Diaries Volume Three by Alastair Campbell

Author:Alastair Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781409049654
Publisher: Random House

August holiday

We had a house in Puyméras, a little village on the other side of Ventoux. We had an OK time, though there were too many party people around in one go – Neil and Glenys at the bottom of the road, the Goulds in the village, Jonathan and family about a mile away, and the Kennedys [Ian and Andrea, with their sons]. Some days, I was chronically depressed. Philip’s view was that I had moved from characteristic glumness to anger. We were all pretty much agreed by the end of the holiday that I felt I had to give my all and was asked to do too much and pick up too much of the slack left by TB and his colleagues. Neil could tell I wasn’t terribly happy and after ten days or so we sat down at the bar in the village and talked it over. He asked what was wrong and I said I felt I had to work round the clock to hold the show together. I asked if he thought there were any circumstances in which I could quit. He said no, because he worried it would fall apart. I said that was the pressure I felt.

His view was that TB had to reassert a grip but it maybe meant understanding that GB and Peter M could not work together, and one of them had to go. He was pretty down on both of them but felt on balance Peter should go, or at least be told to concentrate on Ireland and nothing else. Neil recalled [former Labour leader] John Smith’s death, when his line to them had been that they had to decide it amongst themselves. He was always clear it should be TB but that was an agreement the two of them had to reach. Six years on, it was extraordinary that the feelings aroused by that period were still felt to be so relevant. He worried GB was in danger of cutting a pathetic figure if he allowed the narrative to be perpetuated that he felt cheated of his rightful inheritance, and that he was angry and bitter. He was still a strength but there were areas of policy and personality where he had let himself down, particularly pensioners. It was a nice chat but the bottom line was that he felt I just had to keep going. He also felt there wasn’t that much I could do to change the way the press operated. I was conscious of my bad moods getting everybody down, though Philip and I had the usual good laughs. But he felt I had changed, become more introverted, less outgoing, angrier. He said he felt I was disappointed with TB.

The office didn’t bother me much, maybe a couple of calls a day and I only really got involved when the press were chasing Euan in Rome.115 TB felt the papers really just saw him as fair game now in relation to anything to do with drink.

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