January 20, 2008

It was known that Campbell kept a diary, a portion of which was later published as The Blair Years. Accurate, descriptive and persuasive, it provides the inside story of the Labour government. Being a journalist and then at the centre of affairs through Blair’s two governments, the entries are pieced together with observant comments and reveal incidents of importance.

Campbell, who was also said to be pointlessly combative, picked a fight with the BBC over the story. The chairman and director-general of the BBC resigned and Lord Hutton’s inquiry exonarated Campbell, however the death of Kelly and negative public opinion put him a in very bad light. This episode is not adequately dealt with in the diaries.

TONY Blair was known to be the cheeky, argumentative schoolboy who drove his teachers to distraction. When at Oxford University, Blair had rock star fantasies when he founded a band called Ugly Rumours, and none would have believed then that this young teenager and son of a would-be Tory MP would go on to become a successful New Labour leader and eventually, a Middle East peace envoy.

Although a controversial political figure, it was Blair, along with colleagues Gordon Brown, and Peter Mandelson (then a key aide to party leader Neil Kinnock) who set out to lay the foundation of New Labour. Their focus was to ensure Labour became more attractive to voters, especially the younger generation, by forging a new agenda through focus groups aimed at merging free market economies with social justice. Blair and Brown were both rapidly progressing through the ranks of the shadow cabinet as modern New Labour candidates, but when their leader John Smith died in 1994 of a heart attack, it was Tony Blair, the younger of the two, who was to dominate British politics. But not without the initial rift between Blair and Brown, which even led to the new leader being dubbed ‘Bambi’ by the press who saw him as charming, slick and maybe even handsome, but not a single-minded leader of determination at that juncture.

As this estrangement continued with the British media, Blair appointed the suave, often tough-talking former tabloid journalist Alastair Campbell. Doubling as spin-doctor and confidante, it was the indefatigable Campbell who worked on Blair’s image, vetted his numerous speeches and sound bites late into the night; words and phrases that would later become Campbell’s trademark. In 1997, at the age of 43, Blair entered Downing Street as the youngest British prime minister ever to take office. His landslide victory was based on promises to restore trust in Britain’s archaic institutions, as he gained repute to make decisions with the assistance of trusted confidantes and not engage all cabinet members.

Blair’s government adopted certain key media techniques that drew attention after his election and earned them the reputation for ‘spin’. It was after the Iraq war and Blair’s relentless support for Bush’s decisions that witnessed the prominence of Alastair Campbell as Labour’s front-running spokesman. Or rather Blair’s shadow. It was then that the world questioned the failure of the Coalition forces to unearth weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And the British people realised that maybe Blair had been taken in by spin and his government was not in possession of credible information in that he simply supported Bush out of some misguided special relationship between the two countries. Campbell took control of media output and tightened his hold on information flowing from the Blair camp. Given the years of service as Blair’s press secretary and strategist, he spent more waking hours alongside the prime minister than anyone. Even Blair’s wife, Cherie, complained she didn’t see him as much as his press secretary.

It was known that Campbell kept a diary, a portion of which was later published as The Blair Years. Accurate, descriptive and persuasive, it provides the inside story of the Labour government. Being a journalist and then at the centre of affairs through Blair’s two governments, the entries are pieced together with observant comments and reveal incidents of importance. However Campbell has admitted that the matter has been heavily censored and shortened to remove those instances revealing the feud between Blair and Brown, who was previously the chancellor of the exchequer for 10 years. But Campbell’s writings reveal much more, albeit he withholds what he deems unsuitable and harmful to Blair’s historical legacy. From Labour’s resurrection to the ‘war on terror’, from the Hutton hearings, encounters with Diana and the riveting speech after her subsequent death (Blair coined the term ‘the people’s princess’), to negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, and Blair’s relations with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, particularly when a lunch in Moscow became heated, these writings reveal Blair and his entourage of confidantes intimately. How Blair took decisions that not only affected his own country but the world, often under pressure from parliamentarians who were against his policy on Iraq.

Recognised as the second most powerful figure in Britain, Alastair Campbell is no stranger to controversy. He was loathed by some for his bad temper but his drive and vision made him pivotal to the founding of New Labour and the sensational election victory of 1997. As Blair’s communication director, he says of these diaries: ‘I kept a diary every day I worked for TB (Tony Blair), and the total word count runs to well over two million words. In common with every other person who has seen them, I occasionally wonder how on earth I found the time. Perhaps it is true that the busier you are, the more time you find to get things done. I had a very busy, very demanding job and a young family.’ Although these diaries were handwritten and transcribed chronologically, Campbell claims that the opposition years alone accounted for a thick tome, implying that in the future he intends to publish his record of the remaining years of TB in government.

Of prime interest and importance during TB’s premiership are the events that led up to the Hutton inquiry in 2003, although Campbell doesn’t accord the media’s role much attention. Blair wanted to quit as prime minister a year before the Iraq war according to Campbell. He confided that he was not going to seek a third term of office, wanting to be free to act without worrying what the Labour party or public thought of him for the remainder of his second term. In the summer of 2002, a year after winning his second general election and nine months before the start of the Iraq war, Blair decided to tell the Labour party conference in the autumn that he would not fight a third election. He said: ‘Two terms is all you get in the modern world’. Blair asked his inner circle — Campbell, his political adviser Sally Morgan, and his chief of staff Jonathan Powell — whether the announcement would liberate him to pursue sometimes unpopular reforms without focusing on the next election. Campbell’s response: ‘I wasn’t totally opposed, but I advised him that it would make him a lame duck’. At the time, increasing tension over the potential military action in Iraq was fueled by claims that Blair and Bush had already decided in principle to invade Iraq, although this has always been denied by Downing Street. Blair was also under pressure over a variety of issues, some of them personal, but others included domestic issues such as tuition fees and hospital reforms. In the end Blair’s departure plan was shelved.

It is the Iraq war that dominates these diaries. Campbell says he warned Blair about its likely political repercussions. ‘I had doubts about the impact of military action on Tony’s future. I said to him, ‘Look, if, when all this is done, you are history before your time, is it really worth it?’ And he said, ‘It’s always worth doing what you think is right. America has been attacked. It’s important they don’t think they’re going to stand up to this on their own.’ ‘He knew from the word go that there would be some who would want to portray him as Bush’s poodle. He was just prepared to live with that.’ Campbell worked through the summer of 2002 and onwards to concoct a dossier, as it is alleged, which claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction ready for use within 45 minutes. He will be remembered for his preparation of this infamous dossier, findings from which, when the invasion took place, were proven false. Andrew Gilligan of the BBC had candidly stated that the government had ‘sexed up’ the intelligence. His source: David Kelly, the former weapons inspector. At that point Campbell, who was also said to be pointlessly combative, picked a fight with the BBC over the story. The chairman and director-general of the BBC resigned and Lord Hutton’s inquiry exonarated Campbell, however the death of Kelly and negative public opinion put him in a very bad light. This episode is not adequately dealt with in the diaries. I recall the days prior to and even after the untimely death of David Kelly. Campbell was pursued by the media for answers as he dealt with allegations associated with a web of misinterpretation and deceit on which Britain was taken to war.

It’s still a book worth reading, not for abolsute honesty but for colourful descriptions of incidents that are vital to historical documentation. And of course, there were personal relationships at stake with wives and partners: TB’s wife and Campbell’s partner, Fiona Miller, both hated the hours spent politicking at the cost of family. Campbell also reveals that Princess Diana held secret dinners with Blair and his inner circle — including one at an ‘ordinary house’ in east London — in the mid-1990s when he was leader of the opposition and inventing new Labour. The princess had earlier met Blair at an establishment dinner party in Belgravia, where she had made a beeline for Campbell when he arrived at the end of the meal. Here both politicians become ordinary men and their egos clash, something which often happens. ‘I rang the bell and told them Mr Blair’s car was there. And the next thing is she’s there, at the car. I’ve ribbed Tony about this ever since, because she basically said she’d really like to meet Alastair Campbell’. Diana, he writes, really felt she was part of the new Britain and that Blair would support her causes.

There is not much concerning Gordon Brown in these diaries, which is strange given that he was a prominent member of New Labour. Also, TB came into Downing Street, guitar in tow, in 1997 but left a different politician. He was now, as he said himself, ‘less concerned about being liked.’ The same man who was so concerned about whether the people trusted him became hardened like his own spin doctor who, during the 2005 campaign, adopted what was known as the ‘masochism strategy’ where voters vented their anger through televised debates about the Iraq war.

Also, the 30-year rule concerning disclosure has been discarded for Campbell, taking away the consistent rule about what can be published and when and by whom. Sir Christopher Meyer, the former ambassador in Washington, was permitted to publish a gossipy memoir which enraged many ministers whom he mocked, but Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the prime minister’s special envoy, was prevented from publishing his account of what went wrong in Iraq. The best diarists and writers present the story as it was, with vigour and authenticity and without compromise. Revealing political warts and all, they tell it like it was with the rows and political reconciliations, the disasters and the triumphs. This particular work, however, lacks the sincerity of its author.
 

About Alastair Campbell

Born: Keighley, Yorkshire in 1957, the son of a veterinarian
University: Graduated from Cambridge University in Modern Languages
Career: Journalist with the Mirror GroupWith TB’s New Labour government: Press secretary, and then later director of communications and strategy and official spokesperson, 1994-2003. He served as advisor to TB during the 2005 election campaign.
Lives in North London with his partner Fiona Miller and their three children
 

The Blair Years
By Alastair Campbell
Hutchinson. Available with Liberty Books, Karachi
ISBN 0-09-179629-7
794pp. Rs1,875