The Burden of Power: Countdown to Iraq - The Alastair Campbell Diaries Read Free Page A

for TB. Though no WMD have been found, the BBC report is as untrue today as it was when it was first made, despite the constant attempts by many in the media to rewrite what was broadcast, or to confuse and conflate the WMD dossier with the so-called ‘dodgy dossier’, which was a different paper, which attracted next to no attention at the time, on which someone working for me made an error for which I apologised.
    It is fair to say that in this volume, most of the personal satisfaction, even happiness I managed to get from working for TB in the early years has gone. The twin pressures of a 24–7 job of real intensity and scrutiny, and a home life where pressure was mounting on me to leave, at times felt like a living nightmare. I was glad to have discovered a new obsession in running. My sons persuaded me to go for a long run in the summer of 2002. By the end of the holiday I had decided to do the London Marathon, which coincided with a very busy time in relation to Iraq. TB felt the whole thing was a bit of a distraction; to me, it was something of a saviour. At the time I took up running, I could do the job, but I didn’t feel I was doing it as well as before. I was resenting the workload, and resenting those on our own side who so often made life harder than it should have been. TB was convinced that I could and should stay, and he is a very skilful manager when it comes to getting his own way. Also, even when we fell out, as over the role of Australian con man Peter Foster and Carole Caplin when Cherie bought two flats for her son Euan, I always felt a strong sense of loyalty to TB, and I still do. It was that loyalty, in addition to the sense of being involved in such significant events, with the chance to make a difference, which made it so hard to leave. When finally I did, I knew it was the right time, even if I fell into a pretty awful depression not long afterwards.
    I had forgotten until transcribing the diaries just how long I had been trying to get out. Ironically, the controversy over the communications on Iraq kept me in post for longer. TB finally agreed to my departure in May 2003, shortly before the BBC report I describe above, and yet I didn’t leave until August, as the intervening months came to be dominated by the fallout. I suppose it is also something of an irony that TB hired me to take charge of his media relations and yet my own relations with the media became as bad as they did. Partly this was because I often played the role of lightning conductor. But also I was one of the few people able and willing to articulate what I believed to be a set of damaging trends in the way the media and its effect upon democratic debate were developing. I think one of the reasons I became so high profile and so controversial is that I was doing the job at a time the media age was becoming a reality. The media sought to position themselves as the sole purveyors of truth (ironically at a time when standards were falling). In their minds, what they did was truth; what we did was spin. We made mistakes, certainly, not least my colleague Jo Moore’s infamous ‘good day to bury bad news’ email of 9/11. But in general I believe we applied far higher standards to what we said and did than many journalists applied to what they wrote or broadcast.
    By the time of this volume we are certainly on the receiving end of the culture of negativity which is powerfully unique to the UK media. I’m not quite sure I would go as far as Derry Irvine’s description of the press as ‘Satan’s people on earth’ – some of them were out for Derry’s son at the time – but I thought David Blunkett summed up the new media mood well when he said if TB had found a cure for cancer they’d report his failure to do anything for victims of meningitis. TB shared my analysis that the media had become a problem not just for politicians but for our culture and therefore our country. But as I said to the Leveson Inquiry, whereas I felt