Meanwhile politics follows him around everywhere he goes. Even a consultation with his GP descends into a debate about Iraq, and his days are peppered with calls from old mates in government moaning about other old mates in government, like squabbling children begging a parent to intervene – often to Campbell’s frustration, now that he’s out of the daily fray. As he says, apropos a friendlier than expected lunch with Balls, “It was interesting how a little bit of distance was making me look at people in a different light.”

The criticism of Dearlove is less pointed than that of Scarlett. It is largely implicit, blaming him for providing faulty intelligence that Iraq was pursuing a chemical and biological weapons programme and that it had been seeking uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.Campbell diaries to be published". BBC News. 16 October 2008. Archived from the original on 18 February 2009 . Retrieved 16 October 2008. The Burden of Power is the fourth volume of Alastair Campbell's diaries, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited given the ground it covers. He initially argued that military action would require a second United Nations resolution but it never came. In spite of that, he said there was legal cover. He has on a number of occasions turned down the opportunity to sit in the House of Lords. In 2010, Gordon Brown offered him a senior ministerial position alongside a peerage, but Campbell is a long-standing opponent of the House of Lords. White, Michael (5 November 2001). "White vs Campbell". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 24 November 2007 . Retrieved 19 July 2007.

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 on 9 July 2007. Subsequent press coverage of the book's release included coverage of what Campbell had chosen to leave out, particularly in respect of the relationship between Blair and his chancellor and successor Gordon Brown. Campbell expressed an intention to one day publish the diaries in fuller form, and indicated in the introduction to the book that he did not wish to make matters harder for Brown in his new role as Prime Minister, or to damage the Labour Party.The report notes: “The UK failed to plan or prepare for the major reconstruction programme required in Iraq.”

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 called on Corbyn to step down and cited his "failure" on Brexit, antisemitism, broader policy and "above all the failure to develop and execute a strategy". The story was broken in The Guardian and the full letter published in The New European. Corbyn said he was "disappointed", prompting Campbell to ask why he had been expelled. [76] [77] Exclusive interview: Alastair Campbell". MHT. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017 . Retrieved 5 May 2020.Scarlett emerges from the Chilcot report with his reputation badly damaged, mainly for failing to rein in some of the wilder conclusions by Blair in claiming that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the basis for going to war. In March 2022, Campbell launched The Rest is Politics podcast with Rory Stewart, a former Conservative Member of Parliament and candidate in the 2019 Conservative Party leadership election. The pair discuss current news stories and reminisce about their old jobs. [79] Personal life [ edit ] Riveting and revelatory, The Burden of Power is as raw and intimate a portrayal of political life as you are ever likely to read. There is also a brief but fascinating passage about Blair’s promised (and ultimately abandoned) referendum on the EU constitution, and his desire to “get to a position on Europe where the question was in or out”. Campbell could hardly be expected to draw these threads together and predict Brexit in one late night diary entry in 2004, but it would be fascinating to see him try to retrace the steps. What a shame it’s too late for his publishers to skip the next two diary volumes, and ask Campbell instead for the definitive book on why New Labour ultimately failed. The report notes that Hoon – early in 2002, before Blair went to see Bush in Texas in April – identified Iran as being a bigger problem for the UK than Iraq in terms of weapons of mass destruction proliferation. But he did not follow through on this and joined the rush to war in Iraq. Hans Blix

Well, now Tony Blair's consigliere, Alastair Campbell, has stepped forward, after editing down more than two million words into a still-formidable volume, to tell us that in all those years when the author was firing off abusive letters to television stations, tearing a strip off inadequate journalists and threatening elected members of the Labour party with the termination of their halting careers, he was secretly suffering agonies of self-doubt, wondering whether the price he and his family were paying was far too high, and despairing daily of how he might ever again lead what he calls a normal life. At a Celia Johnson-ish moment in their second election campaign, he and Tony Blair stop in a Dorset café by the sea. "Don't you sometimes wish," says Blair, apparently scripted by Noël Coward, "we had a normal life like the people who live over there?" After leaving university and doing casual jobs Campbell was accepted as a trainee reporter with the Mirror Group Newspapers. Kazakhstan". Freedom House. Archived from the original on 11 February 2013 . Retrieved 5 July 2013. History of Aireworth Veterinary Surgery". Archived from the original on 30 December 2011 . Retrieved 11 July 2012.He oversaw Blair's successful 2001 UK general election campaign for re-election and also returned to assist with the successful 2005 UK general election campaign. On 28 May 2019, Campbell announced that he had been expelled from the Labour Party after voting for the Liberal Democrats in that month's European elections, and that he would appeal against the decision. [70] He also questioned the speed of his expulsion compared to the treatment of Labour colleagues accused of anti-semitism. In response, shadow minister Dawn Butler stated that it was common knowledge that voting for another party would result in automatic exclusion. [71] Campbell has long been linked with the “dodgy” dossier of September 2002 alleging Saddam was pursuing a weapons of mass destruction programme.