But What Can I Do?: Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It

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The government later accused the BBC of behaving improperly for allowing Campbell to appear as a more in-depth version of his diaries was due to be published the following week, and a Downing Street spokesman told The Guardian, "Campbell seemed to be on because he's flogging a book next week, so the BBC haven't behaved entirely properly here. They now also do an interview channel, Rest Is Politics Leading, and have talked to a number of former Prime Ministers, including John Major, Theresa May and Tony Blair, leading international politicians, among them Hillary Clinton, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Francois Hollande, and a host of British figures from politics and beyond.

All the same, if you’d told me five years ago – or even two years ago – that tickets for the appearance in Harrogate of a double act comprising a former government spin doctor and a former government minister would sell out, and quickly, I wouldn’t have believed you. Their first interview was with Ed Miliband, followed by Rachel Riley, Jamie Carragher, Kelly Holmes and Maro Itoje. In July 2019, in the week Boris Johnson became prime minister, Campbell penned a 3,500-word open letter to Jeremy Corbyn saying he no longer wished to be re-admitted to the party despite legal advice saying he would win a court case against his expulsion.

Campbell was born on 25 May 1957 in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, son of Scottish veterinary surgeon Donald Campbell and his wife Elizabeth.

I hear a woman say to her friend, in a voice I would describe, as a Yorkshire person myself, as exuding a full sense of value for money. Campbell is widely reported to have coined the phrase "the people's princess" and to have persuaded the queen to make her broadcast to the nation more personal, not least by using the phrase "speaking as a grandmother". I’m a friend of Bill,” she said, with a little wink and a smile as she headed to the changing rooms. In any case, by then, the campaign had largely imploded, thanks to a collapse in trust and respect between members of the board and the people running the campaign, a situation made worse by personality clashes and factionalism. Interestingly, although the campaign reached across the generations, it was to a large extent driven by young people working for two particular groups, “For our Future’s Sake” and “Our Future, Our Choice”, FFS and OFOC (variations on the same joke).But even the Conservatives conceded they were partly defeated by their inability to find someone to match him.

The double act in question – Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s bagpipe-playing former henchman, and Rory Stewart, who was briefly the secretary of state for international development under Theresa May – began their podcast, The Rest Is Politics, in March 2022. Campbell wrote the speech that led to the party's review of Clause IV and the birth of "New Labour". This started with England rugby player Maro Itoje and former athlete turned sports politician Sebastian Coe. It emerged McGuinness was helping Campbell with a novel which had an Irish Republican Army (IRA) active service unit as part of the plot.Campbell became a central figure in the handling of the aftermath of Princess Diana's death after the head of the royal household, the Earl of Airlie, asked Tony Blair to second Campbell to help prepare the funeral, saying they knew it would have to be different.