The Alastair Campbell Diaries

"I love The Alastair Campbell Diaries because I was an observer throughout that period. From 1983 to 1997 I was a Liberal Democrat MP and since 1999 I’ve been a member of the House of Lords. So I’ve seen all this unfolding. Also in my nine years as independent reviewer of terrorism legislation I have been more close to some parts of government – or at least I’ve had the opportunity to see how some parts of government worked in a little detail. The opportunity to read what appears to be the unalloyed truth – about those relationships in the last government – is just fascinating. It’s very real in my mind. Contemporary history is often boring, insubstantial and plain untruthful, but there are two fabulous political diaries written in recent years: one is Alan Clark’s diaries, probably vastly untruthful but hugely entertaining. Again I was there when Alan Clark made the speech when he was drunk and Clare Short accused him of it – to read about events like that is really very enjoyable after being there, sitting across the chamber. I think Alastair Campbell’s diaries cover vast areas of national and international politics with a degree of very personal engagement with many people. And Campbell is different from many of the memoirs because he writes with a pretty small amount of vanity in my view. I also think Alastair Campbell’s diaries have the quality of Pepys to this extent, which is that people will be looking for insights and finding them in 100 years’ time when they come to analyse Blair’s pre-government years and the early years of the New Labour government and the early part of the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – surely one of the most complicated political relationships of the last century. Blair was the most wonderful communicator we’ve seen in recent years – the only competitor was probably Mrs Thatcher. As to the ethics of it, I think we are still too close to judge. I have absolutely no doubt that Blair never deliberately told lies. Those who suggest that he deliberately did so about the Iraq war are not recognising what a deep moral sense he feels. Whether his deep moral sense was always on an accurate compass I’m less sure – and probably so is he. But I think history will come to judge Blair as an effective prime minister. The Blair government did one thing which I think will be its monument and which isn’t recognised because people tend to dwell either on the kitchen sink or on the whole edifice. And that is the enactment of the Human Rights Act, which to me as lawyer – and it went far beyond what most lawyers expected – was a more dramatic piece of legislation than any I can think of in my lifetime. It’s a huge monument, and it enabled the quality of United Kingdom justice to be clearer and fairer. As to the ethics of what happened between Blair and Brown, it really depends on which version you believe. I regard Brown as a deeply ethical person – I’ve heard him speak on the odd occasion, in what I took to be speeches that came from the depths of his heart. Although some of his judgments seem to have been deeply flawed, I don’t believe Brown made them for cynical reasons. I get very, very cross, having been an MP and now having been in the Lords for over ten years, when people say, ‘All politicians are just out for their own interests.’ If you were to take the unwritten ethical code of MPs you would find that the vast majority – in fact all, with a small number of exceptions – are doing their best for their constituents and other interest groups that they represent, within what they judge to be an appropriate ethical framework. You are not the master, but you are in a position to write the chronicle, and chronicles are extraordinarily valuable. Where do we find the real accounts that connect up to give us a sense of the history of our public life? Maybe if you start with the Venerable Bede, then pick up various religious figures, then when you reach his time you have Pepys, then Evelyn, maybe Thomas Carlyle in a way, and then in the modern era you come to Campbell, actually. I think it’s justified to include him in that list. Another issue that’s quite important to me is that Campbell is quite a fragile character. He very frankly describes his demons. In his diaries he says that one of the worst demons that people can have is serious endogenous depression. Maybe Pepys suffered from it too; Churchill certainly suffered from it – I think most of us have a bit of a ‘black dog’ inside us, particularly energetic people. Campbell having the courage to write about it in the way that he did in the diaries is very useful for people suffering from the mental illnesses about which we tend to whisper when we should actually speak. Very dappled."

"I think the whole set is important because it’s the best example of contemporary history if you want to know about the Blair government, or even the Brown government. Obviously, it’s a subjective view—but he was there—and sometimes you have to discount the contemporaneous nature of diaries in that they are a historical document written in the heat of the moment, which sometimes means that they go over the top a little bit. You’re not necessarily thinking clearly all the time because you’ve been involved in the events that you’re describing. But I think Alistair has a really good mix of analysis, self-analysis, and a good observational nature about the people that he’s dealing with. It is warts and all. I mean, often the writer of a political diary has the temptation to make themselves the hero of every chapter. This is not the case in Alastair Campbell’s. He recognises when he’s done something wrong, or argued the wrong case, or not supported Tony Blair in the way that he would have wanted to. They’re very raw. I think that transcends every single volume I published. I published volumes five to eight, and I suppose they are a little bit different in that, as time goes on, he’s slightly more remote from the centre of events. I mean, Gordon Brown keeps trying to get him back into Downing Street to advise him, and he still does that a bit, but he’s got other things going on in his life. And, I think the last volume is probably a bit more personal than the others. He talks about his mental health, which I think is a really good thing for him to do. As a collection of diaries, they’re a really important historical document. Well, a lot of the issues that we’re dealing with now actually stem from that era. Not all, but some. If you look at immigration, for example, I think a lot of the problems that we’re experiencing now stem from the failure of that government to get to grips with it. The problems that we’re dealing with as a result of Brexit could go back to that government—partly because of the failure to deal with immigration that, in the end, led to the Brexit vote, or was one of the factors in the Brexit vote. So, I think that there are lots of lessons to be drawn from the New Labour era. It’s the same for any era of history. You have to analyse it, you have to learn lessons from it. Otherwise, I think it was Churchill who said, those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Obviously, most prime ministers are defined by one issue. For Tony Blair that will be the Iraq war . We’re still dealing with the fallout from Iraq. I can remember saying at the time that I believed the prime minister when he told me that the country was in danger because there were weapons of mass destruction. I remember saying on the radio at the time that if it turns out that that is wrong, and that Blair has inadvertently not told the truth, nobody will ever believe a British prime minister ever again when they persuade the country that it needs to go to war. We’ve seen that time and time again over the last twenty years: the public has become much more cynical about politics in general. I think that is a direct result of that decision."