Alastair Campbell

Campbell was Political Editor at the Daily Mirror newspaper in the 1980s and of Today in the 1990s. In 1994, shortly after Blair was elected as Leader of the Labour Party in 1994, Campbell left the Today newspaper to become Blair's press secretary. He was one of several key people responsible for the rebranding of the Labour Party as New Labour before its victory in the 1997 general election. In addition to being the press spokesman, Campbell was Blair's speechwriter and chief strategist, earning a reputation for ruthless news management. Campbell played an important role in the run-up to the 1997 general election, working with Peter Mandelson to co-ordinate Labour's successful election campaign.


When Labour won the general election in May 1997, Campbell served as Blair's chief press secretary. He put Downing Street briefings on record for the first time, and although he was only identified as "The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman", he became one of the most high-profile and written-about figures in British politics, earning the epithet "the real deputy Prime Minister". Campbell oversaw Blair's successful 2001 general election campaign for re-election and also returned to assist with the successful 2005 general election campaign.


In the run-up to the Iraq War, Campbell was involved in the preparation and release of the "September Dossier" in 2002 and the "Iraq Dossier" in 2003. Campbell was accused of influencing the reports against the wishes of the intelligence services, which led to Campbell battling with the BBC as well as the general media and later resigning. Since his work for Blair, Campbell has continued to act as a freelance advisor to a number of governments and political parties, including Edi Rama, the Prime Minister of Albania.^[1] He was an adviser to the People's Vote campaign, campaigning for a public vote on the final Brexit deal. He is the editor-at-large of The New European and chief interviewer for GQ. He acts as a consultant strategist and as an ambassador for Time to Change and other mental health charities.


Throughout his time in Downing Street, Campbell kept a diary which reportedly totalled some 2 million words. Selected extracts, titled The Blair Years, were published in 2007. He expressed an intention to publish the diaries in fuller form, which he did from 2010 to 2018. In 2019, Campbell was expelled from the Labour Party after voting for the Liberal Democrats in that month's European elections. In 2022, Campbell launched the podcast The Rest Is Politics with Rory Stewart, which has been the top politics podcast in the UK in the Apple rankings since its launch.^[2][3]

Education and early life[edit]

Campbell was born on 25 May 1957 in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, son of Scottish veterinary surgeon Donald Campbell and his wife Elizabeth.^[4][5] Campbell's parents had moved to Keighley when his father became a partner in a local veterinary practice.^[6] Donald was a Gaelic-speaker from the island of Tiree; his wife was from Ayrshire.^[7] Campbell grew up with two older brothers, Donald and Graeme, and a younger sister, Elizabeth.


Campbell attended Bradford Grammar School for a short period of time,^[8] followed by City of Leicester Boys' Grammar School,^[4] and the University of Cambridge, where he was an undergraduate student of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.^[4][5] He studied modern languages, (French and German), gaining an upper second (2:1) degree.

Journalism[edit]

Following graduation from Cambridge, he joined the Mirror Group training scheme and spent a year at a local weekly paper. He became the sports editor at the Tavistock Times, writing a column called 'Campbell's Corner'. He published Inter-City Ditties, his winning entry to a readers' competition in Forum, the journalistic counterpart to Penthouse magazine. This led to a lengthy stint writing pieces for the magazine.^[9] His first piece for mainstream news journalism was coverage of the Penlee lifeboat disaster in December 1981, while a trainee on the Plymouth-based Sunday Independent, then owned by Mirror Group.


In 1982, Campbell moved to the London office of the Daily Mirror, Fleet Street's sole remaining big-circulation supporter of the Labour Party. He became a political correspondent, then in 1986 moved to Today, a full-colour tabloid newspaper, where he worked as a news editor. His rapid rise and its accompanying stress led to alcohol abuse.^[10]


In 1986, while accompanying MP Neil Kinnock on a tour of Scotland, Campbell had a nervous breakdown. Campbell stayed in Ross Hall Hospital, a private BMI hospital in Glasgow. Over the next five days as an in-patient, he was given medication to calm him. After seeing a psychiatrist, he realised that he had an alcohol problem. Campbell said that from that day onwards he counted each day that he did not drink alcohol, and did not stop counting until he had reached thousands.^[10] He experienced a period of depression and he was reluctant to seek further medical help. He eventually cooperated with treatment from his family doctor.^[10]


Campbell returned to the Daily Mirror, where he eventually became political editor.^[10] He was a close adviser to MP Neil Kinnock, and Daily Mirror publisher Robert Maxwell. Shortly after Maxwell drowned in November 1991, Campbell punched The Guardian journalist Michael White after White joked about "Captain Bob, Bob, Bob...bobbing" in the Atlantic Ocean, referring to where the tycoon's body had been recovered.^[11] Campbell later put this down to stress over uncertainty as to whether he and his colleagues would lose their jobs.^[12][13] After leaving the Daily Mirror in 1993, Campbell became political editor of Today.