Original subtitles

I read somewhere that there's one film

that had more of an influence on you than any other. Yeah.

Schindler's List.

Can you tell me about that and the impact it had on you?

Well, Schindler's List is a remarkable

and important film in many different respects,

but the thing that impacted me most was...

..this...

..concept of the camp commandant

and the normality that

in one sense he was living with his girlfriend and all of that,

and then just the sheer brutality

that was being visited upon the people.

GUNSHOT As this awful thing is happening,

there are people just standing about.

You know, they're looking at it. They're knowing it happens

and they're not doing anything about it.

You cannot be a bystander -

that has been a very important part of my politics,

and it can lead you to right judgments

and wrong judgments but it's,

you know, it's not just your job to look after your country,

to look after the people around you, it's also...

You owe some responsibility to the bigger world.

BACKGROUND CHATTER He's coming.

It's June 2001.

Tony Blair has just won a second massive general election victory.

Prime Minister, are you pleased to be back in Downing Street?

How does it feel? How does it feel?

Public opinion loved him, the press loved him,

the unions were quiet.

There were very few constraints on his ability to do what he wanted.

MIXED CHATTER

I was the most senior civil servant available to him,

and inside, I was bearing the briefs for incoming Prime Minister Blair,

and I said to him, "Prime Minister,

"congratulations on this amazing victory.

"You should be very proud of it,

"you've worked for it for years and you've done well.

"You are now at the moment of your greatest moment of power.

"It's going to be up to you to decide

"how do you use your power and what to do with it."

And he said, "Gosh, OK, right."

The point I was making to him is,

"You will never be this strong again," and he took it in.

The new US President George Bush arrives at Chequers

with congratulations for Blair's latest victory.

Blair is determined to build a close relationship with

the most powerful man in the world.

Tell me about Tony's relationship with him

and what you perceived of that. How did it work?

I can remember when we...

Because obviously we knew Bill and Hillary

even before Tony became Prime Minister,

from when he became Leader of the Opposition,

and obviously we have similar views in many ways.

Then, you know, the Republicans come in

with George Bush, who we know nothing about.

And when I didn't know them,

I was very apprehensive about, did we have anything in common?

What I did know, and what Tony made perfectly clear to me, is...

..it was my duty to make sure that we got on.

Over dinner, they discuss the biggest threats to the world.

Bush outlines his plans for a nuclear missile shield

to protect the United States of America...

..though Cherie can't help but point out a flaw in his plan.

I simply expressed the view that it didn't really matter what you had

if you had an individual who was determined,

an individual terrorist, who was determined to blow themselves up.

You know, a nuclear shield, or a...

Cannot really protect you.

Tony... Mr Blair...

Two months on, Blair is in Brighton, preparing to make

a major speech in support of the Euro at the TUC conference.

We're in The Grand Hotel...

..and we're in a room where Tony was writing his speech.

We were quiet. We were just getting on with our own work

because he didn't want any noise, but we had the TV on over there.

Have some very, very sketchy details reaching us here at Sky Central

that happened within the last few moments.

He said, "Turn it off, Alastair."

He said, "Anji, go down and keep an eye on it."

And as you can see,

I don't know if you just saw the plane flying by.

There's another explosion.

Another plane. We just saw a plane flying by...

And we see the second plane go in...

..and our Special Branch jump up out of their chairs

because they know this is not an accident any more.

APPLAUSE

Bill, Congress.

As Bill has just informed you...

..there have been the most terrible, shocking events taking place in

the United States of America.

Delegates, I hope you will understand,

I will now return to London.

They're deciding how we should travel back to London,

and they decided in the end that it would be safer

for us to go on a train,

because if we were travelling in our normal convoy,

that's easily spotted from the air.

And I can remember Tony just sitting there

with that look on his face, that look I know so well,

and just staring out the window.

He had spent that summer reading the Quran.

His mind would have been going at 5,000 miles an hour.

Tony wrote this long, long

list of things we were going to need to do when we got back.

Protection around buildings, airspace...

Dozens and dozens and dozens of things that we had to do.

When to speak to Bush,

say that they'll be feeling like Pearl Harbor,

because they're not used to being attacked like this -

they'll be feeling like that.

Bush will be under enormous pressure to do things very, very quickly,

and will be under pressure to use this

to take out all sorts of different enemies around the world.

OK, nice and calmly out the front now, ladies and gents, please.

Can you tell me why we're being evacuated?

Can we go across the road? Has there been a security alert?

I can't tell you at this time, OK?

RICHARD: We got hold of Blair -

he said, "Well, how are the Americans going to react?"

His immediate reaction, without blinking.

"How do we stop the Americans doing anything stupid immediately?"

I was at Number 10 when the Prime Minister arrived back from Brighton,

and I saw this figure stride very purposefully.

And there was something in the stride and the gait

that said that he recognised the world had changed.

And he is a figure who, I think,

always wanted to change history.

This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world.

We therefore here, in Britain...

..stand shoulder to shoulder

with our American friends in this hour of tragedy...

..and we, like them...

..will not rest until this evil is driven from our world.

The number of people missing in the rubble

of the World Trade Center has jumped to 6,333.

No-one has emerged alive in more than a week.

Mr Blair? Mr Blair? Mr Blair?

Days after 9/11, Blair is in New York,

heading to a service paying respect to British victims.

It's important to recognise 9/11, at the time,

was this dramatic event.

It was obvious America was going to act,

and it was obvious they were going to act with a lot of force.

If we weren't prepared to stand with them at that moment,

and in what they thought was their moment of immense national peril,

then if we ever had a moment of national peril,

why should they stand with us? It wasn't just a moral question,

it was primarily a question of,

it was fundamentally in Britain's national interest

to be with America at this point.

SIREN WAILS I can only imagine what it must have

been like for people in New York,

but my father's generation knew what it was like.

They went through the blitz.

They know what it's like to suffer this type of tragedy and attack...

..and there was one country and one people

that stood by us at that time...

..and that country was America,

and those people were the American people.

And as you stood side by side with us then,

we stand side by side with you now.

As it's established that the mastermind behind the attacks,

Osama Bin Laden, is operating in Afghanistan...

CAMERA CLICKS

..President Bush prepares to reveal his response to the world.

CAMERA CLICKS

The President was going to give an address to the nation

and Prime Minister Blair said, "I'm coming."

And the President said, "Tony, you don't have to do that."

He said, "No, I have to do that. I'm coming."

And then the President said, "Do you want to speak? Do you want...?"

And he said, "No, I Just want to be there."

And he came.

And I told the Prime Minister that that was a moment when

the special relationship really felt special.

And on behalf of the American people,

I thank the world for its outpouring of support.

America will never forget the sounds

of our national anthem playing at Buckingham Palace.

America has no truer friend than Great Britain.

Thank you for coming, friend.

Our war on terror begins with Al-Qaeda...

..but it does not end there.

Either you are with us,

or you are with the terrorists.

APPLAUSE

ANJI: After we'd been to America,

it had been agreed that Tony would go on a sort of world tour,

making sure that everybody was on board for taking on Bin Laden.

Tony Blair was the first European leader

to arrive in Brussels straight from his session in Washington.

The key tonight - a message of unwavering support for America

for whatever she does to strike back.

RICHARD WILSON: He did have a very strong sense

of his own mission in the world,

and he wanted to reconcile his ambition

with what was morally right.

We flew to Moscow, where he went off on his own,

much to our concern -

because we didn't like him going off by himself -

to see Putin, and they played billiards in Putin's dacha.

When we're battling something like

the issue of international terrorism,

but also on many other issues too,

we need Russia there as a partner and a friend.

Blair travels nearly 50,000 miles on more than 30 flights.

He meets more than 50 world leaders,

each time trying to persuade them

to stand shoulder to shoulder with America.

Some Arab countries, they are quite apprehensive.

No western leader is on record to say that

no Arab countries will be targeted.

Well, I think there are two different phases to this action.

The first phase is to deal with Osama bin Laden, his network,

the Al-Qaeda network in Afghanistan, and these camps that are there,

where they're training literally thousands of people

to go out and export terror right round the world,

including, incidentally, in the Middle East.

But then the second phase is to say,

well, what are the aspects

of international terrorism that we need to deal with?

Again, you evaded the question.

You're not telling me whether an Arab country is targeted,

whether it's Iraq, Syria, or even Iran or Sudan in the future.

But what I'm saying to you is that no country is going to be targeted

unless there is evidence that it is doing something wrong.

Well, with 9/11, two things collided.

One was his closeness to America...

..and secondly, this Manichean view of the world

as a struggle between good and evil, and these two hit.

These were two very, very strongly Christian-believing leaders

in a way that I can't think that we've had before.

And the fact that they were going to launch

what is described in the Middle East as a crusade

is a curious coincidence.

Does the fact that George Bush and you are both Christians

make it easier for you to view these conflicts in terms of good and evil?

I don't think so, no. I think that whether you are a Christian

or you're not a Christian, you can try and perceive

what is good and what is evil.

You don't pray together, for example?

No, we don't pray together, Jeremy, no.

Why do you smile?

Because why do you ask me the question?

Because I'm trying to find out how you feel about it, I mean... Yeah.

MUFFLED LAUGHTER Possibly.

To understand Tony Blair's Christianity,

you have to go back to Oxford University in the early 1970s.

Tony came up to Oxford, he immediately made friends...

..and I remember being in his room once

and there was a Bible lying on the table,

and I said, "Oh, are you reading that?"

He said, "Yes, I am."

"Are you going to church?" I think I put it like that -

"Are you going to church?" He said, "Yes."

And I didn't really discuss it with him.

I'd always known that he...

There was a part of him, a spiritual side to Tony.

In his second year at Oxford, Blair is confirmed into the church

after meeting an older student - Peter Thomson, an Australian priest.

PETER: We used to have these marvellous discussions

that would go for hours - you know, cigarettes and coffee.

And we'd get into religion and politics as one.

He could have easily gone into the church.

People often say that he speaks in a kind of messianic way.

How do you feel about that?

He tends to preach a little bit.

I can understand what people are saying about that,

in fact I don't see it that way.

I think he speaks in a more prophetic way rather than

a philosophical or analytical way,

and it's about time politicians started to do that.

Peter was probably the single biggest influence in my life,

I should think,

and I still think about him virtually every day.

That meant that my...

..Christianity and my politics were linked, not in the way -

because whenever you talk about religion and politics,

people can confuse it - not in the sense that

I felt some political mission about Christianity, as it were,

but if you're going to do politics,

do it for a reason that's bigger than you,

that's got something to do with belief.

Have you climbed up to the top? Yes, I have, darling. Mm. Yes.

Meeting Peter really inspired Tony.

Talking to him about Christ as a radical who fought for the poor,

who was engaged with the poor,

who fought for what was right,

I think was very much something that appealed to Tony.

I mean, I think if you are a person of faith,

it does shape your worldview.

The idea of your beliefs being something that resulted in action

was what he brought to my philosophy.

In other words, your religious belief

wasn't something that shut you away from the world,

but something that meant that you had to go out and act.

CAMERA CLICKS, DISTANT APPLAUSE

Within a month of 9/11, Blair sends British troops

to join the American-led war in Afghanistan...

..and lays out his vision for a new world order.

Out of the shadow of this evil should emerge lasting good.

Whatever the dangers of the action we take,

the dangers of inaction are far, far greater.

To the Afghan people, we make this commitment -

we will not walk away as the outside world has done

so many times before there.

And I want to make it a fight for justice, too.

Justice not only to punish the guilty,

but justice to bring those same values of democracy

and freedom to people round the world.

ROBERT HARRIS: There was a sense that he was an instrument of God

for goodness on the Earth...

..that there was a battle between good and evil.

This seems to me a dangerous way for any individual to live their life,

but for a politician, it's quite dangerous

because the world doesn't really divide in that Manichean way.

The war in Afghanistan begins.

Once again, American bombs rained down on

the Taliban front line near Kabul.

The Taliban is quickly toppled, but Bin Laden escapes.

One month on, Blair flies into Afghanistan

under cover of darkness so as to avoid potential missile fire.

MIXED CHATTER

As he greets the new Afghan leader,

Blair is told to stay on the red carpet

as the airport hasn't yet been fully cleared of land mines.

BAND PLAYS MUSIC

CHANTING

Many people were saying this action was a mistake,

would be opposed by people in Afghanistan,

that we would make the situation worse,

that the whole of the region would be destabilised.

Who would have guessed that today we have come

a far greater distance than many might have anticipated?

Thank you very much. Handshake? Well, yes, plenty of that. Yeah.

Is that fine now?

I think, at that stage, we all thought,

"This is great, Tony, you're keeping everyone together."

We were proud of him, and he did the right thing.

And then Blair came out and said,

"We're going to eliminate opium.

"It's the cause of all the heroin addicts on the streets of Britain."

You can't just tell people who,

they grow that because that's the only way to make a living,

that you're just going to eliminate it,

you have to offer them a better life and an alternative way.

And, of course, then he volunteered that Britain would take on Helmand,

the most dangerous place in Afghanistan.

And a lot of our soldiers lost their limbs and so on,

and that was him being brave with other people's bodies in a

not-very-well-thought-out way. So...

..this Blair that was constraining America

and being sensible about post 9/11, about Afghanistan,

then became the sort of gung-ho militarist Blair

that didn't think things through

and made announcements that weren't sensible.

And you began to lose faith.

Well, I mean, it's not faith, you know.

He's not the Pope, you don't say, you know...

But I became critical, in my own head.

He was making mistakes. It was going wrong.

It's April 2002.

Blair arrives at Crawford, President Bush's ranch in Texas,

to discuss the next phase in the war on terror.

Bush has plans to get rid of the Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein.

Only that regime had actually used weapons of mass destruction...

..and the link for the US was, these terrorist groups,

if they managed to get hold of weapons of mass destruction,

then instead of 3,000 people dying, it'll be 30 or 300,000,

and therefore we've got to deal with this issue.

And, you know, there's a lot of...

So much has been written and talked about it,

but it really did start with that.

And for me there were two considerations.

One, was it better to leave Saddam or remove him,

for the security of the world? And number two, be with America or not.

The situation with Saddam Hussein and his weapons

is complex and murky.

It's known that, previously, he'd gassed his own people.

The family living here had fled to their cellar

when they heard the first explosion.

They would have been unaware that the lethal gases

would penetrate every part of their home.

Bush and Blair now fear his weapons of mass destruction

could end up in the hands of terrorists.

He claims he no longer has these weapons, but is he lying?

CAMERAS CLICK

We'll see everybody tomorrow.

Mr President, will the secretary...?

As I said, we'll see you tomorrow. Sounds good.

I know you can't wait and neither can I.

THEY LAUGH OK.

And neither can the Prime Minister for that matter.

How you doing, Ari? Good, sir.

You're looking just like a cowboy.

TOM: President George Bush himself,

Iraq was not just a global issue,

but a personal issue because they'd tried to kill his father.

And George Bush is someone who holds a grudge,

takes things personally.

And President Bush is someone who puts

an awful lot of weight on personal relationships.

The Prime Minister recognised that,

and therefore the best strategy in influencing

President Bush's response

was be seen to be supportive to President Bush.

We used to sit there, and

Tony and George Bush used to go for a walk...

..and you could see Bush's people hated it. They hated it. Why?

Well, because they'd come back an hour later or whatever -

having wandered around the woods -

they'd come back and, you know, President Bush would say,

"So this is where Tony and I have got to,"

and Cheney and Rumsfeld were always horrified probably!

You know, they were just like, "But that wasn't the plan.

"That's not where this is supposed to be."

So an awful lot of politics, in the end,

is about people and relationships,

and ultimately, that's the way that you get movement from leaders.

Good morning.

We appreciate the rain that the Prime Minister brought with him.

SOME LAUGHTER And so do the other farmers

and ranchers in the area, Prime Minister, thanks for bringing it.

My pleasure, George.

The Prime Minister and I, of course, talked about Iraq.

I explained that the policy of my government is

the removal of Saddam

and that all options are on the table.

I can say that...

..any sensible person looking at the position

of Saddam Hussein and asking the question...

..would the region, the world,

and not least the ordinary Iraqi people...

..be better off without the regime of Saddam Hussein?

The only answer anyone could give to that question would be yes.

John Sergeant, ITN.

Yes. John Sergeant, ITN.

Fine lad. Prime Minister,

we've heard the President say what his policy is directly about

Saddam Hussein, which is to remove him -

that is the policy of the American administration.

Could I ask you whether that is now

the policy of the British Government?

Well, John, you know, it has always been our policy

that Iraq would be a better place without Saddam Hussein.

Maybe I should be a little less direct

and be a little more nuanced

and say we support regime change.

It's certainly the policy of my administration, and...

..I think regime change sounds a lot more civil, doesn't it?

Yeah. What Europeans have a problem with

about expanding any war on terror to Iraq is linkage.

They can see a linkage between Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan,

they can't see a direct linkage to Saddam Hussein.

Would you accept that there isn't a direct linkage and how, therefore,

do you make the moral case? First of all, I wouldn't accept that,

but can't they see linkage between somebody who's willing

to murder his own people...

..and the danger of him possessing weapons of mass destruction?

The thing I admire about this Prime Minister is he doesn't need

a poll or a focus group to convince him

the difference between right and wrong.

Thank you all. Thank you. Good job.

So, after Crawford, Blair writes Bush a letter which begins,

"I will be with you..." "I will be with you, whatever."

What does it say? "I will be with you, whatever."

I saw it. I saw the day it went, yeah.

It was not his best moment...

..and...

..I don't know quite to this day why he sent it.

The ambiguity in his relationships,

which he brilliantly used to good effect

as he did over the Good Friday Agreement,

could also lead people to drawing from what he was saying,

what they wanted to hear.

And my anxiety was that this would be seen as

a kind of blank cheque by the United States,

and that the consequence of that

would be that our leverage would be reduced.

You know, people just put far too much emphasis

on the precise wording.

George... Hang on, you're a lawyer - you know the importance of words.

Yeah, I know, of course, the importance of words...

Didn't that commit you to a slippery slope that you couldn't get off?

No, of course not.

I was actually trying to persuade the Americans

to do something different, right?

I wanted us to go through a UN process,

I wanted to try and rally the world as far as possible.

I thought it was possible that we might get Saddam

to agree to the conditions that we wanted,

and I knew it was important...

..that President Bush felt I was with him on the essential issue.

But would there have been anything that the Americans had proposed

or even done that would have made you withdraw that support?

Well, if they hadn't gone through the UN process

it would have been extremely difficult for us, but they did.

Was that a commitment that we were going to do

whatever the Americans wanted? Of course not.

But I was going to be with them in dealing with Saddam

because I believed that was necessary and I still do.

Blair persuades Bush not to invade Iraq straight away...

On behalf of the General Assembly,

I have the honour to welcome to the United Nations, Mr George W Bush.

APPLAUSE

..but to use the UN to give Saddam an ultimatum -

give up any weapons of mass destruction you have

and let inspectors in to look for them,

or face the consequences.

We've accomplished much in the last year,

in Afghanistan and beyond.

We have much yet to do in Afghanistan and beyond.

Back home, Blair is under growing pressure

to show that Iraq is an imminent threat to the world.

Can you, here, today, offer one piece of evidence

that action is necessary?

Well, one piece of evidence is that they're in breach of...

..23 of the demands that the UN has made

in respect of their weapons -

chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

The Americans, in raising this issue, are not wrong,

and the reason why our place is beside them

is not because of some misplaced allegiance

or because of blind loyalty,

it's because it's the right thing to do.

RICHARD: His commitment to America and to being with America

was much stronger than I had understood,

and I went to see him...

..and I said to him,

"I am very worried about what you're doing on Iraq.

"My advice to you

"is you should only go into Iraq if you have evidence

"of the weapons, and support of the United Nations."

"Oh, Richard," he said,

"Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything stupid."

"We can buy off the Russians, they need money.

"The Germans will be onside.

"The French will be difficult at the last minute,

"but they'll give in. It'll be all right."

I think he wanted to carry his dream further in Iraq.

I think he thought he would end up, you know,

with a very popular invasion, the fall of a much-hated tyrant...

..people throwing flowers over the troops.

He could go back to the issue which still was absolutely in his mind,

and which he wanted, which was membership of the Euro,

that we would enter the Euro,

we would have a bridge across the Atlantic to Bush,

who'd be grateful to him,

and he'd be in a very powerful position in the world.

That was the ambition, that was the dream, that was the inner vision.

Blair is seeing MI6 intelligence that suggests

that Saddam Hussein does have weapons of mass destruction.

Blair now gets his Director of Communications,

Alastair Campbell, to go to MI6 and the spies

to help them present their evidence.

What about the criticism, though,

that it was presented with a certainty that it didn't warrant?

Well, listen, I understand

lots of people made that criticism.

What some people in the intelligence community will say

is that you can never be certain, but I would argue

there was an ultra-caution

to the whole thing.

To have the chief spin doctor of a government helping to edit

and tinker with an intelligence dossier,

I think it's just beyond the pale.

The whole Blairite obsession with spin,

of which Alastair Campbell was the prima donna,

led to a dossier that was false, hyped up and inaccurate.

Yes, you can set it against what's followed,

and the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction programme,

and say, "Well, that was bullshit,"

but based upon the intelligence

and the assessment of intelligence that was going into that document,

I certainly don't accept the charge of deception,

and I don't accept even that we exaggerated.

Long delayed, much anticipated,

the dossier had journalists sprinting to deliver its message -

Iraq's weapons threaten the world's stability.

His missiles could hit Cyprus.

An attack could be 45 minutes away.

CLARE: I think he made up his mind early on

that he was going with America

and it was a question of how to manipulate his way through.

I'm sure he thought he was doing it for a good cause...

..but, you know, human frailty says we can all do that -

convince ourselves that we did it for the right reasons.

Are we going to war, Prime Minister?

TOM: We didn't have black-and-white evidence to present to the public...

..so what we had to present was our judgment.

Not just the material contained in the dossier,

but also the material he'd seen over years.

But he himself said that his views

were based on a conviction,

a belief that that was the case.

Ark Royal heads the biggest task force

deployed since the Falklands War.

It's January 2003,

and British forces are headed to the Middle East.

Bit worried and nervous about my dad and hope he's gonna be all right.

In the last two months,

UN inspectors have found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq...

..but Blair is convinced Saddam Hussein

is giving them the run-around...

..and now Blair's facing growing opposition to the prospect of war.

I was on a speaking tour of Muslim countries

about why we all needed to sort of come together.

The reaction I got was pretty darn strong.

People questioned our motives.

I came back,

we sat outside on the terrace at Number 10,

and I said, "Look, you know, I'm worried here that the Arab world,

"the Muslim world, will feel that this is some sort of fresh

"sort of crusaders that we're embarking on here.

"You know, there could be, if we played it wrongly,

"quite a backlash."

He was not really convinced -

said I'd been spending far too long with the wrong people.

Sometimes with Tony...

..he thinks that leadership is so important

and being decisive is so important

that he sometimes becomes

a little tin-eared, you know, to what other people are saying.

You know, "Careful here." "Think of that."

"Bring this into the balance a bit more."

And that's what I felt at the time.

CAR HORN BEEPS

Marching through the streets of London...

WHISTLE PEEPS, CHANTING ..sending a message to Tony Blair

and George W Bush - "Not in my name."

ALL: Don't attack. Don't attack Iraq.

Don't attack. Don't attack Iraq.

When you think of Tony Blair,

what words spring to mind?

I think he's a man in denial, actually.

On the day of the march...

..it was quite emotional.

I thought, "Wow, we've mobilised these people.

"Can the political establishment ignore this?"

They just felt so angry that their country was going to war

without their approval.

CHANTING AND CHEERING

It's the scale of the protest that is unprecedented -

a million people.

It's the biggest rally ever on British soil.

Thousands more deaths in Iraq will set off

a spiral of conflict, of hate, of misery, of desperation,

that will fuel the wars, the conflict, the terrorism,

the depression, and the misery of future generations.

CHEERING

CHERIE: You could hear the protests in 10 Downing Street.

PROTESTORS: Don't attack. Don't attack Iraq.

Don't attack. Don't attack Iraq.

It was a very strange time.

I think it was hard for my children to come in every day,

and people were standing there calling their father

a murderer and a liar.

I don't know what I would have felt if I was...

..out there rather than in 10 Downing Street,

but what I did know was that when Tony said,

as he absolutely believed,

that Saddam Hussein had these weapons of mass destruction,

he told me that was the case.

I absolutely know that that's what he thought was true.

WHISTLES PEEP

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: The morning of the big protests,

we were in Scotland.

He said that morning he'd not slept.

He said that he was feeling...

..worried. APPLAUSE

I think he felt frustrated.

A lot of the things that Saddam Hussein had done in the past

were just sort of being pushed aside.

Not least his use of chemical weapons,

not least the torture chambers, not least the executions -

all the stuff that he did.

That didn't really have a big enough space within the public debate.

And I do remember meetings that he had with Iraqis

who were really pushing him,

saying, "I know how difficult it is, you've got to keep going.

"What we have lived with is an abomination."

Ridding the world of Saddam would be an act of humanity.

It is leaving him there that is inhumane.

Did anything, though, give you pause for thought? Yeah!

A million people on the streets, Nelson Mandela...

Yeah, of course! All of... But you see, in the end, the problem,

and it's one of the things you learn about leaders and leadership,

is that ultimately you sit in the seat,

you've got to take the decision,

and, you know, you've got to stand by it.

WHISTLES PEEP, HORNS BEEP

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: How did it affect him?

I think it made him more conscious...

..of the need to keep trying to explain why he was doing it.

Did it ever cause him to doubt the doing of it?

Not that I saw. Not that I saw.

Blair doesn't waver,

but he agrees with his team to embark on a new media strategy.

Well, I mean the masochism strategy -

I would say that was the period when he was

most fed up with the team,

because we were sending him forth

to see, largely, kind of, mothers of service people

who'd lost their lives or lost their limbs or whatever,

and it was grim.

And it was really grim, but we felt he had to talk to them.

He had to be seen to talk to them.

You said that you were really keen to go down the UN route,

but quite clearly, you don't give a stuff.

We're going to go to war anyway, that's what we all feel.

Well, why did I go through the United Nations last year, then?

I don't know, a fig leaf perhaps. Well, how is it a fig leaf?

I've got to get the agreement of those other countries.

But you're not going to now, are you? You're going to do it anyway.

No, I'm not saying I'm going to do it anyway.

You're still prepared to risk all the good work that you've done

on this one issue.

Well, Debra... In the days before the invasion,

he's questioned by a mother whose son was killed on 9/11.

I lost my only child

in the World Trade Center.

Now, for the last 18 months, my pain has been unbearable.

You are a man that has come across as a genuine man,

a family-orientated man,

a man who's not only a Christian, but a church-going Christian.

Now, to me, Mr Blair, what you're going to do -

and I'm sure you're going to it, you and Mr Bush -

you're going to go and now bomb Iraq?

You don't know how many people like me that's going to suffer so much.

How many innocent victims are you going to kill?

And how many people are

going to suffer like I've suffered? APPLAUSE

But on the... No, Mr Blair, don't do it.

I'm doing it because I think it's the right thing to do,

and I hope, even at this stage, we can avoid conflict, actually.

But if this goes badly, you're finished, really, aren't you?

Well, let's wait and see, Trevor, shall we, about that?

As to whether it goes badly. Thank you. Thank you.

While the diplomats discuss deadlines,

the American and British troops are ready and waiting for war.

With America ready to attack, Blair is on a mission.

He wants world leaders to sign another UN resolution,

giving a clearer authorisation for war.

I remember talking to President Mubarak at the time.

He said, "I trained as an air force pilot in Baghdad,

"I know what the Iraqis are like,

"and your invasion of Iraq will create not one,

"but 100 Bin Ladens."

What surprised me even more was my American counterpart,

who was a good friend, obviously, David Welch,

saying to me very privately,

"John, your service and our services

"have been looking for this WMD for the last ten years.

"The Russians and the French - we've all been looking for it

"and we haven't found it. Maybe there isn't any."

Everyone agrees Saddam is a threat,

everyone agrees that he must be disarmed,

otherwise he poses a real danger...

But it soon becomes clear that Jacques Chirac,

the French President, is a problem.

Privately, he had given Blair some personal advice.

He said, "If you go to war in Iraq, in the future

"you will not be able to look your baby son Leo in the eye."

With Chirac against, the UN resolution cannot pass...

..so Blair has to decide

whether to go ahead with America or change course.

Before taking the decision, he has a secret meeting

with an old friend at his country retreat, Chequers.

I felt terrible for him because...

..he had established a good relationship with Bush.

He realised that he couldn't get what he tried to do,

which is a brief extension of the deadline...

..so that all the inspections could be completed.

The Bush administration was ready to go to war

and thought it was important,

and the rest of the world disagreed with them -

almost everybody did.

So when you're caught in the middle...

..and you want to maintain your unique relationship

with the United States,

and you want to support European unity, not take it apart...

..you wind up...

..taking the best of two unattractive alternatives.

I didn't believe it was...

..critical to our position in the world,

our credibility in the war on terror,

all that kind of stuff - I didn't believe that.

So he was in a pickle, and...

..he did what he thought was right...

..and I think he still thinks he did the right thing.

Do you?

I don't know what I would have done under the circumstances

if I'd been Prime Minister of the UK.

SALLY: I think he was incredibly disappointed

because he really had fought for a second resolution,

but in the end, he still felt he had to take the decision.

And he said, "I am going to press ahead with this.

"But if you're not... You, Sally, you and any number of people

"don't think that's right and don't, you know, don't want to do that,

"I would completely understand that."

CHERIE: So many decisions as Prime Minister are 50/50.

You have to choose.

But once Tony has chosen, he's...

..very skilled at making people think that

obviously it was never 50/50 - that was the obvious choice...

..and it stems from his strength of character and his belief in himself.

Is there sometimes, though, a danger of overconfidence?

I'm a great believer in confidence.

Blair now stakes everything on a vote on the war in parliament.

If he loses, he'll resign.

JEREMY: We had the final meeting of those of us who were

strongly opposed to military action in Iraq.

I said, "Very short, very simple, Tony...

"..why are we doing this?"

"Jeremy, understand this -

"we're doing this because it's the right thing to do."

And then left the room.

I think he invested so much in it.

There'd been such a build-up of troops in the area,

he felt, at that point, he couldn't just back off.

I think he'd got himself into a messianic trench.

He was going to do it.

CHANTING

The stakes could barely be higher.

The Prime Minister warning his party he will not want to lead it

if they do not back the war.

There was the concern that maybe Blair's government would go down.

The calls at that point with the President

became about whether or not it was worth it

for Prime Minister Blair to take a vote

and possibly collapse his government,

or would there be some other way for Britain to be involved?

PROTESTORS CHANT

CHERIE: He was very conscious that this could mean

that he would no longer be Prime Minister...

..and that it would mean a huge disruption for our family.

And so he did sit down the three oldest ones,

who had been affected at school - because they're teenagers by now -

and obviously in our home -

because they were aware of the debate that was going on -

that we might all have to move out by the end of the week

if he lost the vote.

The decision you made to join them in war in Iraq -

did you have any doubts about it?

Look, I knew it was gonna be immensely difficult, and...

..that's why I tried to avoid it for a long time.

Even up until the very last minute,

I was trying to find a way that we could maybe secure

the removal of Saddam a different way -

that you could organise it differently, do it differently -

but in the end it was impossible

and so you come to the crunch point and it's this or it's that,

you've got to decide where you stand, and that's where I stood.

Blair is about to face the biggest parliamentary vote of his life.

We now come to the main business - the Prime Minister.

ALL: Hear, hear!

This is a tough choice indeed -

to stand British troops down now and turn back,

or to hold firm to the course that we have set,

and I believe passionately we must hold firm to that course.

MIXED CHATTER

Confidence is the key to prosperity,

and insecurity spreads like contagion.

The key today is stability and order,

the threat is chaos and disorder.

I've written quite a lot of novels about prime ministers and wartime.

British prime ministers traditionally tried

to keep us out of wars.

This is the only time that I can think of that we've had

a very articulate former lawyer advocating a war,

trying, in effect, to sell it to the House of Commons,

his party and the country.

This is extraordinary and unprecedented.

And all the talents one observed in Tony Blair that one warmed to

and admired were turned into, what seems to me,

to have been a much darker purpose.

I beg to move the motion.

MIXED YELLING

Order!

Order.

Blair wins,

and in less than 36 hours, the war will begin.

Robert Harris told us that Iraq was the only time he could think of

that a British Prime Minister had persuaded

the House of Commons to go to war.

What do you think about that?

Well, it hadn't always been the tradition

that you put these things to a vote in the House of Commons, but we did.

But it was... The essence is that it was a war of choice,

not of necessity. Well, that's a matter of opinion.

You know, it depends on what you think is necessary at the time.

I mean, all wars are wars of choice.

In a sense, you can say, "I choose to do it,"

"I choose not to do it," but...

Well, Churchill didn't have a choice.

Well, there would have been people at the time who said he did,

but fortunately, he made the right choice.

BILL: After he did it,

you can't fool around with this.

If you send troops into harm's way, you got to win.

And so a lot of people were offended that he seemed

so determined during the course of the Iraq conflict,

but if you're going to do something like that, you have to try to win.

LOUD BANG

Blair and Bush broadcast directly to the Iraqi people.

This is George W Bush. At this moment,

the regime of Saddam Hussein is being removed from power,

and the future of your country

will soon belong to you.

LOUD RUMBLE

Our enemy is Saddam and his regime, not the Iraqi people.

Our forces are friends...

..and liberators of the Iraqi people, not your conquerors.

So, it is in the spirit of friendship...

..and goodwill that we now offer our help.

Thank you.

JOHN: I was in Cairo and Number 10 called me

and said, "We need someone on the ground in Baghdad.

"The Prime Minister's concerned about level of grip on the ground.

"Could you please go there?"

I arrived - it was complete disorder.

YELLING AND CHEERING

Saddam is swiftly removed from power...

..but in Baghdad, crime and looting become widespread.

Revenge attacks between Iraqis are common.

GUNFIRE

GUNFIRE

It was total chaos.

No real planning had gone into the aftermath.

The Americans were sitting, hunkered down in their tanks

and armoured vehicles

with reflective sunglasses and heavy helmets on

with no engagement with the Iraqi people at all.

They just assumed that once American forces had toppled Saddam,

then the Iraqi exiles would come in,

take over and everything would be hunky-dory.

Well, it turned out to be completely different from that.

GUNFIRE

Soon after Saddam is removed from power,

Blair arrives in the Iraqi city of Basra,

where British troops are in control.

The streets of Basra may be filled with rubbish,

but it's in the water that the real problem lies.

Doctors here have identified the symptoms of cholera

in at least 17 people.

WOMAN SPEAKS ARABIC

# Twinkle, twinkle, little star

# How I wonder what you are

# Up above the world so high

# Like a diamond in the sky. #

CHEERING AND APPLAUSE

MIXED CHATTER

Obviously, Blair wanted to come to Iraq

because he'd invested so much in it.

Thank you! You OK? Yeah?

Of course, Basra was not Baghdad -

it was in much better shape than Baghdad was.

CHILDREN CHANT AND CLAP

But the military briefings we had at the time were worrying

because there was a clear rise of violence,

even in Basra, let alone in the rest of the country.

We were trying to get some police training going,

which would take, sort of, six months to get

thousands of policemen back on the streets again,

and you get a sense of a rising panic on the side of Tony Blair -

we couldn't wait six months for thousands of police,

we needed them there in six days!

And that made him realise just the sheer scale of

the task that he'd taken on

and that the Americans were making a bit of a hash of.

The reconstruction was of a scale and a level of difficulty

which was simply unprecedented.

It's clear British troops will be needed in Iraq for the long haul.

Before flying back, Blair gives them a speech...

This is for me, I should think, is it?

..at one of Saddam's old palaces.

I know there are a lot of disagreements in the country

about the wisdom of my decision.

I honestly believe that when people look back on this conflict,

they will see this as one of the defining moments of our century

and you did it.

It was your courage and your professionalism that did it.

And thank you.

YELLING

An insurgency against the occupation in Iraq

turns into a civil war and lengthy sectarian conflicts.

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are killed,

and 136 British service personnel.

YELLING AND CHANTING

From the ashes of Al-Qaeda rose ISIS...

SHOUTING

..and no weapons of mass destruction were ever found.

A shaky democracy now holds in Iraq,

and Tony Blair has always publicly denied

that his decision to invade Iraq was a mistake.

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: I think he'll go to his grave

genuinely thinking it was the right thing to do.

Do you?

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Yeah. Why the no?

You wouldn't be human if you didn't think...

Look, it didn't work out as planned - got to accept that.

TOM: We should be criticised for the mistakes we did make,

and we did make mistakes.

We didn't know Iraq...

..we didn't understand the dynamics between

Sunnis and Shias in Iraq,

didn't quite understand the depth

of the dysfunctionality in the George Bush presidency.

JOHN: It had seriously damaged

the reputation of Britain across the region.

It was a mistake that we went into Iraq in the first place.

SHOUTING

He was personally, politically, mentally,

one of the best-equipped people we've had as Prime Minister

of the last 70 years,

but his passion and his commitment to the alliance with the Americans

led him down a road in Iraq where,

basically, he overreached, we as a country overreached,

and strategically, it has not been a success.

What advice would you give me as to what question to ask him on Iraq?

I would focus on telling him the truth,

because he finds it very hard to dodge the truth.

And say to him, "Prime Minister,

"I know you think you've done well on Iraq,

"and you did the right thing, and you had no choice,

"but the evidence is against you - do you accept that?"

And he'll say, "No, no, Michael, the evidence is not so.

"There are all sorts of other factors that came into play

"which I could not possibly have known about,

"and actually, on the basis of the evidence we had,

"I did the right thing." That's the sort of language he'll use.

You won't get anywhere.

Do you ever feel that, in the end,

Iraq was the biggest mistake of your career?

Look, most people would say that

Iraq was the biggest mistake in my career, of course,

and it will always be put,

although history goes on a long time, right?

And I often say to people, you know,

"If you actually look at Iraq today...

"..would it be better if Saddam and his two sons

"had still remained in power?"

People sometimes want to have this debate with me over and over again

until I finally say, "No, I tell you what -

"I shouldn't have gone with America,

"I should have taken a different decision

"and I'm really sorry," right?

I can be sorry about lots of things in relation to it

but there's no point in carrying on trying to get me to see...

..you know, a different point of view from the one I had at the time,

or for me to accept this was the only thing we did.

Be honest with me, what would you say are your flaws -

or were your flaws - as Prime Minister?

You know, I sometimes think that's for other people to judge, really.

I mean, I...

History will judge you...

..but, sometime in the deep of night,

you might think about such things.

You might, but on the other hand, you might decide that

what you think about deep in the middle of the night

is not what you want to start declaring on camera...

..which would be very wise for a politician.

Why not? You're no longer a politician.

You're always a politician.

If people want the honest truth...

..don't ask a political leader to go

and make a judgment about themselves,

because you're going to get a version of it, OK?

I mean, let's just be honest about it.

Whereas, frankly, it's going to be a political answer.

I'm being honest, right?

That's what it's going be, so make your own judgment.

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