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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Campbell quits Rejoice, rejoice!
He’s gone, he’s history, he’s outta here. As spotted by the eagle-eyed Guy Herbert, Alastair Campbell has quit!
Ok, so he hasn’t really gone. He’ll still be on the phone ten times a day to the Boss, just like Mandy is, and he’s not ‘officially’ leaving for a few weeks. But I will still be breaking open a bottle of shampoo tonight, just for the hell of it. Cheers!
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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What’s the big deal?
Yeah, he’s said for ages that he was planning to quit anyway. The Hutton enquiry has just delayed in (allegedly).
In other news Hillary Clinton is possibly going to run for president http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-12752414,00.htm. That’d be about as welcome as a fart in space suit.
I too have had shampoo on ice for a minute like this.
You are right, Campbell will still be helping on the QT, but the comfort of having him right there will be gone. Now he’ll have to keep him hidden, the way he has to hide Mandy. I also think that the more Campbell gets in to writing his diary — and I predict this will be very intense as publishers vie for a rush job for the Xmas trade — the less time and interest he will have. I guess, of the entire inner circle, that leaves only Carole Kaplan.
BTW, I’m sure other people have noticed the dogs that aren’t barking … What is the clever, malicious and aggrieved Robin Cooke up to? And the malicious and aggrieved Clare Short?
Gabriel Syme writes:
What’s the big deal?
I suppose it’s like when Sir Edmund Hilary is five feet from the summit of Everest, and you know he’s going to get there, but he still hasn’t quite got there yet.
To actually see him place his foot on the pinnacle is the real moment to treasure, the one to photograph. Alastair Campbell actually quitting is such a moment, one I’ve waited a long time to witness.
The cracks of New Labour have finally reached the summit. From now on the only way is down.
I suppose if you view all politicians as inherently the same, and you perceive no real difference between Tony Blair’s New Labour and Iain Duncan Smith’s Conservatives, there is no real big deal. And I can appreciate that position, especially after recent forays into Rothbard. It’s just one lizard leaving to be replaced, later, by another lizard.
But to me it’s a defining step on the road to removing the most evil group in this country, the socialists, from power over the rest of us. Yes, they may be replaced, ultimately by a less evil group, the conservatives, but I’m still happy to take one step at a time.
Even if we can only take just one crumb of comfort, the removal of New Labour will entail no Euro, for the forseeable future. I’ll take that, if that’s the only thing on offer.
The way is also clear for Tony’s removal, which will be another major step as he really is the most dangerous man in Britain, because he can persuade reasonable people to agree to his plans for Bigger Government.
Plus, I’ll always use any excuse to crack open a bottle of champagne. And if it takes the resignation of a government spin-doctor to do it, I’ll take that opportunity.
Andy, still not excited. I cannot possibly see how Alastair Campbell’s resignation has brought us any closer to loosening the hold socialists have over the country (to paraphrase you loosely).
As you know, there is no love lost for the Conservatives on Samizdata.net either. Their policies are pretty much on a par with those of Labour.
But that is not the point. Socialism in people’s minds can be more dangereous than in political manifestoes, espcially in countries such as Britain, where it can permeate everyday life, media and people’s social discourse.
Samizdata.net attemps to redress the balance not by following political squabbles but by tracing the hidden assumptions and fallacies that serve as fertile compost heap to the ‘Guardianistas’ of this world…metacontext anyone?
Gosh Gabriel, you can be very pompous, that’s a paragraph for pseud’s corner.
Hmmm, the bubbly might be a bit flat. The Telegraph says, “Campbell to resign”. Not “Campbell has resigned”. And no date has been set for his departure. Could this little bombshellette have been dropped at this particular moment to draw attention away from something really important? What? Any thoughts, anyone?
In fact, on reflection, it looks like just spinning as usual. “New” Labour announces that it will be making an announcement, and then announces it ad infinitum. They may still be announcing Campbell’s resignation, at moments of intense need, a year from now (if Tony’s managed to cling on that long).
I’m assuming your joy at seeing Campbell go and Blair’s possible downfall are not connected to the sexing up thingie?
Have I missed something and the government has not in fact been practically cleared of that and the BBC shown to be lying?
Andy, still not excited. I cannot possibly see how Alastair Campbell’s resignation has brought us any closer to loosening the hold socialists have over the country (to paraphrase you loosely).
I think I’m a bit too stuck, still, in the ‘fighting on the barricades’ mode, of party political conflict, to hold this more strategic viewpoint. I’ve always been more of a rifle-man than a field-marshall.
I suppose, in a way, the best way to completely remove socialism from this country is to let people like Campbell, Blair, Brown, etc, run amok, to create a real hell on Earth.
Then we would have real political apathy, with nobody voting in any elections (what’s the point?), and eventually perhaps an American-style revolution to overthrow these people when the snapping point was reached.
But I’d prefer not to go there, and I’m not sure even that Big Bang approach would work. You’d have thought that after all the oppression the soviet peoples went through, during communism, they would’ve possibly created a real libertarian system after the fall of the red banner (and perhaps, economically, they have) but they seem to still hanker after social democracy, rather than Rothbard-World style freedom, and they still vote in ex-KGB chiefs to rule them.
As far as meta-context goes, yes, I can see where you’re coming from, in that we have to go from being perceived as being mad-staring eyed bonkers lunatics, to having a frameworked philosophy which is accepted as being the best for solving any problem, even if people don’t like its implications (as in the recent BBC program where everyone derided the US, while accepting that its basic philosophies made it very wealthy, for its poorer citizens as well as for its wealthier ones).
And as Hayek supporters have noted, it is truly amazing that someone like Tony Blair can mouth the words of Hayek (freedom, competition, low-tax motives, etc), after decades in which the British Labour Party was just as near as dammit a communist party in thin-disguise.
So we’ve gotta keep pushing the meta-context, and our framework, of “individual freedom is best in all situations”. But can we change the mindset of a whole people, especially one as brainwashed as the British? I don’t think we can.
I think we have to be slower. This means removing the brainwashing first, and waiting a couple of decades. This means shackling the BBC, and introducing ‘free’ schools, not run by the state. And the route to this is privatising the BBC, and introducing school vouchers so everyone can afford private education (even if you and I have to subsidise them, for the first few years.)
We also have to free the Universities, and get them off the state payroll.
All of this is going to take time, and then when people’s minds are more free, our ideas will spread in these freer people, and we will not be seen (as much) as bonkers raving mad wide-eyed lunatics, and our ideas will become more respectable, more fashionable, more accepted, and ultimately the substrate from which all thinking is drawn, and which the remaining socialists have to attack, rather than us having to attack their substrate (as is now the case.)
And I just see that to get that process started, of getting the state out of broadcasting and education, we’ll have to hitch a ride on the back of the conservatives, for a while. And Campbell going (or saying he’s going, or someone else saying he might go), from here, looks like good news for the Conservatives, for it mortally wounds Blair (probably). And Blair going will be the Labour Party destroying its own most powerful and effective weapon (like the Tories getting rid of Thatch, though too many years had seen her losing touch – oh so wise Americans, not letting anyone have more than 8 years! :).
Yes, Boris Johnson et al have said that they’d prefer Campbell to remain in place to remind British voters how corrupt New Labour is at the next election, but I think New Labour know that too, so he was always going to be removed to help them try to win.
But it’s a bloody great gaping hole at the centre of New Labour. Putting my Conservative hat on, I’ll take it, and I bet the mood in Central Office, right now, is electric, and if they haven’t got through 50 bottles of the fizzy stuff, already, I’d be amazed.
The beast of New Labour has been worsted. It is now all the easier to slay, even if it is by the Tories, and as long as they try to roll the state out of education, I’ll help them do it.
But we’ve been here before, so I’ll stop now, go home, and open that fridge to find Mr Tesco’s finest £12-99 shampoo lurking at the back.
Have a great weekend! 🙂
The internet did it! No, wait, the Blogosphere did it! No, Samizdata did it! The web is changing British politics forever! Bloggers got rid of Campbell! etcetera
What a revolutionary spirit you are, Andy. “Removing the brainwashing” … “when people’s minds are more free people, our ideas will spread in these freer people” … as a social conservative I cannot agree that the people will be freed by a few school vouchers. The people, or at least a substantial slice of them below forty years of age, will be less than free forever because of the depredations of social liberalism. There are many freedoms, you see, and the one that flows from political arrangement is highly secondary.
Furthermore, the enslavers are not the Islington Four but the cardres of quiet, little, true revolutionaries buried in the state system. The Tories were supine for a decade and more while the Long Marchers marched. I do not see any immediate signs that, if returned to power, they would hack the marxist bindweed from ther system. Do they have the courage?
As for Campbell’s forthcoming departure (“soon” according to his radio interview with Marr), it exposes Blair and must embolden his opponents in the Party. It is impossible to imagine the situation for Labour improving or repairing. Again, though, one looks to the Tories to do more than merely let the apple fall into their hands. Can IDS do it?
dr dna writes:
“Have I missed something and the government has not in fact been practically cleared of that and the BBC shown to be lying?”
Have they, hell! The desire to see the BBC for what it is is entirely laudable, but taking your eye of the Government’s dark role in Dr. Kelly’s death is unforgivable.
That may be, but my point was about the ‘sexing up’ bit in particular. The thing that started this whole circus. That bit has been resolved, has it not?
Paul Coulam: Thank you, you made my day… btw, who is pseud?
dr. dna writes:
“That may be, but my point was about the ‘sexing up’ bit in particular. The thing that started this whole circus. That bit has been resolved, has it not?”
Not to my satisfaction, it hasn’t.
Indeed, I find it deeply worrying that anyone could feel that it had been, given the evidence of Campbell and his “mate” Scarlett.
Don’t forget – this enquiry is into the death of Dr. David Kelly and it is hard to see how Blair and his gang of thugs can escape with their reputations intact in view of the way they hung him out to dry.
As for the specific allegations – do you seriously maintain that all those ‘observations’ from Campbell weren’t interpreted as orders by Scarlett? The man who wants to inherit MI6? The gift of which is in Blair’s hands?
There is still not a shred of evidence that the dossier Blair’s henchmen concocted was accurate – and I write as someone who was, broadly, in favour of the action we took against Iraq.
My congratulations on the impending de-lousing.
I am less optimistic about the conservatives making much difference. Our Republicans, conservative and otherwise have had little effect over the years, even with Reagan at the helm. They stemed the flood a bit at times, but that has been about all. I think the problem, probably for both of our countries, is the institutionalised structure that has accreted over decades of statism. It is nearly an immovable obstacle for even the most right minded elected officials to overcome. The very next article after this one is an example of an infection of this accretion that has occurred within weeks of the very inception of a new and virgin government.
There was an excellent BBC import to the US a few years ago – the “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” television series. I thought they were hilarious in a black humor sort of way. My wife can’t stand to watch them, she gets too depressed. Humphrey, the eternal bureaucrat, is just bearable because he is so totally devoted to his own self interest. Just imagine if instead his ultimate personal aim were an all encompassing and all powerful state power, with himself at some of the controls. It would no longer have any humor whatsoever.
Because of people like Humphrey, I doubt that the existing institutions will ever be improved significantly. Fortunately, we are living in a time of great technical ferment. Many of our institutions are becoming obsolete, with their functions being taken over by newer and often more decentralized replacements. One obvious example is the internet and it’s replacement of the centralized and orchesterated news media. Another will perhaps be education.
Andy wrote:
“We also have to free the Universities, and get them off the state payroll.”
I would reply, “Don’t bother, replace them with something better.” You will never change them while the current crop of crypto-marxists has tenure. And I don’t want to wait until they all die of old age. I can’t speak for Britain, but in the US, the universities are chiefly certificate granting machines for the young larvae prior to their metamorphosis to corporate workers. That the universities still manage to accomplish some scholarship and even to instill occasional love for it in their graduates is a tribute to some of the people involved rather than to the institutions.
They fail in precisely the areas where the internet is strong. Rather than concentrating on transfering information and knowledge, they administer exams and grant pieces of paper that qualify people for a contracting pool of corporate jobs. Meanwhile, ever growing numbers of older people are finding themselves not only out of work, but out of a vocation. They do not need to be groomed for corporate employment that they will never again find, they need to find new, diverse disciplines in which they can employ their productive efforts.
If new learning institutions are not now forming on the Internet, I believe they are inevitable soon. They will probably be inhospitable to statism but it may be best if people who are allergic to the state are instrumental in their gestation.
Andy: […]Boris Johnson et al have said that they’d prefer Campbell to remain in place to remind British voters how corrupt New Labour is at the next election,[…]
If so, they’ve lost the plot in a way that Campbell never has. Vague untrustworthyness of Labour might have been an election issue. He could never have been. However pleasing to us political hacks, I think it was a mistake (probably not Campbell’s own mistake, but a flustered Tony’s) for him to resign now.
Go out into the streets of Slough (Henley’s not a fair test) this morning, while the issue is fresh and on the front page of every paper, and ask random members of the public about Alastair Campbell is (and while you are at it, who Boris Johnson is). My guess: a minority will have any idea.
The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that this is not for the public anyway: it is partly for the press and other media-types, but mostly for internal Labour Party consumption.
The message is: TB is the boss; spin serves the Project rather than driving it. Expect some eye-catching symbolic socialism at the party conference to reassure the left.
G Cooper, agreed. What has been buried in the smoke and mirrors light show is, was that dossier accurate? Given that it was supposedly compiled by one of the most effective intelligence services in the world, we would have expected it to be so. Yet, we know for a fact that it wasn’t. It had whole sections out of some UCLA doctoral candidate’s PhD dissertation from 12 years ago, cut and pasted with all the original spelling and grammatical mistakes. The British public had every right to believe the words it was hearing and reading came from the British intelligence services. Even then, not content with contaminating the intelligence services’ file with student speculations, the doctoral candidate’s words were changed to “firm” the dossier up. While you’re tapping away, firming it up, why not add some bells and whistles, just so the public gets it? And what was the intelligence service or the MoD or whichever department, doing letting Alastair Campbell let rip with an uncorroborated statement, even if that particular statement did indeed originate with them? Why were they bullied into letting him see it in the first place? It wasn’t safe. This was the dossier whose integrity, or disgraceful lack of it, started this whole tragedy.
Also, we have a right to get an answer to the question Rod Liddle posed in Thursday’s Spectator: Did Dr Kelly have permission to occasionally talk informally and not for attribution to the press? Why has this question not even been asked?
I echo the words of G Cooper: Not to my satisfaction, it hasn’t.
Bye bye Alastair, and good riddance !
Next one is Phony Bliar.
As for George The Butcher >>> 2004 is nigh…
Andy,
“(…) the best way to completely remove socialism from this country (…)”
>>> Glurps ! Blair a socialist ??? How exotic…
“(…) with nobody voting in any elections (what’s the point?) (…)”
>>> the point is letting people like you freely debate about what they want.
“You’d have thought that after all the oppression the soviet peoples went through, during communism, they would’ve possibly created a real libertarian system after the fall of the red banner (and perhaps, economically, they have) (…)”
>>> well, in Russia, libertarianism IS maffia.
“(…) to having a frameworked philosophy which is accepted as being the best for solving any problem (…)”
>>> Inch Allah !!!
“But can we change the mindset of a whole people, especially one as brainwashed as the British? I don’t think we can”
>>> Sigh of relief…
“I think we have to be slower. This means removing the brainwashing first, and waiting a couple of decades (…)”
>>> Oh oh. It’s all coming back…
“(…) and introducing ‘free’ schools (…)”
>>>> Interesting use of brackets.
“We also have to free the Universities, and get them off the state payroll”
>>> Sure ! What about a FoxNews University ?
“(…) and then when people’s minds are more free, our ideas will spread in these freer people (…)”
>>> you’re joking. Right?
“(…) as long as they try to roll the state out of education, I’ll help them do it”
>>> congratulations for your candour.
Bigre! That was a bit of a Nuremberg stadium speech..
Andy Duncan wrote
It’s just one lizard leaving to be replaced, later, by another lizard.
Wasn’t that what David Icke was on about?
Andy Duncan was right. Campbell’s out and Mandelson’s back. (Again.) This fills me with contempt and tells me how weak, weak, weak Blair is. He knows how bad this looks, but he’s driven to doing it anyway, because he’s frit.
Balir can’t survive without a puppetmaster.
Methinks the press will have some fun kicking Mandy around.