The Blair Years, by Alastair Campbell

Alastair Campbell's diaries seek to be a record of the recent past and a contemporary political act in which Gordon Brown is protected, revenge is extracted on journalists, and politics promoted as a noble vocation. Do the demands of the present block the pathways to the past? Or do the present and past dance together as the tribally-committed diarist pulls his strings?

To my surprise, Campbell is less effective in delivering his immediate political objectives. No reader should turn to the account for an intimate record of Gordon Brown's psychological flaws. The battles between Brown and Blair are largely absent. Individual journalists get little more than the odd passing reference. In this account, we are no more than a largely anonymous, ever-present vile chorus, pumping out destructive poison while the clearly-delineated elected politicians take centre-stage. Campbell cut out many references to individual journalists, not to protect them or him, but to cut them down to size. Having failed to tame the beast from the pulpit of 10 Downing Street, he seeks to strike us down from the retrospective comfort of his diaries, while elevating the politician's art.

Sadly, he does not succeed. I make the assessment with disappointment, as I share his basic analysis that media cynicism turns voters away from politics. Yet his diaries, at least in this published form, reveal little about the values and ideas that drove Blair and the new Labour entourage. If they wanted to improve the country, we read about it only in the most general terms. Instead, a lot of the entries confirm the widespread view that for much of the time Blair was a rootless figure chasing headlines, speaking vaguely about the centre ground, moving rightwards weakly if any senior party figure tacked to the left. There is much talk about positioning, little about policy direction.

Instead, the diaries chronicle exhaustively the rows of battered, fragile egos at the very top. If only Gordon would get on with Peter, and Charlie could be sacked, and Cherie could become more reliably orthodox and Carole would disappear, all would be more manageable. Cabinet ministers play marginal roles. The Labour party gets a look in every now and again. Yet most days of the week, most nights as well, the narrative comes back to Peter, Gordon and a few others.

This is where the contrast is most marked with the famous ministerial diarists of the 1960s and 1970s. For Crossman, Benn and Castle, the political canvas was unavoidably much wider. They reflected often on the wider politics of the Labour party and the internal dynamics of the Cabinet because their positions depended on what was happening in those previously mighty institutions. For them, policy and ideological debate were driving forces. For Campbell, the forces that drive him nearly around the bend are Tony, Peter, Gordon - and the media, of course.

Equally to my surprise, Campbell succeeds where I assumed he would fail. He brings the past to life. The published diaries work as a compelling chronicle, even with some of the drama excluded. On every page they are vivid, humorous and revelatory. Fresh light is shone on the key players, sometimes in ways that are not flattering. Blair comes over as surprisingly anxious and neurotic. Long ago Brown had acquired a reputation for phoning his advisers relentlessly and at strange times of the day. Evidently Blair was the same, sometimes contacting Campbell six times in an afternoon to make the same point. Once Campbell got a prime ministerial call at 5am over a relatively trivial matter.

Sleep does not feature much in these diaries. The action tends to be around the clock, like an episode of 24 that never knows when to stop. The build-up to the leader's annual conference speech is almost as exhausting to read as it must have been to live through, with Blair's hair sticking up at either side as a sign of panic on the eve of one address. Blair's receding hair plays a big part, almost a character in itself.

The years in opposition - further away and less immediately sensitive - are probably the most candid and least censored. At one point when Blair is reading Brown's latest inaccessible statement on economic policy, he wonders aloud whether Robin Cook would be better as shadow chancellor. But there is evidence also of Blair's enduring generosity to Brown, at least until early in the second term. Regularly, Blair states that Campbell must put up with the downsides because of Brown's strategic abilities. Only once is there a suggestion of the divide between the two rivals. Brown warns Campbell that a forthcoming Blair speech was too defensively right-wing, that there were other ways of capturing the centre ground and achieving social objectives. In that warning lay a thousand unreported rows.

On Iraq, there is little new information. But after reading these extracts, no one can doubt that Campbell's anger at the BBC was genuine. With fatal naivety, managers at the Corporation judged Campbell's attack was "spin", a diversionary tactic. Lacking any convictions of their own, they assumed that those in politics also did little more than play games.

But Campbell acted always out of angry conviction. What makes the diaries more interesting is his distinctive political outlook. By autumn 1995 Neil Kinnock is exploding with rage at Blair's leadership while on holiday with Campbell. Campbell's partner, Fiona Millar, sides with Kinnock. Every now and again Campbell shows some sympathy with the doubters over education, and more widely over Blair's detachment from the Labour party.

Sometimes emotion overwhelms the politics in ways that heighten the sense of drama. Campbell cries often, at moments of euphoria as well as the surprisingly many moments of despair. (This is a chronicle of extraordinary electoral success, although you would not believe it reading these panic-stricken pages). There are tensions with Fiona as Campbell works around the clock. Quite often Blair is on holiday, but Campbell is still working. There is one hilarious moment when Campbell is discussing a crisis on the phone with Blair as the Prime Minister is fishing on a boat. Blair breaks off triumphantly to catch a fish. Even when Campbell is supposedly on holiday, the work comes with him. Bizarrely, the French village he chooses for a summer break is also the choice of several other senior Labour figures. Bonjour Tony, Peter, Philip [Gould] and the rest of them.

There is enough in these diaries to convince me that they will become one of the classic records of our times. I hope that when the full account surfaces, the nobility of politics as a vocation is reinforced. For now, I put down this highly readable book with a single thought. It is a miracle that this emotionally overwrought group won one election, let alone three.

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