Alastair Campbell has written a new foreword to the paperback edition of The Blair Years relating Gordon Brown’s current difficulties to Tony Blair’s early days in No 10:

Part of the current narrative for politics that is developing is that whilst GB struggles, during TB’s years it was all relatively plain sailing . . . There may be good days, and bad days. There is no such thing as an easy day.”

So for all the difficulties, Gordon is well placed. He inherited a great strategic position, one not enjoyed by most incoming political leaders, in that he is able to represent continuity as well as change. Continuity because of a good record on the issues that most matter to people, and his significant role in that, and because the basic new Labour position is the one towards which other parties have had to gravitate to feel they have any chance of power. And change because he is a different leader in a different era, with the main challenges for today not the same as they were in 1997. In 1997, had TB been asked to set out his priorities on Day 1 in the job, he would probably have said sorting boom-and-bust economics, getting young people more opportunities for work, reversing underinvestment in schools and hospitals, modernising the constitution with particular regard to Scotland and Wales, trying to bring peace to Northern Ireland, improving Britain’s relations with Europe. As GB took power, though the economy and public services are always high up the list of priorities, a new set of challenges dominates — the economic growth of China and India and how to make that an opportunity, not a threat, for Britain, global warming and climate change that threatens catastrophe if not addressed, energy supply, a new form of global terrorism more difficult and dangerous than anything Britain ever faced even in Northern Ireland, demographic change meaning new challenges on pensions when for the first time Britain has more people aged over 65 than under 16. Big issues, and who is thought best able to deal with them will to a large extent decide who wins the next election.”

I have never denied that there were times when the TB-GB relationship was not as good as it should have been, that though sometimes the tensions were creative, sometimes they were not. But though I am new Labour, I am Labour. I was a fully paid-up Blairite even though as the book records TB and I had our differences. I am also a leaderite. Now GB is there, I support him, and want him to succeed. A decade and more of Labour government has seen too much change for the better for it to be reversed by a Tory government.”

I am often asked if I miss the cut and thrust, and the fact of being at the epicentre of power, constantly in contact with the real decision makers and powerbrokers around the world. I do. Every day there is a part of me that wishes I had that driving sense of mission and purpose, and the ability to make things happen in a big way. But I don’t miss it enough to want to be there all the time . . . Getting my life back was not easy. I crashed big time after leaving. TB used to call and ask me if I was watching the afternoon chat shows. I wasn’t. I was more likely to be asleep. One evening, not long after I left Downing Street, David Blunkett came round for dinner. He asked my daughter Grace, then aged 9, if it was nice having me home more. She said it was. ‘What does he do all day?’ asked David. ‘Well, when I go to school in the morning, he’s sitting on that sofa where you are. And when I come back at 4, he’s lying down on it sleeping . . . I think I was the right person for one particular boss at one particular time.”

As well as exhaustion I also suffered a rise in the frequency and intensity of the bouts of depression that have hit me on and off for many years. I have had great support, and now the gaps between the down periods are longer than I can ever recall. Perhaps the book was therapeutic. Or, more likely, perhaps I have finally got my life back. Like many people who give up something that was a 100 per cent full-on professional existence, I now do ‘a bit of this and a bit of that’. I speak, I write, I advise various people, businesses and organisations. I have had a very privileged life and new avenues are opening all the time. But politics and what I did for new Labour will always be important to me.”

© Alastair Campbell 2008

To order a paperback copy of The Blair Years published by Arrow Books for £8.99 (rrp £9.99) with free UK postage please call Times Booksfirst on 0870 1608080

Times Recommends

• Times Christmas appeal: Letter from the Editor
• Conferences — what a waste of money
• Schools supremo learns a painful lesson