Alastair John Campbell (25 May 1957-) was a British journalist who served as Prime Minister Tony Blair's Official Spokesperson and Downing Street Press Secretary from 2 May 1997 to 15 July 2000 (succeeding Jonathan Haslam and preceding Godric Smith) and Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy from 15 July 2000 to 29 August 2003 (preceding David Hill).
Biography[]
Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, West Yorkshire, England in 1957, the son of a Scottish veterinary surgeon and his wife. He graduated from Cambridge before working as the sports editor at the Tavistock Times and going on to work for the pro-Labour Daily Mirror in London in 1982. He became political editor for the Daily Mirror and a close advisor to Neil Kinnock and Robert Maxwell, and he left the Daily Mirror in 1993 to become political editor of Today. In 1994, he left Today to become Labour Party leader Tony Blair's press secretary, and he rose to be Blair's Official Spokesperson and the 10 Downing Street Press Secretary from 1997 to 2000, as well as Downing Street Director of Communications and Strategy from 2000 to 2003. Campbell helped negotiate the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, becoming close friends with Sinn Fein politician and Provisional IRA leader Martin McGuinness. He also argued the case for concern over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2002-2003, and he battled with the BBC and the general media after they accused him of influencing the reports against the wishes of intelligence services. Campbell resigned as a result of the Iraq War controversy, and he went on to become a freelance advisor to a number of governments and political parties, including Albanian prime minister Edi Rama and the People's Vote campaign on a final Brexit deal. He became the editor-at-large of The New European and chief interviewer for GQ, and he published a 2-million-word diary on the Blair years from 2007 to 2018. In 2019, he was expelled from Labour after voting for the Liberal Democrats in that month's European elections, having criticized Labour's Brexit strategy and voted for the Liberal Democrats in protest. He voted for Labour in 2019, but he remained an independent. In 2022, he and ex-Tory politician Rory Stewart launched The Rest is Politics podcast to discuss contemporary news and politics from centrist perspectives of the left and right.