Campbell Alastair - Diaries. Volume 3, Power and responsibility

POWER & RESPONSIBILITY is the third volume of Alastair Campbells unique daily account of life at the centre of the Blair government. It begins amid conflict in Kosovo, and ends on September 11, 2001, a day which immediately wrote itself into the history books, changing the course of both the Bush presidency and the Blair premiership.

If PRELUDE TO POWER told the story of Labours rise to power, and POWER & THE PEOPLE the story of how the party adapted to government after so long in opposition, in POWER & RESPONSIBILITY the honeymoon is well and truly over. In addition to detailing the continuing tensions at the top, this volume contains graphic accounts of perhaps the worst domestic crises of the New Labour years: foot-and-mouth disease and protests over fuel prices which almost brought Britain to a halt. It includes Peter Mandelsons second resignation, the agonies of the Millennium Dome, and the most unexpected slow-handclapping in memory, when the Womens Institute turned against Tony Blair.

Yet despite all the problems not least the most accident-prone manifesto launch in history, complete with deputy prime minister John Prescott punching a voter Labour won a second successive landslide election victory. That triumph is intimately recorded here, alongside the high points of this period, such as devolution to Northern Ireland and the fall of Milosevic.

As ever, Campbell combines an extraordinary eye for detail with the insights that make him one of the foremost political strategists of our time. His diaries provide the most complete and authentic account of a remarkable period in British political history.

Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yorkshire, in 1957, the son of a vet. After graduating from Cambridge University with a degree in modern languages, his first chosen career was journalism, principally with the Mirror Group. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, he asked Campbell to be his press secretary. He worked for Blair first in that capacity, then as official spokesman and director of communications and strategy from 1994 to 2003, since when he has been mainly engaged in writing, public speaking, working for Leukaemia Research, where he is chairman of fundraising, and continuing to advise Blair, Gordon Brown and other leading Labour figures. His first novel, All In The Mind, and an accompanying award-winning TV documentary, Cracking Up, led to him being voted Mind Champion of the Year. A second novel, Maya, was published in 2010. He lives in North London with his partner of thirty years, Fiona Millar, and their children, Rory, Calum and Grace. His interests include running, cycling, playing the bagpipes and following the varying fortunes of Burnley Football Club.

Bill Hagerty, a former colleague of Campbell's, was deputy editor of the Daily Mirror and edited both Sunday Today, and The People newspapers. He is now a writer and broadcaster and edits the British Journalism Review.

www.alastaircampbell.org

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Many thanks once more to Bill Hagerty, who took over the task of editing these diaries after the sad death of our friend and colleague Richard Stott, and to Mark Bennett, who was with me in Downing Street and has also been with me on the long and sometimes tortuous road to publication.

Both through my diaries, and the two novels I have published, I have come to appreciate the professionalism and kindness of many people at Random House. I would like to thank Gail Rebuck, Susan Sandon, Caroline Gascoigne, Joanna Taylor, Charlotte Bush, Emma Mitchell and the team of spin doctors, Martin Soames for his legal advice, David Milner, Mark Handsley, Vicki Robinson, Helen Judd, Sue Cavanagh, and Jeanette Slinger in reception for always ensuring one of my books is at the front of the display cabinet downstairs at least when I am visiting the building. My thanks, as ever, to my literary agent Ed Victor, to his PA Linda Van and to his excellent team.

I want to thank Tony Blair for giving me the opportunity he did, and thank the many friends and colleagues who have helped me in good times and bad.

Finally, thanks to my family. As these diaries show, the pressures of the job I did also fell on Fiona and the children, and I thank them for their love and support.

Volume 3 of my full diaries begins on May 1, 1999, and ends on September 11, 2001. The first of these dates, the anniversary of Labours election win under Tony Blair two years earlier, was another over-busy Saturday in the life of the government, dominated by a horrific and deadly nail bombing at home, and overseas by continuing difficulties in the conflict in Kosovo. The second was a day, and a date, that immediately wrote itself into the history books: 9/11. The terrorist attacks on the twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC would alter the course of George Bushs presidency: 9/11 would herald war in Afghanistan, still going on today, and be part of the thinking that led to war in Iraq, perhaps the most difficult decision Blair had to take, and certainly the most controversial.

Looking back, Kosovo might seem straightforward, an obvious cause, a one-sided war NATO vs Belgrade easily won; these diaries make clear it was anything but. It was, however, seen and not just by his closest supporters as one of TBs finest moments, an episode in which he showed real leadership and moral courage in his determination to reverse the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians ordered by the Milosevic regime. The Iraq War, for many reasons, remains more divisive and less clear-cut. The full story, at least as seen from the perspective of these diaries, comes in Volume 4,