Walk through security, past police in jumpsuits. Wander up the path, crossing the road – Downing Street – to the opposite side. A young blonde woman is pushing a baby in a pram.
Knock on the black door, Number 10. It opens. Inside, to stand around with a bunch of other lowly political hacks. Mainly ill tempered and ill dressed. In the entrance hall two of them get in an argument about who will ask what question, when.
Tedious, waiting. Listening to the protestors from Cyprus, yelling through a bull-horn from way across the other side of Whitehall. Everyone in the Prime Ministerial Offices can hear that shit they shout. Probably they don’t listen though, and who can blame them.
The carpet is probably good, and so probably is the interior décor and the paintings and the rest. We wait a while, having our un-precious time wasted. Missing deadlines, racking up more minutes heading for another 12 hour day.
No illusions here, waiting for the Press People to come and fetch us like obedient dogs. David Hill, the PM’s communications chief, eventually does.
More walking, down a corridor. Hot rooms. Into the cabinet. One of the most famous offices in the world. Which used to be used by the government to make decisions and discuss policy. Before Tony Blair ripped that up and set it afire in exchange for informal, un-minuted chats with advisors on wars and such like.
Sit-down in one of the cabinet seats. Wait a bit, then Tony Blair walks in. Dressed in a pink shirt or perhaps white and dark pink tie with stripes. Look and act of a man just finished fucking a beautiful woman. He’s just smoothed through a Commons debate on Iraq, beating Michael Howard and the ineffectual Charles Kennedy. Like the drums they are.
Even though everyone but the Prime Minister is right, he owns that chamber. He owns the debate. He makes the rest look like play politicians. He wins without trying. And he’s been in his job at the top of Labour for a decade. Running the show for almost as long as I can remember.
Now he sits there in the big chair, in the PM’s chair, in the Cabinet Office, 10 Downing Street. He is easy ugly satisfaction. He is pally. He's a real pal.
He asks on or off-the-record? and answers his own stupid question because we’re too shoddy to merit faux secret briefings. We ain’t gonna get: “between me and you reporters looking for a story, I fucking hate Brown and I knew there were no weapons and just didn’t care a damn”.
And then it starts, predictable enough. Strong economy, record education health police investment. Government’s record stands in testament to its very self and the man him very self. Stability, crime fighting, breaking a leg to beat anti-social behaviour. Asylum seekers to be locked up, asylum seekers are being tackled, numbers are falling.
A proud record.
None prouder than Iraq. He calls it “The Iraq Thing”, the thing is war. Defeated a dictator. “I’m proud to have dealt with barbarous dictators.” You misunderstand the Butler report if you think it damning or critical of the government, of the security services. Are wrong if: you concentrate on the fact there were weapons of mass destruction and was an immediate threat, right up until the time they never really were and we knew as much.
The Prime Minister will tell you the crucial part of the Butler report. He’ll be kind enough to draw your attention to what matters. What matters is: Butler says there was good faith. He says the threat from Iraq was real. He says Tony was right. And I’m certain he believes it to the core of his soul. He doesn’t understand what everyone else is so worked up about. That could be a sign of insanity.
And Tony says muslim voters, if they are thinking about not supporting him, should go and talk to muslim Iraqis. Hop a flight there, hope it aint shot down on the approach to Baghdad International.
He makes the suggestion because he adds one and one and gets not two. Muslim Iraqis hate Saddam, we got rid of Saddam. Muslim Iraqis like us. The Prime Ministerial logic, which fails not in the comfort of the Westminster residence but which sounds hollow in obscene heat and lawlessness of the new frontier in the war on everything. It sounds clean and cool and clear and it utterly absurd looking down a cheap AK-47 barrel.
And Tony says the big thing is Palestine, and that’s why it’s so important we keep up our efforts on that front. The PM hopes to have some better news on that front in the Autumn. (He does not elaborate and no one asks him to because that is not our job, to push him on factual issues which are of no interest to our editors. We know the game and are under instructions).
He talks for 45 minutes, near enough, that talisman period which will always remind of but one thing.
No hard questions are asked, and if they were he’d not answer the fuckers. His home.
After, all hacks are allowed to have their picture taken, sitting next to him. Like Santa in a grotto. Like schoolkids with a pop star.
I got little dignity, but just enough to refuse a picture. I go walking down the hall instead, and out the front door, and Number 10 is behind me and the evening is hot and very gray everywhere. I carry messages to you all from your Prime Minister.
He says: “Its been a tough time because sorting out Iraq is important and I just hope people understand that whatever their feelings about the war that Iraq and the world is a better place without Saddam in charge of Iraq and I think that is clear even now despite all the reports and everything we’ve been though and the best evidence of that is to talk to the people in Iraq who will be very clear about that.”
He says: “All I say about the Iraq thing which I think is maybe I haven’t said to people enough is that whatever we did was going to be difficult. If we had walked away from Iraq and left Saddam in charge that would also have been difficult people shouldn’t be under any doubt about that. I don’t mean difficult just in terms of the rupture of the American alliance and so on, I mean difficult in the sense that Saddam left there with us walking away would have been far bolder and far stronger in what he was doing.”
We don’t think back to the pre-invasion days, when diplomats were saying the problem with a massive military build-up in the region is that it develops its own momentum. Makes war inevitable. Leaves the US, the UK no way to back-down on war and save face. Tony Blair admits it now, but times have changed and memory has too and no one gives a fuck about details anymore because we’ve had too much and anyway it’s all split milk now, all that misery and those fucking falsehoods.
And anyway, the summer holidays are here.
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