Tories should crack open bubbly and pay for his removal van

The Times ^ | 30 August 2003 | Daniel Finkelstein

[Tomalak]

I ONCE ate a salmon mousse that was intended for Alastair Campbell. I got food poisoning and lay in bed for a week.

Yet the illness was not the worst thing about this incident. It was the crushing look of disappointment on the face of the journalist who had double-booked lunch and found that, since I had turned up first, he had to eat with me rather than Campbell.

I was John Major’s director of research and we were still in power. Campbell worked for only the Leader of the Opposition. Yet already he, not me or any of my Central Office or Downing Street colleagues, was the man you wanted to have lunch with. He was the man who entered a party and set the room buzzing (“Campbell’s here”; “He actually said hello to me”; “I must have a word”; “I think he’s had to go”). He was the man whose little jokes the lobby journalists felt they had to laugh at and whose stories they felt it wise to print without too many questions.

That’s why I laugh grimly when I read that some people, even some of those same journalists, now think that Tony Blair might be better off without Campbell and even argue that he has hindered rather than helped his boss. All I can say in response is that it didn’t seem like that from where I was sitting during most of Campbell’s reign.

Before I explain this let me get something straight at the outset. All political parties and all governments spin. And there is nothing wrong with it. I attended a daily Cabinet committee chaired by Michael Heseltine in which we all sat around in his huge office trying to work out how to present (in other words, spin) the day’s news. We would come up with a first-class speech on fisheries policy being made by a junior minister to discover that on the same day Blair was practising headers with Kevin Keegan and abolishing Clause IV. What distinguished Campbell is not that he span, but that he did it so well.

As a former lobby journalist himself he understood just which story to give to what paper and when. I remember how frequently I opened the morning papers and exploded with frustration at finding a “Labour sources say Tony Blair will do something left-wing” story exclusively in The Guardian, followed the next day with “Blair stamps on ugly left-wing rumour” in the Daily Mail.

He also understood how to make something out of nothing. When Labour figures spoke out of turn, we at Conservative Central Office would be briefly delighted, only to find that Campbell had slapped them down (producing a firm leadership story) and then disowned their ideas (producing a Blair is a moderate story).

Meanwhile, a great deal of strategic work was being done to neutralise the Tory press. Right-wing columnists would suddenly produce “Why I love Blair pieces” and, of course, there was the biggest coup of all — converting The Sun to the Labour cause.

Now, Campbell did have one big, big advantage over me and my fellow Tories. Even when he began working for Tony Blair his party was miles ahead in the polls and journalists believed rightly that he would soon be in power.

Later they realised he was going to be around for quite a while. It made correspondents wary of getting on the wrong side of him. They didn’t much care if they got on William Hague’s wrong side (said he, bitterly).

Yet Campbell exploited this advantage superbly. He used a combination of an intimidating manner and withering humour to make sure journalists never forgot where power lay. He laughed at the Tories and dared the media not to join in the joke. He made them feel that they wanted to be on the inside, that they wanted to be in the same gang as the cool guys, and that he decided what cool was. I should resent it, I know, but I don’t because it was brilliant.

Some on the inside chafed against his strict party discipline. Tories could only watch jealously.

I recall that the late Tory MP Alan Clark once praised the way Campbell brought Labour dissidents to book by telling them to “shut up”.

A Tory staffer then wrote to Clark suggesting a period of silence. Without any irony at all, Clark complained (successfully) to the Chief Whip.

It has been argued that Campbell became too dominant, too close to Blair. Certainly there are constitutional reasons to be concerned about this. Position does not automatically bring power. Politics isn’t physics, it’s chemistry. The reason that Campbell became so dominant is that he was so much more able than a lot of Tony Blair’s rather second-rate parliamentary colleagues. He will be difficult for the Prime Minister to replace. David Hill is good and he will take Campbell’s job title, but I doubt he will really fill his shoes.

I have heard some Tories say privately that it’s a pity that Campbell cannot stay because he has become such a liability. Are they mad? Have they learnt nothing from almost ten years of suffering? On hearing yesterday’s news, the Conservative Party should offer to pay for the removal van and then crack open the champagne.