Another noxious spin-weed…
By Brian Boyd.
Tony Blair’s notorious ex-spin doctor, Alastair Campbell is coming Down-under.
Spare us. It was bad enough when Captain Cook took Australia from the Aborigines.
Now we have ‘the King of the big lie’ Alastair Campbell coming here to tell our local spin doctors how to do it better.
The man who left working for Tony Blair, after the infamous scandal surrounding the suicide of British weapons expert David Kelly in 2003, is coming to Perth in October. He is addressing the national conference of the Public Relations Institute of Australia (PRIA).
Campbell joined Blair in 1994 and dreamt up the brand name “New Labour” for the British Labour Party. It was designed to break the Party’s link with its traditional base, the trade unions. We’ve had a taste of this of course in Australia.
His trade mark, as an ex-journalist, was to assist Blair in predicting how the press would cover political issues and therefore try to ‘take control’ of the media agenda. By managing the flow of government announcements and initiatives to the nth degree it was hoped to put the best face on everything the Blair government did.
This manipulation came to a head over Blair’s sexed up justifications for the war in Iraq. He ran hard on Saddam Hussein having Weapons of Mass Destruction with no evidence.
Campbell unravelled and left Blair facing the British public alone with little or no credibility.
It got worse. As a spin doctor Campbell should have known better in not becoming the story himself. He seemed instead to relish the publicity about his own role in events. Now he’s coming to OZ and our own Prime Minister needs to be careful. Alastair Campbell is describing Kevin Rudd “as a really impressive guy, he campaigned very well”. The PRIA have lot to answer for and Campbell hasn’t arrived yet!