Campbell attacked for gloating
Cabinet minister Tessa Jowell has launched a sharp broadside against the “bullying and aggressive” tactics of Tony Blair’s former director of communications.
Though naming no names, she implied Alastair Campbell’s style of media management threatened to derail Labour’s chances of a historic third term in office.
The culture secretary said Mr Campbell was a liability for the party as it approached the general election.
In The Telegraph, she attacked the former Guardian journalist for disrespecting the voters.
She said his reaction to the Hutton report, which exonerated him and the Downing Street of any wrongdoing in the David Kelly tragedy, was unnecessarily “aggressive.”
Mr Campbell told Channel Four news in the days after the report’s publication: “I haven’t met anybody today who is any longer saying that the story that was broadcast was sensible.”
“In relation to the way the senior management dealt with it – they were saying to us, based upon complaints I was making on behalf of the prime minister and the government that they had looked into it properly and investigated it thoroughly.
“They never did any such thing. They decided that because it was me, Alastair Campbell making the complaint, that they weren’t even going to look into it.”
“Round the world the prime minister’s integrity was being impugned. I think that’s unforgivable.
“It was a story that the BBC – the world’s foremost broadcast organisation – should never have allowed to be broadcast.”
Elsewhere, he said: “The damage has been done has been done to itself and by itself by condoning bad journalism. The BBC should root out bad journalism where it exists.”
Ms Jowell slammed men like Mr Campbell for the bossy and patronising interviews given in the wake of the Hutton report last week.
Mr Campbell at the time demanded a full BBC apology and the resignation of senior executives.
She said this was another example of “testosterone-charged” interviewing and “a real turn-off.”
She said Mr Campbell’s “ranting” in interviews may alienate voters.
She told The Daily Telegraph: “You don’t need to shout and abuse people – you can be polite and constructive.
“Our behaviour has to change.”
