Former Northern Ireland secretary Peter Mandelson thought prime minister Tony Blair "too prone" at times to buy "the line" from Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.
And during one tense negotiation following the first suspension of the Northern Ireland executive, Mandelson rebuked his boss in front of officials, telling him: "Do not use your Sinn Féin methods just because you've been absorbing them all day."
The exchange is revealed in Alastair Campbell's diaries, The Blair Years, in an entry recording Mandelson's irritation at being excluded from key meetings between Blair and the Northern Ireland parties. For Tuesday, May 2nd, 2000, Campbell records: "Peter M was working out of my office most of the day because he was not at the Northern Ireland meetings and very pissed off not to be so.
He felt Number 10 and Jonathan [Powell - Blair's chief of staff] in particular were not setting meetings up well, and also that TB was too prone to buying the line from Adams. There was a little scene at the end of the day when, in front of officials, TB referred to 'demilitarisation'. Peter M said 'We call it normalisation. Do not use your Sinn Fein methods just because you've been absorbing them all day'. Peter was clearly feeling a bit isolated and undermined."
The book also reveals the early tension with Dublin over attempts to resolve the issue of IRA weapons decommissioning in parallel with the talks leading eventually to the Belfast Agreement. On July 8th, 1997, lunch at an "away day" at Chequers was interrupted by a call with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, primarily about that year's Orange Order parade at Drumcree. Campbell records: "The big disagreement with BA was still decommissioning. Bertie did not think Mitchell [Independent chairman of the talks process] meant decommissioning during talks. TB did."
During the negotiations in the week of Good Friday 1998, Campbell recalls Ahern returning to Stormont after attending his mother's funeral only to take "a whole load of grief" from the Ulster Unionists. "They talked to him, and about him, with something close to contempt." After the negotiation was concluded, Campbell also detected a little bit of anger from Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness directed at the Taoiseach, adding: "But BA was brilliant at taking flak from the lot of them."
On constitutional change in the Republic, Paddy Teahon [then senior adviser to the Taoiseach] at one point said Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble "was asking for the Holy Trinity to be replaced by the Almighty God in the Irish Constitution". And at the mid-way point in that week's negotiation, the Taoiseach, reflecting on continued hard-bargaining over cross-Border implementation bodies, was decidedly downbeat.
"'They [the unionists] don't really want these implementation bodies at all,' said BA, who was really tired and gloomy by now. They want consent principle enshrined, an Assembly, the Irish constitutional claim on the North gone, and they want to give f*** all in return. We had been up and down all day, but were ending it very much down."
Language issues were seemingly crucial here, with Campbell recording "the whole thing nearly came unstuck over a f***-up over the wretched implementation bodies". By mistake Irish-language promotion and export promotion "were back on the f****** list". And then, at the very last, "we had another history lesson from DT [David Trimble] on the importance of Ullans." Campbell's entry the weekend after recalls: "TB could not believe what he was hearing. I said why can't we just say it is promotion of Celtic languages? Because Ullans is not a Celtic tongue, said DT. We had effectively announced the deal done and here we were, with DT ready to unpick the whole thing over this."
Humour helped them through. At 10.40pm on the night before the deal was done, Campbell notes: "Bertie and Mo came in to go through the list [for implementation bodies]. TB just listened, stony-faced... An Irish official called Wally came in and said we should remove food safety from the list 'because the Irish government is not quite ready for it'. Bertie: 'We are going to poison everyone instead.'"
ON RECORD: Blair and the North
Soon after Tony Blair's first election victory in July 1997, Campbell records "TB" becoming "more and more pre-occupied" with Northern Ireland: "He felt that if Trimble showed more strength, he could blow out Paisley."
In the same entry for July 21st, he says: "We were in a difficult position. You have the sense that DT brings his own enemies with him (to meetings), meaning John Taylor and Ken Maginnis."
Of the issue that would eventually destroy David Trimble's leadership - the decommissioning of IRA weapons - Campbell notes: "The problem was that the Irish government probably did tell Sinn Féin there would be no need for actual decommissioning, and we were saying the opposite to the Unionists."
At 10.40pm on the night before Good Friday 1998, Paddy Teahon (adviser to Taoiseach Bertie Ahern) suddenly piped up: "'It's all quite simple. 1. Get Strand 1 (internal Northern Ireland) sorted. 2. Do the deal on (North/South) Strand 2. 3. Get Clinton to force Sinn Féin into line'. TB just sighed and looked like he wanted to curl up into a ball. John H was almost asleep on the sofa. Jonathan was still smiling. Nick Matthews was in and out with food and drink. After they all left, TB just said 'F***, F***, F***.'"
At 4.30am on Friday morning, 10th April, 1998: "Another Clinton call: 'Hell, I'd rather be on holiday with (special prosecutor) Kenneth Starr than hanging out with these guys.'"
Still attempting to put the powersharing executive together in April 1999, Blair was back at Hillsborough Castle for more hothouse talks.
The Ulster Unionists wanted to go home in the early hours, but TB talked them into staying. Campbell notes: "I said to (John) Taylor, why do you not go for a nap? I suggested he take TB's bed, to which he said, 'I could not possibly use a bed reserved in the main for the Queen and the PM'. So he took my own room instead, and Maginnis, clearly no possessor of false modesty, took TB's. When I wandered up later he was snoring loudly at the ceiling.'"