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  1. Politics
7 February 2010updated 12 Oct 2023 10:45am

Alastair Campbell — overcome by emotion? Really?

It is difficult to take the former spin doctor's emotional outburst at face value.

By Samira Shackle

Alastair Campbell showed his sensitive side on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show this morning, getting emotional as he denied that Tony Blair had misled parliament over claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Marr asked the former communications director to clarify his answer to the question put to him at the Chilcot inquiry: if the original evidence did not support the view that there was clear and unambiguous evidence that there were WMDs, did Tony Blair mislead parliament?

The notoriously bullish Campbell had to take a minute to compose himself, breathing deeply as if to hold back tears. “Tony Blair is a totally honourable man,” he declared, his breath catching in his throat. He apologised for his emotional state. “I’m a bit upset at this constant vilification . . . I don’t think people are interested in the truth any more, people are just interested in settling the score.”

It was a strange tack for the man who has batted off sustained criticism for the past seven years, and who defiantly endured five hours of questioning at the Chilcot inquiry two weeks ago without so much as a dampening of the eyes. Given his intimate understanding of the media, it will be difficult for many to believe that this was a genuine, uncontrolled display of emotion.

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We are familiar with anger from Campbell — think of his impromptu appearance at the Channel 4 newsroom in 2003 — but not this openness about his hurt feelings.

The Tory shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, another guest on the show, made an arch comment: “Many people are upset [about the Iraq war] in different ways, but that must not stop us from debating it.”

It’s a good point. When he had composed himself, Campbell took issue with the fact that the question was being asked, rather than answering it definitively:

I’m not saying it’s not an important question . . . what I’m saying is that the reason people are going over it again and again is that those who disagree with the judgement Tony Blair made don’t want to see the other side of the story.

Of course, it is entirely possible that what we saw this morning was genuine: Campbell probably is sick of being asked the same questions. But perhaps saying that he feels victimised is a tactic to close off debate, while showing the humanising “authenticity” that, as he pointed out, the public wants.

 

Evasion is the name of the game

Campbell was not the only one to be evasive. Hague was typically obfuscatory on the question of Lord Ashcroft’s tax status.

He gave a very clear statement on Conservative policy — that all peers will have to pay tax in the UK — and said that it will not pose a problem for Ashcroft. However, his refusal to give an outright “yes” or “no” shows continued Tory discomfort with the deputy chairman’s current tax status.

 

UPDATE (3.30pm):

Alastair Campbell has blogged on his appearance on the BBC this morning, saying that it is “frustrating” to be asked the same questions, and that Marr’s agenda “was exposed in the way he casually threw in a highly disputed figure about casualties”. He says:

So if I appeared lost for words, it was perhaps because there is nothing more to say, and if I had said what I was really thinking about the way the media [have] been covering the inquiry, and the way they cover public life more generally, I might have regretted it. So I let my mind race for a while, controlled the emotions surging around, then carried on.

. . . I do sometimes feel that people in public life are now treated by the media as though somehow they are devoid of humanity, do not have feelings, do not really care about anything.

 

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