A Journey

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Halliday, Josh (23 May 2012). "Alastair Campbell gets job at PR agency Portland". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 23 May 2012 . Retrieved 5 July 2013. ALASTAIR CAMPBELL: Why I no longer want to be readmitted to Labour". The New European. Archived from the original on 4 August 2019 . Retrieved 2 August 2019. Mason, Rowena. " 'Alastair Campbell says he no longer wishes to be a Labour member' ". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 31 July 2019 . Retrieved 2 August 2019.

Much of this comes from a place of deep nostalgia, as the obsession with 1997 best captures: not the actual, real legacies of New Labour’s policies, but the feeling it created. As Keir Starmer surrounds himself once again with the key personnel of New Labour, and even the very language of its now decades-old soundbites, it’s clear this nostalgia has a firm grip on the party’s very leadership. The uncomfortable fact remains that New Labour is not the solution to the crises currently facing Labour or the country, but a key cause of them. About the Author The road to Baghdad therefore led directly from Pristina where, after the Kosovo war, Blair was acclaimed as a hero. All the evidence produced by his biographers suggests that, after Kosovo, Blair was itching to implement once more the newly minted philosophy revealed in Chicago. According to Kampfner, Blair's concern about the election of George W Bush in 2000 was that this would be "a stay-at-home president". He told Mandelson that "we've got to turn these people into internationalists". In painful detail, episode four outlines how the British government marched towards the Iraq War, an event greeted almost immediately by moral outrage and condemnation. Here, New Labour’s gift for (and pride in) the dark art of spin doctoring was most effectively deployed with the so-called ‘dodgy dossier’ of faulty, misrepresented or ‘sexed up’ intelligence. This allowed the British public to believe that Saddam Hussein not only possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, but could deploy them within forty-five minutes. He has on a number of occasions turned down the opportunity to sit in the House of Lords. In 2010, Gordon Brown offered him a senior ministerial position alongside a peerage, but Campbell is a long-standing opponent of the House of Lords. On Brexit, Trump, trust and whither politics". alastaircampbell.org. 29 April 2017. Archived from the original on 9 July 2017 . Retrieved 8 May 2017.Alastair Campbell, Speaker Mentor – "Define your key message" ". The Speaker. BBC. April 2009. Archived from the original on 11 April 2009 . Retrieved 10 May 2009. It was precisely because Blair tried to run so much that he achieved so little. Not only did he attempt to accrue all government power to himself, he also tried to take it into new areas, setting targets for smoking, obesity, drinking and teenage pregnancy, to give just a few examples. As Riddell observes drily, "what ministers say has run well ahead of what they can do". Alex Jennings (I)". Internet Movie Database. Archived from the original on 7 February 2009 . Retrieved 25 July 2009. As we all know, despite the largest public demonstrations in British history, Britain invaded Iraq, leading to the death of hundreds of thousands. While Blair never fully admits it, it is of no doubt he appears at least personally haunted by the decision. The traumatic calamity and futility of it all is perhaps best demonstrated by his change in tone when publicly discussing the war. Whereas in the past he maintained a sense of moral certainty, the best he can now offer is a plea for others to at least understand his side of the argument. A dominant theme of the latter part of Blair's time in office was his decision to join US President George W. Bush in committing troops to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the aftermath of which he describes as a "nightmare", [25] but that he believes to have been necessary because Saddam Hussein "had not abandoned the strategy of WMD [weapons of mass destruction], merely made a tactical decision to put it into abeyance". [26] He would make the same decision again with regard to Iran, warning that if that country develops nuclear weapons it will change the balance of power of the Middle East, to the region's detriment. Blair believes some problems in Iraq still require a "resolution" and will fester if left unattended. [27] Of the war dead he says, "I feel desperately sorry for them, sorry for the lives cut short, sorry for the families whose bereavement is made worse by the controversy over why their loved ones died, sorry for the utterly unfair selection that the loss should be theirs." [28] A year on from the invasion he hoped Bush will win a second term as US President: [29] "I had come to like and admire George," he writes. [30]

Alastair Campbell joins The New European as editor-at-large". The New European. 24 March 2017. Archived from the original on 14 April 2017 . Retrieved 13 April 2017. In August 2016 Campbell's older brother, Donald, who had schizophrenia, died at the age of 62 due to complications resulting from his illness. Campbell has talked extensively about how Donald, the Principal's official bagpiper at Glasgow University and a competitor in high-level Piobaireachd competitions, had inspired him to fight for better mental health services and understanding, and to become the ambassador for several mental health charities. [80] [81]Campbell, Alastair (7 June 2013). "Alistair Campbell: I feel for Stephen Fry. Nobody would wish depression on their worst enemy". The Independent. London. Archived from the original on 15 June 2013 . Retrieved 17 November 2013. Watch: Scottish musicians join forces with Alastair Campbell to launch charity single in aid of NHS workers". The Scottsman. Archived from the original on 23 April 2020 . Retrieved 4 May 2020. Campbell returned to England, preferring to stay with friends near Cheltenham rather than return to London (and his partner) where he did not feel safe. His condition continued with a phase of depression, and he was reluctant to seek further medical help. He eventually cooperated with treatment from his family doctor. [13] Return to work [ edit ] As we have seen, Blair's philosophy of life is religious rather than political, and his summary of John Macmurray, the Christian philosopher who is supposedly his guiding light, was hardly rigorous: "What he was on about was community. It's about fellowship, friendship, brotherly love." A succession of ideas and gurus were briefly embraced and cast aside, though the sociologist Anthony Giddens remained a constant, "conjuring", as Jenkins puts it, "a swarm of abstract nouns, consuming all meaning in their path". The Third Way is dismissed by Rawnsley as "a food-mixer". It tried to reconcile, in Blair's own words, things that had previously "been regarded as antagonistic": patriotism and internationalism, liberalism and socialism, the market and public services.