Chapter 25
Leo’s timing was impeccable. He arrived on the Friday before the bank holiday week. For ages I’d been pushing Tony to take some paternity leave, but he’d refused, saying, “I can’t. I’m the Prime Minister.” But from the moment he clapped eyes on his son, he was so besotted he wanted to spend time with him, and as Parliament wasn’t sitting, it wasn’t that difficult to cancel all his outside engagements. Of course he was still on the phone and read his papers, but basically he was based in the flat enjoying being a new dad.
When Leo was about six weeks old, I decided I needed to take a break and to start getting back in shape. The singer Cliff Richard, whom I had met at a charity event a year or so before, had said that if ever we wanted to get away, we could borrow his villa in Portugal.
So while Tony stayed at home to keep an eye on the kids, Leo and I — together with Carole and my mum — flew off for a week’s vacation. It was exactly what I needed: sunshine, good food, and gentle exercise. Everything was going well until the phone call from my husband on July 6, telling me he had just come back from the police station with Euan after he’d been found sprawled across the pavement in Leicester Square, the heart of London’s entertainment district.
“But he’s home now and he’s safe,” Tony said when he called to give me the glad tidings. “I won’t suggest you try to speak to him because he’s incoherent. But you don’t have to worry, because I’m in charge.”
“If you were really in charge, this wouldn’t have happened.”
It was a short conversation. When I put down the receiver, I turned on the television. The news had even reached Portugal.
Fortunately I was going back to England the following day, and it was a very shamefaced sixteen-year-old who greeted me. His father wasn’t much better. I wasn’t really cross. The press was making a lot of it, but the reality is that had he been the son of anybody else, they’d just have said, “Okay, don’t do it again.” As it was, because of press pressure, he had to be given a formal caution by the police.
The local police station was obviously out, so Euan and I were told to take the emergency escape route, a gloomy old tunnel that ran under Whitehall, right into the Ministry of Defence. In the event of a terrorist attack or a bomb scare, it would take us straight to the nuclear bunker.
A car was waiting on the far side of the Ministry of Defence, and we were taken to a police station in south London, where Euan made a statement and was given the caution.
“If you don’t get into trouble again,” the kindly police officer said, “when you’re eighteen, this will be wiped off, and there’ll be no record at all.”
Euan looked decidedly cheered. “You mean once I’ve turned eighteen, no one need ever know?”
My heart sank. My sweet, innocent boy, I thought. You don’t realize that they’ll never let you forget that at the age of sixteen, you were drunk and were cautioned.
Because of giving birth to Leo, I missed that summer’s G8 summit in Okinawa, which is why André wasn’t there to prevent my husband from wearing a hideous Japanese shirt the British press delighted in. When he got home, Tony explained that they were all given a choice, and he had chosen the least offensive. To his amazement, when Bill Clinton appeared, Tony noticed that Bill had picked the most hideous of all.
“Why on earth did you choose that?” Tony asked.
“Take it from an old-timer,” Bill said. “Sometimes when you go to these summits, you’re in a rock-or-a-hard-place situation. If you don’t wear it, you offend your host. If you do, you’re made a mockery of at home. Now you, Tony, wearing that particular shirt, people at home might conceivably think that you actually chose to wear it. Me, wearing this shirt, everybody at home is going to think, Boy, is that Clinton diplomatic, being so nice to those foreigners. There’s no way he would have chosen to wear that. What a good man he is!”
The UN doesn’t go in for funny outfits, and as that September’s Millennium General Assembly was a one-off, I was determined to go. I was still breast-feeding, however, so I would need to take Leo. The first question was, Can I take Jackie? The answer from the Cabinet office was absolutely not. Fortunately Leo has known André since the day he was born, and so André agreed to be his stand-in nanny. During that whole trip, whenever I had to be somewhere else, André looked after him: changed his diapers, gave him his bottle of expressed milk, everything.
André has had to put up with a lot from me over the years, but he never expected to have to introduce the British Prime Minister’s son to the American President. We were staying in the UN Plaza Hotel, which because of its location doesn’t have to try very hard. I was late returning to the room, a circumstance with which André was all too familiar. The baby bag was packed, and Leo was strapped to André’s front in the sling, when two FBI men arrived at the door. They told André to bring the baby; Mrs. Blair would meet him at the destination. More than a little unnerved, he was ushered into a limousine — one of five, four of which were empty — and off they set. Then, disaster. Leo filled his diaper. Worst of all, it was of the explosive variety, and André had forgotten to pack an extra set of clothes. As André always points out, he is not a professional nanny, and he panicked.
“Excuse me,” he said to the Secret Service man beside the driver. “I have a problem.”
The man was totally unfazed, and seconds later they screeched to a halt. The door opened and André was ushered out, Leo still strapped to his front, to find himself being escorted into Ralph Lauren.
“My!” said the greeter — the place had been completely cleared of customers — “you must be important!” Then the penny dropped. “Oh, my God, it’s Baby Blair!”
They were whisked into the back of the shop, and once André had cleaned Leo up and put on a new diaper, he was presented with a brand-new outfit, dungarees and a sweater resplendent with the American flag.
Next stop was the Waldorf Hotel, where he was assured I would be waiting. He was taken up through the kitchen entrance — the route of choice for American Presidents and their wives — then up to the presidential suite on the top floor, which was bristling, he says, with bodyguards, earpieces, and cell phones. Finally he arrived at a pair of double doors.
“The President will see you now,” he was told, and the door was held open.
“What about Mrs. Blair?”
“She’s not here yet. You’re to go on in.”
He was petrified. Making his way down the empty corridor, he began calling out, “Hello? Hello? Anybody there?”
“In here” came the reply. André pushed open the door to the room from which the voice was coming, only to see Bill and Hillary Clinton at the far end of a room the size of a tennis court.
I arrived about five minutes later, to find Bill holding Leo and generally cooing, although my son’s red face showed that he had clearly been exercising his lungs until very recently. André gave me one of his looks.
“Cherie,” he hissed, “don’t you ever do that to me again.”
We all then proceeded to the UN to meet up with Tony. The first group to emerge was the Chinese. They are usually very stiff and unforthcoming, but seeing Leo in his little American sweater was too much even for them. They stopped and talked and had their pictures taken with Baby Blair. Then French President Jacques Chirac came out, and it was the same thing. Tony couldn’t believe it. “Why on earth,” he said, “is the British Prime Minister’s son wearing an American jumper?”
“It’s a long story,” I said.
The general election in 2001 was set for May 2, to coincide with local elections, but following a severe outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, it was postponed until June 7. This outbreak was a major disaster for farmers, and the government was entirely right to wait until the situation was under control before going to the country. But it was singularly bad timing for me, as I was about to start a big case on May 8. When I had taken it on, I had assumed the election would be done and dusted by the time it began. Fortunately, as it was expected to be a very long case, the judge agreed we could have a “reading day” every Friday. In addition, a couple of public holidays were coming up.
As a result, although my campaigning with Tony was confined to the weekends, I was able to do some on my own with Angela Goodchild, who took over my schedule for the weeks of the campaign. As Fiona and Roz were “special advisers” paid for by the government, they were forbidden to do anything that might be deemed political. Angela had been a volunteer at Labour Party headquarters in the 1997 election and had then come in as a part-timer, a Labour Party employee in the political office, to help with Tony’s more personal mail. With the publicity surrounding the founding of Matrix, members of the public increasingly saw me as a first port of call for legal advice, and I was flooded with queries. As Downing Street understandably couldn’t help — anything to do with the law was clearly my professional domain — I negotiated to pay for Angela’s services one day a week. We got on very well, and from then on, whenever I hit the campaign trail, Angela would accompany me.
For those four weeks in the run-up to the election, every Friday I’d visit marginals — those districts in which things were so close that a few votes in either direction might tip the scales — close to London. In the final week, thanks to a holiday and my junior on the case covering for me at the trial, I was able to be at Tony’s side.
It was another landslide, with Labour losing only one seat to the Conservatives. The press, however, didn’t look at the huge majority, but claimed instead that it was a victory for apathy because of the low turnout. Tony, rightly in my view, took it as a sign that the public was happy with the way he was going and hadn’t thought there was much need to register their votes. Tony made some ministerial changes. Robin Cook was removed from the Foreign Office, and there was talk of Gordon Brown taking his place, though it didn’t happen. Gordon, who had married Sarah Macaulay in August 2000, had recently been increasing pressure on Tony to commit to leaving office. But Tony knew he still had a lot to do, particularly in the area of public service reforms — namely, health and education — and he was determined to see them through.
The office was also given a shake-up. Tony moved Alastair out of day-to-day press management and gave Anji a new post as head of government relations. Fiona was promoted to head of events and visits. As a result, Angela began to take on more for me, and Sue Geddes joined the office to assist with my official schedule.
Everybody knows where they were on September 11, 2001. I was in chambers: I had two separate case conferences, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, and had just finished the morning conference when the news started to come through. My first instinct was to go back to Number 10. Whenever something important is happening, Downing Street is the place to be. Tony was in Brighton, where he had been due to address the TUC conference. As it was, his speech was simply handed out to delegates. He came straight back to London. His overriding feeling was that everything needed dampening down and confidence maintained, particularly in the financial sector. He was convinced that America would feel beleaguered, and we had to let the United States know it wasn’t alone.
Tony remained very visible. From the start, his was the opposite of a bunker mentality. In his first television address, less than an hour after the news of the attacks came through, he said, “I hope you will join with me in sending our condolences to the people of America and to President Bush from the British people. This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of human life. All democratic countries must unite to eradicate this evil from our world.”
Three days later, at a special session of the House of Commons, Tony made a fantastic speech, sending out a message not only to Britain but also to the world:
One thing should be very clear. By their acts, these terrorists and those behind them have made themselves the enemies of the civilized world. The objective will be to bring to account those who have organized, aided, abetted and incited this act of infamy; and those that harbor or help them have a choice: either to cease their protection of our enemies; or be treated as an enemy themselves. . . . We do not yet know the exact origin of this evil. But, if, as appears likely, it is so-called Islamic fundamentalists, we know they do not speak or act for the vast majority of decent law-abiding Muslims throughout the world. I say to our Arab and Muslim friends: neither you nor Islam is responsible for this; on the contrary, we know you share our shock at this terrorism; and we ask you as friends to make common cause with us in defeating this barbarism that is totally foreign to the true spirit and teachings of Islam.
Even before Tony was elected Prime Minister, he thought it important to learn about Islam. Britain has a sizable and important Muslim population, and as far back as January 1997, Khawar Qureshi — a lawyer friend of mine and now a Queen’s Counsel — took us to visit the Regent’s Park mosque. He knew that we were interested and that Tony wanted to meet and talk to other Muslims. During the summer of 2001, while we were on holiday, Tony had in fact been reading the Koran.
The Washington Post was soon rating Tony alongside New York’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani as “the only other political figure who broke through the world’s stunned disbelief.” Among the victims were two hundred from the UK, a small percentage of the total toll of three thousand, but 9/11 remains the largest terrorist attack ever on British citizens. That Friday we attended a memorial service at St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was a powerful occasion: not only were we all in a state of shock, but it was so moving to see the relatives of the victims — mostly wives and children, because so many of the missing and the dead were reasonably young. As Tony was anxious to have a face-to-face meeting with the still relatively new President, George W. Bush, the following week we flew to America. By then Tony had already had meetings with all the key European leaders. He believed that the response to the attacks should be international rather than America going it alone.
On that long flight across the Atlantic, I remembered the conversation I’d had with President Bush, when he and Laura had stayed at Chequers the previous spring. We were all having dinner together, and the conversation had been extraordinarily open and frank, thanks in no small part to the presence of the children. George had been talking about the Star Wars missile defense system, initiated by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and how he saw that as the ultimate shield.
But I had grown up under the shadow of IRA terrorism. “Surely,” I’d said, “the real danger is not from Russia or any other country sending bombs, but from individual people in a terrorist attack?”
George had looked bemused at the suggestion. Americans had no sense that such a thing could ever happen to them, and that’s what made September 11 so shocking.
On our arrival in New York, we went first to a processing center near the Hudson River. Everywhere we looked, people had put up pictures of their loved ones, with messages and contact phone numbers, in the hope that they would be found alive. It had been only nine days since the attack, and it was all very upsetting. Knots of people talked in hushed voices. A section of the center was being run by the British consulate, and we talked to those who were counseling the bereaved. The counselors themselves had barely slept in days. We wanted to go on to a fire station — New York firefighters, of course, having become the heroes of the tragedy — but with downtown Manhattan still in a state of paralysis, even with a police escort and motorcycle outriders, we were too short of time. So we went directly to St. Thomas’s Church for a memorial service for the British dead.
We knew that Tony was expected to do a reading, but the question coming over on the plane had been, what? It would be very difficult to get the right tone. Magi Cleaver suggested an extract from a novel by the American writer Thornton Wilder called The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Magi had been shifted from the Foreign Office to manage the Civil Service side of the events and visits office. (The arcane regulations decreed that as a special adviser herself, Fiona could manage only other special advisers.) She was a tiny bossy-boots of a person, and everybody seemed petrified of her, but she was charming and lovely to us. She took me under her wing, and I loved her. Having started her Foreign Office career in Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende, she was interested in all things South American, which was why she happened to have the book with her. The reading ended like this: “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”
After the service I was able to talk to some of the victims’ families, including wives who were pregnant and with whom, I am happy to say, I have been able to keep in touch as they have rebuilt their lives. At the time they were still hopeful that their husbands would be found alive. Tony went straight to Washington for talks with the President, while Bill Clinton agreed to come to the fire station with me in Tony’s place. This particular fire station had been chosen because it had suffered such tremendous losses in the rescue operation, and in those kinds of circumstances, Bill is at his best. The men we met were just fantastic, brave and strong. One I talked to I recognized from one of the now iconic photographs taken that day. At the end they presented me with an American flag — for Tony — folded up in a triangle, with a plaque signaling their appreciation of his support, a thank-you from the firefighters of New York. For years it was on display in Downing Street, and now we have it at home. I was insistent that we take it when we left: a powerful memory of a very haunting visit.
By the time we got back to London, a whole new security regime was being put in place. It had been decided that from now on, I would have permanent police protection. What this meant in practical terms was that I stopped going into chambers every day. Like Tony, I could no longer drive; wherever I went, I had to have a Number 10 driver and a close security officer. Once I got back to Number 10, I had to stay there: no picking the children up from friends’ houses, no dropping them off at sports activities, no popping out to the shops or going for a run in St. James’s Park. If I wanted to do any of those things, a detective had to come with me. Everything had to be planned in advance and marked on the appropriate schedule.
The children were no longer permitted to travel by public transport. One of my main concerns in keeping their faces out of the newspapers was wanting them to lead as normal lives as possible, which meant subways and buses. In fact, we had managed surprisingly well. The nannies, too, were unknown, and could take the children for a hamburger without any fear of their being recognized.
Euan was far from pleased. He had been taking the underground to school since 1996, and the idea of being driven by the police did not go down well. Nicholas wasn’t much happier. Kathryn, still only twelve, was less resistant, as she hadn’t experienced the same kind of freedom the boys had.
Security at this level takes some adjusting to. If you have police protection, you have police protection; it is not some sort of optional perk. You cannot go anywhere without having somebody with you, and the police have to know where you are and what you are doing all the time. One evening that autumn, on the spur of the moment, Kathryn and I decided to go to the theater, to see Blood Brothers. The play was written by Willy Russell, whom I knew when he ran a folk club in Liverpool. It starred Barbara Dickson, who, long before she became famous, did a gig at the Trimdon folk club. We were about to set off when I suddenly remembered the security. The ’tecs had left for the day, and I hadn’t made any provision for late-night duties. Although I felt bad, I rang them up and said perhaps they could meet us at the theater. “I’ll just get a taxi there,” I said.
“Sorry, Mrs. B. You can’t do that,” the officer said. “You’ll have to wait till I get there.”
“But we’ll be late.”
“Well, then, you’ll just have to be late.”
Another issue was the nuclear bunker. When we’d first moved in, I had inspected it to see if it was suitable for children. It was totally underground and really spooky. There were army-style bunks, and I couldn’t see how I could ever take the kids down there. Downing Street staff members were divided into groups: Red, Blue, Green, and Orange. In the event of an emergency, the Red group had to come down with us, the Blues were to muster on the lawn, the Greens were to go home but be on call, the Orange group were free to go home and not be on call. Alastair was in the Red group, but Fiona was in the Green group, and I thought, No way is Alastair going to come in with us and leave Fiona and his kids at home if there’s a nuclear Armageddon. I’d told the powers that be as much and asked, “Just how realistic is this as a plan?” In response, they’d asked if I wanted to show the children the bunker, and I’d said no.
Now I had to address the matter seriously, so Jackie and I went down, as instructed, taking clothes and games and books for the children. Apart from the hum of the air-conditioning, it was as quiet as a grave. Jackie agreed with me that if it ever came to it, this place would completely freak them out.
In early December the Daily Mail ratcheted up its attacks on me. This time it was in relation to Leo. They demanded to know whether he had had the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine. “Come Clean, Cherie” was the headline. The great issue of the day was whether the MMR vaccine causes autism. A report — since wholly discredited — had said that it could. Then the Mirror joined in. I had innocently responded to a letter sent to me by the mother of an autistic child, saying that I was “keeping an eye on things.” It had seemed fairly innocuous at the time.
A number of people around me, whose views I respected, were vociferously against all forms of vaccination. Over the years I had listened to their side of the argument, and it’s fair to say that I was of two minds. I did get Leo vaccinated, not least because it’s irresponsible not to — there’s absolutely no doubt that the incidence of a disease goes up if vaccinations go down — and he was given his MMR jab within the recommended time frame. I was adamant, however, that I would not give the press chapter and verse. I saw no reason to parade my family’s vaccination records in front of the public. It would set a bad precedent, and everyone — by which I mean Alastair and Fiona — agreed.