A Journey

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His account, published in 2000 and therefore confined to the first term, is usually considered favourable to New Labour, yet its revelations of how Blair and his team approached government are extraordinarily damning. Sometimes Bower is straining so hard to damn the accused that the author tumbles into the ridiculous. Shortly after Maxwell drowned in November 1991, Campbell punched The Guardian journalist Michael White after White joked about "Captain Bob, Bob, Bob. The result, from an author who has previously written mainly about the Conservative party and its leaders, is admirably even-handed and often insightful.

Campbell was born on 25 May 1957 in Keighley, West Riding of Yorkshire, son of Scottish veterinary surgeon Donald Campbell and his wife Elizabeth.He oversaw new co-ordination and rebuttal systems which gave birth to a communications machine which became both feared and respected, and the model for modern communications in politics and business. Gordon Brown was said to be "seething" and "dismayed" over the criticism he received from Blair in the book, but had told aides not to criticise it.

Julian Glover, a columnist in The Guardian, said that "no political memoir has ever been like this: a book written as if in a dream– or a nightmare; a literary out-of-body experience. He opened briefings to the foreign media, among a raft of modernisation and efficiency strategies he introduced. 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.What this meant is spelt out by Hennessy and Riddell: the biggest centralisation of Whitehall power in peacetime. In November 2017, he was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in recognition of his work in breaking down the stigma surrounding mental illness and promoting the importance of psychiatry. But even the Conservatives conceded they were partly defeated by their inability to find someone to match him.