He returns to the list. ‘How many anti-Americans?’
Campbell punches out a text-message on his phone in a manner suggesting that the answer is bloody obvious.
For the first time Jonathan Powell shows an interest. This boyish former Washing ton diplomat does not always seem as dominant as Campbell or as personally close to the Prime Minister as the blunt Political Director, Sally Morgan, currently propped against the front of the desk. But Powell is the Chief of Staff. Ten Downing Street is his domain. He does not want to talk about television programmes. He has United Nations problems, Chileans and Mexicans and a Security Council member in Africa whose leader is ill, can barely even be spoken to by telephone and may need a visit.
Tony Blair makes most diplomatic calls in this ‘den’. It is a small office full of family photographs, like the consulting room of a successful doctor.
Civil servants do not recall a Prime Minister who has sat at a desk and ‘worked the phones’ so much. He has been obsessive in trying to persuade world leaders that they should back the United Nations’ so-called ‘Second Resolution’ which authorises an automatic invasion of Iraq if Saddam Hussein does not disarm.
Whenever Tony Blair is firmly in control of a call, or is gently keeping a friendship warm, he has his feet up on the desk. If he has his head hunched forward, he is making a case that his hearer does not want to hear. In the past few days he has been more hunched than not.
A Prime Minister is overheard and watched over most of the time. Powell’s characteristic position is to be listening in from his desk outside, earpiece jammed to the side of his head, pushing against his curly black hair. He has to concentrate intently on every ‘Hi, George’ against the murmur of news from a flat-screen TV on the wall.
This is not yet time for an office sandpit and model tanks with flags. The prime and most pressing battlefield is still at the United Nations. The second battle is for public support, particularly from those groups who most hate what seems certain soon to happen. The third is for the support of Labour Members of Parliament.
In the mirror on the wall of the den the Prime Minister can see all the faces in the room. If there is a common feeling among his team apart from fatigue it is impatience. Nothing is going as planned. Tony Blair looks down at the fruit bowl, takes a green apple and chews it very slowly, as though obeying some half-remembered hints for health.
Campbell’s pager buzzes. He glances down and announces that an anti-war Conservative has just resigned over his party’s support for the government.
‘In fact he hasn’t just resigned. He decided to quit last Wednesday, but thought he’d keep back the news till a quieter day.’ Everyone laughs. The tension is relaxed. It may not be the sharpest piece of political irony, but it is a joke that the team can share.
Mocking Conservatives is where most people here began; and opportunities at the moment are scarce. If the French or the Russians frustrate the efforts at the UN, and if Clare Short’s cries inflame more Labour opposition, a victory in Parliament may be possible only with Opposition support. Tony Blair, for seven years the toast of his party, could soon be ‘toast’ – or even ‘history’, as Americans use that word.
The first words from the make-up man confirm every immediate fear. ‘I’ve just come from doing the women,’ he says, putting down his transparent plastic eyeliner case and flapping the sweat off his short-sleeved black shirt. ‘They’re very angry. They’ve been stuck in the room for ages. The camera lights are on and they’re very hot and …’ – he pauses to deliver what is, in his view, by far the worst sign of Prime Ministerial danger – ‘hardly any of them wear make-up.’
After Tony Blair’s forehead has been powdered for the cameras and the most analysed facial lines in Britain have been hidden beneath kindly ‘concealer’, he clarifies a few last points. ‘Shall I say anything about the UN timetable?’ The den is suddenly filled with overlapping cries of ‘wiggle room’, ‘full and immediate compliance’ and ‘dramatic change of mind by Saddam’.
‘Am I frustrated by Clare Short’s action, or distracted?’ he asks. This is just to fill time till the three-minute stage call. The coming ordeal may be in the Foreign Office Map Room, a hundred yards across the street. But this is theatre now. Campbell and Co. are the producers, wishing they had a better audience, cursing modern television for seeing ranters and emoters as the only ‘real people’ but helpless to do much about it. The bums are already on the seats. The star has to perform.
The ‘three minutes’ extends longer than would be allowed in the West End, almost up to rock-star levels of lateness. The Prime Minister is still at his desk, not so much ‘working the phones’ as being worked by them. There are anxious calls now not just from the White House but from Labour politicians, all of a seniority requiring a Prime Ministerial chat, all wanting to know ‘what Clare (and he) are bloody well up to’.
Clare Short today represents the fear and rage of many in the Prime Minister’s party who oppose war. She has also found new friends among marching voters who would not normally have the slightest sympathy with the Labour Party’s ‘conscience’ at all.
When Tony Blair has dealt with his last panicking colleague, his ‘security column’ eventually assembles in the hall behind the Number Ten Downing Street door. The decoration at this end is dull, almost domestic, by comparison with Cabinet Room and den. The black-and-white tiled floor is piled with refills for the fruit bowl, boxes of oranges, apples and bananas. This was originally the back entrance to the office, and it is still where the ‘Salisbury’s To You’ van comes.
The team goes ahead of its leader, ignoring shouts from reporters about his future. The Prime Minister is told to wait twenty seconds to let everyone else get out of his camera shot. The small patch of sky above is grey and cold. But by this stage he is reminded of the rising heat and sweat of his interrogators. He catches up quickly. ‘The boss didn’t want to wait,’ says the detective apologetically as together they all stride up to the room.
The Prime Minister steps gingerly over clumps of black cable. The ‘warm-up act’, the studio manager, who has used up all her usual jokes for entertaining guests, retreats in relief. The star of the afternoon apologises and is immediately assailed from all sides by women who do not believe him, do not trust him, and will never vote for him again. He hears the sound dreaded by any performer anywhere, violent volleys of slow handclapping. Portraits of Wellington and Nelson look down for an hour on a sight that neither of those great British heroes would have seen as very pretty.
‘No, it wasn’t very pretty,’ the inquest back in Downing Street agrees. The slow handclappers were a disgrace. Maybe ITV wouldn’t broadcast that bit.
OK, so probably they would. But there were only four slow-handers. And they were about as representative as a Socialist Workers’ circus. The presenter couldn’t control them. One woman was suspiciously expert on Yemen. Not even Nelson in his hero-of-the-Nile days could have handled the humidity. Had Blair thought when he first joined the Labour Party that he would end up sending B52s over Baghdad? What sort of question is that? And as for ‘I married a human shield,’ God help us.
Tony Blair seems the least bothered of anyone by the fiasco. At least no one will ever be able to say that he slunk in his bunker. He had to begin almost every answer with the phrase ‘I know I am not going to change your mind, but …’ He had a fresh powdering at each commercial break and would have benefited from more.
Why does he do it? That is what very few yet understand. This is not a place he would have been in five years ago. He would have hated the mockery and ridicule.
Ten years ago few of even his closest friends could imagine him in the place he is now. Tony Blair was not always the most certain of men. He had decent modern ideas for an almost dead party in Britain. He was persuasive and popular. He liked