UPDATED EVERY THURSDAYThursday 19th August 2004All content © New Journal Enterprises,2004 REVIEWS
BY ILLTYD HARRINGTONAlastair Campbell. Below: Tony Blair’s 1983general election poster
Labour saviours face toughverdict of history
The tide is turning against Blair and Campbell, despite two electoraltriumphs, writes Illtyd HarringtonAlastair Campbell by Peter Oborne and Simon WaltersAurum Books £8.99Tony Blair by Philip Stephens, Politicos £8.99
BLAIR and Campbell sound bland enough to be an old Victorian firm of gentlemen outfitters. One the sanctimonious moral man living aperpetual Sunday, the other a combination of Al Capone and Rasputin,a menacing floor-walker snarling We Don’t Do God.Westminster’s version of the Odd Couple comes in two parts. Campbell’stwo biographers are right wing hatchet men while Blair’s is the associateeditor of the Financial Times and is calm and distant in contrast.Blair’s rise and electoral success is phenomenal. Born in 1953 he joinedthe Labour Party in 1975, was elected for Sedgefield in 1983, becameparty leader in 1994 aged 40 and prime minister in 1997.Campbell was born in May 1957 and progressed effortlessly to universitywhile Blair strummed his guitar in St John’s Oxford.Ali went off to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he seemsto have engaged himself in the robust irreverent style of life but went onto get a very good degree.Neither men showed any interest in politics, nationally or internationally.For them the late Harold Wilson had come and gone.Blair, if anything, sees himself as a Gladstonian Liberal. Ali’s epiphanycame after he met his partner and fellow journalist Fiona and her family.His political learning curve was steep and dramatic.I saw it at close quarters. Bob Millar, an old Tribune man, Fiona’s father,became his mentor. His dedication to the bottle, tediously documented,came to a sensational end in 1986.Thereafter an obsessive process of mental and physical change began.At 31, he was the political editor of the Sunday Mirror. A year later herose to become the political editor of the Daily Mirror. Neil Kinnock,leader of the opposition, made daily use of his developing gifts.Alastair’s new choice of drug was politics.The defining yearfor the future prime minister and his head of communications came in 1994 when John Smith, the Labour leader, diedsuddenly. That very night Alastair, who lives in Gospel Oak, declared forTony Blair when questioned by Jeremy Paxman.Blair, Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson, Campbell and Philip Gould were inplace to take over the Labour party.While the solid ranks of Old Labour turned up at Blackpool for theannual conference in 1994 in which magicians were at work along theseafront, Campbell’s appointment was announced and he brilliantlyencapsulated their philosophy. New Labour – New Britain.And for good measure Clause IV was throttled in a smoke-filled room.John Prescott spluttered but they gave him a new cloth cap to remindhim of his working class roots and sent him to the funeral of the lostideal.May 1997 dawned and John Major had his marching orders. Blair andCherie moved regally into Downing Street through an orchestrated,ecstatic crowd proceeded by Campbell who immediately took on themost entrenched forces of the civil service and intimidated them for thenext six years.Blair at first seemed enraptured while Campbell laid the foundation of afuture presidential style. He proved a master builder.Power and control quickly gravitated to Number 10. No one daredchallenge his decisions – not even Blair. Big Brother had arrived.The cabal formed in 1994, known as Capital P5, virtually became theeffective cabinet. Blair, Gordon Brown, Alastair Campbell, PeterMandelson and Philip Gould. Parliament’s role diminished and NewLabour’s ideology took over. Symbols like private finance initiatives werethe mystical stones.Gould convinced Blair of the parallel of the new Democrats in the UnitedStates. It was a comforting philosophy embracing liberalism as theirnatural ally. Roy Jenkins and Thatcher both approved.The new century brought further triumphs in the June election of 2001.Labour again swept back to power and 70 per cent of the British pressbacked it. Alastair had been successful but a dark cloud appeared overthe golden horizon. Blair, a former member of CND, was in charge of thekeys to Britain’s nuclear weapons. George W Bush was elected presidentand Saddam Hussein, that evil genie, had clouded out of his bottle.Blair’s relationship with Bill Clinton did not stand in the way when Bushdrew us into his deadly conflict. Not even Churchill had been as fulsomein his support of the United States.Blair flew 50,000 miles pushing Bush’s philosophy not very successfully.Campbell now supremely confident sat in at the intimate heads of states’ meetings.He even clashed with the deplorable vice president Dick Cheney.Then on the day of Blair’s acclamation by a joint session of congress onJuly 17 2003, scientist Dr David Kelly died in an Oxfordshire wood.It was a shattering event. After non stop involvement for six years,Campbell left exonerated by the Hutton Inquiry.The sub-plots and characters are interesting too. Sir Alex Ferguson,Robert Maxwell and Rupert Murdoch were all in Alastair’s little blackbook. The bag-piper of Gospel Oak is a star while the verdict on Blair isawaited. These parallel lives are the stuff of our post-democratic age.top
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