The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries by Campbell Alastair Page B

the idea we were declaring war on the Taliban. It was leading the news not just in the UK but in the States too, so much so that as we were going through the autocue rehearsal at 12, Jonathan came in to tell us that David Manning had read the wordson Afghanistan to the White House, who were worried about what we were saying about the nature of military action. They felt it was too forward, too clear re what we intended to hit, with the reference to camps and military installations. But that was the section we had briefed which would make it hard to pull back even if we wanted to. We toned it down a little and got it just about in the right place. TB asked Jonathan and I to go through to his room and go over the final version with the words on Afghanistan. He was getting a bit exasperated with it all, said this was like Kosovo all over again. ‘What on earth do they think we are going to hit? They just aren’t clear about what they want to do.’ I think Hilary [Coffman] was feeling a bit stressed out at the thought that a briefing I had written and she had read out to a few journalists was now leading the news here and in different parts of the world, so much so that we had a sudden blitz of TV channels in the US and elsewhere wanting to take the speech live.
    It was inevitable that foreign policy would get the main coverage but it was a strong domestic speech too. We also had extensive discussion about whether we should show the euro section to GB. It was a sign of how bad things were at the moment. The basic view was GB would take it, demand a change, then brief that he had done so to show that he could, so in the end we agreed simply to send the text through once the speech was pretty much done. As ever, his people were assuming a great plan had been unleashed to draw attention away from his speech. In reality, the briefing we did was pretty minimalist. TB had not spoken to him, so far as I knew, since we got to Brighton, which was ludicrous when I thought of the issues he was addressing.
    When it came to the delivery, he got the tempo right, a bit slower and more measured, not worrying too much about reaching the heights. [BBC political editor] Andrew Marr’s reaction was that it was as though he had levitated above the party, and indeed just before I left the hotel, I had said to him I got the sense that this year he needed us less, and he needed his colleagues less. The clap lines were good, the mood was good, nobody seemed to get overly alarmed at the public services section and all in all, it went down fine. The party loved the stuff on Palestine, Africa, the environment and the central idea of community driving through the whole policy agenda was strong. The euro was the only bit I felt tricky at the briefing afterwards. We left not long after to get the train back. TB called later, worried about the advice we were getting on security re the trip to Pakistan. But he was pretty keen to go, and very keen to go to Russia. Thespeech was getting huge play everywhere, including one headline in the States that it was TB’s ‘pitch for world leadership’. We would have to watch it.
Wednesday, October 3
    Extraordinary press for TB’s speech, though some found it a bit preachy and there was a real danger of overreach. We had a real problem with the Indians over the planned visit to Pakistan. Vajpayee was on the phone, totally adamant that if TB went to Pakistan without also visiting India, it would be a real disaster for him. He was normally so quiet and soft-spoken but there was both panic and a bit of anger in his voice. TB said that having listened to him, there was no way we could do one without the other. It was not impossible that if OBL successfully launched another hit then the Indians could launch a strike at Pakistan. The security committee, which advised on TB’s own safety, had met yesterday and basically would prefer that he didn’t go to Pakistan, but if he did, they wanted us to use the [Royal Air Force]