After the 1997 landslide election victory he became the Prime Minister’s Chief Press Secretary and Official Spokesman, which entailed the co-ordination of Government communications and twice daily briefings of the press. He is, looked at one way, extremely parochial, obsessed with – passionate about, if you prefer – the Labour party to a degree that can be unnerving even to other devoted members (this, he tells me, easily survived his expulsion from the party in 2019 for voting Liberal Democrat in the European elections on the grounds of their support for a second Brexit referendum). In July 2019, in the week Boris Johnson became prime minister, Campbell penned a 3,500-word open letter to Jeremy Corbyn saying he no longer wished to be re-admitted to the party despite legal advice saying he would win a court case against his expulsion.

He was one of the founders of the University College of Football Business, based at Burnley's stadium. In his time in Downing Street he was involved in all the major policy issues and international crises.

An Old Etonian who once tutored Princes William and Harry, he was in the Black Watch before he went up to Oxford, and joined the Foreign Office after he came down. Britain was a divided country, its politics was shrill and we were in a knife fight where waving a teaspoon around would have done no one much good. When Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon revealed to Campbell that Kelly had talked to the BBC, Campbell had then decided, in his own words, to use this fact to "fuck Gilligan". Campbell attacked the news media for their obsession with him, and eventually began to pull back from frontline work and delegated direct briefing of the media to others, but, if anything, his profile continued to grow.

In March 2022 he launched a new podcast, The Rest is Politics, discussing politics home and abroad with former Tory cabinet minister Rory Stewart. Telling someone they have no right to a view is not a great opening gambit if you’re hoping to win them over. Recently, outside the Parliament Hill Lido on Hampstead Heath, where I swim most mornings, I had two random encounters, the first with someone I know, the second with someone I had never met before, and have never seen since. He opened briefings to the foreign media, which were among a raft of modernisation and efficiency strategies he introduced.Campbell wrote the speech that led to the party's review of Clause IV and the birth of "New Labour". They decided to apply the same principle – recovering alcoholics supporting other recovering alcoholics – to help others. Today, there are more than 120,000 AA groups, with over two million active participants, achieving more together than they do alone and getting good out of bad. Campbell voted Labour in the 2019 general election, having been part of a failed tactical voting campaign aimed at preventing Johnson from winning a majority. Campbell worked as Blair's spokesman and campaign director in opposition (1994–1997), then as Downing Street Press Secretary, and as the Prime Minister's Official Spokesperson (1997–2000).