Tony Blair’s former spin doctor Alastair Campbell has weighed into the row over the Tories’ treatment of the regional press during the General Election campaign.
As previously reported on HTFP, David Cameron has come under fire from journalists in the industry for the way they have been treated during campaign visits to their patches.
Last weeek the Prime Minister apologised to the Huddersfield Daily Examiner and agreed to a ten-minute interview with its political reporter after she was given just one minute with the PM on a previous visit.
But within 24 hours he was further accused of a local media “snub” by weekly title Bedfordshire on Sunday after only taking questions from national broadcasters during a visit to Bedford.
Speaking to the Manchester Evening News Mr Campbell said Labour has given local reporters access on “every visit” during the 1997 and 2001 election campaigns when he served as Tony Blair’s director of communications
Mr Campbell, pictured above left, added: “In my day, we made sure we spoke to every local paper in the place we went. Often it meant arranging picking up reporters in lay-bys.
“I know, having been involved this time around, the local and regional press are part of the planning of every visit the party and Ed Miliband does.
“David Cameron has not met a single person he’s not been planned and scheduled to meet. The Tories, including Osborne, say they love being out campaigning and meeting real people. But the truth is, they’re not.”
Other regional newspapers to have complained over their treatment by the Conservative Party during visits by high-profile politicians in this campaign include the Nottingham Post, The Yorkshire Post and the East Anglian Daily Times.
The MEN’s own local government reporter, Jennifer Williams, last week wrote an editorial in which she said political parties’ lack of communication with the local press had “strategised that basic human interaction out of their daily grid”.
Mr Campbell added: “Despite what I thought about John Major, you can’t say he didn’t get out there and engage with people. The media is very important in campaigns.
“And if you’re an undecided voter, you know what the big stuff is from the television; they don’t care about that stuff.
“Campaigning is about getting to people and actually speaking to them. Local media is a big part of that.
“I was a control freak. You do have to be in control of a campaign. But that doesn’t mean we didn’t have real engagement.”
Sign up for our free daily email bulletin
Follow HTFP on Twitter
Got a story? Email the Editor at
Yes, Campbell needs to be lecturing governments on how to behave with the media. He wrote the book on that…
Report this comment
Campbell is already from another era. 15 years ago local papers had a far greater reach than they do now.
Report this comment
Why should anyone listen to the dodgy dossier expert?
Report this comment
I had a chat with Tom Utley of the Mail when he was covering Miliband’s wanderings last week and his main line, which he repeated in print, was how the nationals were being kept at bay in favour of the regionals and the locals. So reverse ferret to what has been suggested recently on htfp. You can understand why they tried to keep the man from the Mail away (made better copy anyway, he was blocked off by a minder at one stage), and the coverage from local TV was certainly friendly and stultifyingly uncontroversial. In Ipswich, best coverage was from Paul Geater of the EADT although Tom Utley’s hatchet job was accurate in the way it portrayed the way the visit was brutally stage-managed with a small army of fixers and minders. Without a report to file or a deadline to meet, I watched the whole farrago from beginning to end with a relaxed fascination. It’s great being a university student.
Report this comment
Ha, I’m sure your average young journo was no match for this fella. I know one guy who was forced to read back all his shorthand notes following an interview with Blair. I’d have been in big trouble if that was me, in seven years I never understood a single one of my shorthand notes, thank goodness most people don’t remember what they’ve said.
Report this comment
Yep, got several interviews with Blair when he was in the area in 2004 ahead of the local elections. Got a good 20 mins at The Lowry Hotel for the Salford Advertiser (which was recorded by his team on video, dictaphone and shorthand, to make sure we didn’t misquote I presume) and was invited back to cover the party rally that evening at the art gallery along with all the local papers and radio stations.
Entertainingly the PM remembered me the next day when I also covered him opening the new Prestwich police station for the Prestwich Advertiser (both produced by the same team in the Eccles office). When introduced as the reporter for the Prestwich Advertiser he quipped “Hang on, weren’t you from Salford yesterday? Are you the only reporter around here?”
Oh how we laughed
Report this comment
Why anyone would listen to a single word Campbell says about anything after Iraq is beyond me. He is a busted flush when it comes to ethics.
Report this comment
As I’ve pointed out before, the nationals’ reach isn’t anything like as vast as many people imagine, and the ABC figures tell us it’s declining by the week.
There was a time when a paper like the Nottingham Evening Post could claim – with justification – that it sold SIX times as many copies in its own area as all the nationals put together. I imagine that could be said of most big evening papers.
Even in its present dire state, the regional press tends to have more credibility in readers’ minds than the nationals, which are seen as having an agenda to be followed slavishly, especially during an election campaign.
Any switched-on PR guy would, therefore, ensure the local press is well-served because its stories will carry more weight among voters than the ‘slanted’ Fleet Street versions.
However, when you spend your entire working life in Westminster, you tend to lack perspective and fall into the trap of believing nothing much happens outside central London, and that ‘provincial’ people don’t matter.
As Nicola Sturgeon is proving, that it a fatal line to take.
Report this comment
I didn’t buy Grazia last week after it emerged he was holding forth in it – who thought that was a good idea?
Plainly there is no escape
Now here he is again and I ask myself: who cares what he thinks?
Don’t flatter yourself luv!
Report this comment
Campbell certainly has been very local media friendly. I recall his visit to Fulboun hospital several years ago. Not only did he give one of our reporters an interview but obligingly posed for the photographer so The young reporter could have a souvenir pic with Campbell holding the weekly title. It made the reporters day.
Report this comment
Campbell has obviously forgotten all the times he tried to bully local reporters before and after interviews with Blair. Tried it with me twice, quoting inaccurate information fed to him by the local Labour party.
Report this comment
Why should anyone pay any attention to anything Campbell says? He’s one of yesterday’s men – and he knows nothing about football, either.
Report this comment
I well remember the determined attempt by Labour HQ to bully me when I refused a libellous campaign ad in the paper I was editing in 1997. The matter escalated all the way up the chain of command from local to national, with each person I spoke to even more incredulous than the last that the editor of an insignificant little local rag could have the temerity to behave in such an unreasonable way. “This is the LABOUR Party,” I was repeatedly told. “And this is the LAW,” I replied.
They changed the ad.
Report this comment
My own experience for what it’s worth tallies with what Alastair has said, and I don’t make a habit of agreeing with him! When I was political editor of The Journal, Newcastle during the 1997 and 2001 elections I had a half-hour sit-down interview with Tony Blair both times. On the latter occasion, the interview had to be rescheduled a couple of times and I began to doubt it would happen, but when I rang up No 10 about a week away from polling day, I was assured that Mr Blair “would never go through an election campaign without doing an interview with the Newcastle Journal.” If the number of stories on HTFP is anything to go by, Mr Cameron is taking a very different approach to the regional press during this campaign.
Report this comment