Cabal that took Britain to War
Daily Mail, 16th July 2004

When Tony Blair swept into Downing Street on May 2, 1997, past the carefully choreographed lines of well-wishers, he took charge of Britain's role in the world with less foreign policy knowledge or experience than almost any incoming Prime Minister. In his previous 14 years in Parliament he had said little about international affairs. Others spoke out about Bosnia and Rwanda. Others signed motions condemning Saddam Hussein's gassing of Kurds at Halabja. Blair travelled light into office, only to turn himself almost instantly into the global soldier, fighting the good fight.

He has already presided over five wars, the last, Iraq, with devastating consequences. Lord Butler, for all his soft words, has identified the core of the problem - Blair's style of government.

Surrounded in opposition by a tiny coterie of trusties, he could not shake the habit in office. At the heart of it was 'The Den' - the name given to the the informal gatherings of the adviser clan on the sofa of Blair's office - comprising Jonathan Powell, Alastair Campbell, Anji Hunter initially and later Sally Morgan.

It was here that the decisions were taken, away from the public glare. With nobody on hand to take minutes, there would be few records of who said what. The people with expertise, the people from the foreign office, were kept away. That applied even to Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary. He spent much of his four years in office struggling to find out what Blair and his unelected officials were up to. Powell would occasionally summon him for the odd chat, but it was very much on a 'need to know' basis. As for the cabinet, not once in Blair's entire first term, was it granted a discussion on a major issue of foreign policy: three wars, no debate. Government has never been so centralised, so unaccountable and, as Butler noted disdainfully, so informal.

Powell had been recruited from the British Embassy in Washington, a relatively senior but not that senior, diplomat. His rank should not have allowed him to dictate policy.

The others had no international background at all. Campbell was driven by a tabloid view of foreign affairs as an extension of the domestic battle to secure the positive headline.

Within days of becoming premier, Blair was in Sweden on one of his first outings and he told his European counterparts to 'modernise or die'. The words 'upstart' and 'cheek' emanated from the lips of foreign statesmen who had been around for much longer than he.

Still, they indulged him.

In Amsterdam, at his first Euro-summit, they allowed him to win a bicycle race in front of the cameras, so that British newspapers could write "Blair leads from the front" headlines.

When Britain took over the presidency of the EU, foreign diplomats were summoned to London's Waterloo Station to see a Eurostar train arrive triumphantly from around the corner.

All this quickly established foreign policy by media, by stunt, by presidential image. In those first years, Blair fought three of his wars. First came his air strikes on Baghdad in December 1998. Britain was running the EU at the time but at no point was it consulted. The attacks caused little political controversy at home, however, largely because the paucity of the intelligence was not known at the time.

It was the war in Kosovo, in 1999, that convinced Blair of his powers to police the world. Mistakes were made, but this was a good example of an ethical intervention.

The dispatch of soldiers to Sierra Leone the following year to drive from power a particularly hideous regime was similarly brave and important. And yet this was foreign policy and warfare by instinct rather than calm, careful deliberation.

The men and women of the Foreign Office who understand the intricacies of regions such as the Balkans, Africa and the Middle East, produced papers but were rarely consulted. This was always an unacceptable approach, a cavalier approach, but the damage came later.

Blair's foreign policy began to fall apart when George W Bush became US president. The Prime Minister persuaded himself that Britain derived its power in the world solely through its supposed special relationship with America, that he would not allow the Republican administration to become close to the Conservatives, that he would do whatever it took to keep onside with Bush.

Add to that the all-conquering confidence that Kosovo instilled in him and the fear and uncertainty caused by the events of 9/11 and it is easy to see how Blair came to support Bush's war plans from early on. Blair's intimates knew no better, and encouraged the Prime Minister in his certainties.

All the while, British diplomats and intelligence officers were told that if they wanted promotion, they should do what "Tony wants", to "deliver" for him. The "make it happen", can do' clichés of management consultancy were translated into foreign affairs.

Whenever Blair travelled, he surrounded himself with his coterie. As an example, when he met Pakistan's President Musharraf in Islamabad at a time of great tension, who was at the table with him - a combination of Campbell, Powell, Hunter and Morgan?

They may have their strengths, but insight into the politics of the Indian subcontinent is not one. The real experts were, I am told, kept at the back of the room.

The only voice of reason in the 'den' now was Sir David Manning, Blair's foreign policy chief from 2001 to 2003, a man who commands considerable respect. He too, however, was sucked into the process.

Meanwhile, Jack Straw ensured that, as the new Foreign Secretary, his job was not to challenge. Such was the balance of power that when Straw wanted to see Manning, he would have to go to Number 10, not the other way round.

As I revealed in my book, Blair's Wars, Straw did ask, very tentatively in a last-minute memo, whether Britain might not, after all, commit troops into Iraq. But that was two days before war began. Blair overruled him. Straw fell into line, and that was that. Downing Street ran foreign policy on a wing and a prayer from the moment, in April 2002, that Blair had given his assent to go to war - with Powell, Campbell et al in tow - while at Bush's Texas ranch.

That decision - the most important a government can take - was at that time never discussed with the Foreign Office, let alone the cabinet. It was confined to the coterie. I remember asking a senior mandarin at the FCO in the autumn of that year what the policy was towards Iraq, and he shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the building across the courtyard - 10 Downing Street. The same story was told of Afghanistan.

Butler has set out in graphic terms how flimsy the intelligence was on Iraq and how it had to be embellished in order to fit into Campbell-esque dossiers. We know the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith's legal advice endorsing war, which has yet to be published, was cobbled together at the last minute and contradicted by most international lawyers. We know the reason for war changed on a weekly basis - was it Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) or regime change or enforcing UN resolutions or saving the Iraqis from starvation by bombing them in order to remove the very sanctions that we had imposed on them?

The diplomacy in the run-up to the Iraqi war was just as woeful. From January 2003 until the invasion in March, Britain managed to alienate its European partners, most governments in the Middle East and most member states of the UN, an organisation whose integrity Blair proclaimed to be defending. Far from increasing Britain's prestige, many diplomats say that as the result of the war, the UK's influence and credibility around the world is lower than it has been for years. And Blair's crisis of credibility extends beyond British politics and into the complicated arena of international negotiations. Put simply: wherever he goes, he will struggle to be believed.

At the turn of the millennium he bestrode the stage triumphantly. Iraq has finally exposed the hubris and in doing so severely damaged the national interest.


This article first appeared in the Daily Mail and may not be reproduced without permission.