Another Alastair Campbell whitewash

Contrary to what some people might think, I have some degree of respect for Alastair Campbell. Whether or not you agree with his methods - and I was on the wrong end of them for seven years - the way in which he overcame serious mental health problems in his late 20s and went on to have a highly effective career in government can be seen as an inspiration to others in similarly dire straits.

So it was not susprising that the Independent on Sunday chose an interview with Campbell as the centrepiece of a special edition yesterday highlighting the issue of mental health.

Looked at solely in that context, it was a decent piece of journalism. But in the wider political context, the problem with the IoS piece was that it allowed Campbell to present a completely disingenuous and self-serving account of the David Kelly affair.

In the interview, Campbell admits that the death of Dr Kelly was his "worst day" - and how his experience of a crippling breakdown in his 20s helped him to cope. He said: "It [the Hutton saga] was one of those episodes where things spiralled out of control... I felt completely confident in relation to the facts but during the whole period it was a nightmare. And you are thinking, 'There's this guy for whom it's been such a nightmare he's killed himself'."

Read like that, he almost makes it sound like they were all in it together, that Campbell, like Kelly, was a victim of a process over which none of them, least of all the spin doctor himself, had any control. The facts, as related in Campbell's evidence to the Hutton Inquiry and in his own diaries, are rather different.

Far from having sympathy for the plight of the MoD weapons expert, Campbell wanted his name out in the public domain because, as he so poetically put it, it would "fuck Gilligan" - as in Andrew Gilligan, author of the controversial BBC story which claimed the "dodgy dossier" on Iraqi weapons had been "sexed up."

As well as that one infamous phrase, the Campbell diaries also reveal that "GH (Geoff Hoon) and I both wanted to get the source up but TB was nervous about it," and that he and Hoon "felt we should get it out through the papers then have a line to respond."

In other words, Campbell tried his damnedest to ensure Dr Kelly's exposure, and despite being initially overruled by Tony Blair, in the end he got his way.

In his IoS interview, Campbell describes his original breakdown as having been brought on by work, drink and pressure at a time when he was in a job for which he was psychologically unsuited. Interestingly, at no stage does he mention guilt.

Is it not ironic that someone who displays such self-knowledge about what drove him to a "psychotic" breakdown at the age of 28 can fail to show the slightest understanding of his own role in a tragedy in which someone else was ultimately driven to take his own life?

Spring conference decision gives Blair more legroom

What are we to make of the Labour Party's decision to abandon its Spring Conference, slipped out Jo Moore-style under the cover of David Cameron's speech yesterday evening? One thing's for sure, the official explanation that it's about getting out and involving more ordinary voters in the party's policy-making process is bound to be a banquet of bollocks.

No, my strong suspicion is that this is all about Mr Tony and the precise timing of the announcement of his wretched retirement date.

Had the Glasgow gathering taken place as planned, the Prime Minister would have been under enormous pressure to use it to name the precise date on which he plans to leave office.

Furthermore, he would have had to make yet another farewell speech to the party faithful, which would inevitably have been something of an anti-climax on top of last week's tour-de-force in Manchester at which he bade Labour what sounded like his last goodbye.

The general consensus after Manchester was that Mr Blair's speech had earned him the right to depart slightly later than originally expected - say the end of July as opposed to the May 31 date that was made up by leaked to the Sun.

Postponing the Spring conference may give the Prime Minister just that a little bit more legroom to enable him to hang on till the beginning of the summer recess.

Could Cameron really make the NHS a "Tory" issue?

There was no mention of "sunshine" in David Cameron's keynote speech to the Conservative conference this afternoon, which was probably just as well. I still can't believe that a political leader with apsirations to be taken seriously ever came out with the comment which he came out with last Sunday.

But leaving that and Gideon's "autistic" gaffe aside, it has been a reasonably good week for the Tory leader, although the "row" over tax cuts versus economic stability was far too manufactured ever to rank as Cameron's Clause Four moment.

His speech today provided few further clues to the make-up of the next Tory manifesto, but it was nonetheless notable for one rather breathakingly audacious move - an attempt to steal Labour's historic mantle as the party of the NHS.

Normally such an initiative would be doomed to failure. The NHS is "one of the 20th century's greatest achievements," Mr Cameron reminded us in his speech, neglecting to mention that it is, of course, a Labour achievement for which, historically, Labour has always reaped the political dividend.

But these are not normal times. As I wrote in my last column for the North West Enquirer - the one that didn't actually appear because the paper went bust the day before publication - a Government which came into power to "save" the NHS has ended up closing hospitals.

The prospect of this, in the tenth year of a Labour Government, offers a stark illustration of the gulf between the hype and the reality of Tony Blair’s administration which Mr Cameron is right to seek to exploit.

Don't get me wrong. I still think DC is essentially a jumped-up PR man who deserves to be smashed out of sight in a style v substance election against Gordon Brown in three years' time.

But by highlighting the NHS as an issue on which Labour is now deservedly vulnerable, he has done his cause no harm at all.

Tories still don't get the English Question

To be fair, they are not alone. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have demonstrated in recent months that they don't really get it either. But David Cameron's comments yesterday indicating support for the ultmately unworkable concept of "English votes for English matters" is a real missed political opportunity in my book.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have long advocated an English Parliament as the only way of answering the so-called West Lothian Question, although I prefer to call it the English Question as it is England which is the missing piece in the federal jigsaw that the Blair administration has created.

I don't want an English Parliament because I want to create another layer of politicians, but simply because I want to see the four nations of the UK treated fairly and equally. Any English Parliament would have to be accompanied by the abolition of the iniquitous Barnett Formula that gives the rest of the UK a huge inbuilt advantage in public spending-per-head that is no longer justified by their relative levels of need.

More than that, I believe the idea could have great electoral appeal in England. Labour's stubborn refusal to address the issue is a sitting duck for the Tories - especially in view of the overwhelming likelihood that the next Prime Minister will either be the MP for Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath or the MP for Hamilton North and Bellshill.

Mr Cameron's comments appear to have pre-empted the conclusions of the so-called "Democracy Taskforce" which has been set up under Ken Clarke to look at this and other issues arising from Labour's half-baked constitutional reforms.

It now appears that the king of the Tory blogosphere himself, Iain Dale, is going to launch some sort of campaign to get his party to take the issue more seriously. The very best of luck to him.