Word: labouring
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...Labour leader never kept a diary, unintentionally casting Campbell as his acerbic Boswell, whose journals reveal their serial encounters with Presidents and Premiers, royals and rock stars, lawmen and faith leaders, press barons and members of the public. That last category, "people outside the Westminster bubble," is the one to which the author appeals, over the heads of a media that both he and Blair have come to regard as irredeemably hostile. This, says Campbell, is the message he hopes his readers will take away with them: "During that period an awful lot happened, and some of it was unexpected...
...sometimes fretful and indecisive. Campbell knows with a weary certainty that his book will be seen as a whitewash of Blair's record. For while Blair's legacy is still up for grabs, Campbell is permanently lumbered with his: as the Surgeon General of Spin. His skills made Labour electable and helped to keep the party in power, yet now they are vested with so many negatives that the new government's public-relations priority is to appear spin free. Brown's very first act on becoming Prime Minister was to repeal a ruling that allowed political appointees like Campbell...
...different at the beginning, in 1983, when a political ingenue met a tall, handsome Labour-supporting journalist. "Tony was wearing this absolutely terrible beige suit," Campbell says. "I introduced myself and he was just magnetic. This will sound ridiculous, but within a minute we were talking about what Labour needed...
...answer, they agreed, was to woo over a hostile media. In the 1980s, Britain's press barons fervently backed Margaret Thatcher and they continued their support for her successor, John Major, when he moved into 10 Downing Street in 1990. Their reporters gave his Labour challenger, Neil Kinnock, short shrift. On the eve of the 1992 election, the country's biggest tabloid, the Sun, printed a stark message on its front page: IF KINNOCK WINS TODAY WILL THE LAST PERSON TO LEAVE BRITAIN PLEASE TURN OUT THE LIGHTS...
...Campbell of briefing against him. But most of the time, says James Rubin, the chief spokesman for the State Department from 1997-2000, "American officials appreciated Alastair's bluntness. To some people the British seem to beat round the bush, and Alastair never does that." Meyer, critical of many Labour figures in his memoirs, praises Campbell's "extraordinary ability to get on top of foreign-policy issues and to anticipate problems even before they...