The Blair Years - Couverture souple

Campbell, Alastair

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 0091920639 ISBN 13 : 9780091920630

Editeur : Hutchinson, 2007

Synopsis

Book by Campbell Alastair

A propos du livre

Extrait :

The following are excerpts from Alastair Campbell's The Blair Years. Mr. Campbell's comments on the entries are in bold.

Meeting Diana

As a journalist, I had often been critical of Princess Diana. The moment I met her, former negative thoughts were banished.

Thursday, May 4, 1995

Local elections. Terry picked me up to go to collect TB/CB to go to Walworth Rd for the results coming in. They were at a dinner in Hyde Park Gardens that had been organised for them to meet Princess Diana. I rang the bell and said could you tell Mr Blair his car is here. I went back to the car and the next thing TB is tapping at the car window and he says: 'Someone wants to meet you.' I get out and she's walking towards me, and she says: 'There he is, can I come over and say hello,' and then she's standing there, absolutely, spellbindingly, drop-dead gorgeous, in a way that the millions of photos didn't quite get it. She said hello, held out her hand and said she was really pleased to meet me, so I mumbled something back about me being more pleased and how I didn't expect when I left the house tonight that I'd end up standing in the middle of the road talking to her. 'It would make a very funny picture if there were any paparazzi in those trees,' she said. TB was standing back and Cherie was looking impatient and I was just enjoying flirting with her.

I asked if he had behaved well and she said yes, very well. I said in that case I think you should come with us to Walworth Road and create an almighty sensation.

'I just might,' she said.
Northern Ireland

In the introduction to the book I cite TB's optimism and resilience as two of his greatest qualities. Here, in his second week as Prime Minister, the optimism is on display after a weekend spent reflecting on Northern Ireland. The resilience would follow as, over the course of his Premiership, he secured progress towards peace.

Monday, May 12, 1997

TB said he reckoned he could see a way of sorting the Northern Ireland problem. I loved the way he said it, like nobody had thought of it before. I said what makes you think you can do it when nobody else could?
Death of Diana

The events following the death of Diana are recorded in some detail in the book. Here is a short extract which records how I heard the news, and how TB initially reacted.

Saturday, August 30, 1997

I got to bed, and at around two I was paged by media monitoring: 'Car crash in Paris. Dodi killed. Di hurt. This is not a joke.' Then TB came on. He had been called by Number 10 and told the same thing. He was really shocked. He said she was in a coma and the chances are she'd die. I don't think I'd ever heard him like this. He was full of pauses, then gabbling a little, but equally clear what we had to do. We started to prepare a statement. We talked through the things we would have to do tomorrow, if she died. By now the phones were starting from the press, and I didn't sleep. Then about an hour later Nick, the duty clerk, called and said simply 'She's dead. The Prime Minister is being told now.' I went through on the call. Angus Lapsley was duty private secretary and was taking him through what we knew. But it was hard to get beyond the single fact of her death. 'I can't believe this. I just can't believe it,' said TB. 'You just can't take it in, can you?' And yet, as ever with TB, he was straight onto the ramifications.
Historic day with Sinn Fein

There were many important milestones on the road to the Good Friday Agreement, which was perhaps the greatest high of my entire time with TB, elections included. This extract relates to one such milestone, the first visit to Downing Street by Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, two men crucial to the peace process.

Thursday, December 11, 1997

Gerry Adams and his team arrived 15 minutes early, and he did a little number in the street, where the media numbers were huge. This was a big moment, potentially historic in the progress it could lead to. They came inside and we kept them waiting while we went over what TB was due to say. Mo Mowlam and Paul Murphy were both there and Mo was pretty fed up, feeling she was getting shit from all sides. They were hovering around the lifts and were summoned down to the Cabinet room. We had agreed TB should be positive but firm. He actually came over as friendly, welcoming them individually as they came in. I shook McGuinness by the hand, who as he sat down said, fairly loudly, 'So this is the room where all the damage was done.' It was a classic moment where the different histories played out. Everyone on our side thought he was referring to the mortar attack on Major, and we were shocked. Yet it became obvious from their surprise at our shock that he was referring to policymaking down the years, and Britain's involvement in Ireland. 'No, no, I meant 1921,' he said. I found McGuinness more impressive than Adams, who did the big statesman bit, and talked in grand historical sweeps, but McGuinness just made a point and battered it, and forced you to take it on board. Of the women, I could not work out whether they really mattered, or whether they just took them round with them to look a bit less hard. They were tough as boots all three of them. TB was good in the use of language and captured well the sense of history and occasion. He said we faced a choice of history — violence and despair, or peace and progress. We were all taking risks, but they are risks worth taking. He said to Adams he wanted to be able to look him in the eye, hear him say he was committed to peaceful means, and he wanted to believe him. I was eyeing their reaction to TB the whole time, and both Adams and McG regularly let a little smile cross their lips. Martin Ferris [Sinn Fein negotiator] was the one who just stared. Mo got pissed off, volubly, when they said she wasn't doing enough. TB was maybe not as firm as we had planned, but he did ask — which I decided not to brief, and knew they wouldn't — whether they would be able to sign up to a settlement that did not explicitly commit to a united Ireland. Adams was OK, but McGuinness was not. Adams said the prize of a lasting peace justifies the risks. Lloyd George, Balfour, Gladstone, Cromwell, they all thought they had answers of sorts. We want our answers to be the endgame. A cobbled-together agreement will not stand the test of time. He pushed hard on prisoners being released, and the aim of total demilitarisation, and TB just listened. TB said he would not be a persuader for a united Ireland. The principle of consent was central to the process. Adams said if TB could not be a persuader, he could be a facilitator. He said we would be dead in 40 years, but in the meantime this was the biggest test of TB's time in office, how he deals with the displaced citizens in a divided territory.

9/11

September 11 was meant to be another fairly routine day. It came to be a defining moment in the Blair years and would ensure foreign policy dominated his second term. As with Diana's death, once the initial shock subsided, he was straight onto the ramifications.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001

I woke up to the usual blah on the radio about TB and the TUC speech, all the old BBC clichés about us and the unions, the only new thing GMB ads asking if you trust TB not to privatise the NHS. Peter H and I went up to the flat. TB had done a good section on public-private, an effective hit back at the Edmonds line. With the economy, public services, Europe/euro and a bit on asylum, we had a proper speech. We sharpened it and honed it a bit. He was furious at the GMB ads, said he intended to give Edmonds a real hammering. We finished it on the train to Brighton, were met and driven to the hotel.

We were there, up at the top of the hotel putting the finishing touches to the speech, when the attacks on the New York Twin Towers began. Godric was watching in the little room where the Garden Room girl had set up, came up to the top of the little staircase leading to the bit where TB and I were working, and signalled for me to go down. It was all a bit chaotic, with the TV people going into their usual breathless breaking-news mode, but it was clearly something way out of the ordinary. I went upstairs, turned on the TV and said to TB he ought to watch it. It was now even clearer than just a few moments ago just how massive an event this was. It was also one that was going to have pretty immediate implications for us too. We didn't watch the TV that long, but long enough for TB to reach the judgement about just how massive an event this was in its impact and implications. It's possible we were talking about thousands dead. We would also have to make immediate judgements about buildings and institutions to protect here. TB was straight onto the diplomatic side as well, said that we had to help the US, that they could not go it all on their own, that they felt beleaguered and that this would be tantamount to a military attack in their minds. We had to decide whether we should cancel the speech. There was always a moment in these terrorist outrages where governments said we must not let the terrorists change what we do, but it was meaningless. Of course they changed what we did. At first, we felt it best to go ahead with the speech but by the time we were leaving for the venue, the Towers were actually collapsing. The scale of the horror and the damage was increasing all the time and it was perfectly obvious he couldn't do the speech. We went over to the conference centre, where TB broke the news to John Monks [TUC general secretary] and Brendan Barber that he intended to go on, say a few words, but then we would have to head back to London. We would issue the text but he would not deliver the speech. Monks said to me that it's on days like this that you realise just how big his job is. TB's mind was whirring with it. His brief statement to the TUC went down well, far better than his speech would have done. We walked back to the hotel, both of us conscious ther...

Quatrième de couverture :

'This is a gripping, compelling and genuinely revelatory read'

Rod Liddle, Sunday Times

'A brilliant, absorbing account...These diaries...will be gasped at, and

relied upon, for decades to come. Buy them: they will suck you in'

Matthew Parris, The Times

'Vivid, humorous and revelatory... There is enough in these diaries to convince me they will become one of the classic records of our times' Steve Richards, Independent

'To my mind, The Blair Years is worth double the money' James Downey, Irish Independent

'The Campbell diaries have the potential to be an historical record of outstanding importance.' Peter Oborne, Spectator

'Beyond question the most important and revelatory book so far written about the inner workings of Blair's government' Washington Post

A publishing sensation on its hardback publication last year, The Blair Years is the most revealing account of contemporary politics you'll ever read. Taken from Alastair Campbell's daily diaries, it charts the rise of New Labour and the tumultuous years of Tony Blair's leadership, providing the first important record of a remarkable decade.

Campbell is no stranger to controversy. As Blair's press secretary, strategist and trusted confidant, he was pivotal to New Labour and its three election victories, spending more waking hours alongside the Prime Minister than anyone. His diaries - at times brutally frank, often funny, always compelling - take the reader right to the heart of government.

The Blair Years covers the defining events of our time, from Labour's new dawn to the war on terror, from the death of Diana to peace in Northern Ireland, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, through to the Hutton Inquiry of 2003, the year Campbell resigned. But amid the big events are insights and observations that make this a remarkably human portrayal of some of the most powerful people in the world.

There has never been so riveting a book about life at the very top, nor a more human book about politics, told by a man who saw it all.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Hutchinson
• Date d'édition: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0091920639
• ISBN 13: 9780091920630
• Reliure: Broché