Alistair Campbell

Anthony Barnett (London, OK):  Yesterday I queried the way that Alastair Campbell's so-called Diary of the Blair Years an entry on Scotland allegedly written in the past tense even before Blair was elected in 1997 , "Scotland was, as ever, a disaster waiting to happen". Bookworm in the 20 July edition (print only) of  Private Eye has done a more thorough job. He quotes from the depth of the introduction where Campbell admits he has re-written "where the original made no sense or lacked any context" which given the rushed nature of the beast is probably most of the entries! Bookworm spots a number of incongruous past tenses and anachronisms and makes the good point that Campbell should have indicated in the text when he had added to the diary. As you can't read bookworm's judgement on this on-line here it is, Campbell's is "a deriliction of authorial duty which makes his book almost...worthless".

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): "Scotland, as ever, was a disaster waiting to happen." This is the opening of Alastair Campbell's alleged diary entry for Friday 4 April 1997, when Labour was still in opposition. It refers to the interview Blair gave the Scotsman when he compared the proposed Scottish Parliament to a parish council, which was presented by the media as betraying an anti-devolution prejudice. Campbell writes,

Anthony Barnett (Athens, OK): While we wait for Peter Oborne to deliver, in OK or elsewhere, his verdict of the Campbell diary (for Peter was the first person to skewer him with the question that matters, namely ‘what is wrong with the constitution of our country that permits this tabloid journalist to be its second most powerful person?’) two comments.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Fascinating long tussle between John Humphrys and Alastair Campbell on the Today programme this morning. If this is the choice it has to be Humphrys! Campbell sounds like a salesman who sweet-talks you at the front door while your belongings are disappearing out the back.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): One of the unforeseen benefits of recent attempts to restrict access to Freedom of Information might have been to spare us from Alistair Campbell's painful attempts at humour. This is revealed in the memos between him and Blair on the proposed appearance of the PM in the Simpsons which have been the subject of a Freedom of Information disclosure (thanks to Martin Rosenbaum's excellent BBC blog on FOI for drawing my attention to this). Reading Campbell's suggestions for the script it seems he was determined to turn the episode into an advert on behalf of the British tourist board, having TB advise the family "you should go to my birthplace, Edinburgh, there's a big castle over there." "And why not stay in one of its many luxury, centrally located hotels?" he might have added... Campbell also tells Blair that due to the attention the episode will attract and "the opposition we'll get for you doing it" there must be a "rationale" behind it, "namely that you seize any opportunity to promote Britain." Replace the word "Britain" with the word "yourself" and I think you have a fair insight in to Blair's motivation sans spin... Am I being too harsh on our ex-PM (for once)? Although the finished episode wasn't as satirical as it could have been, Campbell didn't succeed in sucking all of the humour out of it...