DOWNING STREET VENDETTA

THE memoirs of Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s former ambassador to Washington, are causing a political storm. Here, in the third part of the Mail’s compelling serialisation, Meyer reveals how his time in office was hampered by the hostility of junior Do

FROM the moment that Tony Blair paid his first official visit to America as Prime Minister, in February 1998, his popularity in the U.S. was clear. As ambassador, I bathed in the reflected glory. There was, however, already a worm in the apple. During that visit there were the first signs of a ‘ them and us’ relationship between embassy and Downing Street staff — the beginnings on their side of a churlish, chippy arrogance which came to characterise too many of the support staff and minor courtiers.

At one point, a female voice was heard to ask sourly in the corridors of the embassy: ‘Is there anyone here who hasn’t been to public school?’

To which the answer was, 99 per cent of the embassy staff. Unlike, of course, the British Prime Minister himself.

Blair was the sixth Prime Minister in my career and I had known nothing like this before. As the years passed, things got worse.

There were times when I felt that No 10 regarded the embassy as a competitor in dealing with the Americans. I detected a resentment at the close contacts we had built with the Bush administration, contacts whose only rationale was to serve the interests of Her Majesty’s Government.

By the time I retired, almost exactly five years after this first visit, I had reached the unhappy conclusion that what I had achieved as ambassador had been as much in spite of Downing Street as because of it. ON September 20, 2001, Tony Blair came to New York to attend a memorial service for the British and other victims of the 9/ 11 atrocities.

He was then due to fly straight to Washington for crisis talks at the White House. He and Cherie would then have supper with the Bushes, before the Prime Minister was the President’s special guest at a joint session of Congress.

Arranging the trip at such short notice, at a time of frantic activity for the embassy, was a logistical nightmare. The timings were terribly tight, and there was a huge travelling press party to complicate things. We woke up to torrential, unrelenting rain. We had a police escort to help Blair’s cavalcade through the traffic, but it was slow, ponderous going.

The press coaches slowed us down badly, and the nearer we got to Manhattan the worse the traffic became.

We were late, very late. We were told by mobile phone that the huge congregation at the church of St Thomas had been in place for a good half hour.

I was getting anxious. The Blairs sat in the limo holding hands, looking worried and nervous. A jolt of sympathy for them passed through me. When we finally arrived at the church, we hurried to our seats at the front. The service was very moving. I heard occasional sobbing from the congregation. There was a good choice of hymns, and Alastair Campbell sang loudly and tunefully behind me.

Afterwards, the moment came to meet the British relatives of the missing who had been in the congregation. We talked to several. I have never felt so useless and inadequate in my life.

Some were inconsolable. Others wanted to talk about their lost children, brothers, sisters. This was not an occasion to rush. The Blairs, all of us, were reluctant to leave.

We lingered with the relatives in the hope of being able to offer some crumbs of comfort, but time was once more pressing desperately. On our way back to the airport, we again had to struggle through the New York traffic.

It was as nerve- racking as the inward journey, but I reckoned that we could still make it on time for our meeting with the President so long as there were no further hold-ups.

After what seemed like several lifetimes, I finally slumped into my seat in the first- class cabin of the plane taking us to Washington. But nothing happened. No ‘Fasten your seat belt’ sign, no sound of engines revving, no nothing.

Word came down that the airport authorities had decided to subject the travelling press party and all their equipment to a meticulous security search.

The result was to delay us so much that the meeting at the White House planned for the afternoon had to be scrubbed. That just left the supper with Bush.

Some of the No 10 people were panicking. They tried to pin the blame for the delay on a member of my staff and told her to go and explain herself to the Prime Minister.

Meanwhile, in the first- class cabin, all was fret and impatience. Blair was in a huddle with his advisers Jonathan Powell and Alastair Campbell. Powell came up to me: ‘Tony would rather have Alastair at the supper with Bush than you. I’m sorry.’

After all the tensions and fraught exertions of the last ten days, and on this day of all days, that was not a terribly well-judged thing to tell me. In fact, Powell might as well have punched me in the solar plexus.

For a moment I could not find the words to respond. When they came, they were furious and expletiveladen.

‘If this happens, you will cut me off at the f***ing knees for the rest of my f***ing time in Washington. Is that what you want?’

If I had been absent from that meeting I would have lost all credibility in the eyes of the President and senior members of the U.S. administration. They would have concluded that I did not enjoy the Prime Minister’s confidence.

If they had made that judgment, then the effectiveness of the embassy would have been damaged at just the moment when the British Government had rarely needed it more.

Anyway, it was unnecessary. A junior White House official appeared to have told a junior No 10 official that supper would be for the two principals plus three advisers on each side.

This was not holy writ. All Blair had to say was that he wanted four: his three advisers from No 10 and his ambassador. But Jonathan Powell just looked embarrassed and shrugged his shoulders.

The aircraft finally took off and we sped to Andrews Air Force Base in Washington. Immediately on arrival we jumped into limos and raced to the White House. Blair and I were alone in limo number one.

I had a series of phone calls with the embassy. I was told that there could be a problem about Campbell attending the supper, because there would be no one there from the press side of the White House.

The Americans had not yet hoisted on board Blair’s dependence on Alastair as a senior adviser.

I said that we had to be four because Alastair was indispensable to Blair. The Prime Minister was listening to all this. ‘ I don’t mind who goes to the supper between you and Alastair,’ he said weakly.

That’s no help, I thought to myself.

‘Prime Minister,’ I said, ‘you don’t have to choose. A team of four is perfectly reasonable. You have a right to select whom you want. The President will not conceivably object.’ As, indeed, he did not.

When we arrived, Don Ensenat, the White House head of protocol, immediately approached me with a worried face. ‘ Ambassador, we have been told not to include you in the

Prime Minister’s party for the President’s supper. I don’t know what to say.’

‘ Who says?’ I asked, the anger rising in my gorge.

‘ Somebody called from the cavalcade, while you were driving into town,’ Don replied. I had a pretty shrewd idea who that had been.

The thought passed through my mind to resign if I did not get into that supper, but I was saved from this extreme step by Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s National Security Adviser. One of her aides came up to me and said: ‘Don’t worry. Condi wants you there. We’ve laid another place.’

What have things come to, I thought to myself, when the British ambassador has to depend on the Americans and not his own Prime Minister to do the right thing?

The following year, in the run-up to Blair’s visit to Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, the No 10 advance team continued to pursue their vendetta against the embassy.

At every turn they tried to cut my staff out of the preparations and planning. Things reached such a pass that I had to make a formal complaint to Downing Street.

The high point of the British visit was a dinner given by the Bushes in honour of the Blairs. The senior members of the Downing Street team were all invited.

As I arrived, Laura Bush looked for my wife at my side and asked me: ‘Where’s Catherine?’

‘I don’t think she was invited,’ I replied in some embarrassment.

‘Well, no one consulted us and we would have liked to have her here,’ said the First Lady. I had an identical exchange later in the evening with the President.

Another manoeuvre, I thought to myself, by the No 10 advance team, who had told me that Catherine had not been on the Bushes’ guest list.

It was all of a piece with their ( failed) attempts to remove my name from all the events next day, when Blair gave a major speech at the Presidential Library containing the archive of his host’s father, George Bush Senior. God knows what the Americans thought of this odd, obsessive behaviour.

As I neared my due departure date from Washington, I came under great pressure from the Foreign Office to remain at the embassy to give Tony Blair’s choice as my successor, David Manning, extra time in his current job. In 2001, I had already had my posting extended 18 months to February, 2003.

To my astonishment, I then discovered London had made arrangements with the U.S. State Department for David Manning to replace me in August of 2003. There had been no warning or consultation as there should have been.

I called David Manning. ‘What the hell is going on? You and the Foreign Office know I am leaving at the end of February. Do people understand that there will be a six-month gap if you don’t arrive until August?’

David was apologetic. ‘I’ve tried to speak to the PM, but he doesn’t want to listen,’ he said. I began to sniff a stitch-up.

This conversation took place just as I received bad news about a heart condition that had first been diagnosed in the spring of 2001. My heart valve had now got significantly worse, and my doctors in America recommended urgent surgery.

The Foreign Office refused to authorise the treatment. Various arguments were advanced, financial and clinical. Americans were always too eager to operate, etc etc.

I had to delay the surgery until I was back in Britain several months later, having stuck to my agreed departure date and resisted further, intense pressure to stay on.

By now, the valve was so far gone that it could no longer be repaired and had to be replaced with an artificial one. A week after the operation, I had open- heart surgery for a second time to deal with a blood clot that almost killed me.

The British surgeon said to me afterwards that my condition was worse than he had realised. I deduced that the American doctors had been right all along.

Shortly before the operation, and after my return to London, I had met my wife at the Blue Bar of the Berkeley Hotel, where she was having a drink with the Duchess of York. After a while, we were joined by Prince Andrew.

The country was on the brink of the Iraq war. The Prince said to me breezily: ‘ I have just been at the Foreign Office.

‘ Someone very senior said that you had deserted your post just when you were needed. I’m not going to tell you who it was.’

Similar stuff started to appear in gossip columns. Well, I told myself — that’s diplomacy.