Alastair Campbell Quotes

Friends have suggested that I am the least qualified person to talk about happiness, because I am often down, and sometimes profoundly depressed. But I think that’s where my qualification comes from. Because to know happiness, it helps to know unhappiness.

One day, we will look back and wonder how on earth we used to believe that depression was a lifestyle choice, only to be debated and taken seriously when an A List film star took his life, and the world filled with people saying how shocked and saddened they were.

Tony’s [Blair] convinced I’m going to find God. I do have spiritual moments, but I don’t think it’s God.

Sometimes Jonathan [Powell] and myself would go to Tony [Blair] and ask him if he was absolutely sure about this or that. That was our job. But ultimately it was his decision.

By asking the question ‘Am I happy?,’ and via the answer setting out what I mean by happiness, there is a political route that can be taken, by asking another question – ‘Can politics deliver happiness, and should it try?’

I hold no candle for George Osborne whatsoever. He has no strategic skills, is a hopeless chancellor, has no idea how most people have to live and his policies are failing and hurting millions.

The junk food of political journalism…all reshuffle stories are crap.

My public caricature – that of a self-confident alpha male – is only partly accurate.

I’m certainly driven, I hate losing, I can be ruthless and short-tempered and terribly competitive.

Greg Dyke is on record as saying that once the BBC was attacked, it was their job to defend themselves. But that is not their job.

My closest friend, who died not long ago, is buried near Marx’s grave in Highgate cemetery, so I see the gaggle of admirers laying roses at the foot of his tombstone regularly. I have never been tempted to leave flowers there myself. Great theories, shame about the practice. Marx did many things. But inventing class was not one of them.

Don’t accept that you are in crisis just because everyone says you are.