Campbell - Diaries Volume Two

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, as was the first volume of his diaries, Prelude to Power. His interests include running, cycling, playing the bagpipes and following the varying fortunes of Burnley Football Club.

Prelude to Power, the first volume of Alastair Campbells unexpurgated diaries, told the story of how Labour won a landslide election victory in 1997. Now, in Power and the People, the serious business of government begins.

With tensions between the partys big players never far from the surface, Campbell gives the inside track on the big economic, social, political and public-service changes that Labour brought about. One of the governments greatest triumphs, the Northern Ireland peace process, is described here, from the high of the Good Friday Agreement to the deadly low of the Omagh bombing.

But difficult and unexpected events crowd in: sex scandals Robin Cook at home, Bill Clinton abroad; party-funding scandals; and issues of judgement such as Welsh secretary Ron Davies moment of madness on Clapham Common, and the loan from Geoffrey Robinson which led to the first of Peter Mandelsons resignations from the Cabinet. Then comes tragedy: the death of Princess Diana and the extraordinary period of worldwide mourning that followed.

Meanwhile Campbell paints intimate portraits of the foreign leaders who become central in Blairs life Bill Clinton, Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schroeder, Jacques Chirac, Boris Yeltsin, Nelson Mandela, and the Chinese as they take control of Hong Kong.

Power and the People begins as Tony Blair appoints his first Cabinet, and ends as he mobilises international support against ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. And Campbell is with him every step of the way. He saw it all and here, with the forensic detail that made The Blair Years an acclaimed bestseller, he tells it all. Combining the eye of the journalist with the insight of the strategist, Campbells diaries are candid, funny, thoroughly absorbing, and a major contribution to the history of the Blair era.

Volume 2

POWER AND THE PEOPLE

19971999

Edited by
ALASTAIR CAMPBELL
and
BILL HAGERTY

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Epub ISBN 9781409049623
Version 1.0

Published by Hutchinson 2011

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Copyright Alastair Campbell 2011

Alastair Campbell has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Hutchinson

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780091797317 (hardback)
ISBN 9780091937379 (paperback)

To my mother, Betty Campbell, Fionas mother, Audrey Millar, and the friendship between them

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.

The driving narrative in Volume 1 of my full diaries, Prelude to Power, was relatively straightforward: though with many ups and downs along the way, it was basically the story of how Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, shaped New Labour, and led the party to a landslide victory which put him in Downing Street.

That is where Power and the People begins, the long years of opposition over, the huge challenges of government about to begin, helped not just by the scale of victory, but by the mood in the country it engendered. Most British voters, on seeing the picture on the front cover today, will know instantly where and when it was taken Downing Street, Friday, May 2, 1997 and perhaps remember something of what they felt at the time.

As I recorded in the closing pages of Prelude to Power, with those challenges looming, the sense of euphoria is not something in which either TB or I were sharing. Tony has since confirmed that he felt distant from the happiness of others, and real fear about what lay ahead. Outwardly, he was the ultimate modern politician, youthful and energetic, with a clear programme of major change to implement, and the favourable wind of public opinion in his sails. But inside, he knew that the euphoria would pass, that many lonely and difficult moments lay ahead, and that nothing can really prepare you for a job that so few get to do. Only five people alive at the time of writing know what it is like to be British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and David Cameron. And only a handful of people Tonys wife Cherie obviously, Jonathan Powell, Anji Hunter, Sally Morgan, myself, one or two others really know what it was like for Tony Blair to be one of those five; the pressures he had to contend with minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week, year by year; the different, often difficult characters he had to deal with at home and abroad, the myriad policy issues he had to master, or at least look and sound as if he had mastered sufficiently to deal with anyone and anything that came at him in the terrifying forum of Prime Ministers Questions.