Euan notices the bottles of alcopops
So by now the media were crying 'spin' as often as the Tories, and Alastair was the one person to blame. No one thought that it could be the policies rather than the public relations that was at fault. The press in particular were universally condemnatory in a way the New Labour government hadn't seen before. Moving Alastair to the backroom role wasn't the best way of changing the story, but it was more acceptable to Blair than his own abdication in favour of Gordon Brown - though this wouldn't become a story until much later.
Those closest to Blair's court weren't fooled. In July 2000, Ken Follett, the author, launched a scathing attack on New Labour in the Observer: a project he had previously supported by raising millions of pounds for the party. His wife Barbara, the Labour MP for Stevenage, had once been responsible for improving New Labour's collective dress-sense and the couple had been close friends of the Blairs. The friendship cooled after journalists received a tip-off that the Blairs were dining at Follet's house shortly before the 1997 General Election. If this was the cause of the venom, Follet's sour grapes were certainly being served cold. He now branded Blair an immoral, cowardly control freak. You go, Ken!
His main beef was that Blair and his cronies didn't air their criticisms of colleagues such as Mo Mowlam openly, and instead briefed against people in secret: the equivalent of sending a poison-pen letter. 'The people who do the briefing, who whisper the words of poison into the ears of journalists, are of no consequence. They are the rent boys of politics.' Suddenly Mark Oaten would appear to have an excuse.
But the truth was now out there for anyone wanting to read it. 'The polite fiction that the Prime Minister's advisers are responsible is absurd. Control-freak Tony doesn't let Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson go around saying anything they like. They do what the boss tells them.' No one wanted to listen.
Alastair went on record as saying that,"serious people will treat his outburst with the derision it deserves." He also claimed that another of Follett's allegations was merely, "an old, untrue story claiming that a spokesman for the prime minister had briefed Roy Hattersley against David Clark. That is, and always was, untrue." Unfortunately Hattersley himself had discussed this very incident on Channel 4 two months previously, saying, "I was writing a profile of a beleaguered cabinet minister [Clark] . . . There was one small fact about his career which I wanted to check, so I phoned the Downing Street press office. They confirmed the fact. Ten minutes later they phoned me back and said: 'We hear you are writing a profile of this man. Well, it's only fair to tell you that he is a very bad minister, he doesn't get on with his civil servants, his junior ministers are rebelling against him . . .' I have never known Downing Street to behave in that way before and it seems to me entirely disreputable."
In the doldrums, Alastair's flailing about was only making him look worse. Writing in the Mirror, he warned newspapers that criticising New Labour was playing into the hands of the Tories, "They should never forget the choice in the end is simple: Tory or Labour.... I make no bones about the fact that I was a pro-Labour journalist". Sadly, he'd forgotten the attacks he'd made on Labour in that journalistic career. Francis Wheen was only too keen to remind him:
Reporting from the 1993 party conference, he noted the "widespread unease" about Jack Cunningham's performance as shadow foreign secretary: "It really is very hard to get anyone to say a kind word about him." A few months later he complained that "Labour's health team has been less effective under David Blunkett than it was under Robin Cook. Blunkett appears to view shadow chancellor Gordon Brown as a bigger enemy than [Virginia] Bottomley." In April 1994, not for the first time, he sneered at Mo Mowlam's talent for grabbing the headlines: "It all smacks of a bid to get noticed and talked about before national executive and shadow cabinet skirmishing."
Even during the Labour leadership contest of June 1994, Campbell was still singing lustily from the Conservative Central Office hymnsheet. "Both Prescott and Cook are in part motivated by dislike and mistrust of Brown," he revealed. "The very mention of his [Brown's] name sets Prescott's teeth on edge." When an irate reader accused him of being a "stirrer", Campbell was unrepentant. "What's wrong with stirring?" he demanded.
But this all admirably kept ET off the front pages, even after the PM promised spin rather than substance (allegedly a verbal error) during PM's questions. Focussing on the spin doctors themselves also ensured that the real origin of the spin was blurred. Andrew Tyrie in the Commons wasn't distracted and summed up the problem on 3rd July:
The Prime Minister can do something about that. The first thing that he should do is to curb the power and activities of Alastair Campbell. If the Prime Minister wants a political hatchet man, he cannot expect the taxpayer to provide the funds. If Alastair Campbell is doing exclusively party political work, he had better resign and be paid for by funds from the Labour party. Secondly, the Prime Minister had better clean up his act at No. 10 Downing street. He had better put the building back in the charge of civil servants. He had better start using Cabinet Sub-Committees for some genuine decisions, rather than working out how to implement decisions. He should also show some respect for Parliament.
The ETPM would, of course, do no such thing while he could happily hide behind Alastair and make all the decisions whilst receiving none of the harsher criticism.
Family would appear to have been the least of Blair's worries at this time. Then on July 6th, 16-year-old Euan Blair was arrested after being found drunk and vomiting in Leicester Square.
He'd apparently been celebrating the end of GCSE's. Or maybe it was the ultimate act of rebellion: an exhibition of drunken yobbishness designed to undermine his father's plans to introduce fixed-penalty fines for drunken yobbish behaviour. Downing Street issued a statement saying:
"Euan was out last night with friends to mark the end of his GCSEs. The police late last night saw him lying on the ground in Leicester Square.
He was clearly ill and had been vomiting. An ambulance was called but ambulance personnel decided he didn't need hospital treatment and he was then taken by the police to Charing Cross. He was, in the view of the police, drunk and incapable.
He [Euan] gave his name during the interview as Euan John. He gave an old address and he gave a date of birth which suggested he was 18.
The police searched him and established his correct identity. They immediately called the special branch here [10 Downing Street] who immediately went to Charing Cross and identified him. He was then processed, released and taken home.
Euan is very sorry for the inconvenience he caused to the police, the state he was in, and for the false statement that he made.
He is in no doubt of the seriousness of it and the view that his parents take of it.They will of course fully co-operate with any further action the police propose to take.
In the near future he will have to return to Charing Cross with his parents to hear what if any further action is going to be taken.
The prime minister and Mrs Blair appreciate that as this is a case of under-age drinking which required the involvement of the police, the press will report this but they will continue to do all they can to protect their childrens' privacy and ensure as normal an upbringing as possible for them."
Alastair said, "Euan won't be the only teenager out last night celebrating the end of his exams. But he will be the only one splashed over the papers and on TV." Perhaps because the rest of us celebrated by hanging out in the park swigging lager shandy? Understanding as well as gorgeous, Alastair appeared to have forgotten his statement of the previous week: "There is a very real issue with young louts causing mayhem up and down the country on a Friday night."
The on-the-spot fines were Alastair's idea all along, according to Roger Liddle, then an advisor on European policy. He'd hoped they would deflect attention from the Evil Troll's European policy - a weakness according to the tabloids. If only he'd known that Euan could do the deflecting so much more effectively.
But Euan didn't manage to distract Alastair from attacking the Press again. Over the Summer of 2000, most newspapers were calling for serious debate over the euro. This was apparently unacceptable, according a rant from Alastair on the Downing Street website. It was all part of the Press 'distortion and misrepresentation'. Now someone's losing the plot here. It's the job of the media to criticise those who have power, and somewhere along the line, in his blind fear of power returning to the Tories, Alastair had lost sight of that. Now BBC TV has too.
The problem was that now even those journalists who had sympathised with New Labour were beginning to feel irked by Campbell's policiy of leaking to 'blue' papers rather than 'red' ones. This wasn't earning him any gratitude either - the Mail remained obstinately anti-Blair despite all the cuddling and coddling it received, and the Sun as volatile as ever in the face of all the New Labour creeping and crawling. And now the usually sympathetic Guardian worms were about to turn.