Thread by @JohnRentoul

The ‘how not to do it’ guide for Keir Starmer from Alastair Campbell @indypremium independent.co.uk/independentpre…

The lessons of 2015 for the election of 2023/24 independent.co.uk/independentpre…

My review of @campbellclaret vol 7 is here, with links to reviews of vols 1-6 at the end independent.co.uk/voices/alastai…

Here are some snippets from @campbellclaret Diaries vol 8 I didn't have space for in the review

28 April 2011 On the wedding snub [Jeremy Heywood, cabinet sec] said it was very much the royals. Cameron and Osborne both went ballistic, said it was a bad error, worried they would get the blame. They have little time for GB but respect TB – they call him ‘the master’

That was a ref to Blair and Brown being nfi to William & Kate's wedding, which I wrote about here independent.co.uk/news/uk/politi…

(That article is now mis-dated; it was published 1 May 2011, but @Independent has a tech problem with archived material)

27 May 2011 Rare Q&A at a private [primary] school. One of them asked what single thing I would do if I was PM for a day and they gasped with shock when I said abolish private education. Some seemed to get it when I explained why

22 April 2012 Met Alistair Darling at Labour fundraiser in Edinburgh. He said he was looking forward to the referendum and he believed it could be won. Salmond was not good on the detail, not good with women, and not good at dealing with criticism

16 January 2014 Saw TB with Anji [Hunter]. She and I had discussed how we might help him get to a better position with his own profile which was still not great. TB admitted there were times when he felt like an exile in his own land

... Anji thought maybe Europe [as main theme of his post-PM operation] which she felt was crying out for leadership ... because the scepticism was really taking hold. We both said the conventional wisdom that a referendum was unloseable could be tested

26 March 2014 Long chat with Tom Baldwin [Ed Miliband adviser]. He said the problem was Ed genuinely believed that he was into something with this idea that he was standing up for the ordinary man against the toffs. It was not a winning strategy. The shadow cabinet was piss-weak

6 Nov 2014 John Woodcock [Lab MP] said that if Alan Johnson was up for it, there would be 200 [MPs] who would back him. I said I didn’t think he would and later I spoke to him & he said it just wasn’t going to happen. He felt that it was not the right thing, for him or the party

14 Nov 2014 Peter Mandelson called out of the blue, said that he felt things were desperate, and that Neil [Kinnock] was the key to persuading Ed to go. I had spoken several times to Alan Johnson who just wasn’t up for it...

... Nobody else really made it, but I felt that maybe a contest would at least give us the chance to be back making the weather

19 Nov 2014 I talked to Neil to ask if he thought we could get Ed to go. He felt not but agreed there had to be a major shake-up

5 Dec 2014 Email exchange with George Osborne. “I think we will win. I am a child of the Clinton/Blair era. Back then you taught us that you had to be trusted on the economy, have the more leader-like leader and hold the centre. We’ve got all three”

24 Jan 2015 Dinner with Keir Starmer, Lab candidate

8 May 2015 TB was in one of his “I know I am right” modes on the various calls through the day. Maybe he was. But I said we had moved a bit left from TB to GB, a bit more left from GB to Ed, and even if it seemed obvious to us what needed to happen, I’m not sure it will

Looking forward to volume 9