If you're even peripherally interested in politics and British politics in particular, here's a must-read. Like many books of the genre it's a tome of note - some 800 pages. I find these a pain in the wrist to read in bed. They literally weigh in at over a kilogram. Nuts. Why not produce them as two volumes, I wonder?
I got to finish reading The Alastair Campbell Diaries - 'The Blair Years' - last week. He was Tony Blair's poster-child Spin Doctor. From when the British Labour Party was in opposition, to being the governing body and all the way through to the end of the second term. It's fascinating to have the inside track on what was going on backstage with mega-events occurring onstage.
Campbell is an emotionally volatile, deeply neurotic, egotistic, vindictive and vengeful man. He clearly couldn't stand Cherie Blair. He had a love-hate relationship with the notoriously self-centred and Primma Donna-ish Peter Mandelson. He joked when referring to the potential of the British Cabinet being blotted out in an aircrash, that a colleague wouldn't know which queen to tell first. i.e. Her Majesty Lillibet or Peter Mandelson! Ascerbic.
Throughout the book Campbell refers to people by their initials. Clearly the TB for Tony himself or GB for Gordon Brown or RC for Robin Cook are fine, but with my terrible memory for initials/names or acronyms I had (in the initial stages) to keep referring back to the index to keep me on track. That bugbear notwithstanding, I found it a riveting read.
Tony Blair himself emerges from the Iraq debacle with a little more honour than I would have suspected. He took astonishing personal reputational risks - being dubbed Bush's Poodle and the like. But, based even on Campbell's unfavourable view of the invasion, Blair had a real belief that he was doing something both honourable and necessary.
The relationship between TB and Bill Clinton (BC!) is a revelation. I've always admired Clinton (Lewinsky issue notwithstanding). What a mind, what a strategist, what a communicator, what a personality. You'll like him.
Campbell has a mouth on him like a sailor. He doesn't mince words or opinions on people or indeed heads of state (Chirac emerges particularly poorly, Yeltsin, permanently tanked on Vodka, hilariously) that he doesn't like. Gordon Brown's character evolves slowly and dourly throughout the book and the power interplay and competitiveness between him and Blair are intriguing. The egos involved at multiple levels in government, civil service and elsewhere, are breathtaking.
Possibly, what fascinated me most, was the extraordinary difficulty of keeping anything confidential under wraps. There seemed always to be some twit of a Cabinet member willing to sell the party down the river, for a few moments of media fame or insular career-building. Clare Short was the worst of the lot - suffering from terminal foot-in-mouth disease. For some incomprehensible reason, Blair wouldn't, or couldn't (did she have something on him?) get rid of the silly cow.
Finally and perhaps most pertinently, the book demonstrates the incredible difficulty, in the media Pirhana-tank and slugfest of our wireless global village, of managing the delicate balance between delivery of services and mandate and managing perceptions. It should be compulsory reading for all modern leaders and management and certainly anyone interested in PR or reputation management.
I'm co-reading the George Bizos autobiography (taking time to 'get' his style) and Mark Gevisser's new biography on Thabo Mbeki (verbal silk - Gevisser is a gifted writer). I'll report on both in due course.
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