Campbell holds a mirror up to shallow Britain

Stephen Pollard, who as David Blunkett’s biographer longed to see Alastair Campbell’s journal, says it tells us as much about the nation as it does about New Labour

Alastair Campbell may be no Chips Channon or Alan Clark, but his diaries are at least readable. Very readable. And that is not something one can take for granted with New Labour diarists. The last set, from David Blunkett, managed to turn one of the most melodramatic political stories of all time into a turgid cure for insomnia.

The Campbell diaries’ importance lies not in any great revelations but as the final part of a New Labour Trilogy. More than just telling us about modern politics, however, they act as a guide to modern Britain.

Two previous books have been essential reading about The Project. Philip Gould’s Unfinished Revolution was a detailed account of how a coterie of (to use their own word) ‘modernisers’ took power and launched a revolution within the Labour party, transforming it from the greatest election-losing machine in Western politics to an unstoppable winning force.