Buried in the depths of No 10 Downing Street, on the desk of national security adviser Jonathan Powell, sits a special phone for secure communications with his counterpart in the White House. It might ring at any time of the day or night.
This phone will have been red-hot in the past 48 hours amid explosive claims that Powell was a critical figure in the collapse of the prosecution of two Britons accused of spying for China.
Powell, it has been claimed, was unwilling for China to be depicted as an ‘enemy’ of Britain in such a high-profile matter – so the entire legal case against the two men fell apart, no doubt to the dismay of President Donald Trump and his administration.
The result has been a diplomatic storm, yet that won’t stop Sir Keir Starmer deferring to 69-year-old Powell on all international matters. The Prime Minister will continue to seek Powell’s opinion even before he calls on the wisdom of the Foreign Office or new Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper.
Powell was a surprise appointment last November, four months after Labour’s landslide election victory, and has been central to everything the Government has done on the world stage since.
He helped shape British efforts to bolster Ukraine, and was sitting close to Starmer at his first White House meeting with President Trump in February.
He is also deeply involved in the decision – which backfired – for Britain to recognise a Palestinian state, even though terrorist group Hamas gave no assurances about the fate of the remaining 48 Israeli hostages.
The decision was driven by political tactics rather than policy, with Starmer desperate to throw some red meat to his increasingly vocal critics on the Labour Left.
But tactics and strategy have been at the heart of Powell’s extraordinary career. Directing operations around the world from Downing Street, he is in deeply familiar territory.
Powell, after all, was Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser and chief of staff from his time as Leader of the Opposition to his last day as Prime Minister in 2007. The two men continued to work together after government, when Blair trousered tens of millions of pounds advising presidents, sheikhs and dictators.
At times, Powell has kept one foot in the past. He often makes the mistake of referring to the current prime minister as ‘Tony’.
Known for his intellect, Oxford-educated Powell can be brusque to the point of rude and speaks so rapidly, his delivery has been likened to machine-gun fire.
He was a key figure in the Northern Ireland peace talks which led to the 1998 Good Friday agreement.
Blair shook the hand of Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein minister who was once the IRA’s brutal second-in-command, but Powell refused to do the same. His feelings towards the IRA were coloured by the fact they had ambushed his father in Northern Ireland during the Second World War and shot him through the ear. Air Vice-Marshal John Powell survived the attack.
Usually, the national security adviser is a career diplomat. But in this case, as a political appointee, Powell is not subject to the same scrutiny. The Cabinet Office has refused to let him be grilled by
Parliament’s national security strategy committee.
The Conservatives have called for a parliamentary investigation into why he has been given special-adviser status – meaning he does not have to answer to Parliament, even though he deals directly with foreign governments on behalf of our own.
The scrutiny is needed. The mistakes on his watch are piling up.
Powell was in favour of Lord Mandelson becoming US ambassador, for example, and was heavily involved in the deal that led to Britain handing over sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius.
Powell is delighted to be back at the heart of government with a role taking in what had previously been two jobs: that of national security adviser and foreign policy adviser to No 10.
One person with knowledge of the arrangement said when he got the job: ‘It’s impossible for Jonathan Powell to do both of those jobs well.’ The growing list of errors suggests that prediction is coming true.
