Bill Clinton turned down tea with the Queen: Five things we learned from newly declassified papers

Published

3 years ago

July 20, 2021

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Bill Clinton turned down an invitation to have tea with the Queen because he “wanted to be a tourist” in London, newly released official papers show.

The US president was visiting the UK in 1997 – four weeks after Tony Blair came to power – and said he wanted to hit the shops and eat Indian food.

Previously classified documents show Mr Clinton, Mr Blair and their wives Hillary and Cherie ended up dining at a French restaurant in London Bridge – complete with beer and fine wine.

Memos between Whitehall aides show Mr Clinton was invited to Buckingham Palace to 5pm tea.

But a letter written by Downing Street private secretary Philip Barton said: “The Americans said that the president and Mrs Clinton were very grateful for HM The Queen’s invitation to tea at the palace, but would wish to decline politely.”

The restaurant bill racked up by the Blairs and Clintons is also among the series of files released by the National Archives in Kew, dating back to Mr Blair’s first few months in government.

They spent a total of £298.86 at Le Pont de La Tour – and the bill featured £20 wild salmon, £19.50 grilled sole, £18 halibut, a £2.95 Budvar beer, and a bottle of Mas de Duamas 1995 wine priced at £34.75.

Blair and Brown tensions

The latest tranche of official papers from 1997 also shows that Mr Blair’s aides wanted Gordon Brown‘s spin doctor “out on his ear” amid fears that unauthorised briefings were damaging the new Labour government.

Files suggest officials struggled to manage tensions between the administration’s two most dominant figures right from their early days in office.

Peter Mandelson – one of Mr Blair’s ministers – repeatedly complained about the actions of Charles Whelan, who served as Mr Brown’s press secretary.

Mr Whelan was accused of planting a series of hostile stories about Mr Mandelson that were making the government “look foolish, and worse”.

A frank note written to Mr Blair also suggested that Mr Brown was using his chairmanship of cabinet committees to “bludgeon through” his own policies.

Scottish independence worries

The now-unclassified documents from 1997 also show that Downing Street advisers had conceded that Scotland could have a referendum on “anything it wants” without Westminster’s consent.

Even back then, key aides to the prime minister said “a couple of very worried Scottish MPs” were concerned about “the slippery slope to independence”.

Scotland voted in favour of devolution in September 1997, with Labour pledging that the country would be able to set up its own parliament responsible for education, health, transport and other matters.

It was not until 2014 that an independence referendum was held, with 55% voting against proposals for Scotland to break away from the rest of the UK.

Blair’s Irish famine message ‘written by aides’

The documents also reveal that Mr Blair’s headline-grabbing admission that the British government was culpable for the Irish Famine was actually hastily ghost-written by his aides.

At the 150th anniversary commemoration in Cork, a message was read on the prime minister’s behalf that said: “That one million people should have died in what was then part of the richest and most powerful nation in the world is something that still causes pain as we reflect on it today.

“Those who governed in London at the time failed their people through standing by while a crop failure turned into a massive human tragedy.”

A request from remarks from Mr Blair was made at the last minute, and they were approved by his private secretary because the prime minister was “not around at the time”.

Millennium Dome could have been tribute to Diana

Records also reveal that plans had been considered to make the Millennium Dome a tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales – and also faced the prospect of being scrapped altogether.

According to the PM’s director of communications Alastair Campbell, a member of the Dome’s board had proposed that the “Millennium project be completely refashioned, the site extended, to accommodate, for example, a hospital, businesses, charities, private residences, and the whole thing named ‘the Princess Diana Centre’.”

Separately, one of Mr Blair’s aides said: “Diana’s death could give us a semi-plausible excuse to cancel.”

The attraction cost £758m and opened on 31 December 1999, but it only drew 6.5 million visitors in 2000 – far fewer than the 12 million that had been budgeted for.

It was later closed and replaced with The O2, which has hosted concerts, sporting events and other entertainment since 2007.

Politics

UK considered using Iraq to process asylum seekers in Rwanda-type deal, leaked documents show

Published

3 hours ago

May 6, 2024

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UK considered using Iraq to process asylum seekers in Rwanda-type deal, leaked documents show

The government at one point considered using Iraq to process asylum seekers – like the Rwanda scheme – according to documents seen by Sky News.

This could have seen people sent from the UK to a country the government advises against all travel to.

The two countries already have a returns agreement – but only for people that are from Iraq.

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According to leaked correspondence between high-ranking officials, the Iraqi returns commitments were made with a “request for discretion” and no publicity.

The country was willing to move forward but did not want a formal or public agreement.

The current travel advice to Iraq on the Foreign Office website simply advises against “all travel to parts of Iraq”. However, according to the document, negotiations were fairly advanced and described in one table as “good recent progress with Iraq”.

Other government aims included enhancing cooperation with the Iranian Embassy in order to enhance returns arrangements for migrants and potential asylum seekers.

Returns agreements are also in the works for Eritrea and Ethiopia, according to documents about work undertaken by the Home Office and Foreign Office that relates to countries with the highest number of nationals arriving to the UK by small boats.

In a tranche of internal government documents seen by Sky News, even from the earliest stage of the Rwanda policy, Downing Street advisers knew there were serious problems with their proposals.

There are even private admissions that many people arriving here on small boats did so without the assistance of criminal gangs – despite their communications strategy.

Comparisons were also made to Australia’s response – to what Downing Street officials understood to be a comparable “smaller problem” than in the UK and admitted it had cost billions of Australian dollars in order for their returns processes to be fully operational.

In one document submitted to the Home Office, some of the highest-ranking officials at the time wrote that their guidance was to be “prepared to pay over the odds” to get the policy up and running. And that the initial offer from Rwanda was a “modest sum”.

Whitehall’s official spending watchdog has priced the cost of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda at £1.8m per person for the first 300 people the government deports to Kigali.

It also disclosed that since April 2022 the Home Office has paid £220m into Rwanda’s economic transformation and integration fund, which is designed to support economic growth in Rwanda, and will continue to make payments to cover asylum processing and operational costs for individuals relocated to Rwanda.

It will also pay further amounts of £50m over the next year and an additional £50m the following year.

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A government source said: “The Home Office is spending millions every day accommodating migrants in hotels – that’s not right or fair. We’re taking action to put an end to this costly and dangerous cycle. Doing nothing is not a free option – we must act if we want to stop the boats and save lives.

“The UK is continuing to work with a range of international partners to tackle global illegal migration challenges. Our Rwanda partnership is a pioneering response to the global challenge of illegal migration, and we will get flights off the ground to Rwanda in the next nine to eleven weeks.”

Politics

Bitfinex database breach ‘seems fake,’ says CTO

Published

1 day ago

May 5, 2024

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<div>Bitfinex database breach 'seems fake,' says CTO</div>

Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino explained that if the hacking group was telling the truth, they would have asked for a ransom, but he “couldn’t find any request.”

Politics

Labour taking ‘Tory crown jewel’ feels like a momentum shift

Published

1 day ago

May 5, 2024

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Labour taking 'Tory crown jewel' feels like a momentum shift

It was a wafer-thin victory, but a huge win.

The symbolism of Labour taking the West Midlands mayor, a jewel in the Tory crown, could be felt in the room as Labour activists gathered in Birmingham to celebrate the win with their new mayor Richard Parker and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.

There are moments on election journeys when the momentum shifts – and this win felt like one of them.

“We humbly asked [the voters] to put their trust and confidence in a changed Labour Party and they did. And that is a significant piece of political history that we’ve made here today,” said Sir Keir at his victory rally.

“So the message out of these elections, the last now the last stop before we go into that general election, is that the country wants change.

“I hope the prime minister is listening and gives the opportunity to the country to vote as a whole in a general election as soon as possible.”

This win gave them the boost that was missing when they won the Blackpool South by-election on a massive 26-point swing, but then failed to pick up the hundreds of council seats they were chasing.

This win, on just 1,508 votes or 0.25 per cent of the vote, was a body blow for a Conservative party that believed they could just about cling on. Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, is now the last Tory standing.

For Labour, then a moment to bookmark.

Just as Boris Johnson’s Hartlepool by-election win in 2021 was a low point for Sir Keir – he told me this week that he considered resigning over the loss because he thought it showed he was the barrier to Labour’s recovery – this too will feel devastating not just for Andy Street but for the PM too.

Labour has beaten him in a street fight. He’s bloodied with Sir Keir now emboldened.

“This was the one result we really needed,” said one senior Labour figure. “It’s been our top focus for the past week and symbolically a very important win.”

And Labour needed the boost, because, as Professor Michael Thrasher pointed out in his Sky News’ national vote share projection calculated from the local election results, Sir Keir was not picking up the sort of vote share that Tony Blair was winning in the run-up to the 1997 Labour landslide.

His latest calculation of a 35% vote share for Labour and 26% for the Tories, put Sir Keir winning a general election but short of a majority.

What the West Midlands mayoral win did for Sir Keir was to give him a clear narrative that he is coming for the Tories and will do what he needs to take them down.

It raises inevitable questions about what is next for Rishi Sunak. The prime minister had nowhere to go today, not one win to celebrate. The worst performance in council elections in 40 years, was already pretty much as bad as it gets before the loss of Andy Street. The former Conservative mayor was magnanimous towards the prime minister, saying the loss was his alone.

But colleagues will not be so generous. One former cabinet minister said this loss was “devastating”. “We’re done and there’s no appetite to move against him,” said the senior MP. Many Tories tell me they are now resigned to defeat and believe Mr Sunak and his team needed to own it, rather than the rest of the party.

The coming days might be bumpy, the mood will be stony. But Tories tell me not much will actually change for them.

For Sir Keir, he now needs to sell not the changed Labour Party, but his vision for changing the country. The West Mids mayor’s win was dazzling, but it could have so easily gone the other way. And as Mr Sunak fights to survive, Labour still has to fight hard to win.