Robustness was Alastair Campbell's hallmark, but even the BBC was surprised at the strength of his rejection of the station's charges against him.Deaglán de Bréadún examines his role in the Kellysaga
Alastair Campbell's long-heralded departure as Director of Communications in Mr Tony Blair's 10 Downing Street office finally came about yesterday. For days, if not weeks, there will be speculation about the timing of his exit.
Some may find it significant that he announced his exit while the public hearings of the Hutton Inquiry were still under way and a few days before Dr David Kelly's widow, Janice, and other members of the scientist's family, were due to give evidence.
But it is reported that Campbell has wanted to leave for at least two years and kept having to put it off because of such events as September 11th, the Afghan war, the Iraq war and, finally, the Kelly affair.
Ironically, we are told that he was finally ready to make his announcement on May 29th, the very morning when BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan made his fateful broadcast, reporting that an unnamed senior official had told him the British government falsified a dossier on Iraq to suggest that Saddam Hussein could launch weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes.
Gilligan went one further in an article for the next issue of the Mail on Sunday newspaper when he said Campbell had been named by his source as the author of this "sexing-up" process.
The Gilligan story became a focal point in what had now become all-out verbal warfare between Campbell and the BBC. In evidence at the Hutton Inquiry this week, the BBC Chairman, Mr Gavyn Davies, said he had paid little or no attention to Gilligan's report for several weeks until Campbell went before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on June 25th and repeatedly denounced the BBC news item in terms such as the following.
"It is a lie, it was a lie, it is a lie that is continually repeated and until we get an apology for it I will keep making sure that Parliament, people like yourselves and the public know that it was a lie," Mr Campbell told MPs.
Mr Davies was evidently shocked by the vehemence of Campbell's outburst.
"I felt this was an extraordinary moment. I felt it was an almost unprecedented attack on the BBC to be mounted by the head of communications at 10 Downing Street. Mr Campbell accused the BBC of lying directly. He accused Mr Gilligan of lying directly. He alleged that the BBC had accused the Prime Minister of lying, something which I never believed the BBC had done. And he accused the BBC of having followed an anti-war agenda before, during and after the Iraqi conflict."
Journalists covering the prime minister ran the risk of being "Campbelled". When the press chief took particular exception to an article or broadcast he reportedly conveyed his displeasure in unvarnished terms. The Guardian journalist Michael White even found himself in an exchange of fisticuffs with him many years ago, when Campbell worked for the Daily Mirror and White made a tasteless remark about the recent death of the newspaper's chairman, Robert Maxwell.
But a good tongue-lashing in private, generally shrugged-off by seasoned journalists, was different from an open, public attack on the BBC in front of a parliamentary committee. Aunty Beeb had now been "Campbelled" and, as the comments of Mr Davies made clear, she did not like it one little bit.
Had Campbell confined his complaint to the specific instance of Gilligan's story, which has since been the subject of much criticism, it would not have been so bad. But putting it in the context of a generalised attack clearly put the Corporation on the defensive and made it all the more difficult for those, like Tony Blair and the Defence Secretary, Geoff Hoon, who were privately attempting to make peace with the BBC.
Not entirely through his own fault, Campbell had become a symbol of the "spin" culture surrounding the whole Downing Street operation. He had come to be portrayed as a type of Rasputin figure, "Blair's brain" and the "real" deputy prime minister. He became a hate-figure to the Daily Mail, which slated him as a mendacious bully: the paper's feelings were reciprocated in full measure.
But it was all fairly run-of-the-mill knockabout stuff until the Kelly affair. The fact that the scientist apparently chose to take his own life put the whole issue of "spin" in a different perspective. It was obvious from the evidence of both the prime minister and Mr Hoon this week that political factors and the potential effect on the government's image were foremost in their minds and that they failed to give sufficient consideration to the potential human impact of massive public scrutiny on Dr Kelly and his family. Suddenly the game had turned sour. With Campbell's departure, it might be possible now to make peace between the government and the BBC. Despite all he has done for Mr Blair, it could be said that the biggest favour he ever did his boss was stepping down.