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Global Journalism Review

Alastair Campbell: the fall guy with much to be proud of ?

by Nicholas Jones

Rather like Humpty Dumpty, I don’t think Alastair Campbell can be put back together again. He has had a great fall: his political influence within the Labour Party and his authority in dealing with the news media have both been shattered by a sequence of public relations disasters which pre-date even the tragic death of the government's weapons inspector, Dr David Kelly.

Whatever the outcome of the inquiry being conducted by Lord Hutton, I was convinced that Campbell already knew that his days were numbered. His name had become synonymous with spin and he realised that sooner or later he would have to become the fall guy for the meltdown which has taken place in the level of public trust for the pronouncements of the Blair government.

All that is left to be decided is whether the Prime Minister’s beleaguered director of communications will be able to salvage enough from the Hutton report, into the circumstances surrounding Dr Kelly’s death, to enable him to make an honourable exit from Downing Street.

Campbell is still insisting that he will be vindicated and will finally be cleared of the BBC’s accusation that he ‘sexed up’ the dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction by inserting the warning that Saddam Hussein could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes.

But equally Campbell knows he will face widespread condemnation -- and possible disgrace -- if Hutton finds a shred of evidence to substantiate the claims that he and his Downing Street staff were responsible in any way for influencing the Ministry of Defence’s disclosure to the news media of Dr Kelly’s identity.

At the start of all this, by going over the top in accusing large parts of the BBC of having an anti-war agenda, Campbell only stiffened the governors’ resolve to defend the Today programme’s correspondent Andrew Gilligan. The tactics deployed against the Corporation in retaliation were classic Campbell: a ferocious combination of denial and attack.

In many ways this former tabloid journalist has much to be proud of: through the force of his own personality, professionalism and drive he has transformed the way in which the British government communicates with the news media.

In 1997 Labour inherited an information service which was failing to address the growing demands of 24- hour reporting. By pushing through the use of modern techniques like media monitoring, rapid rebuttal and the trailing of future announcements, Campbell has ensured that the government is able to get its message across.

He also deserves to be praised for the steps he has taken to open up the lobby system at Westminster, by allowing access to briefings to overseas correspondents and specialist reporters and by publishing on the Downing Street website a twice-daily summary of the guidance which has been issued by the Prime Minister's two official spokesmen.

Unfortunately there has been a terrible downside to the aggressive and often hole-in-the-corner way in which Campbell has done business with journalists, typically by playing off one news outlet against another.

In the long litany of public relations catastrophes which have marred Labour’s good name, there is one common thread. Almost every case is characterised by a determination to shoot first, by attacking journalists and rubbishing their reports.

It was his own hasty over reaction which was partly responsible for Peter Mandelson’s second resignation. His finger prints were all over the muddled departure of the disgraced Jo Moore and former information chief Martin Sixsmith.

In the end Campbell had to back down in the row which he had engineered with Black Rod over the arrangements for the Queen Mother’s funeral but, undeterred, the Prime Minister’s spin doctor blundered again and was forced to take the rap over the way journalists were misled initially about Cherie Blair’s purchase of two flats in Bristol.

Campbell’s power derives from an unprecedented change made in 1997 when he gained the authority to give instructions to civil servants. This was in effect a smash and grab raid on Britain’s unwritten constitution: a self-confessed Labour propagandist was allowed to take control of the flow of information from the state to the public.

After numerous complaints about the way the political impartiality of civil servants has been undermined, the British establishment has had enough. Earlier this year the Committee on Standards in Public Life recommended that a strict limit should be imposed on Campbell’s executive powers and that he should lose the right to order around the government’s 1,000 information officers.

We won’t know until the autumn -- and the publication of yet another review into the future of the information service -- whether Blair intends to act on this recommendation. But if the Prime Minister is to honour his much-repeated undertaking to turn his back on spin, he will need to adopt not only a more open approach to the media but also appoint a new and less dogmatic communications chief.

Picking a bruising fight with the BBC has not only reinforced mounting public unease about the accuracy of official statements, but has also cast fresh light on the hitherto shadowy remit of Blair's director of communications. If I had been asked last September about Campbell's role in the publication of the intelligenc services' assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, I would have said his responsibility was to advise the Prime Minister on the best ways of ensuring that the dossier was presented to the news media and the public in the most effective manner.

I might have had my suspicions about internal manoeuvring within Downing Street but would have had nothing concrete to go on. Now we know differently: Campbell chaired the planning meeting to discuss the subjects to be included in the dossier and, in further evidence which was demanded by the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, he was forced to disclose, word for word, how he tried to strengthen its scope and impact.

Equally revealing was his confirmation of the divisive route through which the second, so-called dodgy dossier reached the public domain. Disclosure to Parliament was only an after thought. Once his staff in No.10 had completed the February document, with its mix of plagiarised material and intelligence information, Campbell ordered that it should be handed out exclusively to six Sunday newspaper journalists travelling on Blair's plane to a meeting with President Bush. So much for the Prime Minister's much-trumpeted assurance that he had turned his back on spin.

As a former BBC political correspondent I can still point to the scars on my back after being put in my place by Campbell. For example, in the 1997 general election campaign, he dressed me down in spectacular fashion. It happened inside Labour’s infamous Millbank HQ.

I had done a report that morning about the Essex firefighters’ strike. Campbell was furious that an industrial dispute, which could damage Labour, was leading the news. He was incandescent: ‘So that’s the story then, a trade union dispute…I just love the way you guys in the BBC decide what the issue is. John Major only has to fart to get on the news. If Blair does something positive you don’t report it.’

Believe me that was pretty tame for Campbell. The language got decidedly blunter and bluer as the years went by.