Alastair Campbell’s mental rehabilitation
It’s the times we live in I suppose – ones where a war criminal can be a made a peace envoy or a dilettante millionaire who doesn’t know how many houses he owns can claim to feel the poor’s pain – when a professional liar and bully can be acclaimed Mind Champion of the Year. Does anybody else think this is a spectacularly bad idea?
How many of us are able to separate Campbell’s role in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people from his I-share-your-pain schtick, I wonder? I’d like to hear the reasoning behind such distinctions.
When Secretary of State for War John Profumo left office in disgrace in 1963 he went to Toynbee Hall and cleaned the toilets. There used to be a time when (some) politicians and their servants accepted punishment and justice. Now they get fat cheques, book deals, and soft interviews about their mental health that don’t mention Iraq even once or the narcissistic drive for vindication that led ultimately to the death of David Kelly. It’s to be noted that the interview is All About Alastair – just what Mind actually does doesn’t get much of a mention.
It’s a strange campaign against mental illness that Campbell leads – he’s very visible and vocal about the work he does for charity. Always up for having a reputation-polishing photo taken and then letting us know about it. He says, ‘Most people don’t think about me. I’m not on their radar’ and yet by accepting the Mind award he clearly thinks he’s a prominent enough public figure to be a figurehead for a charity’s campaign. A shop-soiled figurehead with a dubious morality.
We’re told he’s in and out of Downing Street giving a desperate Gordon Brown advice on how to cling to power and yet we never hear if Alastair’s having a word in the Prime Minister’s ear about the shitty state of mental health services in this country. No word of him exploiting his contacts for public good. Why can’t we have a bit of Joanna Lumley from Campbell?
Couldn’t he just cut out the middle man of his charity campaigning and go straight to his mates who, you know, just happen to be running the bloody country? That’s a rhetorical question by the way. If the people he’s trying to keep in power were doing their jobs properly, charities like Mind wouldn’t need to exist.
I would suggest that Campbell don his body armour and start a campaign against the shocking state of mental health services in Iraq. But the recent Iraq Mental Health Survey shows that despite the utter horror and degradation they have been through, the prevalence of mental illness amongst the population isn’t as high as medical experts expected although ‘the percent who are suicidally depressed is high’. Thanks to the war that Alastair helped to orchestrate, ‘many Iraqis have adapted to trauma as a way of life‘. Not sure, however, that that approach would go down so well with his Western target audience.
Posted on May 27th, 2009 at 4:28pm under New Labour
| Related posts... • An email from Alastair • Depression, dossiers and death: Campbell confesses • The two Derek Drapers |
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• 9 Comments |
Excellent post, Justin. The man is a shit. There is nothing more I can add.
Hear hear.
Mind Journalist of the Year is also Derek Draper. You have to wonder if there’s something not quite right within the charity itself.
Justin I couldn’t agree with you (and Mike) more. It’s a disgrace the way Campbell gets to play the media in the way he does.
Time he started to doing it for somebody else’s benefit, and lobbying getting the politicians and health service bureaucrats to get serious about mental health would be a really good start.
No one in Britain in recent times has more more experience as a spokesman for the criminally insane.
Long existing charities like that are always prone to cozying up to the establishment and becoming part of the “jobs for the boys” network. Unsurprising that they chose an asshole like Campbell then to represent them.
You must not forget that is what people like Campbell do for a living, they lie and protect the leader, he is doing the same thing now for Brown.
These peoples whole life or working life is about protecting the leader, once Labour is out of office and if he fails to find a job with the Tories, then he will write a book about his time in politics and how he worked so hard to save new labour.
He must have been horrified to have been part of an administration, then, that had members briefing the press that Mo Owlam’s brain tumour made her unfit to be Northern Ireland Secretary.
And that David Kelly was a Walter Mittyish fantasist.
And that Clare Short was ‘unstable’.
Thank God he was there to stop all of that…
[...] Alastair Campbell’s mental rehabilitation – Chicken Yoghurt: When Secretary of State for War John Profumo left office in disgrace in 1963 he went to Toynbee Hall and cleaned the toilets. There used to be a time when (some) politicians and their servants accepted punishment and justice. Now they get fat cheques, book deals, and soft interviews about their mental health that don’t mention Iraq even once or the narcissistic drive for vindication that led ultimately to the death of David Kelly. [...]