Category: Political Spin
Alastair Campbell's 'unprecedented' role in preparing dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
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Despite denying repeatedly that he played a ‘sexing up game’ when working on the government’s much-criticised dossier on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Alastair Campbell acknowledged in his evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry (12.1.2010) that his role had been unprecedented.
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Yet again the Labour Party is paying a heavy price for giving free rein to political attack dogs who have the status of civil servants but whose uncontrollable behaviour is undermining the democratic process. Damian McBride’s crude attempt at smearing both the leader of the Opposition and the shadow chancellor is par for the course in the every day story of the apparatchiks on whom the Prime Minister and his cabinet colleagues have come to rely. But while Gordon Brown is rightly being blamed for having lost control of his politically-driven spin doctors, David Cameron should also be in the frame. He too has some questions to answer.
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If ever there was an example of how important it can be for politicians to understand how to exploit the news media it has to be Enoch Powell's calculated timing of his "Rivers of Blood" speech. Although Powell's apologists insist to this day that it was never his intention to deliver such a highly-inflammatory speech, the build-up had been prepared with great precision on the advice a close friend, Clem Jones, who had in effect become the MP's personal spin doctor. Jones, editor of the Wolverhampton Express and Star, had been advising Powell on how to maximise his coverage in the press and he followed to the letter the advice he was given on supplying the text in advance to a carefully-selected group of political editors, leader writers and columnists and the speech was under a strict Saturday afternoon embargo, in order to secure maximum exposure in the Sunday newspapers. Former BBC correspondent Nicholas Jones reveals a family drama which throws new light on what many political observers consider is the most controversial speech of the post-war years.