12 JULY 2003, Page 34

If Alastair Campbell is still there at the next election, Labour will lose

Here's what Tessa Jowell, the Culture Secretary, told the BBC's Peter Sissons during her interview with him on Sunday morning. She's talking about the Gilligan affair, this interminable row between the corporation and the 'government'. Yes, I know. You're sick to death of Gilligan and Campbell and the whole shebang. Another mention of those tiresome bloody dossiers, and you'll gag. I understand entirely. But bear with me for a few seconds before you flick the page over.

Tessa had already said she thought it was a great pity that Greg Dyke was 'digging himself in' over the dispute and twice, early on in the interview, she made the point that the BBC had a 'constitutional responsibility to [sic] the accuracy and impartiality of its news coverage'. This is how the interview proceeded: Jowell: 'It is not do or die for the BBC. The BBC should say: "We made a mistake, we regret it." And then everybody can move on. That is the point and it underlines.

Sissons: 'But if the BBC is not going to do that, can life go on as normal? Can the [BBC] governors put out of their minds any consideration such as now we're going to get the charter . . . will the licence fee go up as much as we want, will the licence fee be in existence in ten years' time? I mean, can you separate out from the acts that would bring the BBC, as you see it, into line?'

Jewell: 'Yes, of course. I mean there is . . . no question over bringing the BBC into line. . . , The BBC's constitutional responsibility is for accuracy and impartiality of news coverage_ That is the central tension. Now it is perfectly possible to separate this row, now, which can be very shortly conceded, from the wider and absolutely crucial question of charter renewal for the BBC, the role of the BBC in modern broadcasting.'

So, there we have the minister responsible for overseeing the renewal — or otherwise — of the BBC's charter and its licence fee implicitly threatening the corporation that if it doesn't concede in this dispute, it might find itself in trouble. Her constant references to the 'constitutional' position of the BBC and that little phrase in italics are ample evidence, for me, of a direct threat, I'm not sure which adjective is correct, in describing such a threat. Disgusting? Astonishing? Authoritarian?

Interestingly, Tessa was deluged with telephone calls from Downing Street as she waited to go on air. Afterwards, in the BBC's Green Room, she apparently rowed back on the threats issued to the corporation. I suppose I'd better watch it, because I have only one source for this information, But that's what seems to have happened. You get the picture of someone who may have been, I don't know, a little uncomfortable with what she had been instructed to do. This is pure supposition, based on what was said on air and what happened —before and after.

Tessa was the latest minister to be co-opted into the front line of Alastair Campbell's personal vendetta against the BBC, a vendetta which is at best a smokescreen and at worst a bizarre manifestation of a bruised and frankly desperate ego. Ben Bradshaw has been wheeled around the interview rooms, as has the unpleasant Phil Woolas. John Reid has been stamping about making various belligerent allegations and accusations (my personal favourite being that there is a conspiracy within the security services designed to evict Labour from office. That accusation has been dropped, of late, since No. 10 decided that the story had changed. Now the conspiracy, apparently, is within the BBC).

Poor Jack Straw was pushed out of No. 10 in front of the cameras to instruct the BBC to say sorry. And now one of the more likeable and competent ministers, Tessa Jowell, has been harangued into making veiled threats against the BBC's charter. I wonder what Gordon Brown thinks of the whole affair? He's been pretty quiet, hasn't he?

I suppose that if you are a Conservative it is both entertaining and cheering to watch this government destroy itself. Because that is what is happening. The opinion polls — which two weeks ago put the Tories in the lead for the first time in nearly ten years — are the clearest evidence of this. And, for the first time, a poll in the Times this week suggested that both lain Duncan Smith and Charles Kennedy were trusted rather more than Tony Blair. A spate of ministerial resignations, followed by a honribly panicked and botched reshuffle, is another piece of evidence. So, too, is the almost total estrangement of those parts of the press most usually sympathetic to New Labour: the Guardian, the Obseiver, the Mirror and, to a lesser extent. the Sun.

Here's a prediction: if Labour goes into the next general election with Alastair Campbell still prowling the halls as chief of communications, it will lose. There is, surrounding the machinations of this man and his various apparatchiks, monkeys and scullions, the same sense of distaste and revulsion on the part of the general public that one began to see directed towards John Major in the final years of his administration. It is almost impossible to mention the name Alastair Campbell in public without provoking a collective sneer or a torrent of abuse: it is like mentioning the name of Jeffrey Archer. And this antipathy is not confined to the chattering classes.

Campbell has, in fact, become New Labour's sleaze factor all by himself, which is no mean achievement. This is not entirely deserved, perhaps, but it is a fact, nonetheless. And the problem, of course, is that while Tony Blair may well realise this, there is almost nothing he can do about it. One by one, over the last couple of years or so, his closest allies, his praetorian guard — if it is possible to conceive of Alan Milburn or Stephen Byers with a flashing sword and body armour — has left him or been forcibly removed. He is now almost alone. Without Alastair Campbell, he would be entirely alone.

The present government — by which I mean, of course, Blair and Campbell — may well feel insulated by the magnitude of its parliamentary majority and perhaps the perceived ineptitude of the official opposition, but it is mistaken in so thinking. Majorities have a habit of disappearing, sooner or later. And these days the electorate is more volatile than ever before. With the party stripped of its ideology and more pertinently, perhaps, its class basis, there are none of those historical bonds which tie the voters to Labour. One minute they will be there, the next they'll be gone, and without very much in the way of regret or nostalgia. It may well be that the first time one is able to truly conceive of fain Duncan Smith as prime minister is when he makes his victory speech from the steps of Conservative Central Office in two years' time.