Lord Robert Winston
Recanting heretic?
By October 1999, Alastair was increasingly under attack in the UK media for his management of the Kosovo war. Two biographies of Our Hero were also due to be published, neither of which could be expected to be particularly flattering.
Peter Oborne's book turned out to be repetitive rant about how Alastair was single-handedly (ok, maybe the Evil Troll helped him a bit) turning us all into a bunch of Winstons who love Big Brother. Tom Condon and Eric Jacobs may have been fairer, or may not have been - the book has disappeared without a trace.
Campbell's favouritism in handling reporters now meant that plenty of them were queing up to poke him in the eye with a sharp stick. He helpfully handed them one he'd made earlier when he gave a talk to the Royal United Services Institute in London. He condemned the cowardliness of some jounalists in implying a "moral equivalence" between ethnic cleansing and a stray bomb that accidentally killed civilians" , and dared to mention a "Serbian Lie Machine". Apparently, we're back into Big Brother language here. I'm as fruitcake as anyone when it comes to seeing parallels with 1984, but this one passes me by - and where are all these journalists now when we really do need someone to point out how we're headed for a police state? Savaging George Galloway, probably. Ooops, I'm digressing again....
Unfortunately, it couldn't be denied that Milosevic's advisors learned from Alastair extremely quickly - and that their briefings began to be modelled on what they saw NATO doing on TV the night before. If anyone inspired the Serbian Lie Machine, it was Campbell himself.
It didn't help that some of the facts Alastair was faced with were bloody terrible. He had to praise the accuracy of NATO bombing, when it had killed 1,500 civilians - and that was about double the number of Serb soldiers or police killed. It's true that NATO didn't intend to kill civilians and Milosevic did, but (as in Iraq) when you're dead, the intentions of your killer are pretty meaningless. Families will naturally despise those who've killed their relatives even if they didn't mean to. Can it even be counted as killing without intent when aircraft flying so high (to avoid danger to themselves) was *bound* to cause inaccurate bombings and kill innocent civilians? It's a bit like a drunk driver blaming the alcohol or the car, because he never intended to kill anyone.
Equally, justifying attacking Yugoslav TV headquarters (presumably not a military or industrial target) on the grounds that it was broadcasting Milosevic's propaganda seemed quite rash at a time when the Evil Troll and the Beloved One were attacking the BBC because its war reports were not sufficiently on-message for the Labour government. Presumably the post-Hutton snivelling and toadying BBC is now a legitimate target in any future war.
But once again, who were the newspapers blaming? Not the Evil Troll. Teflon Tony once again slipped out of the room while they killed the messenger. This was something even Alastair himself didn't see - in his mind, "I think you have got a situation where a lot of right wing journalists do not like us much because we are a Labour Government and some left wing journalists do not like us much because we are a New Labour Government." True: but just as policy was becoming less newsworthy than 'spin', so Campbell was becoming synonymous with that spin and was taking the flak that the PM so deftly deflected from himself.
As an example, in January 2000, Lord Robert Winston, tabloid darling fertility pioneer and New Labour peer, was highly critical of the state of the NHS under New Labour. In an article by Mary Riddell in the New Statesman he accurately accused the government of failing to live up to its promises on the NHS, such as removing the hugely damaging internal market. "We still have an internal market,but instead of commissioning by local health authorities, we have primary care groups. I think we've been quite deceitful about it." His own 87 year old mother had received appalling care. "She waited 13 hours in casualty, before getting a bed in a mixed sex ward - a place we said we would abolish. None of her drugs were given on time, she missed meals, and she was found lying on the floor when the morning staff came on." Of his own speciality he said, "The truth is that our services are much the worst in Europe. There are fewer [IVF] treatment cycles under this government than there were under the Tories." Worst of all, he claimed that a "conspiracy of silence" meant that the Evil Troll had no idea of the financial and structural problems faced by the NHS.
He also unguardedly revealed that Cherie Blair (pregnant with baby Leo) was planning a caesarian section atChelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. Despite it being manifestly evident that Cherie was always going to be too posh to push, she was said to be upset and angry about the story. Mary Riddell later said, "I am not privy to the content of that talk, but it sounded mind-bending." She claimed that, "Winston emerged from his home on Friday, looking beaten and dejected after his No 10 debriefing. . . . At issue now was new Labour's suppression of the dire state of the health service." Lord Winston hastily issued a statement denying any such discussion had taken place, and retracting some of his other comments. "I did not mean, and I wish to stress this, that the government are deceiving people over the NHS. I certainly do not believe that the NHS is worse under this government than the last government."
Sadly for him, the New Statesman had the remarks on tape, and the BBC's World at One programme played them within an hour of Lord Winston's statement. Although the tape was inaudible over the airwaves, the BBC confirmed the presence of the remarks. With this confirmation of his breaking the rules of medical ethics, Lord Winston was thrown to the Labour lions and his claims were duly savaged to pieces.The Conservative Liam Fox could only watch in admiration: "The Alastair Campbell press machine seems to be more capable of getting heretics to recant than the Inquisition."
Alastair himself saw things a little differently. "The New Statesman piece appeared and, to be perfectly fair to the New Statesman, they didn’t flam it up. I saw it in the morning and thought, ‘Oh God, that’ll fly a bit’. I went to the four o’clock briefing over at the House and got one question on it, which wasn’t followed up. I thought, ‘It’s going away’. [But] The next day the Daily Mail had five pages on ‘Labour’s Worse On Health Than The Tories’, blah, blah, blah. The other papers followed it up a bit. Cherie was genuinely upset and angry about the things [Lord Winston was reported as saying] about her. Fiona spoke to Robert Winston to ask what he did say, because he didn’t know what her [Cherie’s] arrangements were; nobody knew apart from her and her doctor and her family. I then spoke to him and said, ‘Look, I am going to have to have a line about what to say about this – not the health stuff, purely about Cherie’. He was perfectly nice and said he didn’t recall saying any of it. And I said, ‘Well look, I am going to have to deal with this and it would be good if I could say you didn’t say this about Cherie.’ He hadn’t read the piece or seen any of the papers – he had only heard the Today programme. I came into the office and spoke to him again. By then he had seen the papers and he said, ‘Look, I didn’t say all this stuff about you’re worse than the Tories and I didn’t say this and I didn’t say that.’ I said, ‘You’ve got to be clear about this, because she [interviewer Mary Riddell] talks about the tape recorder and how you put your hand over it’. So though we discussed it, the ensuing statement was his [Lord Winston’s], not mine. The next thing I know it there’s a Daily Mail splash, [saying] I gagged him and all the rest of it. Oh well, you get used to it."
But once again, qui bono? The news about the dire state of the NHS gets buried in a pile of fallout about Alastair and his role and power within the government.
So on my birthday (18th Jan, all cards, presents and money welcome) in 2000, Mo Mowlam found herself in the position of having to defend Alastair's role in front of the House of Commons. Apparently, by speaking for the PM and being employed by the PM to do this, he preserved the impartiality of the Civil Service. So that's all right then.
The Tories were complaining again in February 2000. In December 1999, Alastair met millionaire Tory MP Shaun Woodward at his 10 Downing Street office. Woodward subsequently defected to Labour, amidst a storm of publicity clearly co-ordinated by the gorgeous spin-doctor. So in February, Andrew Tyrie MP felt moved to write to Sir Richard Wilson, Head of the Civil Service. "At the Select Committee hearing last week I asked you whether Alastair Campbell's negotiations in meetings with Shaun Woodward prior to his defection to the Labour Party constituted a legitimate function of a special adviser. I also asked whether they were consistent with the terms of Mr Campbell's contract which require special advisers to use discretion and avoid controversy. The Chairman of the Select Committee, Tony Wright, intervened to prevent you from having to answer this question. On further reflection I still feel this is a matter for you." Sir Richard replied, "My understanding is that what happened was in line with the Model Contract for Special Advisers. Mr Woodward did not make clear before the first meeting that he wished to discuss a possible move to join the Labour Party, and subsequent meetings took place with the approval of the Prime Minister, away from Number 10, either at lunchtime or outside office hours. The Model Contract makes it clear in Schedule 1 (part 2) that if, with the approval of their Minister, special advisers wish to assist with party political matters (other than national election campaigning and standing for Parliament) they may do so at times which do not interfere with their normal duties, for example, out of office hours."
But by now Alastair was starting to fight back. Friendly journos such as Roy Greenslade, and even such unlikely characters as Bernard Ingham, were to be found debunking the idea of spin and instead discussing how the media itself was full of spin about spinners. This is getting confusing, but there's some truth in it. Don't we all now believe all the pants about Poor Old Tony, at the mercy of his Evil Spin Doctors? The Evil Troll might have been walking around with his strings visible, but it was a cunning ploy. All the time he was the puppeteer, not the puppet.
Alastair would also try to counter the effect of stories harmful to the government by writing letters and articles correcting false claims. But all this did was raise his profile further and increase the 'spin' stories. Even those who were writing anti-Campbell stories that received a wide airing in the media (most notably Peter Oborne again - he's a man with a mission) were insistent that Alastair had the Press (minus the Daily Mail, obviously) in his pocket (lucky Press). There was no way to win, unless you were the Prime Minister.
Part of the problem was that Alastair himself didn't understand (or pretended he didn't understand) what all the fuss was about. "The role of the press is changing – they had a taste of power under the last Government and what I think they find irritating about us as is that we won’t be pushed around by the media. We don’t jump up and down every time they give us a kicking. Part of my job is to argue the Government’s case. What I find astonishing is that when I do it, there is this sense that it is unfair and that the press should be allowed to kick the Prime Minister, Chancellor, Deputy Prime Minister, any minister as hard as they want. The minute we prod them back, they squeal."
Which is all very well, but it's one thing to go around 'prodding' the likes of the Mail and the Telegraph who just want to put the boot in: it's quite another to have a go at the BBC and the Guardian when they are critical in a way which could be constructive, if only the Evil Troll had ears to hear.
Though even this is a two-way street. The Press had changed in response to changes in the way Downing Street worked - and not in a good way. Being a political reporter now seemed to involve nothing more than phoning the Press secretary to find out what the news was. Jeremy Paxman summed it up in the Philip Geddes Memorial Lecture, delivered on May 5:
"In January this year, the Times gave an account of a speech in which Tony Blair savaged Ken Livingstone, when the reality was that the reported remarks were never made. The newspaper was going on a press release handed out before the speech was delivered: when it came to the event itself, confronted by irritable Livingstone supporters, Blair dropped the remarks that had been included in the pre-released version of his speech.I am sure this was just a genuine mistake, but it is symptomatic of something. So, too, is the phenomenon of reporting things before they happen - as in David Blunkett's announcement of new primary school spelling tests. Poor old Matthew Parris, the Times columnist and former Conservative MP, woke up at 6.30am one Sunday in January to hear Radio 5 Live tell him what the prime minister was "expected to say" in a live interview with David Frost in a couple of hours' time. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought what someone said in an interview rather depended on what they were asked. Alastair Campbell, who is an honourable man, says this "expected to say" line did not come from him. In which case, where did it come from?
On the morning in question, the prime minister's spokesman found himself, he said, in the bizarre position of explaining to a BBC journalist what the prime minister had said in the course of the interview. You might have thought that the journalist could have found out by watching the interview, and discovering whether indeed the prime minister had said what he was expected to say. The journalist explained to Campbell that she had been too busy talking about what the prime minister was "expected" to say on other BBC outlets to watch the interview itself."
So now it all starts going a bit mad. Alastair seemed to be getting to quite like being the story. When Charlie Whelan had allowed a TV crew access to Number 11 in 1998, Alastair had warned him that it was a big mistake. Despite this, on 8th March 2000 in his lobby briefing he revealed, "Given the increasing focus in the media on the issue of so-called spin, we have agreed to co-operate with the BBC on a documentary about the way we work here in Downing Street.
"This is something broadcasters have been requesting for some time. We have agreed that Michael Cockerell can have access to film some of our meetings, visits and briefings. We are constantly asked for greater access, and also to open up the processes of government, and I am confident that if a film explores the full range of what we do, the public will have a better understanding of the relationship between modern politics and the modern media.
"This does not change in any way our view that Downing Street briefings should remain on the record, but off-camera. Ministers will continue at all times to present the Government's case to Parliament and the public."
The lobby briefings were becoming more and more dissatisfactory, and were endlessly subject to media criticism. The briefings used to be available as verbatim transcripts on the Downing Street website, but they have now been removed. That's a shame, because reading them showed the downright tediousness of lobby briefings - the endless going over the same ground, the snipy little questions; some journalists obviously tame, others equally obviously out to make some kind of personal point by getting one over on Alastair. Other times you would read how Alastair was having to comment on such things as tax reform, tax figures, estimates of furture tax and so on, on the hoof, as if he were the minister responsible. This was going way beyond being an Official Spokesman. You end up thinking - he has to do this twice a day every day. Who would want to do that?
He was also the squaddie facing the lobby firing squad when the General screwed up. For example, on the 7th June, Tony Blair addressed the Women's Institute Conference at Wembley. Nice little gig, he must have thought. Nice chance to tell the little old dears all about my plans and then have a nice cup of tea and a toe-nail cake. Instead, the applause he received was luke-warm at best; many ladies left before the end, calling the speech 'overtly political'; and most amazingly of all there was a spate of slow hand-clapping, only subdued by Chair Helen Carey's appeal to the audience to listen politely. Not the best reception anyone's ever had on their return from paternity leave, but certainly proof that ladies in twin-sets can sniff out a troll at a hundred paces.
The Sun's political editor advised the PM to 'come out fighting'. Scaredy Troll couldn't manage that, but he knew a man who could, so Our Hero faced the lobby alone. He managed admirably, outlining the government's achievements, refusing to insult the WI but pointing out that they had asked for the speech they had got, and finally announcing that they had already invited the PM back. (Was the invitation accepted? What do you think?). It was a fine performance, but it was still the monkey rather than the organ grinder.
A week later, it was announced that Alastair would be 'scaling down his face-to-face meetings with journalists'. His deputy, Godric Smith, had conducted the previous two days' briefings, and a new Chief Press Officer, Anne Chevas, was appointed. Her role included taking on some of the press briefings.
At the time it looked as though Blair had been stung into action by the reception he'd received at the WI conference. In fact, he'd obviously been thinking about Alastair's role for some time. When speaking to the WI, TB had said that the government had to learn to trust people to make their own judgements and did not "need to fight over every headline." This was a clear criticism of the way Alastair had been conducting himself in recent months, and was a bit bloody rich coming from the man giving him his orders.
Additionally, a recent TV programme may have given the Evil Troll pause for thought. Rory Bremner lampooned his relationship with his Official Spokesman in a one-off TV show in May 2000, 'Blair Did It All Go Wrong'. The comedian had a meek and indecisive PM being bossed around by a bullying Alastair. Blair possibly had a fear that Michael Cockerill's upcoming TV documentary might show much the same thing - or more damagingly for him, the exact opposite.
When the film did appear in July 2000, it turned out to be little more than a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Alastair's role in Downing Street, with the Prime Minister making the odd cameo appearance. Just the way for Alastair to attract the attention of potential stalkers, fantasists and the Press (these categories not necessarily being mutually exclusive). It was mostly written off as a gigantic spin exercise in itself. Alastair was supposedly being extra-nice the whole time - and he must have hated it. Kevin Maguire gleefully reported rumours of Alastair wearing make-up for the cameras (very Simon Le Bon, I only wish I could have been the one applying it).
Yet the truth of the relationship between Alastair and the PM most likely isn't what was on the film. TB was, by Alastair's own admission, uncomfortable about appearing in front of the camera. The effect of the film was to reinforce the impression that Alastair had far more power over the ETPM than he did. This could have been damaging to the Prime Minister - but it was ultimately far more damaging to Alastair himself.