The tempestuous and hostile relationships at the heart of new Labour between the past and present prime ministers and within Tony Blair’s inner circle were laid bare yesterday.
Despite Alastair Campbell’s decision to remove from his diaries material that he believed would be damaging to Gordon Brown, his 800-page book throws an uncomfortable light on to the partnership that has dominated politics for 13 years.
It reveals for the first time that Mr Blair gave warning to his Chancellor then that he would oppose him becoming Prime Minister unless he stopped agitating against him, that the two of them argued over the make-up of the first Blair Government as early as polling day in 1997, that Mr Brown had tried to stop Mr Blair’s team talking about tax because that was his territory, and how John Prescott had stepped in to dissuade Mr Brown from pushing for Mr Blair to retire.
It also suggests that the decision to rule out membership of the euro in the first Blair Parliament, through an interview in The Times, was taken without Mr Blair’s knowledge, prompting scenes of disarray before that decision was confirmed to Parliament.
The frenzied confrontations between the big players in the new Labour project were not confined to Mr Blair and Mr Brown. The book discloses an astonishing dispute between Mr Campbell and Peter Mandelson just one year into Mr Blair’s leadership, in which Mr Mandelson threw punches at Mr Campbell and then lunged at Mr Blair when he moved in to separate them. The battle was over the contents of a key speech and Mr Mandelson accused Mr Campbell of trying to force him out of the operation.
Advertisement
It is revealed that Mr Campbell first raised his worries about Carole Caplin, Cherie Blair’s “lifestyle guru”, as far back as 1994, and that Mr Blair and Mr Campbell had their biggest row when Mr Campbell told him, in a reference to Ms Caplin’s partner, Peter Foster, that he was “linked to a conman”. Mr Campbell threatened to resign there and then.
The book also discloses that:
— Mr Campbell considered suicide for a “fleeting moment” after the death of the scientist David Kelly;
— Civil servants planned a caretaker government led by John Prescott if Mr Blair was defeated in the Commons vote on Iraq.
Mr Campbell had said before yesterday’s publication that Mr Brown had nothing to fear from his book. But the references to his feud with Mr Blair left politicians wondering about the explosive nature of the material that has been left out.
He describes a “difficult” dinner on December 19, 2001, during which Mr Blair and Mr Brown discussed the succession. “TB had given him a pretty frank assessment of why he [TB] was generally thought to be an OK PM – because he has breadth, could deal with a stack of different things at once, and get on with a range of people. He told [Brown] he still believed he was easily the best person to follow him but he was not going to support him in circumstances where he felt he was being forced out.”
Mr Prescott was later to issue a warning that no attempt must be made to force Mr Blair out. “JP had basically told him that if TB didn’t want him to get the job and JP was agin it, it would not happen.”
Advertisement
As early as April 2002 Mr Campbell recorded Mr Blair’s fears about split loyalties in the Cabinet. “TB’s big concern re the GB situation was the feeling that ministers were unsure what their instincts were meant to be, because though we were the present they realised GB was the future.”
Mr Campbell reveals that he considered suicide momentarily during Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of David Kelly. He was on holiday in France with his family and was leaving his holiday home to pick up a copy of his diaries, which were to be part of the evidence put before Lord Hutton.
“As I left the house, and said goodbye to Fiona [Millar, his partner], I did actually wonder momentarily whether it would be the last time I saw her, whether what I discovered on reading my own diary would be so awful that I would want to top myself. It was only a passing thought, but it was there, and it came back several times as I drove down to Marseilles. I knew I had done nothing wrong, but in this climate, things had gone beyond reason, it was like a drama or a novel, and nobody had control of events.”
Cherie Blair is known to be unhappy about the book’s publication. Mr Campbell claims in his entry of April 29, 1997, just before the election, that the Blairs had argued about the role that Anji Hunter, Mr Blair’s “gatekeeper” then, would play in government. “CB didn’t want her there at all and I am not sure if TB had confronted it.”