The GuardianAlastair Campbell diaries: MI6 warned Blair over dangers of Brown rif
Alastair Campbell wrote in his diary that the French and German governments planned to exploit Blair's rivalry with Brown. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian
In a sign of how the rivalry risked harming British interests on the world stage, Campbell wrote in his diary that Blair was told by "the spooks" that Paris and Berlin hoped to use his rivalry with Brown to "divide them even further".
The latest volumes of Campbell's diaries, serialised in the Guardian today, will also undermine the attempt by Ed Balls to claim that he was not a divisive figure during Blair's premiership, after damaging private papers were published recently by the Daily Telegraph.
Blair repeatedly told Campbell that Balls, then Brown's chief lieutenant, was a highly disruptive influence who used to treat him like a junior official. "TB … said he had just about had enough of Ed Balls talking to him like something on his shoe," Campbell wrote on 25 April 2001.
Balls breached Treasury rules by leaking details of the government's response to the fuel duty protests – that fuel duty would be frozen for two years – before Brown's pre-budget report in November 2000, according to Campbell. "It was wrong to leak tax measures … it was misleading," Campbell wrote after Brown outlined plans for Balls to brief the Times and the Mirror.
But the diaries also show that Balls and Brown helped save Britain from direct involvement in the current Greek euro debt crisis after Blair made clear in private – at one point even to the Sinn Féin leadership – that he would take Britain into the euro. Brown campaigned hard against Blair on the euro and in October 1999, as they finalised plans for the launch of the Britain in Europe group, said to his face: "Do you want to be held responsible for mass unemployment?"
Campbell left much of the Blair-Brown tensions out of the first condensed version of his diaries, which were published in 2007 shortly after Blair stood down as prime minister. But in the latest volume, covering the years 1999-2001, Campbell provides vivid details of their turbulent relationship. He reveals that:
• Brown put pressure on Blair to give a date for his departure before the 2001 election – earlier than had been thought. In April 2001 Brown told Blair he was "crap" and that he should stand down to allow for the restoration of cabinet government.
• Just two months before the 2001 election Brown accused Blair of having "betrayed" him when he stood for the Labour leadership in 1994 and of having taken "that job away from me".
• Before the 2001 election Blair said he expected Brown to strike against him. He appealed to Campbell to remain on board on the grounds that he was his "Exocet".
• On the day before the 2001 general election Blair told his inner circle he had "sadly, very sadly" reached the conclusion that Brown was working against him. But he said it was impossible to sack him or move him from his position as chancellor.
• Relations became so fraught that in 2000 Blair asked Lord (Richard) Attenborough, the veteran actor and film director, to mediate. Attenborough was told by the Brown camp that Blair needed to say in 2003 when he would stand down.
• Blair said that Brown lied to him in 2001 when he tried to secure money for schools and hospitals.
• Blair turned "white with fury" – and later rebuked Brown in private – when his chancellor responded with "venom and contempt" to his question at a presentation by Treasury officials.
• On 9/11 Blair declined to invite Brown to a smaller ministerial meeting in Downing Street, following the main Cobra crisis meeting, because his answers had become "monosyllabic" in recent discussions.
Campbell believed that the splits were being picked up in Europe. On 12 October 2000 he wrote: "TB showed me a piece of intelligence which showed that the Germans assessed our problems on Europe not as one of public opinion, or the Tories, but a sense that TB and GB were on a different track to each other. So it was out there, probably picked up when some Foreign Office people were in Berlin."
A few months later at an EU summit in Nice, on 7 December, Campbell wrote: "The French and Germans, according to the spooks, were exploiting the fact that GB was seen as a rival to TB, to try to divide them further."
Campbell also shows that Brown had never reconciled himself to Blair's election as Labour leader in 1994 after he stood aside as part of the "Granita pact". Brown saw this as a noble and selfless act; Blair saw it as a recognition of his status as the frontrunner.
Nearly a decade later this was on Brown's mind even at the height of the foot and mouth crisis. On 11 April 2001 Campbell wrote: "He [TB] said on Monday, GB had started a conversation with him straight out with the words: 'You betrayed me. You said you would never challenge me and you took that job away from me.' TB said GB was still very sore, and operated on the basis there was a genuine grievance, which TB did not accept. GB was back to saying TB had an operation ready to roll in 1994."
The diaries also show that Brown was the decisive strategic thinker in the government who often outshone Blair in cabinet. Blair regarded him as one of the top five politicians of the 20th century, on a par with Lloyd George.
Campbell told the Guardian on Sunday that, for all his faults, Brown was indispensable. Campbell said: "As Tony made clear in his book, he viewed Gordon as both brilliant and impossible. What is interesting from these extracts is that even when we felt Gordon was wanting Tony out, and the division was causing real damage, Tony was always able to see the strengths that made him want to keep him as chancellor and later support him as leader.
"I shared that ambivalence which is why even though I lived through some of these difficulties and divisions, when push came to shove I went back to try to help Gordon in the last election campaign. He could be a complete nightmare, but he could also be absolutely brilliant and it is important people remember that. Tony was always the more rounded figure, and in my view a remarkable political leader, but Gordon also had formidable strengths."
The Guardian
Sunday 3 July 2011 21.32 BST
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