Lockdown has taken its toll on the mental health of Alastair Campbell – formerly chief bagman to Prime Minister Tony Blair and a titan of early 21st century British political skullduggery, now tragically reduced by weeks of enforced isolation to gibbering near-insanity.
That, at any rate, is the charitable explanation for a ‘satirical’ video Campbell has launched onto an appalled, cringing internet.
The video — in which Campbell dresses up in a Brigade of Guards tie (to which, obviously, as a lifelong civilian he is not entitled) and some military campaign service medals (ditto), and attempts a posh voice — is presumably meant as an attack on Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his troubled strategist Dominic Cummings.
(Cummings has a similar job now to the one Campbell had in the days when he was still a thing. Perhaps the resentment explains why he is so bitter).
In the video, Campbell pretends to be Boris Johnson recalling a visit to the Queen in which he describes proposing a revised National Anthem.
Campbell then sings this new version of the National Anthem, which goes like this:
God save my gracious Dom
Long live my darling Dom
God save my Dom
Send him to face the press
That should clear up the mess
Like Andrew’s Pizza Express
God save my Dom
It sounds even less funny than it looks on the page.
Campbell clearly wasn’t quite sure how to end the sketch. But he has a stab – first putting on his stock comedy Scottish accent to ask his Boris character how the revised National Anthem went down with the Queen. Then, Campbell has his Boris character quote the Queen as saying: “Fuck off you snivelling little shit.”
Yes. Told you it was bad.
The video has been condemned by the servicemen’s charity Help for Heroes;
And also by a number of war veterans including Trevor Coult MC (who won his Military Cross for gallantry in Iraq).
Coult told Breitbart:
Alistair Campbell pretending to be a War hero while wearing a military medal is not the sickest slur he has done to date. He helped produce documentation that sent our men and women into a war which resulted in the death of thousands of people!
It still rankles with many servicemen and women that Alistair Campbell helped put together the ‘dodgy dossier’ about ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ which led to the Second Iraq War, where Britain lost 179 servicemen and women. Campbell was accused of having ‘sexed up’ the dossier to make the case for war look more compelling to Britain’s U.S. allies – though Campbell was cleared of this by an inquiry.
Still probably not such a good idea of Campbell to pick the scab off these old wounds in so embarrassing a way. He’s not much of hero, but it does sound like he needs help.