Europe needs to get real on defence; Britain needs to get real on Europe
13 February 2025
Post
18 January 2010
2 minute(s) read
Recent Posts
207. Gordon Brown: How to Fix a Fracturing World
What did Gordon Brown learn from leading the UK through the global financial crisis? Why do so many citizens today not belong to any civic or religious group, and how does that impact our politics? Ho... Continue21 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
The Greatest Threat Humans Just Can’t Stomach with Yuval Noah Harari
Episode 2 is available right now for TRIP Plus members. Sign up at therestispolitics.com What can the Aztec Empire's catastrophic failure to understand Cortés and the Spanish conquistadors teach us ... Continue18 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
572. Trump’s Next Middle East Crisis and Reform’s £72m Megadonation
Is the Houthi’s seizure of one of the world's most critical waterways the clearest proof yet that Trump's Iran war has become a catastrophe? With the very people building AI now calling for a pause,... Continue17 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
16 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
571. Rory and Alastair Challenge Ed Miliband on Israel-Palestine
Why has Ed Miliband gone further than any previous foreign secretary in confirming the occupation of the Palestinian territories as illegal and placing sanctions on Israeli settlements in the West Ban... Continue15 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
Join Alastair Campbell and Mishal Husain live at Cadogan Hall
Persevilience: The word the world needs now is the title of Alastair Campbell’s new book. It is also the starting point for a conversation with... Continue14 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
206. How Putin’s War Changed Finland Forever (Sanna Marin)
Following Putin's war in Ukraine, how politically challenging was it committing Finland to join NATO? What was it like becoming the world's youngest sitting prime minister at 34? Why did a scandal ove... Continue14 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
“Our Generation Was Lied To”: Two Gen Z MPs on Fixing Politics
To hear the full series “The Gen Z Story”, sign up at the restispolitics.com – use your student email for a discount How do you get older colleagues to take you seriously when you become an MP ... Continue11 September 2026
Posted by Alastair Campbell
What a wonderful way to start the blogoweek. Hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. And so believable
Keep it up. And as you found at OT on Saturday, the media have no idea how much the public dislike and disrespect them. Their coverage of your appearance at the inquiry, and the inquiry more generally, was the latest eg of bias. I read in a German newspaper last week that Iraq’s economy is growing faster than at any time in history and that the deaths there are lower than since pre Saddam. I cannot claim to read every UK newspaper but I have certainly head nothing to that effect here.
Whoever put that together deserves the Order of Lenin! I saw the Nick Griffin one, but this is funnier. And the great thing is that because I have no idea what Dacre looks or sounds like, because of his paper, I imagine him to be like this
‘One of the most evil men in Britain’!!!! A bit of hyperbole perhaps but still quite amusing.
Personally I liked the abuse of Oborne, though the casting wasn’t too good as that actor didn’t look like he’d lunched well.
As a complete aside, where is George Osbourne these days? Is he being kept in a locked room, out of the way?
Tee hee! Poor Mr Dacre, how awful to go through life without a sense of humour. No wonder the paper he edits contains so much bitterness and envy.
But I have good news. Although the Mail is Britain’s second best selling newspaper it still only reaches about one voter in ten and I know one regular reader who doesn’t believe everything she reads in it.
So, unlike Mr Dacre apparently, we live in hope…
Give it a rest Alastair! It sounds like you’re the one with the obsession with Paul Dacre, rather than the other way round. You never shut up about him. He’s obviously got under your skin!
Just been watching your former colleague Mr Powell. Interesting to see you both attacking the former ambassador, Mr Meyer, whose evidence made me understand rather better why Prime Ministers might want to bring their own trusted advisors rather than rely on people like him. What a creep!
Hi Alastair, I’ve been thinking how Blair should answer this ‘growing’ thing that the enquiry is obsessing on. He should simply say: ‘as sanctions eroded and inspectors were not allowed back and cooperated with fully, the threat could only continue to grow. This is what I interpreted from the intelligence information and the message I was trying to get across to the public; that if we did not face up to this threat the programmes would only grow’.
I bet the staff at the Mail love the vid almost as much as Dacre loves AC.
Do you honestly feel the whole sorry saga of the invasion of Iraq was ‘decent and good’, that not just the deaths of many British servicemen but of several hundreds of thousand ordinary Iraqis was ‘decent and good’, that cribbing from a decade-old thesis found on the net to cobble together a half-hearted justification for the invasion was ‘decent and good’, that the hounding of the pensioner at the Labour Party conference was ‘decent and good’? Or Blair exempting Formula 1 from the tobacco ad ban for a £1 million backhander from Bernie Ecclestone? Do you honestly think that was decent and good? If so you really must be a sandwich short of a picnic rather as I have long suspected Blair was.