Disaster at Number 10

Over the past few months, people have sometimes asked me what I think of Alastair Campbell, and I have usually replied that I feel just a little bit sorry for him.

Having briefly myself been caught up in the media hurricane, a very new experience for one accustomed to doing the blowing, I understood for the first time how that kind of pressure could twist someone, bend them out of shape.

I had it for six months, not long enough to do any permanent damage. But by the time Campbell embarked on the démarche that was to end his career and, I thought for a while, also my own, he had lived under it for the best part of 10 years.

There were, of course, reasons why this Number 10 Press Secretary was more controversial than Jonathan Haslam, his predecessor, or David Hill, his successor. Campbell was far more powerful than either of them, yet, as this book shows, he was probably the wrong kind of person for the job he did.

In a role that should have been about dousing fires, Campbell lit them. In a job whose previous occupants had mostly been self-effacing, Campbell was anything but. After he joined Blair, he had to be ordered to give up guesting on television programmes; and, even now, his end-of-the-pier roadshow speaks of a need to be noticed, to matter.

It is easy to understand why New Labour felt it needed a bruiser, however much of a cul-de-sac it eventually proved. As a fierce Labour partisan in the 1980s myself (I have to admit that my ardour has cooled a little after recent experiences), I, like Campbell, watched in fury as the Tory press took Neil Kinnock apart.

Oborne and Walters are strong on the emergence of a new, self-important "media class", which sees itself a political player in its own right, and properly credit Campbell with the "genius" to grasp that this "monster" could be turned in Labour's favour if control was exercised ruthlessly enough. It was.

It is a strength of the book that Campbell is given due credit for his achievements. His advice was often excellent. It is made clear that his judgment, professionalism and drive were highly respected within the government machine. There are some lovely anecdotes (one of baby Leo Blair's first words, we are told, was "Alastair").

There are also several of the right points about the darker side of the Campbell character. In the prologue, attending his first post-Hutton roadshow, our hero growls: "Don't call me a liar." This is the cue for the authors lovingly to catalogue the many lies that Campbell has told, and the stories he made up while a journalist at the Mirror.

Then there is the fascinating way in which Campbell projects his own worst fears and inner demons on to his enemies. Having himself suffered a breakdown, his deadliest smear is that someone is mentally unstable, as Gordon Brown, Mo Mowlam, Peter Mandelson and Ron Davies have all found to their cost.