Lost In The Week

Prologue
At 6.45am the sky was red over the city. An eerie glow behind clouds low over the towers of Westminster. Under different circumstances it would be impressive and beautiful. But these are bad times and my nerves are not strong enough to deal with the skies of armageddon so early in the morning.

Security is everybody's concern.
How many days ago was it that a police officer on a motorbike put his hand up in my face to stop me crossing the road; to stop me getting in the way of the fast black car he was escorting through the red lights?

Who was in the back of that thing? Why the hurry? What made him so special that he couldn't wait for the lights to change? It knocked me into a foul mood, and all I could think is that he must have the kind of bad conscience that gives a man reason to fear for his life. What bad things had the bastard done? What had he done to put someone else in a mood to pill his blood?

Maybe he's innocent, but I doubt it.

And how many days ago was it that I sat in the Foreign Press Association for the morning briefing by the PM's spokesman (one of his unofficial, official people this time; both official spokesmen were probably away preparing themselves to face-down accusations of backstabbing and character assassination at the Hutton inquiry)?

I only remember that day because something terrible happened in Iraq but the Lobby journalists were doing their job and muttering about another 1.25 pence on a litre of petrol Asking whether Tony Blair had taken a step too far into setting up a European Security Force (the unofficial spokesman insisted nothing had changed from the previous position which the government had already made clear).

And would Stephen Byers be brought back to replace defence secretary Geoff Hoon - who was still in his job but according to that day's Mirror newspaper was as good as buried (the spokesman - actually a woman and an apparently pleasant one who deals patiently with often absurd questions - said; "That's a matter for the Prime Minister to decide, certainly not for me")?

And is Alistair Campbell to be referred to as the 'former' communications director or the 'outgoing' communications director ("he's serving out his notice but I have to check the exact position," the unofficial spokeswoman said)?

It was a nice autumn morning in London that day, with a fine cool wind and leaves coming down from the trees. The FPA is in a big old building once occupied by Gladstone - a former Prime Minister and one of the Big figures of British history.

Yes, London was very pretty and I walked happy back to the House of Commons with other reporters, not talking to them, just listening. We wandered past one of those big monuments to futile death that are everywhere in this city. Marne 1914. Ypres 1914. I wanted coffee and was hungry. It was the beginning of this week.

Since then;
Bush gave his speech at the UN, a half-smile on his lips like he knew everyone was sore at him but couldn't do a fucking thing about it. A smirk of utter power. I'm certain he threatened the chamber, dared it to side with the 'freedom-haters'.

As much as the actual things he said, it was that which made me stare at the TV, watching with a growing sense of dumb horror. I picked up a pad and pen and scrawled down some quotes. I've still got the notes but I don't want to look at them. I remember walking away with the certain feeling that the doom-spiral we are locked in will carry on for a long, long time.

It was the cliches about them and us, good and evil etc etc. If the rhetoric is to be believed, the shitty mess in Iraq has not been a lesson learned, and that is a real source of misery for any right thinking person. Especially when Bush started talking about Syria and weapons programmes and pre-emptive strikes.

Since then;
I went to Brighton - a town I hate more than any other - and sat though Charles Kennedy's conference speech. It was mainly boring but did hit one nail on the head. He quoted Tony Blair from a speech to Labour MPs after their 1997 election victory. The new Prime Minister had said: "We are not the masters. The people are the masters. We are the people's servants. Forget that and the people will soon show that what the electorate give, the electorate can take away."

Kennedy contrasted that with the recent Hutton revelations and said those "good instincts and great ideals" had been "tarnished" under a government "corrupted" by power. If you put aside the fact it's all just political point scoring by a different gang trying to get hold of that same power, his analysis does cut close to the centre of things.

Since then;
I was dragged to a Socialist Workers Party meeting in Croydon where I heard a potted history of Iraq and denunciations of "Yankee Imperialist Dogs" (really, that's an accurate quote; it was even said in a strongly accented English. The woman who said it eventually stormed out of the fast-food curry place basement where the meeting was held; one of the other people there had suggested it might make the best of a bad situation if the UN put peacekeepers into Iraq and she disagreed. So incensed she stood up and ran for the stairs. I wanted to do the same, but for different reasons).

Since then;
More people dead in Iraq. More stories about the US going soft on Israel over the non-existent 'road-map'. Alistair Campbell and the 'fucked-over' diaries at Hutton.

Since then (today in fact);
Papers running stories of President Bush's visit to Buckingham Palace in November, with attached speculation about whether Blair has the guts to send The Man into the House of Commons. That would be the customary accolade, only it would be very embarrassing to the Big Team for the free world to see its leader (oh yes) on television being booed by MPs who happen to think he's a fucking ignorant bastard, responsible for mass murder and gross human right violations.

All of which leads to this Friday night, with its cool air and fat gobs of rain. Listening to the people walk by on the street outside. To the planes in holding positions for Heathrow.

Sitting here and desperately trying not to speculate about what will happen at the Labour Party conference which starts on Sunday. Will Labour rebels be able to get a debate on Iraq or will the fixers block it, and stop us seeing just how unhappy Labour people are over the lies that led us to war?

I want to see a vote. I need to know what people in the party think about this. Most I know who vote red pride themselves on a sense of probity that I'm pretty sure this government has violated in the most savage and explicit way. I really just wanna see how many of these people have drawn their moral line, and how many people have bent it. How many have joined their glorious leader on the slide?

And I want to see the security. In Brighton, it was non-existent and that was nice. I like to be able to come and go as I please without someone treating me like a criminal or killer. In the Houses of Parliament now there are signs everywhere warning you to wear your security pass. It generates a fine atmosphere of mistrust appropriate to what goes on in the place. I'm sure security'll be harder for the conference in Bournemouth because more than anything else, the Prime Minister is good at making vicious enemies for himself and those he governs.

Epilogue
The sky was red and horrible to behold, but I realise now the end of days will not come under flaming air. It'll happen with the stroke of a bureaucratic pen or in an un-minuted, informal meeting between pals in a corridor somewhere close to this place.
Death is a well-dressed man, with a great sense of self-importance and moral purpose, but utterly lacking in moral balance. He doesn't kill you. He has people to do that for him.

Cackling

Prologue
Frost in the air and I’m on the morning train to Brighton. To sit there through a Liberal Democrat conference speech on pensions. The prospects of any one of us getting to that stage seem slim, getting ever slimmer. It’ll be hard to concentrate today, I can see that much.

Cackling
The office was quiet at just gone 8am yesterday, just me on the phone to the one decent contact I have in government. And he was cackling, just couldn’t stop the laughter. I’ve never heard a grown man giggle in that way. It was fascinating and horrible. The sound of a person close to coming off the rails.

“He beat them all, that’s the thing, he beat them all. They never had a chance. Alistair has won,” he said. No attempt to suppress the glee. It’s one of the things that makes me trust him - in terms of believing he believes the things he tells me, which is the best you can hope for. I don’t think he acts too much. He cackles. He knows I’m not gonna name him. He knows I know we both know the rules in this.

“Alistair beat them all and made himself a fortune. He is simply the best there is. You can say what you want, but he’s the best there is.”

Alistair Campbell. Outgoing director of communications to Tony Blair. One of the chosen men who has brought us to where we all now find ourselves.
The previous day he’d been up before the Hutton inquiry, his second appearance, and he’d dealt with everyone in the sternest sense.

The morning’s papers were covered with extracts from the extracts of his ‘unpublished, not for publication’ diaries. I always start the day going through all the papers. The FT comes first for largely superstitious reasons; on it’s pink front page “GH and I agreed it would fuck Gilligan”. All the other papers had similar, The Times splashed with it in the headline, blanking out to f*** for reasons of decency. As if the truth wasn’t indecent enough to require some kind of censorship for the good of public health and morality.

“Fuck Gilligan”. That’s why I had a cackling man on the other end of the phone.
“Alistair won. He saved Blair, he pushed the blame onto himself and Hoon, he’s beaten the BBC and he’d made himself a fortune! All in a days work. You’ve got to admire that.”
And when you consider the rules of this game, it is hard not to. One rule only; win at all costs and it seems Campbell had. That’s what my man was telling me and I had no reason not to think he had a point.

Campbell is still utterly loyal to the Prime Minister and he had to make sure the PM came though this in the clear – at least technically, at least in so far as official hand washing is concerned. It looks like that will now happen.

Blair said he took full responsibility for everything when he appeared before Hutton, which you could take to mean he put his hand up to what parts of the apparent suicide were made up of the pressures Kelly felt himself buckling under.

But the Prime Minister didn’t mean it that way, and Hutton will not take it like that. It was a leadership gesture, not something he actually meant. He said it meaning it was the damned fault of the fucking MoD. But he held up his hands without quibbling; such courage and dignity in the mire! A true leader of men, happy to bear the weight of his fallen soldiers.

But then A[listair] C[ampbell] appears with his diaries and it turns out that AC and G[eoff] H[oon] wanted Dr Kelly’s name out in the open to fuck-over Gilligan. But Tony Blair worked to hold them back.

Disregard the fact, for the moment, that his name came out anyway, meaning the PM eventually overcame his inhibitions and let the attack dogs of the leash. Yes, ignore that and the Rt Hon Tony Blair looks even better.
No, despite the mud and sticks, it’s hard to see Blair being buried by Lord Hutton when he finally reports on the death of Kelly and the on-going, painful death of something bigger.

Blair is technically in the clear, from a certain perspective; because his spy chief says Downing Street did not sex-up the dossier. Because he tired to avoid naming the now dead Kelly.
AC has done all he can to save his master, painting a flattering portrait.

On the phone, the cackling continued.
And AC did it by sucking all the blame onto himself and defence secretary Hoon. But really it is Hoon that counts. Campbell had no friends in the media anyway, so now couldn’t give a shit about what they say on him. He’s quitting the damn No 10 communications job. He’s out.

No, blaming himself was really, politically, blaming Hoon. Hoon, the ex-lawyer who had sat in the law court that same morning, fought a lawyers fight. He left the Royal Courts of Justice before Campbell appeared, before Campbell buried him alive.

The diaries said it in black and white, despite the absurd government disclaimer that the record they contained was not AC’s ‘considered’ judgement, just his ‘immediate’ reaction to events at the end of each day.
Hoon wanted to force Kelly’s name into the open, believing it would fuck Gilligan over. Gangster talk in a gangsters’ world. Naturally, this was only a partial success and helped prompt the chain of events which has seen the reputation of this government, all governments, all politicians, all spies and all journalists, dragged beautifully through the slime.

Yes, AC buried GH, I’m certain of that.

And AC, who fought the BBC like his life depended on it, has managed, in a stupid and massively destructive manner, to get half of a kind of apology from the broadcaster over the whole Gilligan story.
Still cackling.

AC’s notoriety is also now assured, together with a huge personal financial fortune. That appearance in court, those diaries, will be sold for a massive sum of money, probably more than you and I will ever earn in our lifetimes. And the sexing-up stuff pinned on him has dropped away in the battle and now hangs on JIC chairman John Scarlett.

Checkmate Campbell. That’s what the cackling man seemed to be saying.I said: “Absolutely. There is no question, Campbell is a genius. At least twice as smart as the people he’s up against. None of them had a chance.”

Down the phone the voice said: “You’ve got to love him. I love him.”
The conversation ended.


EPILOGUE
There is only one problem with saying Campbell has won, which in a way he clearly has: it falls down because the Hutton inquiry has given us an incredibly damaging picture of a morally corrupt government which at base doesn’t give a shit about people in this country or abroad. Dead or alive, it’s all the same.

And the reason we know this is because Alistair Campbell decided to take on the BBC. Some fairly trivial points of accuracy were on his side. But the whole truth never was.

He helped make the New Labour party, which has dug the filthy shell-hole in which we now sit. And he has started to pull in the soil on top of us all, his friend and master Tony Blair included. Suffocation coming on.

Live by the sword, die by it, like the cliché says.


But worse for the govt. Not so much cause for cackling.

Brent East

Prologue
The odds were poison. Labour had a 13,000 majority in the London seat of Brent East. The Tories came a distant second and Lib Dems were nowhere. Labour owned that bit of the inner city.

In the early hours of this morning, Brent East fell to Sarah Teather of the Liberal Democrats with a 1,000 majority.

Defeat
Sitting here now, I´m trying to make sense of it. A piece of prime Labour real estate belongs to the Liberals. The analysis must be simple; thousands of people just said ´no more´.

For such a huge majority to be overturned is a VERY bad result for the government. They came, they saw, they were trampled into the dirt. I spoke to some Labour people yesterday as the polls opened, and they were sure the seat would hold. Maybe a reduced majority - say, one thousand at worst - but still theirs. Still a seat for them in parliament, still an MP for their team.

They threw some pretty big people into that place for the campaign, plenty of cabinet ministers, although not the man himself. They even got Ken Livingstone to back their candidate, Robert Evans, and say he was an anti-war, anti-new labour kind of man – ‘vote for me, I’m not really Labour’.

But not good enough.

The Lib Dems, desperately trying to sell themselves as the real party of opposition and as a real credible alternative to Labour, actually won.

It was quickly explained away and justified. First Labour; they insisted it was a typical by-election thing, voters delivering a strong message to the government, safe in the knowledge it would not results in that government being removed from office. A warning shot, mid-term blues.

And Labour people were soon on the airwaves insisting lessons would be learned, although that’s an obvious lie because at the same time Tony Blair was insisting retreat from his various agendas of reform and military occupation would be political suicide.


Then the Conservatives explained their terrible night away (they used to hold Brent local council) by saying they never expected to win in a traditionally left wing seat. Worth nothing perhaps to note it’s a traditionally left wing seat because it contains an incredible mix of people from different ethnic backgrounds. Not rich, either, which must deliver some kind of message to the Tories, at least if they want to listen.

And the Lib Dems, high on their crushing victory. Charles Kennedy assured us this was the START of something NEW and BIG for LIBERAL DEMOCRACY.

All arguments with some merit, but none crack the real nut. The real story is the miserable turnout, which is as damning to the government as the Lib Dem victory. In fact, it’s a painful for all the parties.

Less than 40 per cent voted, and the story from that seems clear: no one wants anything to do with politics in this country.

It´s so fucking tainted that ordinary folk - barbers and cab divers and check-out girls and whores and pickpockets - are too disgusted to bother with it.
Disgusted, and bored by the whole alienating process of picking some bastard who will lie to you and heap misery on top of your already miserable life.

Needless to say, not all politicians are like this. There are some good ones and it’s up to you to decide who these rare people are. Only one thing is clear. There are not enough of them and they will NEVER become Prime Minister.

Never.

Which means the real choice in British political democracy is the choice between a .45 revolver or sawn-off 410 for a suicide. The details will be different but brains still paint the wall.



EPILOGUE
The other day over the press announcement system in the press rooms, it was announced that the “Prime Ministers Statement is now available in the lower gallery”.

For a fraction of a second no one knew what the disembodied voice was talking about.

Someone said: “Maybe he’s decided to resign.” We all carried on chipping out our lousy stories.

The Glorious Dead

Prologue
Too sad to move this day. The usual nasty headache behind my eyes. I need to find a corner to hide in, away from all this.

The glorious dead
Westminster is no place to be if you're inclined to take life seriously.
Everywhere you look, armed thugs in uniform. Men happy by the power their trigger finger gives them, your life a breath away.

Police on every doorway. For our security and our peace of mind, you understand. For the terrorists. Violence ready to deal violently with the violent. It's the only thing these people understand. This is endless war.

Police standing along Whitehall as the weather turns; sky darkening too early, wind picking up. A storm on the way, rushing in from everywhere.

Outside Downing Street SW1 a war memorial in the middle of the busy road. Chiselled into stone 'The Glorious Dead'. If the Prime Minister ever walked out of his front door, to the end of the road and turned right, he'd be standing in front of it. But he doesn't leave his fortress like that. Security. Anything could happen if he went out into the world he runs, the one the rest of us live and die in.

Sirens and shouting and crushing mean expressions on every face. Women's calves stretched in high heels. Expensive shirts across middle-age spread. People trying to kill themselves on fast motorcycles in the traffic.

A Bentley convertible waiting at the lights, inside two men who robbed someone of hundreds of thousands of pounds and never even thought they'd done wrong.

Kids in school blazers and caps. Guy walking with arm wrapped around his girl. Bright coloured training shoes. CCTV cameras.

People get old in front of your eyes, turning grey and starting to die as you watch them walk by. This city.

I read though the papers in the press canteen mid-morning. Opposite, a journalist phoned some copy over to his paper just ahead of his 11am deadline. He ripped it straight from yesterday's Evening Standard, pretending like he got it from some 'source'.

He told them: "Blair is confident inspectors will uncover proof of Iraq's WMD programmes before the end of the month. The Prime Minister told aides he expects to be vindicated soon."

Then he lit a cigarette and smoked as if he'd earned it.

I had to have coffee with a press officer in the afternoon; Labour, for an MP. Nice enough, but another true believer in The Project. She thinks her team will win the Brent East by-election tonight but everyone knows that's wrong.
I talk half-hearted and don't pay much attention. Nor does she and that's all there is to it. Everyone wants to be a big player and not have to deal with the inconsequential.

Throughout the day news snaps on the wire:

10.32am - "Former UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix accused the US and UK today of 'over interpretting' information about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction."

1.32pm - "Detectives were today investigating allegations that three paratroopers gang-raped a teenage girl before taking photographs of the attack on their mobile phones."

2.16pm - "The British National Party is hoping to take a second council seat in a Stoke-on-Trent by-election."

3.34pm - "Eight American soldiers were reported to have been killed in an ambush in the Iraqi town of Khaldiyah today."

4.38pm - "The best friend of glamour model Jodie Marsh was murdered on her 22nd birthday by her boyfriend, the Old Bailey was told today."

4.50pm - "President George Bush today led hundreds of thousands of people fleeing from the path of Hurricane Isabel as it bore down on America's East coast."

And everywhere are statues of our illustrious leaders. The Great Men of the Past. In the blind eyes of each you look in vain for how many people they killed, but there is nothing. No answers. No one wants to remember that. The real past is something that disappears even as people swear they're thinking about it.

On a doorstep outside the first barricade that separates Downing Street from reality, a crazy skinhead sitting down, muttering over and over "we don't want you Blair looking for our interests. Get out."
Not shouting, just talking over to himself, rocking back and forth on his heels.

A tourist wondering why he can't walk up to the door of No 10, like he did years ago when he visited London. "It's a different world now, things have changed," the cop tells him. And maybe heís right.

Or maybe he's just an arsehole with shit-for-brains.

Epilogue
The dead, so often slaughtered so freely, and always in such glorious circumstances.

Disgust

Prologue
There is nothing amusing about this place. What happens here, at the centre, is too ugly and serious for that.
Even the people who smile are probably just thinking about robbing a child or cutting a puppy’s throat, just to see what it sounds like.

Complete degeneration
As if there was any doubt, it’s now clear only grim realities are left. There is no reason for optimism. There are no grounds for faith.

Man does not have a better nature and he does not have a conscience.

Proof enough came from the Prime Minster today. He made it clear that even the lowest expectations are too high for him. Think he’s gone low, well, fuck, he’s the Prime Minster – a talented man – and he can go lower if he wants. He makes the laws, after all.

Noon. Tony Blair at the dispatch box for PMQs, surrounded by the empty-headed fools so few people actually bother to vote for. They sit, wasting time, grunting.
Most of the questions were stupid, which is only to be expected. But there was one clear and true ray of light.

Blair was asked why he didn´t bother to tell the public that our intelligence services had said Iraq posed no nuclear threat to the country.
He was asked why he said we were 45 minutes from chemical doom but did not bother to not tell us all that his experts had warned him terrorism would INCREASE if the invasion of Iraq went ahead.

The question came from Charles Kennedy, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Doubtless a man with faults at the head of a faulty party. Regardless, that’s not the issue here. The thing that matters is the Prime Minister’s answer.
This man we are supposed to trust and respect. This man who commands legions. This man with his finger on the button.

Blair´s answer was to say that foreign policy would be terrible if the Lib Dems were ever elected. Really, that’s what he said. I know because I saw it once and then I watched it again, in dumb horror, on the news. It was on the TV.

It’s hard to believe he had the guts to give such an idiots response to a serious question in public. It was the dirtiest kind of infectious filth.

The Prime Minister took us into a war that has left at least 8,000 people dead, by pretending our country faced an immediate, massive risk, when in fact he KNEW going to war would increase the chances we would be brutally killed or maimed in our own country.

None of this is good enough. He´s the Prime Minister, for fuck´s sake - people are dying for fuck´s sake, hundred of bodies rotting in the heat - and he comes out with that kind of shit. There was no more comeback. PMQs is an absurd theatre and has nothing to do with questioning the head of government or holding him to account. It’s just a game.

EPILOGUE
Even a revolution wouldn’t bring an end to this misery. It’s cockroaches that survive the nuclear attack. Just another reason to give up.

Making Enemies

Prologue
In this city, beautiful women are ghosts. They pass by quickly, instantly lost to you for the rest of time. The loneliness is easier if you end the heartbreak before it really takes hold: force the thought into a corner and suffocate the fucking thing.
Wander up the road alone, head down and fading fast. Another unconscious body caught in an ebbing tide, brutal and ugly but still alive. What the hell, this is war after all.

Long walk off a short cliff
It's hard to believe Michael Meacher can have changed all that much since he was a member of the government. He was never really one of them, one of the real players chosen by Blair to help with the righteous and urgent task of digging our collective grave.

No, a wealthy man who sued a newspaper for calling him middle-class is not really the stuff of inner-circle leadership. Someone capable of that pointless act has to be innocent of the vicious animal instincts of a politician who goes ALL the way. Instead it suggests a man dealing with abstract intellectual argument, someone who doesn’t really have a handle on the media consequences of his actions. A PR fool; a very rare thing in Westminster and Whitehall.

But Meacher was close enough to get a seat at the big table, Anthony Blair's choice for environment minister: Meacher was closer to the center than most full-time pro politicians get even in drunken dreams. He had made it.

Back then he was a well-dressed 60-something-year-old with a keen interesting most things. Graying hair, glasses, a wine-drinkers nose.
And an unusual reputation for integrity. Criticism was generally fond and not really personal in the shiv-to-the-ribs sense.

Mainly he was seen as too of intellect. Not quite amenable enough to the greasy compromises of real politics, the small betrayals that allow this place to limp, humpbacked and grimacing, through another day. He was too abstract, wanting too often the politically impractical.

Today he is the same well-dressed 60-something-year-old with a keen interest in most things. Graying hair, glasses. The same disregard for real politick.

But two things are different now. More blood vessels have burst across that nose and the skin beneath his eyes.

And politically, he is teetering on the brink of the deep pit reserved for the damned, a pack of vengeful trolls promising to pull out his heart unless he jumps right in. Stuck between two devils and a thousand deep-cold seas.

If only he had suffocated that thought, the one that led him to this shit position! Aborted the hateful thing before it grew strength, before it picked up its own momentum, question leading to question, further into the labyrinth. Stop at the entrance, for the love of God!

The sign is clear and shrieks in neon letters ‘abandon hope all passing through this cursed door’.

Meacher, fool, goes for a peek and then wanders in. Graying hair, glasses. Too of intellect. Somehow blind to how this will play in papers worldwide as it spreads as fire across those newswires.

I mean; people dived out of windows for christsakes, substituting living hell for certain death because it was faster, less painful.

I mean; hundreds of police and fire fighters ran into those collapsing buildings that fine September morning, only to come out months later after millions of tonnes of concrete and steel had finally been moved from on top of their incinerated remains.

I mean; it happened on the TV, a plane smashes into a tower of the World Trade Centre in New York. And then another one hits the second tower. Close to three thousand people murdered.

In the mainstream world there are no doubts, not really. It soon turns out the attacks were the work of terrorists bent on destroying freedom and civilisation. Such attacks on the most powerful country in the world, its only superpower, could not go unavenged. Gloves would be pulled off.

And so it came, the terrorist leaders were in Afghanistan. Afghanistan was attacked, an evil regime replaced, the world a better place for it. A blow for the forces of good against the forces of the devil, Amen.

Then another war, this time in Iraq. Bad men bound up in terrorism, part of an axis of evil, weapons of mass destruction. Mustard Gas, VX. Thousands of innocent, civilised people less than an hour from horrible lingering deaths, burned lungs, coughing blood, bodies in spasm. Ballistic missiles, insanity, real-and-present dangers. Must be dealt with before another attack is launched on the civilised world. People on our side die but the battle for freedom continues and, etc etc.

I mean; almost 3,000 people died on that day in September 2001. Each one an unwitting, innocent - and above all, American - hero who must not be defamed.

It's a simple horror story for our times, something to remind us of frail morality. Something we can all be scared of. A daily dose of fear and a simple equation even a fool can understand; no room for gray. With good and against evil, with us or against us. Friend or foe.

But not everyone accepted this; the free thinkers, the conspiracy theorists, those who sometimes get bored with paddling in the shallows and go for a plunge in the dark depths.

People started asking questions about things which don't seem to add up: about how three hijacked planes can go missing for so long in US airspace, the most protected airspace in the world; about how unarmed, incompetent amateur pilots can fly these planes into a major landmark and the Pentagon, heart of the US defence establishment; about how US intelligence services knew something like this was possible but utterly failed to do anything to stop it.

And there are more, smaller, technical arguments about US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld talking of a missile, not a plane, hitting the Pentagon, about plane timetables and CCTV footage, about a dead ‘terrorist’ pilot being alive and well and working on an airline in the Middle East, about intact passports being quickly found at the scene of all that utter devastation.

Most of this stuff was reported in the media; the same mainstream media derided by so many of these free-thinkers, conspiracy theorists and deep-water swimmers as too complacent and compliant to the interests of the Right People. Michael Meacher’s problem is that he is one of those deep-divers. He read this stuff in the news. He read too much. It's something he does, keeping things that interest him in a big archive, painstakingly catalogued and filed.

So he knew of a document called Rebuilding America's Defences, written in September 2000 by a group calling itself Project for the New American Century.

Sinister name, wide-reaching sinister vision and powerful people; a toxic mix. Behind the document; Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeb Bush and others.

It contains references to a ‘worldwide command and control system’ to see off threats from dangerous regimes (Syria, N Korea, Iran). It contains comments about 'A new and catastrophic event like a new Pearl Harbour’ as likely to speed up plans for continued and increased US dominance.

And Meacher knew there are questions to ask about unchecked visa applications to the US. He knew a 1999 US intel report spoke of al-Qaida suicide bombers crashing a plane full of high explosives into American targets.

He knew no fighter planes were scrambled for intercept from the base closest to the Washington, with those that did get up missing intercepts with the doomed airliners by a matter of minutes. He knew ex-Federal crime prosecutor John Loftus had said it was impossible for the CIA or FBI to claim it was incompetence which allowed the attackers to hit their targets.

And as an environment minister he knew about supply and demand of oil and gas supplies.

So this respectable, mainstream politician starts putting various bits-and-pieces together and decides there is something being widely ignored in all of this: a clear and proud US plan for global supremacy coupled with a devastating incident that 'changes the world' and provides the direct justification for a blank-cheque, open-ended 'war on terror'.

Justification for attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq. Justification for Bush to talk repeatedly of “a new kind of war” of “not waiting for further attacks on our citizens. We are striking our enemies before they can strike us again”.

September 11 2001 “offered an extremely convenient pretext” to put US domination plans “into action”, Meacher decided. In an article which appeared in the Guardian newspaper on Saturday, September 6, he wrote of events surrounding the attacks of two years earlier as a 'political smokescreen'.

He stated: “The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the 'global war on terror' has all the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.”

Meacher is not a conspiracy theorist. He is inclined to believe it was a monumental fuck-up that led to the attackers success. But he likes tidiness and would prefer to see the i's dotted and the t's crossed. He wants to see further investigation, even if only to end fears of conspiracy.

He also accepted the overwhelming likelihood such investigation will never occur. In the absence of that, he just wanted to say what he thought the evidence showed; that Sept 11 is being used as a convenient justification for various US policies which actually do not relate to the event itself.

Many others have said the same thing; it is not a new argument. What was new about is that this time it was coming from the pen of a man who used to be in government, a man who voted FOR the war in Iraq and who still thinks that war is morally justified because Saddam Hussein was a corrupt mass-murderer who best understood violence and HAD to be dealt with using armored brigades and aircraft carrier groups.

Meacher was respected. From the Big table. A success story, although one fallen to the fringes of the game having resigned from the government and facing the potential, easy insignificance of the backbenches. But then he decided to make his unease public.

That day, if you believe many people in Westminster, Meacher put a gun to the head of his credible political career and pulled the trigger twice. Then one more time, just to make sure it was dead.

The man himself didn't really know what reaction there had been. He realized after the article was published that it could undermine his work on opposing GM crops by damaging his mainstream credibility.

That article was his long walk off a short cliff. It was his failure to understand that for your own grim survival in this war, it can be better to not to ask too many questions about the wrong things. Thoughts may enter your head, but some of them need to be annihilated quickly. Choked in a dark alley, for your own comfort and convenience.

Right or wrong, Michael Meacher will now forever be known in t he world media as the man who said America 'deliberately allowed' Sept 11 to happen, even though he didn't say that.

But this is war, so who cares a damn about details, right?

Epilogue
None of this takes us any further forward. No revelations in these words. What was the goddamned point? More time wasted, nothing proved except that the easiest thing is to do what's expected of you; eat shit and smile. Everyone knows that anyway.

Bored Then Cleavage

PROLOGUE
Sitting in a media talk for five bored, desperate journalists by three bored, make-work press officers.

The Woman:
The briefing finished fast but not fast enough and it was turgid, except for the woman.

Nothing in their words really. Just reams of crap about how schools are getting better despite all evidence to the contrary.

But in the interests of Truth, what happened was; she wore a tight green jumper with plunging neckline. Cropped above the waistline of her tight black trousers.

A press officer from the Department for Education and Skills. Pretty with pulled back brown hair, long in a pony tail.

That jumper, opal, dipping sharply in a long v-neck.

Such a contrast to the two men in suits – one with too many bad teeth, the other an on-going confidence crisis – who followed her along.

She leaned forward as she spoke, exposed smooth white curved skin.

For the sake of my self-respect and her personal dignity, I looked her carefully in the eye. But in the interests of journalism and noting all the facts, I made all necessary observations. Purely professional.

The other lobby reporters present were less circumspect, letches all. A blow to feminism. Some of them are shameless, really. I was ashamed to know what they were thinking. I think she knew too. I’m sure she did.

I tried to concentrate, and managed enough to ask how I could explain away to the great unwashed the fact teachers are being laid off; and timetables cut; and classes made bigger; and etc.

She gave me some nice enough lines. A young press officer, not wanting to get out of her depth, perhaps only partly understanding there is NO depth in the Lobby. One reporter, bored, got up and walked away.

She said, to paraphrase slightly: “no crisis, all media lies,” before adding in a slight contradiction: “there are some ‘issues’ [that is; problems, in Whitehall speak] but we are working to stop them being ‘issues’ this year.”

Which cleared that up. She was young – mid to late 20s – and slim but curvy.

Epilogue:
At the end of the briefing I smiled at her, she smiled back, and that little piece of human contact cheered a day immeasurably. A day which had started with feelings of utter disgust at the whole world, from God on down.