"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."
Quote collection
Alastair Campbell quotes (page 2 of 3)
52 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"I used to be very routine-based and the new thing in my life is not having a clear, full-time existence."
"I think I'm highly loveable."
"I have always been driven. I have always believed in what I believe very deeply."
"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."
"I had a happy childhood."
"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."
"Tony's [Blair] convinced I'm going to find God. I do have spiritual moments, but I don't think it's God."
"By asking the question 'Am I happy?,' and via the answer setting out what I mean by happiness, there is a political route that can be taken, by asking another question - 'Can politics deliver happiness, and should it try?'"
"Sometimes Jonathan [Powell] and myself would go to Tony [Blair] and ask him if he was absolutely sure about this or that. That was our job. But ultimately it was his decision."
"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."
"Jeremy, are we going to play your games?"
"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."
"One of the more fatuous remarks I've heard in recent days is that 'My Life,' Clinton's autobiography, is too long and, at almost 1,000 pages, short it is not. But this man was for eight years the President of the most powerful country on earth."
"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."
"If you look at the other people around at the time - Charles Clarke, Alistair Darling, Jack Straw - they've all gone. And they're not old. What's happened is that someone who is quite old - Jeremy Corbyn - is now leader. We have to take some responsibility for that."
"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."
"I never met David Kelly, but I knew from what he told other people that this was not his view. The BBC were saying that Tony Blair was making up lies so that he could send young men and women to war, maybe to die. I think that if the BBC had done their jobs professionally, they'd have realised that you couldn't justify what they said. And nothing has emerged since to justify that report."
"I have a nightmare about Tony [Blair] and Gordon [Brown] killing each other. Not every month, but now and then. I also have a recurring dream about losing."
"As Tony [Blair] said in his book, Gordon [Brown] was brilliant and impossible. If he'd just been one of those things, the options are obvious."