‘Tokyo. [. . .] There was the odd schoolboy comic moment too, as when a Japanese businessman said “Ra whole of Japan is rookin fowad to your erection.” I said we are hoping for a big one and TB spluttered while the Jap put his thumbs up and said “Big one, big one.” The reality was that he was making a big impact though, and the Japanese saw in TB a very new and attractive kind of leader.’ This is an extract from Alastair Campbell’s diaries written during a trip to Tokyo in 1996, the year before Tony Blair’s first landslide general election win. Blair - who is 70 today - has never kept diaries. However, Campbell has published eight volumes of diaries, with Blair centre stage in most of them.
Blair fought, unsuccessfully for Labour in the 1982 Beaconsfield by-election, but a general election the following year saw him elected to Parliament for the seat of Sedgefield. He soon joined in with a group of party modernisers, including Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, who sought to make Labour more electable. They advocated a weakening of Labour’s association with the trade unions, and a reduced focus on policies such as unilateral nuclear disarmament, public ownership and high taxation. In 1994, following the unexpected death of John Smith, Blair became leader of the party (Gordon Brown having stood aside in the leadership ballot to avoid splitting the modernising vote). In 1997, he led Labour to a landslide election victory, becoming the youngest Prime Minister since 1812. He enacted constitutional reforms, increased public spending on healthcare and education, introduced a minimum wage and tuition fees for higher education, and aided devolution in Scotland and Wales.
Blair was re-elected with a strong majority in 2001 but his premiership was much affected by the September 11 terrorist attacks in the US. Blair supported the US’s war on terror despite serious disquiet in his own party, and backed the use of British forces for military action in Afghanistan, and then during the invasion of Iraq. Increasingly, his authority was undermined by a long simmering rift with Brown. After a third election victory in 2007, he stepped down as Labour leader, allowing Brown to take over as Prime Minister. He also resigned his seat as an MP. The same year he was appointed Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic post which he held until 2015. Since then, he has been the executive chairman of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2021. Further information is readily available online at Wikipedia, the British Government website, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and the BBC.
Blair is not a diarist (he revealed as much in 2007 - see this BBC news report). However, Alastair Campbell, who worked directly for Blair in various roles (spokesmen, campaign director, press secretary, and later director of communications for the Labour Party), did a keep a very detailed diary, both political and personal. A first selection of diary entries was published in 2008 as The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries. But between 2010 and 2018, he brought out eight volumes - variously published by Hutchinson, Arrow and Biteback - with much longer and more comprehensive extracts. Also in 2013, The Lilliput Press published his Irish Diaries 1994-2003. Many of these books can be previewed at Googlebooks, but the original volume - The Blair Years - can be digitally borrowed from Internet Archive
The Diary Review has already dipped into Campbell’s diaries a few times, see A good press secretary, Call me Cherie, and All work and no play. But here, to celebrate Blair’s 70th birthday, are a few more of Campbell’s observations on his boss.
5 January 1996
‘Tokyo. We had been advised before coming over to get lots of calling cards and the embassy explained it really was important, not just for us but for TB himself. The Japanese set huge store by calling cards, and the ambassador really felt that we should get some good ones for TB. As the day wore on, and he began to run out of his own cards, and get them mixed up with the cards he had been given, he ended up giving the German Ambassador's card to a businessman from Sony. There was one tricky moment, when TB was introduced to someone and asked who he was, and the ambassador said “You know, the former prime minister,” and TB said “Ah yes, I know the face.” There was the odd schoolboy comic moment too, as when a Japanese businessman said “Ra whole of Japan is rookin fowad to your erection.” I said we are hoping for a big one and TB spluttered while the Jap put his thumbs up and said “Big one, big one.” The reality was that he was making a big impact though, and the Japanese saw in TB a very new and attractive kind of leader. I wondered if they would have felt the same if they had seen him later, sitting in his bedroom at the residence, wearing nothing but his underpants and an earthquake emergency helmet which we all had in our rooms, pretending to speak Japanese.’
6 May 1997 [Oddly, Blair’s birthdays are very rarely mentioned in the published versions of Campbell’s diaries. 1997 was an exception.]
‘[. . .] It was TB’s birthday and there was a little do for him in the Cabinet Room, to which lots of the Garden Room Girls [Prime Minister’s secretarial staff] and other staff came. It could have been a really good scene for him, but he didn't really rise to it, which was a pity. All felt a bit flat. [. . .]’
11 May 1997
‘The papers were basically fine, though there was far too much chatter about the Budget. I went for a swim and then a lunch at Fredericks for TB’s birthday organised by Maggie Rae [partner of Alan Haworth, PLP secretary] and Katie Kay [former neighbour of the Blairs, later an aide]. Lots of his family were there and it was an OK event. I was sitting next to a relative of Cherie’s who runs a B&Q store. TB arrived in a rather poncy four-buttoned suit. He said he felt rested. He liked Chequers. He was worried about changing PMQs, felt it would come back and hit us at some time. We were only getting away with it because of the honeymoon effect. He felt once that ended, we would have to raise the game another gear.’
20 July 1997
‘TB called early, worried about Ireland. He felt the way the coverage was leaning could add to the pressure on Trimble to pull out. There was a sense that the IRA ceasefire was a tactic to secure exactly that, so that the Unionists would be the ones blamed for screwing it up. TB suggested that I sprinkle around references to the UUs surely not wanting to be seen to throw away the best prospect of peace for years. He wanted it made clear that we had not changed the line on decommissioning, and there was far too much of that around in the Sundays. We had both to reassure the Unionists but also make clear how much was at stake if they pulled out now.’
30 August 2000
‘TB said it was important I understood why parts of Thatcherism were right. Later in the day he came up with another belter when Peter H, trying to get him to be more progressive and radical, asked what gave him real edge as a politician and TB said “What gives me real edge is that I'm not as Labour as you lot.” I pointed out that was a rather discomfiting observation. He said it was true. He felt he was in the same position he had always been and we were the people who had changed to adapt. Re me, he said I had to learn to be less het up and emotional about this because in the end it was my political judgement he wanted me for. In another conversation later, he said the problem with schools was uniformity of teaching. I said the problem was the background of poorer kids and he just rolled his eyes at me.’
4 July 2001
‘TB said this was going to be a rocky phase and we just had to ride it. “This is politics. It happens. Name me a prime minister who has not had to deal with this to greater or lesser degrees. You will never change it,” he said. He had picked up on my mood, said he thought the problem was I had gone from obsessive management of day to day to now being a bit disengaged, almost deciding no communication was better than one that got attacked. TB reckoned it was “not impossible I will be gone in a couple of years - it depends how much change they will take”.’
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