Read F-bomb email that Alastair Campbell sent me after my Brexit vote reflection
Blair's former mouthpiece and his like hated seeing the will of the people triumph in the Referendum and that’s why I love seeing the mayhem at the top of both the Tories and Labour
APART from bumping into him occasionally in a TV studio, I don’t know Alastair Campbell.
You would remember him as the chap who told lies for a living during Tony Blair’s time in No10.
Perhaps his best one was the dossier he helped put together which said Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapon and was on the verge of using it.
Wholly untrue.
That dossier led us to invade Iraq, where 179 of our brave lads died.
Neither Campbell nor Blair has ever apologised for those deaths.
Thanks to an email he sent me I think I do know Campbell rather better now.
In Monday’s column I said I was suffering from buyer’s remorse after putting my cross next to Leave.
In truth I was derailed by the collapse of sterling and the stock markets, which have now happily recovered.
RELATED STORIES
Thanks to two paragraphs on the subject I received my biggest-ever mailbag, which split evenly between those saying “grow some” and those saying “we agree”.
Even the French started emailing, including a Gilles Chemla, who said he was everything I hated: A Frenchman and an intellectual (surely an oxymoron).
But it was Campbell’s F-word-filled ramblings that caught my eye.
I apologise for his words.
These days Mr Campbell is not fussy how he makes his money. Still living off Blair, he offers PR advice to dictators like the evil Kazakhstan President who kills and tortures at will.
KELVIN MACKENZIE, SUN COLUMNIST
I think of the two of us, the one that knows most about “giant propaganda machines” would be Campbell by some distance.
His No10 PR machine was a disgrace, where he would call up the dim-witted Sun Editor David Yelland and dictate (sometimes successfully) what the editorial should be.
These days Mr Campbell is not fussy how he makes his money.
Still living off Blair, he offers PR advice to dictators like the evil Kazakhstan President who kills and tortures at will.
Campbell's email in full
“Never mind buyer’s remorse, you should feel totally f***ing ashamed to have been for so long part of a giant propaganda machine which has helped the country make a potentially self-destructive decision that future generations will have to live with when you and I are long gone.
“Murdoch has been a complete poison in our national life and you have helped so much. And because you are well sorted it will not hit you nearly as hard as those you and yours have persuaded to make the decision they did.
“But hey it’s all a bit of fun, eh? F*** off.”
Plus he’s on the lucrative speaking circuit, where I imagine his most interesting address was: How I helped send dozens of our Brave Boys to their deaths in the Middle East.
Campbell and his like hated seeing the will of the people triumph in the Referendum.
That’s why I love seeing the mayhem at the top of both the Tories and Labour.
For the first time in all my years, we are the masters now.
CLEARLY there’s been some comfort eating by disgraced charity boss Camila Batmanghelidjh.
Her Kids Company was shut down amid allegations of financial mismanagement last summer.
She was photographed, above, heading to a restaurant in London’s West End where a chef’s menu costs £145.
If you owned an all-you-can-eat, you wouldn’t want to see Ms Batmanghelidjh come through the door, would you?
ON the basis of dog bites postman, no story, but postman bites dog, big story, I wonder with Cabinet minister Justine Greening tweeting she’s a lesbian, Scottish Tory Ruth Davidson announcing she is engaged to a woman and Labour leadership hopeful Angela Eagle having already come out, wouldn’t it make more sense if female politicians only made public pronouncements about their sexuality when they were not of the sapphic attraction?
IN reply to retired IRA terrorist Martin McGuinness, who had asked on meeting her: “Are you well?” the Queen replied: “Well, I’m still alive anyway.”
Since Mr McGuinness and his murder machine were responsible for killing her cousin Lord Mountbatten and one of his twin grandsons, I’m sure she would have preferred to have said: “Well I’m still alive anyway – no thanks to you.”
What kind of job makes you shake hands with somebody in a group who has killed a member of your family?
The manner in which the Queen conducts herself in public life is without a global parallel.
Equity in banks' interest
FIFTEEN years ago divorcee Christine Turner decided her three-bed bungalow needed tarting up. A new kitchen, damp proofing, etc, and it would cost £20,000.
So without telling her family, Christine, from Wirksworth, Derbys, borrowed the money through an equity release scheme from Barclays.
Her family were furious when they learned what she had done but she told them the estate would have to pay back a matter of pennies when she died.
Well, sadly, Christine has now died at 80. And her home was sold for £220,000 with, wait for it, £115,000 going to Barclays, who even held up the sale for two weeks while they made sure the house wasn’t being sold on the cheap.
Her family have contacted me to express their disgust at the cost of that money.
I share their view but annual compound interest does rack up at an enormous rate and I would like to see what simple paperwork Christine was shown, plus the way Barclays’ representative personally explained how her equity would be eaten up. We’re not all Mervyn Kings, you know.
Let's snub toothless stars and pick lions like Johann
THE future of English football lies in the unlikely setting of Bury’s ground of Gigg Lane.
In six weeks they start their first game of the League One season against Charlton and in the team facing them will be Johann Gudmundsson, a hero of Iceland’s defeat of Hodgson’s Halfwits.
Gudmundsson, a pacey winger, pictured here on the left, probably makes around £5,000 a week, which is good money but his career will be over at 30 so there will be no nest egg and therefore there will be one greater calling than his bank balance: A national pride.
It exists in Slovakia, in Northern Ireland, in Wales, in the Republic of Ireland.
Little countries with big hearts.
England are the reverse.
A big country with little heart.
So here is my proposal for the FA.
Instead of picking Premier League players earning anywhere between £60,000 and £250,000 a week who seem incapable of rising to the occasion, we only select from the Championship and League One.
They may only be journeymen but they would care and we would know they were doing their best and wouldn’t expect too much from them.
My edict would also apply to the manager.
We should beg Neil Warnock, who did a stunning job at Rotherham, to take over.
Or the little fat guy who got the push from Leeds.
They may not be great but surely better than a Sterling, a Wilshere, a Cahill, a Hart.
If you always do the same thing you will always get the same result.
Let’s exclusively pick our teams from the Championship and break our link with 50 years of failure.
Love to hear your views. Do send them to [email protected].
WOMEN on the warpath . . . Column reader Mary Hartley, from Sheffield, received a home insurance renewal of £729.59 (double last year’s), went on and got better cover for £303.88, saving £425.71.
Similar story from Pearl Mills, of Burringham, North Lincs, who was asked for £1,263 for home insurance and switched to Aviva for £587. You must have more money than sense not to switch.
WINDOW cleaning company in Limerick – Windows 2000.
Clothes shop in Harlech, Gwynedd – Damsel In This Dress.
Indian restaurant in Upper Sundon, near Luton – Curryzma. On the back of a refrigerated lorry on the A12 – Cool, calm and collect it.
Chimney sweep in Haywards Heath, West Sussex – The Flueologist.
Fishing boat in North Shields, Tyne and Wear – Happy Hooker. Pharmacy in Sheffield – Medisun.
A little thin in numbers today so do send more punnies to [email protected].
MY greatest sporting moment was the Wimbledon Centre Court crowd cheering when Britain’s Marcus Willis managed to serve OVER the net during the warm-up having failed twice. I loved their humour and his personality. What a star.