In 2011, the Hampstead theatre put on an autobiographical play about a marriage strained by lies, betrayal and, as the exasperated wife says, the presence of ‘three of us’ in the relationship. The play was Loyalty by the journalist Sarah Helm, the third person was Tony Blair and the principal male character was a barely disguised Jonathan Powell, her husband and Blair’s chief of staff. The lies are about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and the betrayal occurs when the Powell character goes along with the war despite not ‘really’ believing in it, siding with Blair over his partner.
Two decades on, Powell is Keir Starmer’s national security adviser and may have more influence over foreign policy than anyone in government after the Prime Minister himself. He is one of the few senior officials responsible for the Iraq war who has managed a return to the corridors – and the sofas – of power. The historical record shows that he had doubts about Iraq’s WMDs, but thought Saddam Hussein had to go ‘because he was a ruthless dictator suppressing his people’. This was, as Blair named it, ‘liberal interventionism’, which called for the West to ‘get actively involved in other people’s conflicts’. Though Powell is more ‘grizzled’, as one old colleague puts it, he has the same instincts today. After Iraq, and Afghanistan, he still wants to save the world.
Powell came to Blair’s Downing Street through a series of chance encounters. He started off working at the BBC and Granada TV, but – by his own account – his parents thought journalism wasn’t a proper job and he applied to join the Foreign Office (it had a better pension).
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