For all of the nine years that he worked, first as official spokesman for Tony Blair and then as Director of Communications for the government, Alastair Campbell was obliged to defend a huge lie: that all was well at the heart of the New Labour project when, manifestly, it was not. Gradually, as the years passed, the tensions surfaced and whispers that something was amiss reached the outside world, but by and large — and in no small measure due to the extraordinary resilience of Blair and Campbell — the lid was kept on. Until now.
The fault lines are apparent from the outset. This volume covers the three years from the day of John Smith’s death on 12 May 1994 to the triumphal progress to Downing Street on 1 May 1997. Gordon Brown, convinced that he had been cheated out of the leadership, behaved badly throughout, setting up a secretive, devious rival court of his own, reluctant to share his thinking on the economy with anyone else — least of all the leader of his party. Peter Mandelson flits in and out, compulsively briefing and counter-briefing, for ever resented by Brown for allegedly defecting to the Blair camp. On top of all this there are large egos to be managed, massaged and contained — so-called Big Guns forever cropping up on the Today programme on little policy trips of their own. The whole thing is a nightmare. This is the job from hell.
Then there are the women: Cherie Blair, Fiona Millar and Anji Hunter — formidable, capable, opinionated and often at loggerheads. Cherie was initially keen on Alastair, but soon goes off him when the first crisis — the decision to send Blair junior to the Oratory, as opposed to the ‘bog-standard’ local comp in Islington — breaks. Fiona, Campbell’s partner, who never wanted him to take the wretched job in the first place, is resentful that it consumes his every waking hour and occasionally involves having to defend what she regards as the indefensible — ‘one day there will be something that even you can’t defend,’ she remarks acidly — premonitions of Iraq?). Anji, the gatekeeper in Blair’s office, is loathed by Cherie (‘only one of us is going to Downing Street’). There are some blazing rows recounted blow by blow and a memorable set-to (while on holiday in France) with Neil Kinnock, who is upset that Blair is trashing his legacy. It is exhausting, even to read about, let alone to live through.
Comments
There are currently no comments for this article.