SHARED OPINION
I accept that he's evil, but the alternative could be worse
FRANK JOHNSON
Some people are old enough to remem- ber that the same sort of thing was said about Nasser. Once again the British peo- ple are being manipulated into believing that the world is at the mercy of a bully who commands little support among his own people, scorns the restraints of civilised conduct and rules by fear. Indeed, The Spectator has played an ignoble part in this demonisation by depicting the man in ques- tion, Alastair Campbell, on its cover last week.
Mr Campbell has the nominal title of Chief Press Secretary, but obviously he is the man in charge of his country. Western intelligence analysts claim that he possesses a huge and growing arsenal of complaining telephone calls to editors, and withholdings from political correspondents — when they displease him — of exclusives about, say, how Mr Gordon Brown is messing up the government's European policy. Scientists claim that one of Mr Campbell's leaks, if released on the Treasury, could devastate that department's entire ministerial team.
Only this week he was reported to be preying on Lord Irvine of Lairg. And what was tiny, defenceless Lord Irvine's crime? Like most of us, the only way he can get a decent night's kip is to spend some £20,000 worth of taxpayers' cash on a couple of Pugin-style beds. Yet when this entirely understandable need, on Lord Irvine's part, somehow got into the newspapers, as well as some vague threat which the Lord Chan- cellor is supposed to have made which might upset the right of pro-Labour news- papers to intrude into people's privacy, Mr Campbell is said to have decided that Lord Irvine was bad news for the government.
For the purpose of crushing Lord Irvine, Mr Campbell is said to have formed an alliance with Mr Peter Mandelson Mr Campbell being the Iran to Mr Mandel- son's Iraq. They had fought each other in the past. But such are the shifting alliances in the unstable Whitehall region, they now came together to oppose the Great Satan on the Woolsack.
Perhaps some of these stories are exag- gerated. I do not deny, however, that Mr Campbell is a dangerous man whom the West must stop. Never mind that his imme- diate neighbours — the other Whitehall press officers, and most ministers — say they are opposed to the United States and Britain taking punitive action against him. They are only saying that for public con- sumption. Secretly, they would be delighted if we could take him out.
But can we? And even if we did, how do we know that he would not be replaced by someone even worse? In any case, we could not be certain of destroying all his faxes or every one of his threats to lobby correspon- dents not to give them a story by briefing them against some hapless minister or other politician.
Do not get me wrong. I consider myself an opponent of the Campbell regime. If I could be sure of Western help, I would rise up against him. I was myself only recently hit by one of his faxes. It was unleashed three weeks ago, after the 31 January issue of this magazine. Stephen Glover wrote in his 'Media studies' column of 'a school of thought' that Mr Campbell was responsible for some leak or other. The precise leak need not concern us here. Like most leaks, it was interesting at the time, but has been replaced in interest by others. Mr Glover reported that Mr Campbell had denied it. Mr Glover added, 'I suppose in the custom- ary way we must accept Mr Campbell's denial.'
Perhaps for no better reason than that this acceptance of his denial seemed rather grudging, Mr Campbell unleashed a fax on me. I was sitting in my office when it hit me. The whole office — a listed building in Bloomsbury — shook. My first thought was to make sure the scene was shown to the world on CNN, and to check the safety of my secretary (not necessarily in that order: I am not that propaganda-crazed).
`Dear Frank,' the fax began. This was itself rather familiar. I am a man of some formality; indeed pomposity. I make Lord Irvine look like Mr Chris Evans. True, Mr Campbell used to be friendly towards me years ago, just after Mr Major became prime minister, when he was Mr Kinnock's propagandist in the Mirror. But that was when I was going through an anti-Major phase, and he presumably thought cultivat- ing Tory dissidents was a way of disrupting the Conservative party. I do not think he loved me for myself.
Anyway, the fax said, 'Could you please contact me about how you might phrase an apology' for Mr Glover's 'insinuations'. Such is the climate of fear engendered by Mr Campbell that very few Britons would disobey an order directly from the tyrant himself to telephone No. 10 for a grovel.
But I did. Well, all right then, I did pre- sent myself to him — but only by fax. My fax, a feeble thing in comparison with his, said that Mr Glover had already accepted his denial of the leak in question, but that I would be happy to print a letter from Mr Campbell on the subject. That was three weeks ago. Since then, the Campbell regime has rained down no more faxes or communications on Bloomsbury.
Readers may conclude that the beast can therefore be humbled. That is the version which I would like to enter history. But there is another explanation: that Mr Campbell does not think I am worth intimi- dating, too unimportant and harmless for the Campbell regime to hit with a fax more than once. Even Kuwait was given the cour- tesy of an invasion, and Israel a few Scuds. But it could be that Mr Campbell is not the threat that the West is at the moment depicting him as being. One other possibili- ty is that Mr Campbell was joking. That would be no laughing matter.
In our second leader last week, I wrote Tsar Paul II when I meant Alexander II. As Dr Spooner once said: 'When I said Aristo- tle, I meant Plato.' My purpose in mention- ing the matter is not just to express shame, but also to express concern that only one reader's letter has so far pointed out the error. Spectator readers know much. No error normally goes un-pointed out. Our `surveys' show that the leader is the our most-read feature. I always suspected that people tell surveys what they should say rather than what they enjoy. Mr Bruce Anderson had the error pointed out to him in the Travellers' Club. Those FO people, and retired ambassadors; they are among the few people left who know their tsars. Actually, the error was pointed out to Mr Anderson by the hall porter.
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