Sea lions and green room sharks: Critiques, cliques and the rehabilitation of Alastair Campbell...
A certain lord sends me another unsolicited review and Tony Blair's spin dctor pretends a blood-soaked moral compass still functions.
On a forthcoming episode of Looks Unfamiliar1, Tim Worthington’s excellent podcast dedicated to dimly-remembered cultural artifacts, one of my selections is Sharky & George, the French/Canadian children’s cartoon which ran from 1990 to 1992 and was repeated fairly frequently in Channel 4’s weekend cartoons slot for several years afterwards.
The premise of the show, which is not easily available anywhere now, was that a pulp magazine detective story was translated to an underwater city occupied by a range of anthopomorphic sea creatures. Each episode, Sharky — a lazy pink shark with a fedora — and his sidekick George — a blue fish with a yellow face — solved crimes and battled the various villains terorising Seacago.
Unlike other programmes from which I can remember whole episodes and even chunks of dialogue, only the premise of Sharky & George has stuck with me. There was something delightful about the cut-and-shut combination of an undersea setting and anachronistic detective stories, but it’s also long stuck in my mind as a kind of metaphor for working in and talking about the British media.
There are octopuses like the sweaty-handed [redacted for legal reasons], little fish trying to be big fish, whales who dominate, barking sea lions, and sharks of all kinds. British journalism ranges from the clear water of actual reporting to Finding Dory-style amnesia about crimes and failures, and flips between Jaws!-style terror and Jaws!-style farce from columnists who are more unreliable than Bruce the animatronic shark2.
In Monday’s edition of this newsletter ("Can't I have oranges like everybody else?", November 8), I wrote about a long back-and-forth I had with Tory lord and Times columnist, Daniel Finklestein, on Twitter. Now Lord Fink has sent a new unprompted critique of me and this newsletter in the same thread:
…sometimes I find his particular form of journalism — waiting for someone else to have a career or write something and then saying they are rubbish — a bit negative and don’t always think his particular criticisms well founded. But I don’t get very far sharing my differences of opinion… I suspect he'll be shocked by that suggestion but I found myself nervous before making points to him and in the end I thought, why bother? Which is sad.
… I am not against criticism or commentary and journalism isn't immune. But my taste isn't Mic's. I think he basically just tears down everything (or tries to) and I don't regard that as the most insightful or impressive form of commentary. That's personal taste, I suppose. I sometimes also think he misreads articles in his eagerness to suggest that the person is wrong. And it is surprising that he rarely seems to find anybody's insights of value. That's just my critique of his critique.
The easiest reply would have been to tap the Mandy Rice Davies sign, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”and the most sensible would have been to ignore it entirely. But the temptation to use the Fink’s snide words as a jumping off point is too hard to resist.
Putting aside the thin-lipped snidery (“…waiting for someone else to have a career…” and “… or tries to” have a particular lemony sharpness), there’s still a claim there to be refuted: That my writing in this newsletter is destructive, unfair, and relentlessly negative. Finkelstein is not the first nor will he be the last to level the accusation at me. It’s an easy hit on a critic of anything.
I write about the media because it interests me, it’s the industry that I’ve worked in for the past 16 years, and I think there’s not enough truly critical analysis of it from people who have been within it. When Finkelstein writes “he rarely seems to find anybody’s insights of value”, he sounds like Nancy in Peep Show when she asks, “One bus crash! What about all the buses that made it safely to their destinations?” while watching the news, prompting Mark to rant:
Yes, I suppose the news should just be a dispassionate list of all the events that have occurred the world over during the day. That would be good. Except, of course. it would take forever.
I regularly share articles I think are good on Twitter and via the subscriber-only recommendation editions of this newsletter, but the point of a media criticism newsletter is to point out things that are worthy of criticism and to subject them to analysis. And while the Fink may find that an uncomfortable, unedifying, or even unfair exercise, it’s what I’m engaged in.
That a Times columnist doesn’t find a writer who regularly criticises his paper and his colleagues as well as the political party to which he is aligned as being engaged in “the most insightful or impressive form of commentary” isn’t really a surprise. But Finkelstein’s sea-lioning return to that thread of criticism continues an effort to ever-so-politely, ever so ‘civilly’ suggest that I produce nothing of worth beyond a stream of envious invective.
There’s a Dril-esque quality to Finkelstein’s tweets — “I’m not mad. Please don’t put in your newsletter that I got mad.” — but it’s mixed with a kind of concern troll ‘sadness’ and a high-handedness that only a man who has swanked about in ermine can truly generate. He’s “not against criticism” as long as it’s not of him, his colleagues, or anyone he’s ever met.
I find lots of people’s insights valuable — I quote, feature, and link to them here every day — and paid subscribers get a list of articles I think are excellent on a (usually) weekly basis. But if I wrote soapy tit-wank media love-in pieces, what would the point of this newsletter? People can already read Press Gazette or the human centipede trails of congratulations that hang off any tweet about someone in the media having “some personal news”.
Before the Fink marched back into my mentions this afternoon, I was planning to write about the continued presence and promotion of Alastair Campbell in the British media (again). I last dedicated an edition to Campbell in April (For whom the Campbell tolls: Alastair Campbell's ongoing media career is an obscenity..) when it was announced that he would be presenting Good Morning Britain during Mental Health Awareness Week. I wrote then:
Following the publication of his first collection of diaries, Campbell engaged in a concerted effort to improve his own press. He rebranded as a mental health advocate — drawing on his own long history of depression — wrote books about leadership and made a good living giving motivational speeches. And all the while he remained a readily-available talking head for TV and radio producers.
Campbell was given the chance to have a third act in public life. He is now 63 years old. Four years older than Dr David Kelly was when he died, after being forced into an unforgiving spotlight during Campbell’s scorched earth row with the BBC. Kelly, a government scientist, expert on biological warfare, and former UN weapons inspector whose work in Iraq had earned him a Nobel Peace Prize nomination, was named as Andrew Gilligan’s source for claims that the government had “sexed up” the Iraq Dossier.
… Once we came to Brexit, many people — especially the continuity remainers of the FBPE crowd — seemed to throw every other piece of context out of the window. It didn’t matter what Alastair Campbell had said and done in the past. It didn’t matter that Dr David Kelly had died a lonely death on Harrowdown Hill. It just mattered that Campbell was for Remain and against Boris Johnson.
Now Campbell’s appearance on Question Time last night is bouncing around as an example of principled opposition to the government. He said:
If the Prime Minister consistently, regularly breaks the ministerial code, why shouldn’t other ministers think they can do exactly the same and get away with it? As Priti Patel has done. As Michael Gove has done. As Matt Hancock did until he got caught doing something not to do with his public duties.
So, I really think we’ve just got to face up to the fact we, sadly in my view, have elected a Prime Minister who has no moral compass whatsoever. I speak as someone who has known him for probably longer than anyone else on this panel. I honestly believe that unless and until the Conservative Party face up to the fact that he is not, as Keir Starmer said, a “trivial man”, he is actually a bad man, until people face up to that this country’s politics will be damaged, possibly beyond repair.
I’m pretty sure Campbell’s own “moral compass” broke when the inner workings became entirely gummed up from being drenched in blood, but his rebranding as a mental health campaigner and anti-Brexit talking head has worked.
What Campbell said on Question Time is right but the person saying it is not and that’s a problem. There are other voices saying the same things that don’t come with more baggage than Imelda Marcos in her prime.
Too many people on the Remain side of the Brexit referendum — the side I was also on — are happy to stand behind Campbell because he says things they agree with. But it’s like making friends with a fox who’s pointing out the hen house is wrecked even as he’s licking albumen and chicken guts from his lips.
Earlier this year, Campbell wrote in The New European:
Never mind Labour prime ministers, I do not believe Thatcher, Major, Cameron or May, whatever their faults or weaknesses, would have enable the kind of moral degeneracy which Johnson has introduced to the heart of government.
As a journalist, Campbell ‘broke’ the ginned up story that John Major tucked his shirt into his y-fronts and wrote, after the death of Robert Maxwell, that the Mirror proprietor — later found to have pilfered the pension scheme but already known as a manipulative monster — was “a big man with a big heart, helping sick employees in need and backing charities”.
It serves Campbell’s current act to pretend that Boris Johnson — undoubtedly as bad as any Prime Minister the UK has ever had — is a historical anomaly who is turning Britain corrupt rather than the logical extension of a political culture that the former spin doctor had a huge hand in creating. The personality-driven ideologically ‘flexible’, media manipulating sofa government of Tony Blair begat the era of Boris Johnson.
The willingness of the British media establishment to book and commission Campbell is just more evidence of a moral emptiness. He is convivial in green rooms, he puts on a performance, and they agree with lots of his opinions. He’s familiar like their favourite Britpop albums, a living piece of nostalgia who reminds them of the 90s and joins them in their veneration of the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony. No need to think about the Iraq War dead.
If Campbell can be completely rehabilitated as he has been, expect Dominic Cummings to have his own show by the decade’s end. He’s willing to attack Boris Johnson — his latest Substack post includes a choice anecdote claiming the Prime Minister wanted to write his Shakespeare book instead of doing all that boring governing — and the Barnard Castle stuff will soon become its own nostalgic memory.
All he needs to do is stop naming who he briefed and pointed out the specific pieces he briefed them for as he did today…
And we never liked gambling with the trolley because you always knew he could collapse any second in response to a random text from Carrie or the Telegraph. In 2019 he, and crucially Carrie, lived in constant fear of him breaking the record for fewest days as PM.
This meant we had a much stronger grip on him and made gambles less risky. E.g The calculated gamble of briefing Forsyth about the likely collapse of negotiations was rational and worked as Frost and I intended, as our later discussions with Ireland and Commission proved. This changed the second the exit poll dropped 2200 on election day.
… we’re meant to pretend that James Forsyth doesn’t act as man-shaped megaphone for whatever the government tells him.
Sorry to Lord Finkelstein if you’re reading this, I appreciate that last paragraph was horribly negative and poor old James is just “having a career”.
It’s actually my second appearance and you can hear the first episode featuring me — “A very Fall kind of sweet” — here.
This is a good article on ‘Bruce’, including a sketch of how he was meant to work.
Sea lions and green room sharks: Critiques, cliques and the rehabilitation of Alastair Campbell...
Good read