Tony Blair's top aide
and pugnacious media handler Alastair Campbell has announced his
resignation as the British prime minister battles the worst credibility
crisis of his six-year rule.
Campbell had been
expected to quit later this year but the timing of his announcement -
while both he and Blair are enmeshed in a high-stakes inquiry into whether
Britain hyped the case for war in Iraq - caught political observers
unawares.
Few had expected the
46-year-old media manipulator to quit while he and his boss face their
toughest test yet, with big questions still hanging over their role in
nudging the nation to join Washington in a war few Britons backed.
His departure robs
Blair of his closest confidant and the man credited with masterminding the
slick media strategy that helped Labour regain power after 18 years in the
wilderness.
"This idea that the
prime minister couldn't cope without me, or without anyone else, is an
absolute nonsense. The prime minister is somebody of immense ability,"
said Campbell.
Yet his departure is a
bitter blow to Blair as the prime minister struggles with plunging
popularity ratings amid perceptions style trumps substance within Blair's
inner sanctum.
Just on Thursday,
Blair became only the second British head of government to testify before
a judicial inquiry, answering allegations of hyped Iraq intelligence and
poor handling of the war's aftermath that left a top scientist dead. The
first to testify was Blair's predecessor John Major.
Another Iraq
casualty?
Campbell, who helped
orchestrate Blair's two landslide election victories, said he wanted to
hand over "in the next few weeks".
Blair's office named
his successor as David Hill, a public relations expert and former Labour
Party press officer who will be welcomed as a straight talker after the
"king of spin".
Campbell played a key
role in drafting a government dossier on Iraq's weaponry which has been
subject to scrutiny in the inquiry into last month's suicide of weapons
expert David Kelly.
"I had intended to
leave last summer, but as the Iraq issue developed, the prime minister
asked me to stay on," said Campbell, a former journalist and soft porn
writer whose partner, Fiona, works for Blair's wife, Cherie, and is also
leaving office.
Blair described
Campbell as "an immensely able, fearless, loyal servant of the cause he
believes in".
"In the
extraordinarily difficult and wearing world of the modern media, he
operated with tremendous skill and dedication," Blair said in a
statement.
Bernard Ingham, who
held Campbell's high-pressured job under Conservative Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher, said it was high time the abrasive media manipulator
bowed out.
"He presided over an
appalling period in government communication," Ingham told Reuters.
"Campbell was obsessed with presentation -- but the real culprit is Mr
Blair."
Former Labour minister
Gerald Kaufman said there was no smear from the so-called Hutton inquiry
on Campbell, even though he was central to media allegations of "sexing
up" intelligence.
Yet some within Labour
will not mourn his departure, even if most were careful to craft the
kindest of political obituaries.
"Alastair made a
tremendous contribution, we wish him well," said John Prescott, Blair's
No. 2 by title even as Campbell was routinely dubbed the "real" deputy
prime minister.
"It's a big void to
fill - but the Labour Party goes on."
�
Reuters
