GB on the G20, JP on Jeremy Kyle

By Alastair Campbell

I was at the London Labour Party’s fundraising dinner in Canary Wharf last night.

I was fully intending to blog last night after getting back. But I got home just before midnight to find my mouse had died. You can have all the online malarkey you want, but if your mouse won’t go, and you don’t know where the batteries are…

Batteries duly found this morning I then discovered it was the whole damned computer that seemed to be having a bad day. Computer rage set in, but it did no good.

So this comes via a BlackBerry via a friend (I have not yet learned how to do the blog from the BlackBerry).

Anyway, the dinner. GB was the main speaker and on good form as he set out some of his hopes for the flurry of international dialogue, and in particular the G20 in early April, to frame a new global response to the recent economic upheaval.

JP was perhaps less diplomatic with his analysis, making some pretty robust comments on Fred the Shred and RBS Ambassador Jackie Stewart.

And I was the warm up man for GB and JP, so just reminded people of the time JP decided the best way to connect with the electorate was to thump them, and pointed out we went on to win despite the most disaster prone election launch in history. (Sharron Storer haranguing TB outside a hospital, Jack Straw slow-handclapped by the cops, then the JP punch).

So there’s always hope!

JP and I are both new converts to online activity and he was flashing his new toys for all to see. He said when he sought advice on what laptop to get, he was told just to sit next to a civil servant or a spy on the train, and they’d leave it for him.

He continued to have trouble with his words from time to time. At one point he announced that he had just been on the Jeremy Kyle show and I thought no, please, don’t tell me his publisher got him onto that to promote his book.

But when I asked him about it on the tube home, it turned out he meant Jeremy Vine. Phew.

But as ever with John, there was a serious message to his speech, which boiled down was that the next election is going to be a tough fight and the organisation on the ground is going to be as important as ever. But so is the campaign online and we need to be engaging better than ever.

Stephen Pound did the auction, with the most money given for a signed copy of Barack Obama’s book, and the least for one of mine! Mind you, we made up for it with a book signing at the end with the party organisers charging way over the odds for my novel and my diaries, and I was dead chuffed that the novel sold out first.

As JP and I walked towards the underground station at the end, he couldn’t resist pointing out all the banks. ‘To think, we always dreamed that one day this would be ours…’

Even if not in these circumstances.

I’ll tell you what though … He is still one hell of a campaigner.

Visit Alastair’s own blog at www.alastaircampbell.org.

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