The Spectator

Monday

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Reading the Campbell diaries, Part II

January 24th, 2001 on Peter Mandelson’s second resignation, over the Hinduja passports-for-favours affair: “I went back up and TB looked absolutely wretched. Peter looked becalmed. TB said he had made clear to PM he had to go and that though he wasn’t sure, over time he would see why it had been necessary. TB seemed much more emotional about the whole thing than Peter….Peter was far less emotional than first time, much more matter of fact. I said he was a good thing, and he didn’t deserve this happening to him again.” Comment: Reports at the time insisted that it was Campbell who in effect forced Mandelson's on the spot resignation, and that they had a blazing row over it.

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Reading the Campbell diaries

Anthony Browne, director of the think-tank Policy Exchange and prior to that the chief political correspondent of The Times, is plucking out the most interesting passages from the just published Alastair Campbell diaries for Coffee House. June 30th 2003 on going for BBC over Andrew Gilligan’s report that he sexed up the “dodgy dossier”: “I went up to see TB, who said he didn’t want it going beyond next week. He lacked the killer instinct. His rationale was that he didn’t want every single media organisation against him.  I said we had to get it absolutely proven that we were right and use that to force a rethink of the political/journalism culture.

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Snuffing away

Marvellous to read James Delingpole on snuff in this week's issue and the very next day to go out to lunch and encounter two people both enthusiastically snuffling away. They managed to do so quite neatly, without sneezing volcanically into voluminous tobacco-stained handkerchiefs. One of them favoured a slightly mentholated mix, while the other's was mustier, with notes of sandalwood and cinnamon. Their supplies came in small tins like miniature jerry cans, which was a little disappointing - I had hoped for exquisite enamelled snuffboxes and more of a flourish about the sniffing. Still, it's early days.

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More Mole than Machiavelli

Well, Alan Clark he aint. The publication today of Alastair Campbell's diaries looks set to be a colossal damp squib. I haven't read the 794-page book, but judging from the extracts he's posted on his website Campbell's observations are almost comically uninteresting. Here he is, for example, on meeting the Princess of Wales in 1995: "She's standing there absolutely, spellbindingly, drop-dead gorgeous, in a way that the millions of photos didn't quite get. "She said 'Hello', held out her hand and said she was really pleased to meet me, so I mumbled something back about being more pleased. "'It would make a very funny picture if there were any paparazzi in those trees,' she said.

Sunday

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What happened at Live Earth

Read Matthew d’Ancona’s Live Earth reports: Live from Live Earth, Rocking for the Planet, Gore’s message is confusing, can Geri be clearer?, Let’s save this funny old world, Nan-archy in the UK, The Excellence of Tree Stock, Turning it up to 11 and Nobody does it better.

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Obama’s challenge

Newsweek has a great cover story about Barack Obama that touches on one of the least-talked about, but most interesting issues surrounding his candidacy: the worry among some black leaders and voters that electing a black president could actually be bad for blacks. The argument goes that once an African-American has been elected president, society will be tempted to conclude that all the problems of racial justice have been solved and move away from things like affirmative action. Here’s Obama’s response to this question: “the impulse I think may be to write a story that says Barack Obama represents a quote-unquote post-racial politics. That term I reject because it implies that somehow my campaign represents an easy shortcut to racial reconciliation.

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What’s missing from the Blair years?

A "gold mine": that is how the Tories would regard Alastair Campbell's unexpurgated diaries, according to Campbell himself. In an interview with Andrew Marr, the great spin doctor admitted that his relationship with the press went "horribly wrong" and that Bill Clinton urged him to look in the mirror and ask if that had something to do with his own methods as well as the feral beasts of the media. Campbell came as close as he ever has to admitting a degree of complicity in the death of Dr David Kelly, describing himself as "a player in a series of events" that led to the scientist's suicide. When Tony Blair saw the diaries, he apparently said: "God, this is quite an account!

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Nobody does it better

During Terence Stamp's summing up speech at Live Earth, I very nearly lost the will to live - a self-defeating performance by the actor, given that the whole point of the concert was to rev up our collective instinct for survival. Five minutes in to Terry's oration, we were longing for a nearby glacier to melt, become a tidal wave and put us out of our misery. How did Michael Caine put up with him as a flatmate for so long? How did they bear it on the set of Superman 2? Just as it seemed that climatic catastrophe could not come too soon, he at last handed over to Madonna, rather in the manner of a pier-end compere well past his best introducing the Krankies. But it takes more than a dreary thespian knight to put the dampeners on Madge who was in sparkling form.

Saturday

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Letters | 7 July 2007

From our US edition

Sir: What is this ‘Brown bounce?’ There would be no bounce at all if our media had not reverted to their favoured toecap-kissing mode. Brown-nosing Sir: What is this ‘Brown bounce?’ There would be no bounce at all if our media had not reverted to their favoured toecap-kissing mode. When Tony Blair came to office ten years ago he was new and fresh and merited a honeymoon period, though seven years of it was outrageous. Ditto David Cameron 18 months ago, whose media honeymoon just ended in roadkill. But Gordon Brown has been co-premier for the past decade and is co-equally responsible for every shoddy aspect of the worst ten years of living his-tory.

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Turning it up to 11

There are few sights in Western civilisation to compare with Spinal Tap performing 'Stonehenge' and it is at least arguable that the risk of impending apocalypse caused by climate change was worth it to get Nigel, the boys and the dancing dwarves back on stage. Two billion people watching around the world are surely happier for having seen this awe-inspiring sight. Surely the end of modern society and the melting of the polar ice-cap is a small price to pay? We must all suffer for art, you know. (The  Beastie Boys were pretty splendid, too.

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The excellence of Tree-Stock

Teatime has come and gone here at Tree-Stock, and we have yawned our way through tepid sets by Corinne Bailey Rae and the insufferably wimpy Keane. Don't send a bunch of boys to play a man's stadium. Thank God for Metallica who are presently restoring some sinew and cojones to proceedings. Front man James Hetfield is sober these days and has a ridiculous beard, but is otherwise as angry and raspingly incomprehensible as ever. As Wayne would say: excellent.

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Nan-archy in the UK

Call it 'nan-archy': the anarchy of rock'n'roll grafted onto the spirit of the nanny state.  The Red Hot Chili Peppers bounce and rave pleasingly in front of a huge rolling message board which instructs us to recycle our old mobiles, not to wash our towels too often, and to 'rethink' how we bring our shopping home. There was a time when some members of this band struggled to live more than a day at a time. Now their horizons stretch beyond rehab and they tell us how to live the rest of our lives. Yes, it's Nan-archy in the UK.

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Let’s save this funny old world

Almost exactly 24 years ago, in July 1983, the IRA planned to kill Charles and Diana by bombing a Duran Duran concert at the Dominion, Tottenham Court Road.  I was at that gig, aged 15, and here I am again, aged 39, watching the same band and trying to work out whether Simon Le Bon has put on more weight than me. It's a close run thing. The Durans do a good set as only Old Romantics can: 'Planet Earth', 'Ordinary World', 'Notorious' and 'Girls on Film'. Funnily enough, the brave informer who foiled the 1983 bomb plot, Sean O'Callaghan, is someone I've got to know a bit over the years as a hack. I'm not sure I've ever really thanked him properly. It is indeed a funny old world, and, as such, well worth saving.

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Gore’s message is confusing, can Geri be clearer?

Al Gore's message to the planet is that the cavalry are not the cavalry: the American Indians are the cavalry. An Inconvenient Truth? More confusing than inconvenient, I would say. Never mind: Al looks the part in earth tone polo shirt. One might be forgiven for thinking the man was planning another run at the presidency (see James's piece in this week's magazine): that would be one way for the world to recover from the Bush presidency, simply by pretending it never happened. Meanwhile, the Black Eyes Peas are rocking the house at Wembley: 'Let's Get It Started' was especially funky today. Their female singer is called Fergie - a possible source of confusion to those still absorbing last week's rocking royals at the Diana concert.

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Live from Live Earth

At Wembley Stadium for Live Earth: host Chris Moyles has just tried to sell a used 4x4 to two billion people watching the great eco-event. The atmosphere is indeed amazing. Uh-oh. Genesis -combined age 380 - have tottered on stage and struck up Turn It On Again. Is this a terrible warning from Al Gore? Unless we cut our carbon emissions at once, all the ancient supergroups will re-form: Yes, ELP, perhaps even (gulp) Jethro Tull. It is a terrifying prospect. Phil Collins is belting out Invisible Touch now. We have a duty to future generations to act.

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Al Gore’s musical past

Al Gore has done a Q&A with Independent readers ahead of today’s Live Earth concerts and while most of the exchanges are rather predictably about carbon offsetting, food miles, Gore’s political future and the like, this one rather stands out: You shared a room at Harvard with the actor Tommy Lee Jones. Of the two of you, who got the girls? Mike Barber, Bristol Gore: We both tried to, with variable levels of success. At one point, we became part of a travelling minstrel band to visit girls' colleges in the Boston area, and perform country music numbers ... terribly.

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Hearts and minds

‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’ ‘Among all criminals and murderers, the most dangerous type is the criminal physician.’ So said Dr Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish prisoner at Auschwitz who acted as pathologist to Josef Mengele. The unspeakable depravities of the Nazi doctors were catalogued at the Nuremberg Medical Trial, which led to the conviction of 15 German physicians and scientists. The discovery that those arrested in connection with the planned car-bomb attacks have links with the NHS, as doctors, medical students and technicians, and that the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley appears to have been the headquarters of the cell, is deeply shocking.

Friday

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The Tour de France starts here

Yesterday, I rode up the Ballon d'Alsace, a mountain in the Vosges range that was the first hill ever included in the Tour de France, which starts this Saturday in London. By the standards of the Tour, it's a minor climb -- just five miles uphill, with an average gradient of seven percent -- nothing like the monsters of the Pyrenees and the Alps that riders will be grinding up in a few weeks. It was unseasonably wet and cold, with heavy winds and driving rain, but I hadn't come all the way to France to sit in the hotel. In happier times, I would have been excited to ride in the shadow of legends: Through water-blurred glasses I could see the hundreds of messages painted by fans the last time the Tour made its way over this mountain in 2005.

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We have an answer…it’s Charlie Kennedy

Earlier in the week Coffee House asked who would be the first public figure to fall foul of the smoking ban and it appears we have an answer. BBC News 24 is reporting that Charlie Kennedy, the former Lib Dem leader, has been spoken to by police for lighting up on a train.

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Brown takes a page from the Clinton playbook

Gordon Brown told the BBC this morning that he’ll be holidaying in Britain this year. Dick Morris will be proud! With all his Middle Britain pleasing micro-initiatives--flying the flag over Number 10 and the like--the strategy of the early weeks of the Brown premiership bear an uncanny resemblance to Clinton’s between his drubbing in the mid-terms in 1994 and his re-election in 1996. All we need now is for Brown to endorse school uniforms and the v-chip.