Читать книгу 30 Days: A Month at the Heart of Blair’s War - Peter Stothard - Страница 7

Morning headlines … Chirac pledges to veto UN war resolution ‘whatever the circumstances’ … Russia ready to back French … UN begins withdrawal from demilitarised zone between Kuwait and Iraq …

Tonight Tony Blair goes to Buckingham Palace to see the Queen. He has to cancel Her Majesty’s trip to Belgium next week. Or rather, to put it in the form preferred by protocol, Her Majesty has to postpone her visit to Belgium. This is considered ‘sad for poor Louis Michel’, President Chirac’s sanctimonious supporter in the Belgian Foreign Ministry, but this is a sadness that the Blair team enjoys.

The Queen has had a good day up until now. She has held her first investiture for new Knights Bachelor, new Companions of the Bath and other Most Excellent Orders since twisting her knee earlier this year. While Blair’s advisers worry that their domestic agenda is swamped by Iraq, the Queen’s equerries are quite pleased that Saddam will take attention away from the imminent report into rape, corruption and general management chaos in the household of the Prince of Wales.

Behind the red ropes of the receiving lines, there are only a few signs of war. The head of armed forces’ dentistry is here. He tells fellow recipients that while the Prime Minister works ‘flat out’ for the Second Resolution, his own units are working flat out to fill soldiers’ teeth before battle begins. Apparently, the urge for a pre-fight check-up is contagious when troops are hanging around with nothing much to do.

The Admiral in charge of naval supply is to be promoted in the Order of the Bath. He has a mildly distracted look.

Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Mexico is here to receive the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George. Mexico is a member of the United Nations Security Council. But the Ambassador, it seems, can be spared for a trip to the Palace.

So, for a few hours, can Britain’s senior RAF man, the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Anthony Bagnall, who is to be made a Knight Grand Cross in the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. He is the first to receive his new sash and gong, and then waits while the Queen rewards more than a hundred other assorted policemen, hospital workers, a newspaperman, a pageant-master and a North Yorkshire folk dancer. The war cannot be quite here yet. Only a violin-maker eschews the approved grey ‘morning dress’ for the chance to advertise his profession on his tie.

When Tony Blair’s green Daimler passes through the Palace gates tonight, he can tell the Queen all that he knows of when her forces are likely to be in action. She is the only person in the country to whom he can talk of war in the absolute certainty that the words will not be repeated outside, half understood, garbled, given ‘off the record’ to a friendly journalist and end up back at Downing Street in Alastair Campbell’s in-tray.