Written by Sam Mackenzie
Alastair Campbell. Many now know him as the co-host of the hit podcast The Rest Is Politics (TRIP) which he now hosts along with former Tory cabinet minister and candidate for Prime Minister, Rory Stewart. Older readers may still remember Campbell from his days as a journalist in the 1990s and 1980s. Though I imagine the majority of readers of a historically based journal know Campbell as the spokesperson for Tony Blair and the New Labour government from 1997-2003.
Campbell was the ‘Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy’, an office which was invented for him specifically. He was in charge of everything to come out of Blair’s Number 10, as well as directing the campaigns which won Blair two of the largest majorities in British Parliamentary history.
Campbell had an almost inhuman ability to turn any news into good news, or if he couldn’t do that, he could make it go away and never be mentioned again. It was this uncanny power to ‘spin’ a story that gave rise to the label “Spin Doctor” which Campbell has never been able to shake.
Though eventually, there came a story that even Campbell couldn’t spin. The Iraq war and the ‘Dodgy Dossier’ killed what little there was of Campbell’s popularity, and almost sunk New Labour along with him. Campbell left Downing Street in 2003, amid calls for him to be hung at the Hague for war crimes.
He was eventually acquitted in all the enquiries launched regarding the Iraq War, and he quietly helped Blair to secure another term in government in the 2005 general election, though their majority was massively reduced (four hundred and three seats down to three hundred and fifty-five).
Campbell then seemed to vanish for a few years, remembered by many only for the ‘blood on his hands’ and the damage he had done to British politics by his introduction of the widespread ‘Spin Culture’ which now is unshakeable from British politics; even if nobody has been quite so good at it as Campbell was (See Dominic Cummings).
Some remembered him as just a guy in government, who was parodied by the BBC series ‘The Thick of it’ where Malcolm Tucker, played by Peter Capaldi, is the Campbell stand in during the ups and downs of a governmental department, with the show culminating in Tucker leading the country into a war with a ‘sexed up’ dossier and being forced to resign.
The show led to a kind of humour shield going up around Campbell, as Tucker became a swearing, angry, overly-Scottish parody of the arguably more insidious Campbell’s influence on government and the state. Though a line from Malcolm Tucker in the final episode of the show is somewhat prophetic of Campbell’s future, “You didn’t finish me.”
Campbell was a hated figure, the ‘King of Spin’ and ‘Dragon of Downing Street’ had finally fallen. For many, Blair was next to go, and they moved on from the Spin Doctor without a clinic.
Though in the years since, instead of vanishing like so many disgraced political figures, Campbell has seen a wave of popularity which would have been unthinkable in lieu of his resignation, and I intend to show you how he did it.
Firstly, its key to acknowledge that Campbell left at almost precisely the right moment. He held on and weathered the storm for the worst of the controversy surrounding the start of the Iraq war, when it became apparent that Iraq absolutely did NOT have any Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs).
Campbell did not immediately resign in disgrace and run for the hills before he could be held to account, he stuck by Blair during some of the roughest months of his entire premiership in Downing Street. This meant that when he finally did resign, he did so from a position of strength and ‘with his head held high’.
Another factor is that Campbell has been involved in many causes which his detractors on both the left and the right are unable, or unwilling, to attack him on. I wish to be clear here, where I say he is a part of these causes, I do not make the claim that Campbell has attached himself to these causes as some kind of intentional political move to rehabilitate his image. Not even I, dear reader, am that cynical.
Campbell has always been open about his mental health struggles. For many years, he was a severe alcoholic, he has been deeply depressed throughout many years of his life, and has been extremely open about the fact that he once attempted to take his own life. Ever since, Campbell has been one of the leading voices in Britain as a mental health campaigner.
Campbell lobbied successive governments, from Gordon Brown to the current Labour administration, and has coordinated a rise in support for mental health issues which has brought the issue out of the shadows, and into the mainstream like it never has been before. For a man as feared and revered as Alastair Campbell to come forward about his mental health struggles, whatever you thought of him politically, was a key moment in the normalisation of mental health discourse. Particularly in Britain, where people tend to want to stick to the “Keep calm and carry on” mentality.
Campbell was also involved in a few key events of British Politics over the last ten years. For almost the last ten years, we have all heard far too much about “BREXIT” for our own good. Britain’s fateful decision to leave the European Union back in 2016, by a narrow margin of just fifty-two percent to forty-eight percent.
Campbell had been extremely pro-Europe before, during, and after his time working in Downing Street for Tony Blair. After the tightness of the BREXIT referendum, Campbell was one of the leading voices for a “People’s vote” on the final BREXIT deal worked out between the UK government and the EU.
Campbell and the movement’s argument was that the British people hadn’t actually been told what leaving meant. Did we stay in the Customs Union? Would there still be Freedom of Movement? What about ERASMUS schemes at universities? Almost none of these issues had been addressed during the course of the BREXIT debate. The movement thus argued that a second vote must be carried out when the people had a bit more transparency about what it all actually meant and would result in.
The campaign, as we know, failed. The United Kingdom left the EU on the 31 January 2020, amid the destruction of two Prime Ministers’ careers, a collapsing Tory Party, and economic ruin on the horizon.
Campbell had been right, and his ability for political commentary and prediction, leads us onto the last, and likely most well-known, element of his comeback.
In March of 2022, the first episode of the new podcast The Rest Is Politics (TRIP) aired. Its hosts were, and remain, Alastair Campbell and former Tory cabinet minister Rory Stewart.
The podcast has seen unbridled success, and as much as I may often disagree with the two hosts, I, like many others, can’t help but listen every week. The two of them have lived extraordinarily large political lives. Both being tied up in Iraq, Rory on the ground as a governor, and Alastair as the spin doctor trying to save the government.
Both were tied closely to the BREXIT debate, with Rory trying desperately to help then Prime Minister Theresa May to pass her deal through parliament, to no avail, before mounting a desperate challenge to Boris Johnson for the leadership of the Conservative party which ultimately failed.
Their stated aim on the podcast is to bring back the art of ‘Disagreeing Agreeably’ and to bring politics back towards the centre ground and away from radical extremism on both the left and the right.
This has led to the two of them being labelled as ‘Centrist Dads’ by thousands on the internet, and some have even taken to making ‘Bromace Edits’ on TikTok and Instagram, usually comprising clips of the two on the podcast set to romantic music.
This new image for Campbell is helped by the fact that he has certainly mellowed slightly with age. Though he is still prone to the odd outburst of expletives (usually aimed at Nigel Farage, Donald Trump, or Robert Jenrick) he does strike a more calm and fatherly figure from a perhaps bygone era of politics.
Alastair Campbell is the man who inspired Malcolm Tucker, helped lead the country into war, and kept a government afloat electorally for thirteen years. Absolutely nobody with any sense other than the sixth would have put money on him now selling out the O2 with a former Tory Leadership candidate and watching romance edits of himself with said Tory.
Alastair Campbell’s return to public life, whatever you think of it, has been an astonishing feat of reputational recovery. Perhaps it goes to show that the ‘King of Spin’, has still got it.
Bibliography
“Life so Far | Alastair Campbell.” n.d. https://alastaircampbell.org/about/
“Alastair Campbell – What Does He Do Now? – Politics.co.uk.” 2023. Politics.co.uk. March 26, 2023. https://www.politics.co.uk/reference/alistair-campbell-profile/
“Alastair Campbell.” 2021. BBC. February 13, 2021. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s7kg
Campbell, Alastair, and Alastair Campbell. 2023. “Alastair Campbell: Question Time and an Audience Full of Leavers.” The New World. June 23, 2023. https://www.thenewworld.co.uk/alastair-campbell-question-time-and-an-audience-full-of-leavers/
Campbell, Alastair. 2012. “Alastair Campbell: Despite Its Failings and Our Past Clashes, I Back BBC.” CNN. November 12, 2012. https://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/12/opinion/bbc-campbell
Campbell, Alastair. 2011. The Blair Years. Knopf.
Blair, Tony. 2010. Tony Blair : A Journey. London: Stanley Paul.
McSmith, Andy. 2015. “Alastair Campbell: Fighting His Demons Every Book of the Way | the Independent.” The Independent. February 27, 2015. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/alastair-campbell-fighting-his-demons-every-book-of-the-way-10076562.html
“The Thick of It – Wikiquote.” 2022. Wikiquote.org. 2022. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Thick_of_It#Series_4
Featured Image Credit: McSmith, Andy. 2015. “Alastair Campbell: Fighting His Demons Every Book of the Way | the Independent.” The Independent. February 27, 2015. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/alastair-campbell-fighting-his-demons-every-book-of-the-way-10076562.html
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