The Alastair Campbell Diaries
1 primary work • 4 total works
Book 5
It begins in 2003, where the previous instalment, The Burden of Power, ended, with Campbell's departure from Downing Street. Despite having left government, Campbell's level of involvement barely abated: he continued to advise Blair - and later Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband - and played a key role in every election campaign since.
The diaries open as Lord Hutton prepares to publish his report, sparking a huge crisis for the BBC. But any joy in No. 10 is dwarfed by continuing difficulties in Iraq. Meanwhile the Blair-Brown relationship is fracturing almost beyond repair and Campbell is tasked by both with devising a plan that will enable the two men to come together to fight a united election campaign.
Away from politics, the diaries talk frankly about Campbell's continued struggles with mental health issues, as well as his work in sport and his return to journalism as he tries to find a new purpose in life.
Never Really Left is a vivid and essential record of an important period in modern political history.
As Alastair Campbell said in the introduction to The Blair Years, it was always his intention to publish the full version, covering his time as spokesman and chief strategist to Tony Blair. Prelude to Power is the first of four volumes, and covers the early days of New Labour, culminating in their victory at the polls in 1997.
Volume 1 details the extraordinary tensions between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as they resolved the question as to which one should stand to become Labour leader. It shows that right from the start, relations at the top were prone to enormous strain, suspicions and accusations of betrayal. Yet it also shows the political and personal bonds that tied them together, and which made them one of the most feared and respected electoral machines anywhere in the world.
A story of politics in the raw, Prelude to Power is above all an intimate, detailed portrait of the people who have done so much to shape modern history.
Power & the People covers the first two years of the New Labour government, beginning with their landslide victory at the polls in 1997.
This second voume of Campbell's unexpurgated diaries details the initial challenges faced by Labour as they come to power and settle into running the country. It covers an astonishing array of events and personalities, progress and setbacks, crises and scandals, as Blair and his party make the transition from opposition to office.
POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY is the third volume of Alastair Campbell's 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.
In this volume, we see that New Labour's honeymoon is well and truly over. In addition to detailing the continuing tensions at the top, here we find graphic accounts of a variety of domestic crises: foot-and-mouth disease and protests over fuel prices which almost brought Britain to a halt. Volume Three includes Peter Mandelson's second resignation, the agonies of the Millennium Dome, and the most unexpected slow-handclapping in memory, when the Women's 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.