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Alastair Campbell sexes up the New Statesman

Taking time off from his new career as a "post-modern sex god", Alastair Campbell has guest-edited this week's edition of the New Statesman. Reluctant as I am to give him any more publicity, I'm afraid to say it's rather a good read.

The whole thing does not appear to be on the New Statesman website yet. We've already put up a story based on the Tony Blair article and, for anyone who doesn't want to splash out £2.95, here are five other nuggets worth passing on.

1. Campbell thinks Gordon Brown isn't getting enough support from fellow ministers. (This is from Campbell's interview with Sir Alex Ferguson.)

One of my worries at the moment is that we don't see so much of the team. Too much of it falls on Gordon. I was thinking on the way here, listening to the radio, and Gordon was getting it in the neck over Royal Mail at the policy forum. If the shit ever hit the fan and we were looking for big hitters, there was a lot more than Tony – John Prescott, Gordon, Robin Cook, Donald Dewar, David Blunkett, Mo Mowlam, John Reid, Alan Milburn, Jack Straw, Charles Clarke, Peter Mandelson, Margaret Beckett, Tessa, Helen Liddell, Jack Cunningham, Pat Hewitt, lots of them.

(I'm not sure about all the names on his list myself, but that's what he says.)

2. What Gordon Brown thinks of Tony Blair. There's a revealing quote in a Philip Gould's review of a new book by Stanley Greenberg (the American pollster who also worked for New Labour). Gould writes: "As Gordon Brown once said to me: 'The one thing you can say about Tony Blair is that he always knows where he is going'." That helps to explain why Blair became leader in 1994, and Brown didn't.

3. Ferguson told Blair that he should have a masseur on his battle bus during the 1997 election. The idea does not seem to have been taken up.

4. The difference between the Clinton Democrats and New Labour. This is another quote from the book review by Gould:

For Greenberg, renewing the Democrats meant recapturing the party for the hard-working majority after two decades of liberal elitism and a conservative hegemony that had lasted since 1968. For Blair, modernisation meant renewing the Labour party after 100 years of relative electoral failure and modernising a nation still trapped in the shadows of an empire-dominated past. Blair wanted to make an old country young again, not renew a nation essentially youthful.

5. Campbell thinks "post-defeat positioning" by Labour MPs is "unforgiveable". If I had to translate that into tabloidese, I suppose it would be "Campbell slams Harriet Harman" but he doesn't quite put it like that and he doesn't name the offenders, so it's probably best to read his actual words. They're in his leader, which is on the web.

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