested, and, as planned, I raised the rest by mortgage in the normal way through my bank. We exchanged contracts on November 22 and completed the deal a week after.

  On Sunday, November 24, the Downing Street special protection officers received a report from colleagues in Cheshire. They’d had a tip-off: a convicted con man called Peter Foster was claiming he was involved with the Blairs through Carole Caplin. He planned to involve her in a scam concerning a diet tea, which had already landed him in prison. There was also some talk of involvement in a property deal, and he’d boasted that he’d met the Blairs’ son Euan. Then Alastair rang. He’d just had a call from a former newspaper colleague, Ian Monk, now working in PR. He was advising Carole and Peter Foster, he said. Foster had just lost a deportation case, and as Carole was now expecting his child, he was looking for “advice.” Foster also claimed he was being blackmailed, by the man who had tipped off the police about Foster’s questionable dealings, and having contacted the News
of the World, they were planning to set up a “sting” — that is, to record a meeting between me and Carole and Peter Foster.

  I felt sick, Tony was beside himself, and Alastair was merely grim. Sooner or later, probably sooner, he said, it would come out. For him this was the ultimate “I told you so.” Carole would now have to go. We saw Carole at Chequers that Sunday and confronted her with the information. She confessed that she knew all about Foster’s past but claimed that he was completely innocent: he’d been stitched up by the security services.

  “Please, Carole,” Tony said, clearly exasperated. “This is ridiculous. The man is a fantasist. You’ve got to understand; we cannot be connected with a criminal.”

  She then presented Tony with an extraordinary letter from a lawyer in Fiji, “putting into context” Foster’s shady past. This was hardly reassuring to anybody who had ever spent time around villains and criminals, as both Tony and I had done as barristers. It was classic stuff. To say he was dodgy would be putting it mildly, and we told her so.

  “You’re talking about the father of my unborn child,” she said, and burst into tears. It was horrible. It was as if it had just occurred to her that if he went away, she’d be left literally holding the baby. Frankly, neither of us could spare the emotional energy. Tony had Iraq to contend with. Politically things were very hot, with antiwar groups becoming increasingly vociferous. The last thing he needed was this, and I knew it. I was supposed to be his support, not his undoing. As for me, in addition to my official engagements, for two weeks from November 25 to December 5, I was sitting as a recorder in Isleworth Crown Court. I also had late-afternoon appointments with former Prime Ministers’ wives for the book.

  We told Carole that although it was her life, that man was never coming near any of us. It was all we could do. She agreed that she would keep away from Downing Street. Indeed, for the time being, I kept away from her entirely. This was a shock to both our systems: we had worked out together at the gym most days when I was in London for as long as I could remember.

  On Saturday, November 28, the headline in the Daily Mail ran “Cherie’s Style Guru Has Fallen for a Fraudster.” That afternoon the Mail on Sunday sent through a list of twenty-two questions to the Downing Street press office, all Foster related. It was horrendous, and Tony was fuming.

  “I told you not to buy any bloody flats.”

  “He had nothing to do with the bloody flats. I have never met the guy. He has never been here; he has never been to Downing Street. What more can I say? I can’t believe you’d believe a convicted con man rather than your own wife! Telling lies is what the man does for a living!”

  “So you categorically deny you have had any contact?”

  “Apart from a few e-mails, no. I’ll show them to you if you like.” Technology and Tony are like oil and water, and waving that offer aside, he dashed off the form, filling in yeses and nos — mostly nos — then faxed it back. Unfortunately I think he told Alastair in very firm terms that I’d had no contact with Foster whatsoever — a version that Alastair confidently relayed to the press. I didn’t talk to Alastair at all.

  For the next few days a stream of denials issued from Downing Street. Then, on Thursday, December 5, the Daily Mail published the exchange of e-mails between Peter Foster and me. Alastair’s look of superior satisfaction changed completely. I had never seen him so angry. As he saw it, he had lied to save my face, and he was determined that if anyone went down for this, it wasn’t going to be Alastair Campbell.

  That morning Hilary Coffman came to my bedroom while André was doing my hair. She knew time was short: I had to be in court at Isleworth at 9:30 a.m. Within seconds she was giving me the third degree, clearly on instructions. I have known her for a long time as a faithful servant of the Labour Party, and she was clearly uncomfortable about doing it, not least because she was a friend of mine professing not to accept what I was saying.

  “But Hilary, don’t you see, there isn’t a scandal. It’s you lot who are making it into a scandal. Look, I’ve used my own money to buy two flats. I’ve paid the going rate for them. Nobody paid £295,000. Okay, so I got a discount on the published price, but that’s standard — it’s a marketing ploy to make you feel you’ve got a bargain. No, I didn’t know him. No, I have never met him — I once said hello to him in passing at the gym. No, he has never met Euan. No, he has never been to Chequers. No, I did not ask him to help me avoid paying stamp duty. No, he was not my financial adviser. No, I did not find him a barrister. No, I did not intervene with immigration or any government official or legal representative on his behalf. No, no, no, no, NO, NO.”

  There came a point where André could stand it no longer. “How can you do this to her? Just look at what you are doing to her! I’m going to tell someone. You cannot do this to her,” he said, and stormed off.

  In the mirror was a face I barely recognized. My chin was wobbling. My reflection was blurred as I blinked to try to control the tears. On my dressing table were photographs of all the children. If things had gone differently, in two months’ time there would have been another one . . .

  I was forced to issue a statement saying that Peter Foster was involved. “Damage limitation” is the term, I think.

  I bumped into one of the press officers in the corridor beneath the flat at the entrance to the press office. “I’m so sorry all this is going on, Cherie,” he said.

  Fiona’s take was slightly different. “Everyone in the press office hates you,” she told me. “They’ve told lies on your behalf, and none of them ever wants to work for you again. They want nothing more to do with you.”

  We passed a frosty weekend at Chequers. Tony was on the phone most of the time, in his study, the door closed. Iraq. Alan was making his usual Christmas puddings, and I went with the children to have a stir and make a wish, while Jackie was keeping everybody cheerful. I found it all very, very hard. It was about to get worse. On Sunday the News of the World got in on the act. We later discovered that they had offered Peter Foster £100,000 to tell his story. Now they were questioning the discounts on my clothes. That night Bill Clinton dropped in at Downing Street and gave me a big hug.

  On Monday the ninth Peter Foster’s solicitors issued a statement saying that I had contacted them about his deportation case but that I hadn’t intervened in any way, that it had been only to reassure Ms. Caplin. This, of course, did more harm than good. But it was true. I had phoned them, but all I was doing was checking that everything that should have been done had been done. I knew perfectly well that he hadn’t a chance of winning his appeal. His record — prison terms on three continents, including in Britain — spoke for itself, but I wasn’t going to say that to my friend. And she was still my friend. I had just heard that she had lost her baby.

  André arrived at 8.00 a.m. to do my hair. That night I had a reception for the Loomba Trust, whose aim it is to educate the children of widows in India. In the afternoon I had my annual children’s Christmas party. Every year children from one charity are invited for tea. Father Christmas comes and there’s an entertainer, and at the end we turn on the lights on the tree outside the front door. I’d try to enjoy myself, but I felt like a pariah.

  André was just getting started when Alastair came storming into the bedroom. Until now he had refused to talk to me, either sending in Hilary to do his dirty work or using Tony as a go-between. I think even Tony didn’t want him to talk to me, instead putting himself between us as a shield because he knew Alastair was so angry.

  “That’s it,” Alastair said, his arms folded, as he looked at me via the mirror. “It’s now political. The Tories are asking questions, and your husband is going to have to answer them. One more time, Cherie, did you at any point have anything whatever to do with the immigration case?”

  “I’ve told you, no. You’re determined to humiliate me, aren’t you? I know you’ve been briefing against me.”

  “I don’t need to. You do it all on your own.”

  “Don’
t you dare talk to Cherie like that!” André exploded.

  “You mind your own business,” Alastair retorted. “Remember, you’re just a fucking hairdresser.”

  “Apologize,” I said.

  “I don’t think so.” Alastair snorted. “For the last time, I want that woman out of your life.”

  “She has just lost a baby; her boyfriend is threatened with deportation. I’m not going to abandon her. I’ve said I won’t talk to her, isn’t that enough?”

  “Don’t forget, you brought all of this on yourself.”

  I felt terrible for Carole and very weepy. The news about the miscarriage had taken me straight back to that dreadful afternoon, only a few months before, when I’d been lying upstairs bleeding. Even with four children already, I had felt utterly bereft. How Carole was feeling, I could only imagine. Banned as I was from any contact, I couldn’t even comfort her. The whole situation was ridiculous. Tony could talk to her, but I couldn’t.

  That morning I spent an hour with Lady Wilson, the wife of former Prime Minister Harold Wilson, talking about her life in Number 10 in the 1960s and 1970s. Listening to her, I realized that little had changed in forty years. She had often been lonely and unhappy. She was the first of the Downing Street wives who came from a background that wasn’t “establishment.” Her son Giles had been a teenager when they’d moved into the Number 10 flat, and even after all these years, it pained her to remember the impossibility of him simply getting in and out without a great song and dance being made of it. She remembered how she would wake in the middle of the night to find a garden girl at the end of the bed taking dictation from her husband. To retain her sanity, she told me, she would take the bus to north London, where they used to live, and cry on the shoulders of friends. The lack of privacy, the loss of identity — I heard the same stories over and over again: different women, different backgrounds, different generations, but all bound together by a strong sense of public service, seeing their role as that of support and comfort to the Prime Minister.