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A Downing Street insider’s “non-account”

Hasan Suroor

Alastair Campbell’s much-awaited account of the time he spent at the heart of the Blair Government is, according to those who have read it, disappointing.

— PHOTO: AP

An undated photo released by publishers Random House shows the front cover of a book by Alastair Campbell, press secretary of the former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

In a self-mocking account of a heavily-hyped event, which turned out to be a damp squib, the 19th century Urdu poet Ghalib wrote: “Thi khabar garm ke Ghalib ke udenge purze, dekhne hum bhi gaye the par tamasha na hua” (the hottest news in town was that Ghalib would be flogged in public, so I also went along but, alas, the spectacle didn’t happen.)

That pretty much sums up the reaction to the much-awaited diaries of the former Prime Minister, Tony Blair’s friend and communications chief Alastair Campbell published this week to mostly derisory comment. Although it is one of the fastest-selling books (all copies at Westminster’s bookshop Politicos were apparently sold out within hours of the book’s release) those who have read it — mostly journalists, politicians and the diarist’s friends — have been disappointed. And, judging from the extracts, their sense of disappointment is wholly justified. But first a word about the author.

Mr. Campbell, who resigned in August 2003 after a series of damaging controversies over his role in the “sexed-up” dossier about Saddam Hussein’s supposed weapons, rose from the depths of tabloid journalism to become one of the most powerful and controversial figures in the Blair administration. Indeed, so powerful that he was nicknamed the “deputy prime minister.”

There is no parallel of a modern British Prime Minister’s press officer wielding the kind of influence Mr Campbell did. Not only did he run Downing Street as his personal fiefdom (on occasions he is believed to have ticked off even his boss) but his writ ran across Whitehall provoking widespread anger among civil servants who greatly resented taking orders from a party activist lacking any constitutional legitimacy.

Mr. Campbell’s six-year tenure at No 10 was marked by rows with senior Ministers, civil servants, and his stormy relationship with the media (“God, I hate these people!” he notes in his diaries) and when he finally left there was a sigh of collective relief. He had started to become such a corrosive influence that if he had not left, when he did, he would have been forced to go anyway.

The Blair Years is an account of the time he spent at the heart of the Blair Government and the ringside view he had before that as a member of Mr. Blair’s inner circle when he was in Opposition and struggling to re-invent the La bour Party. Mr. Blair had known Mr. Campbell when the latter was political editor of The Daily Mirror and advising the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock. On becoming the leader of the Opposition in 1994, Mr. Blair brought him into his & #8220;kitchen cabinet,” making him his spokesman to fight the party’s bruising battles with the media.

Throughout his years with Mr. Blair, Mr. Campbell kept a diary and ended up writing some two million words. The first of the planned five volumes runs into nearly 800 pages and his publishers claim that there has “never been so riveting a book about life at the very top nor a more human book about politics, told by a man who saw it all.”

Since the book was published on Monday, it has dominated the headlines (extracts, opinion pieces, editorials) and, in a controversial move, the BBC on Wednesday ran the first of three hour-long programmes based on the diaries. Critics voiced surprise that the BBC reportedly paid more than £250,000 to promote the work of a man who launched a vicious personal campaign against it for its reporting of the Iraq invasion, plunging it into one of its worst crises of recent times.

After watching it, I can say that Mr. Campbell couldn’t have wished for a more effective plug for his book. The BBC version is simply way more compelling than his own effort.

The most common view is that the diaries don’t add anything significant to what was already broadly known and, as one rapid-reader put it: “It reads like yesterday’s headlines… And, oh yes, he never lets us forget how important he was.” The biggest story he was expected to tell from the inside was about the Blair-Brown feud which dominated the political debate in Britain right through the Blair era — resulting, finally, in Mr. Blair quitting just last month before completing his full third term in office.

It is claimed that Mr. Campbell left out the feud in order not to cause harm to the party. So, instead of the anticipated juicy account of their daily quarrels, we are told how during the Labour leadership election in 1994 “GB” locked himself in the toilet and “TB” joked that he wouldn’t let him out until he agreed to back him. “You’re staying there until you agree,” he told Mr. Brown.

The diaries are littered with such trivialities. The only issue on which he throws some extra light is Iraq when he hints at the extent of divisions within the Cabinet over Mr. Blair’s decision to join the Bush-led invasion. He discloses that even some of the most hardcore Blair loyalists in the Cabinet had strong reservations.

But 800 pages to learn that?

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