DC Confidential

This week The Guardian has been serialising the memoirs of Christopher Meyer, the former British ambassador to the US. It makes for interesting reading, as well as being downright embarrassing to certain Cabinet members. The list of MPs who command respect in Washington are few: only Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the late pair of Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam, in Meyer’s eyes, emerge with any credit. There are some cringeworthy anecdotes: John Reid cringing at the bluff of his opposite number Donald Rumsfeld, John Prescott blathering on to an American general about war in the “Balklands” and bombers operating at “fifteen foot”, a nervous Jack Straw seemingly at a loss when it comes to foreign policy. For a government that is swiftly losing whatever credibility with the public it has left, Meyer’s revelations are an ill-timed kick to the teeth.

Yet the central crux of the Guardian’s selection is an elevation of Blair’s role in the decision whether or not to join Washington’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Much has been written on this, and it has long been assumed that Britain’s inflated opinion of itself was illusory. The “coalition” – the misnomer has unfortunately stuck – would not have been greatly weakened by Britain’s absence, and the idea of a British truculence leading to further compliance by the US with the United Nations seems a fantasy of the highest order. However, Meyer makes the other case: that – had he wished to – Blair could have reined in the White House and, quite possibly, have slowed the rush to war, allowing for UN countries (France in particular, whose much-quoted ‘total veto’ on invasion could have been eschewed) to come on board and a ratified agreement for post-war planning been arranged.

Whether or not this is the case is debatable, and Simon Jenkins in the same newspaper disagrees with Meyer’s analysis, sticking to the line that the British involvement was an irrelevance at best. Meyers does occasionally let his guard slip, and reveal the axe that he is (quite validly) grinding, judging by the way his department was so repeatedly circumvented by Downing Street and his eventual departure – due to illness – spun as some kind of dereliction of duty. Meyers also comes across as just a little too cosy with the Bush administration; in trying to correct the commonly-held view of the President’s oft-cited mental sluggishness, he sounds a little too much like a mediocre figure star-struck by his brief touches with tangible power. Yet the portrait of an unsure and often immature Cabinet, undermined by twenty years of opposition and treading gingerly across a world stage that is a far cry from the simpler world of the Westminster village, remains a fascinating read.


Extracts from Sir Christopher Meyer's memoirs