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My Latest Book
Alastair Campbell Diaries Volume 7
From Crash to Defeat
by
Alastair Campbell
Caught in the no man’s land between being a key figure in Downing Street and the relative anonymity of the world outside politics, Alastair Campbell finds himself being torn in several directions as this latest volume of diaries opens. Having succeeded Tony Blair as Prime Minister, Gordon Brown wants Campbell at his side. Campbell resists, flooding his reservoir of guilt as a general election looms and Brown’s indecision and fluctuating moods suggest the Labour administration is seriously threatened by the Tory ‘posh boy’, David Cameron.
Soon Campbell is earning not only praise but big money from motivational speaking and writing novels which darkly reflect the mood swings that continue to concern both him and his family. Serious journalism across platforms old and new puts him back in the public eye and together with live appearances and a love of sport – his enduring love affair with Burnley Football Club still smoulders – sees him board a celebrity merry-go-round that often leaves him far from his comfort zone.
With politics constantly tugging his sleeve, he eventually returns to the front line to marshal a party in disarray. The intensity of the months leading up to 6 May 2010 is as dramatic as any screenplay, with Campbell chronicling Brown’s struggle to win over a disillusioned nation and then his dignified departure from the main stage. For Campbell, another chapter closes. So what next?
It never fails to fascinate me how the most incongruous events in life can lead you in directions you never intended to pursue. How I found myself here, spending an hour at 05:30 on a Saturday morning, watching an interview with John Bercow, is too long a story of the twists and turns of a constantly searching mind that wakes too early and wonders too much. Suffice to say that I enjoyed the interview enormously and I’m really pleased to have discovered this site. But that’s not to say that I won’t have moved on to other worlds and other websites and forgotten all about you by the time I’ve finished breakfast.