Diaries Volume One: Prelude to Power (The Alastair Campbell Diaries, 1)

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Chilcot concludes that the circumstances in which it was decided that there was a legal basis for UK military action “were far from satisfactory”. Alastair Campbell defends 'every word' of Iraq dossier". BBC News. BBC. 12 January 2011. Archived from the original on 15 January 2010 . Retrieved 29 January 2010.

Although Campbell chaired a committee overseeing the dossier, Chilcot makes it clear that it was Scarlett that drew up the dossier and Blair that wrote the foreword. The Happy Depressive: In Pursuit of Personal and Political Happiness (2012). Arrow. ISBN 0-09-957982-0 Campbell has described himself as a pro-faith atheist, and his statement "we don't do God" is one of his more repeated soundbites. However, he was asked in late 2017 by the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, whom Campbell had interviewed for GQ, to contribute to his book on the meaning of Christmas. References to Dearlove are dotted throughout volume four of the report dealing with the faulty intelligence about Saddam allegedly possessing weapons of mass destruction.Campbell has long been linked with the “dodgy” dossier of September 2002 alleging Saddam was pursuing a weapons of mass destruction programme. Throughout his time in Downing Street, Campbell kept a diary which reportedly totalled some 2 million words. Selected extracts, titled The Blair Years, were published on 9 July 2007. Subsequent press coverage of the book's release included coverage of what Campbell had chosen to leave out, particularly in respect of the relationship between Blair and his chancellor and successor Gordon Brown. Campbell expressed an intention to one day publish the diaries in fuller form, and indicated in the introduction to the book that he did not wish to make matters harder for Brown in his new role as Prime Minister, or to damage the Labour Party. My Brother Donald". alastaircampbell.org. Alastair Campbell. Archived from the original on 8 August 2017 . Retrieved 11 May 2017. Alastair Campbell announces his resignation as Tony Blair’s director of communications, August 2003. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

On 28 May 2019, Campbell announced that he had been expelled from the Labour Party after voting for the Liberal Democrats in that month's European elections, and that he would appeal against the decision. [70] He also questioned the speed of his expulsion compared to the treatment of Labour colleagues accused of anti-semitism. In response, shadow minister Dawn Butler stated that it was common knowledge that voting for another party would result in automatic exclusion. [71]Wintle, Angela (27 July 2012). "Alastair Campbell: My family values". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Archived from the original on 25 July 2020 . Retrieved 6 May 2020. Williams, who was Campbell’s counterpart at the Foreign Office and was also a former political editor at the Daily Mirror, is quoted in the Chilcot report offering various media strategies. Perhaps in part because of this new perspective, Blair comes across slightly less likably this time; needier, more self-interested but also more self-doubting, and increasingly preoccupied with the soul-sapping war of attrition with Gordon Brown.

Phillips, Adam (25 October 2008). "Feel the fear". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 28 October 2008 . Retrieved 31 October 2008. Well, now Tony Blair's consigliere, Alastair Campbell, has stepped forward, after editing down more than two million words into a still-formidable volume, to tell us that in all those years when the author was firing off abusive letters to television stations, tearing a strip off inadequate journalists and threatening elected members of the Labour party with the termination of their halting careers, he was secretly suffering agonies of self-doubt, wondering whether the price he and his family were paying was far too high, and despairing daily of how he might ever again lead what he calls a normal life. At a Celia Johnson-ish moment in their second election campaign, he and Tony Blair stop in a Dorset café by the sea. "Don't you sometimes wish," says Blair, apparently scripted by Noël Coward, "we had a normal life like the people who live over there?" Fiona immediately got in touch with them, and for the last six years has been part of a campaign for equal civil partnerships, which has meant we and many other couples and families can enjoy the same rights and protections as the married, but without the cultural baggage of marriage. She is one of the few to come out of the report with her reputation enhanced. Manningham-Buller told the Chilcot inquiry that the invasion of Iraq substantially increased the terrorist threat to the UK and helped to radicalise young British Muslims.

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Campbell has published a number of books, including eight volumes of memoirs. In February 2018, he wrote, with Paul Fletcher, a novel on football and terrorism in the 1970s, Saturday Bloody Saturday. The book has a front cover quote from commentator John Motson describing it as "the best football novel I have ever read". [104] Meanwhile politics follows him around everywhere he goes. Even a consultation with his GP descends into a debate about Iraq, and his days are peppered with calls from old mates in government moaning about other old mates in government, like squabbling children begging a parent to intervene – often to Campbell’s frustration, now that he’s out of the daily fray. As he says, apropos a friendlier than expected lunch with Balls, “It was interesting how a little bit of distance was making me look at people in a different light.” Exclusive interview: Alastair Campbell". MHT. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017 . Retrieved 5 May 2020. Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell's odd-couple podcast". Financial Times. The Financial Times. 28 March 2022. Archived from the original on 20 April 2022 . Retrieved 5 April 2022. He initially argued that military action would require a second United Nations resolution but it never came. In spite of that, he said there was legal cover.