Quote

I do think it's strange that I get associated with Iraq more than the people who were Foreign Secretary or Defence Secretary. It's because of my closeness to Tony [Blair], which I don't regret at all. I think that was a privilege.

Alastair Campbell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Alastair Campbell
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: May 25
Diarist
Journalist
Novelist
Politician
Keighley
West Yorkshire
Alastair John Campbell
Foreign
Privilege
Iraq
Closeness
Regret
Blair
Strange
Tony
Think
Defence
Thinking
Associated
People
Secretary

More quotes by Alastair Campbell

Image
I hold no candle for George Osborne whatsoever. He has no strategic skills, is a hopeless chancellor, has no idea how most people have to live and his policies are failing and hurting millions.
Alastair Campbell
Image
For all that the papers would say I was a liar, I took the words I was saying at briefings as seriously as Tony Blair took what he would say at the Despatch Box. I find it very difficult not to tell the truth. I felt I was accountable for what I said.
Alastair Campbell
Image
Like most meaningful activities, campaigns are team games.
Alastair Campbell
Image
My public caricature - that of a self-confident alpha male - is only partly accurate.
Alastair Campbell
Image
The junk food of political journalism...all reshuffle stories are crap.
Alastair Campbell
Image
I feel like thanking Paul Dacre every time, because the reason they ask me is because they think I've come through the other end with a pretty good reputation. Loads of people get a bad press but have a good reputation. [David] Beckham - think what he went through. [Bill] Clinton, likewise. You just have to be true to yourself.
Alastair Campbell
Image
I will continue to help the political causes I believe in in any way I can.
Alastair Campbell
Image
My closest friend, who died not long ago, is buried near Marx's grave in Highgate cemetery, so I see the gaggle of admirers laying roses at the foot of his tombstone regularly. I have never been tempted to leave flowers there myself. Great theories, shame about the practice. Marx did many things. But inventing class was not one of them.
Alastair Campbell
Image
I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity.
Alastair Campbell
Image
He [Tony Blair] was always ambivalent about the [Rupert] Murdoch papers. But he gave other papers the chance to believe it was just about 'The Independent.' And that was wrong.
Alastair Campbell
Image
Greg Dyke is on record as saying that once the BBC was attacked, it was their job to defend themselves. But that is not their job.
Alastair Campbell
Image
There is something in me that makes me see things through.
Alastair Campbell
Image
One in four of us will have a mental illness at some point. That is a lot of people.
Alastair Campbell
Image
I think I'm highly loveable.
Alastair Campbell
Image
Tony [Blair] slowly sucked me back in for the 2005 campaign, and from six months out, I was basically working full time trying to keep the Tony[Blair] - Gordon[Brown] thing together for the campaign. It was awful.
Alastair Campbell
Image
Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that's where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.
Alastair Campbell
Image
Clinton is a big personality who has led a big life, and for some of the media conventional wisdom to boil it down to a view that 'all people are really interested in' are a few moments of madness in the Oval Office gets him, the importance of the presidency, and the significance of his life, all wrong.
Alastair Campbell
Image
The royal family's existence is a constant reminder of the hollowness of John Major's rhetoric, and idiotic statements by its leading members a constant boost to the republican cause. They're fine opening hospitals. It's when they open their mouths they get into trouble.
Alastair Campbell
Image
The media are obsessed with spin doctors and with portraying them as a bad thing, yet seem addicted to our medicine.
Alastair Campbell
Image
Don't accept that you are in crisis just because everyone says you are.
Alastair Campbell