Campbell's diaries condensed: The inside story of the Blair years

On being asked to work for Tony Blair

9 August 1994

[In France] Some holiday this was turning out to be. Neil and Glenys [Kinnock] were arriving in a couple of days and I'd have Neil and Fiona in one room trying to talk me out of it and Tony and Cherie in the other trying to talk me into it.

On the Iraq war

23 July 2002

TB was pretty clear we had to be with the Americans. He said at one point: "It's worse than you think, I actually believe in doing this." ... TB saw regime change as the route to dealing with WMD.

23 September 2002

It was a pretty good [Cabinet] discussion, though focused as much as anything on the idea that we were having to deal with a mad America and TB keeping them on the straight and narrow.

30 September 2002

He [Bill Clinton] was worried that TB was being used... He said a lot of Democrats were up there asking: "Why is Blair helping Bush so much?"

31 January 2003

GB [Gordon Brown] said, very finance-directorish, that it would be desirable to go ahead if the finances are sustainable.

7 March 2003

TB said he felt that there had to be a [Commons] vote on a second [UN] resolution and if it was about the use of troops and he lost a vote on that, he would have to go... Andrew Turnbull [Cabinet Secretary] was quietly looking at how a JP [John Prescott] caretaker premiership would operate. Even though we were talking about his own demise, TB still felt we were doing the right thing.

25 March 2003

[Gordon Brown] said the War Cabinet meetings were hopeless. You had Clare [Short] blathering away, DB [David Blunkett] and JR [John Reid] behaving like armchair generals and giving out weakness vibes to the real generals.

On David Kelly's death

8 July 2003

I called Geoff Hoon [Defence Secretary]. He was not remotely on top of the case.

18 July 2003

[After Dr Kelly's suicide]

Fiona [Campbell's partner] was desperate for me to go. So was I now. But I wanted some honour and dignity. Things quietened down a bit but then I wept because of the pressures I was under, and the sadness I felt for Kelly's family.

20 July 2003

[Blair] said: "When you leave I want to be able to say that there are two ACs, the one parts of the media portray and the one I know who is a great person."

23 July 2003

Fiona was getting letters saying what's it like sleeping with a murderer. I was getting letters with fake blood on the envelopes.

[Dennis] Skinner said they [Labour's NEC] had to support AC "because he's probably against the war anyway".

10 August 2003

The kids kept me going really – the thought that eventually we would get a proper family life back again, and the knowledge that no matter how bad it was, apart from the occasional fleeting moment, I did not think of doing what Kelly had done.

On Cheriegate

[Campbell falls out with Blair over the help given to his wife Cherie to buy two flats in Bristol by the con man Peter Foster, boyfriend of her friend Carole Caplin.]

9 December 2002

TB kept trying to persuade me that Carole was a decent person and would do nothing wrong... He got very defensive and we had another row about it.

10 December 2002

TB was getting very agitato. He said: "I'm not having my wife treated like this and we have to fight back on the basis we have done nothing wrong."

12 December 2002

[Campbell told Blair] "You're married to a woman who is determined to protect and keep a woman who is in love with a con man so you are linked to a con man." He shouted at me down the line: "I am not linked to a con man... We have a fundamental disagreement. You think Cherie has done something monstrous and I don't. You think Carole is monstrous and I don't."

I said I wasn't going to defend Carole or anything to do with her... if this goes on much longer I'm off, out of here, goodbye.

16 December 2002

TB called me on for a one-on-one chat. "You are the Roy Keane [footballer] of the operation, but like him you sometimes stamp people on the head without meaning to."

On Peter Mandelson

22 November 1994

It is impossible not to like him [Mandelson], but I told TB that if Peter wasn't reined in and just part of the team, it would be a problem not just for me but for him as well.

3 February 1995

TB said he reckoned that in our own very different ways, GB, Peter M and I were geniuses, the best in our fields at what we did, and the key to his strategy. But it drove him mad that we couldn't get on... Fine, I said, but we are all flawed in our own way.

4 February 2005

[Campbell and Mandelson row over whether Blair should wear an open-necked shirt or a tie...] I could feel myself losing it, said he could not just swan in, upset what we were doing, then waltz out again. TB was like a dad trying to shush two squabbling brothers. "Cut it out, you two, for heaven's sake."

He [Mandelson] said I'm sick of being rubbished and undermined, I hate it and I want out. "Get out then and we can finish the speech" [Campbell said]. "That's what you want, isn't it, me out of the whole operation." I said I just wanted to be able to do a job. He started to leave, then came back over, pushed at me, threw a punch, then another. I grabbed his lapels to disable his arms and TB was by now moving in to separate us and PM just lunged at him, then looked at me and shouted: "I hate this. I'm going back to London."...

It was like a classic family explosion, grim and upsetting at the time, but afterwards leaving the air clearer and people getting on better...

We had a perfectly nice chat, calm after the storm. I think we both felt a little ashamed we let it get out of hand. Wrote this in the bath. What a bloody day.

On the Oratory school

31 October 1994

I said imagine the boost to the morale of the local school if you did send your kids there. He [Blair] said that was the first persuasive argument I had put up, but he was still not budging.

1 December 1994

I can't say I felt much like defending the whole thing.

2 December 1994

I told him Fiona was barely speaking to me about it, let alone him...

Cherie had phoned and was angry that it was in the papers that she was keener on the Oratory than TB... She said she'd thought I'd been giving TB too negative a picture of the school because I was personally opposed and it was actually none of my business... She said TB was really upset at the coverage. I said I can't be blamed for that. She seemed to think I had some kind of magical powers over the press that I could somehow control what they did report and what they didn't... We hung up on pretty bad terms.

3 December 1994

She [Fiona Millar] said... if they changed policy to suit his decision, she'd probably leave the party.

On relations with Neil Kinnock

31 July 1995

[Kinnock] said it was of course impossible for TB to address education policy now because he had chosen to send his own son to the SS Waffen Academy... I said his remark would be funny if it wasn't so ridiculously over the top but I'm afraid his humour had gone now...

Eventually he spat it out – "He's sold out before he's even got there." "Sold out on what?" [Campbell asked]. "Everything." His face was inching ever closer to mine and at one point he picked up a kettle filled with newly boiled water which I feared was heading my way...

"Tax, health, education, unions, full employment, race, immigration, everything, he's totally sold out... It won't matter if we win, the bankers and the stockbrokers have got us already, by the fucking balls, laughing their heads off. And all that before you go and take your 30 pieces of silver."

"What's that supposed to mean?" [Campbell asked Kinnock]. And he spat it out – "Murdoch."

"Oh, for Christ's sake, is that what this is all about, because we went to see Rupert fucking Murdoch?" [Blair had spoken at a conference of his executives at Hayman Island, Australia].

"You imagine what it's like having your head stuck inside a fucking lightbulb," he raged at me, "then you tell me how I'm supposed to feel when I see you set off halfway round the world to grease him up."

"We gave him absolutely nothing," I said.

"You will, and he'll take it. You'll get his support and you'll get the support of a few racist bastards, and then you'll lose it again the minute you're in trouble."

I said I believed in what we were doing and one of the greatest difficulties I felt was that people closest to me, including him but most important Fiona, who had basically taken his side in the row, didn't actually support what we were doing at all.

On joining the euro

17 October 1997

EMU (European Monetary Union) was our main problem of the day. Charlie Whelan (the Chancellor's media adviser) and Ed Balls (the Chancellor's key treasury adviser) wanted GB to do an interview "clarifying" the situation, saying policy was unchanged but making it clear we were clearly not going to be in the first wave and therefore it was unlikely for this Parliament. Jonathan [Powell, Tony Blair's chief of staff] called and said though TB was not sure of the need, GB was trying to push him into agreeing to the interview... It was not really an interview so much as a form of words which would be given to Phil Webster (political editor of The Times). I spoke to Webster and agreed that the intro was that he was effectively ruling it out for this Parliament while saying it would be folly to close options. God knows how we had got to this, or to the headline at the end of the day, Blair rules out single currency for this Parliament... I'm afraid I was keen to push my instinctive anti-EMU feelings because I didn't want TB outflanked by an impression that GB was keener on EMU. The words went to Webster, the spin was applied, and away we went.

It was all quiet until after 10, when TB called after he had seen the news and said what the hell is going on? "We never agreed this," he said. I said I thought they had. Peter M (Mandelson, then minister without portfolio) came on too, amazed...

I suddenly realised that because I had not really checked and double-checked with TB, we had briefed an enormous story on the basis of a cock-up.

TB could not get hold of GB – 10.15pm – so he spoke to Charlie, who professed himself "gob-smacked" by the conversation.

TB asked if we had ruled out EMU this Parliament. Yes, said Charlie. "Is that not what you want?" No it is not, said TB. "Oh," said Charlie.

GB was also now on the rampage, saying this had all gone too far, as if suddenly the headline he had been asking for was not what he had asked for at all.

18 October 1997

Pretty much a weekend from hell, at the end of which I was totally unrested as we went into another week. I was beating myself up too because I knew I had screwed up...

TB called early, a bit more relaxed about things, because he felt we had reached the right position, even if we had done it at the wrong time and in the wrong way...

Some of them (the newspapers) were trying to run the line that TB had overruled GB and made him do it. When I told TB, he said: "I wasn't even aware of it. What the press are saying about this is bad enough – but the truth is even worse."

19 October 1997

GB said we should try to shut it down before Parliament returns. The danger was that in trying to end the confusion, we create more confusion...

He [Blair] did say, though: "If the markets go haywire tomorrow, we are in deep shit on this. We will be subject to extreme and justified attack." So after endless calls we agreed – we will not be bounced and a full statement will be made to Parliament first.

20 October 1997

I got a rare queasy feeling in the morning re "Brown Monday". GB spoke at the Stock Exchange and had the ultimate horror backdrop, the screens behind him going red as he spoke. I spoke to TB as he waited for [the German Chancellor Helmut] Kohl. "What I can't stand is the incompetence..." Whelan was beyond repair but I felt I should support him because we had both been involved...

23 October 1997

Cabinet was mainly on EMU and most of them were saying how important it was to keep the option open.

On relations with his partner, Fiona Millar

31 July 1995

[In France] Holiday started with Fiona complaining that she was like a single parent, that three small kids was much harder than my job. We were hanging around on the Sunday when Neil and Glenys called and asked if they could come to stay for a bit.

They were there the next evening, entering a bad atmosphere created by the fact Fiona and I had barely spoken on the way down, and rowed most of the time when we did.

On holiday, August 2000

I felt almost as tired when we got back as when we left, and it had been a strain on Fiona too. Her basic take was that all our problems stemmed from me going to work for TB against her advice, because in the end I always did what I wanted regardless of the consequences.

24 July 2003

I got home and Fiona was walking down the stairs as I walked through the door. "I've been fired," she said. "What?" She said CB [Cherie Blair] had called and said she felt she ought to leave soon... She accused Fiona of briefing against her, which Fiona said was ridiculous, though she accepted there had been a breakdown of trust between them.

She was really upset that CB could think as she did. She was due to go out to the ballet and I said just try not to worry about it, Cherie will regret what she said.

1 April 2002

Philip [Gould] gave a hilarious account of TB's behaviour at strategy meetings, that whenever he was challenged or under pressure he just curled up into a foetal position. He said he was wearing the most extraordinary collection of brightly coloured shirts and ties while GB was always in a plain white shirt and red tie. "It was a classic style meets substance moment."

14 April 2002

GB was wearing a dark suit, white shirt, a red tie, shoes that weren't cleaned properly... TB was wearing Nicole Farhi shoes, ludicrous-looking lilac pyjama-style trousers and a blue smock. I said he looked like Austin Powers.

11 October 2002

TB was wearing what I can only call an Afghan hippie coat. I said there was no way he could wear that... Cherie said: "Just ignore him." I said my job was to stop him looking ridiculous and try to get the press focused on real issues and not his bloody clothes.

11 April 2003

Amid all this [the Iraq war aftermath] we then had the people from The Simpsons in to record TB. The writer... and I had been batting scripts back and forth and it was fine really, though as TB said, there would be plenty of people willing to slag him off for doing it. But hell, he said, there aren't too many perks to the job worth having, so how can you say no to a bit part on The Simpsons?

27 October 1997

TB was regaling us with a few stories from the receptions. One of the African leaders pinching Cherie's bum and asking her who she was, then him jumping a mile when she said she was Tony's wife.

26 June 2000

TB was always pretty discreet about his royal dealings, CB less so. She said when she first met Princess Anne, Anne had called her "Mrs Blair", to which CB said, "Call me Cherie."

"I'd rather not, Mrs Blair," said the princess.