Alastair Campbell

In the way that Ukraine was exactly the right kind of thing, COVID was actually the wrong kind of thing.

There were no inherently right answers.

It was all very difficult.

It was very technical.

It required him to do things which he instinctively didn't want to do.

Like all the lockdowns, really, really un-libertarian.

He was quite a libertarian type person.

All these things were at odds with his belief.

And it just smashed him about and all this kind of stuff.

And, you know, he...

He's always had a degree, and we can discuss how much of a degree, a degree of personal ill-discipline.

We knew that when we as a party chose to make him prime minister.

In many ways, that was personal discipline.

rather than professional, but those things blurred and the wheels came, all of which you can read in my wife's book that she's writing about her.

So Susie's, and the reason I'm reliving this, so it's because Susie's writing a book at the moment about her time being treated for recovering from cancer.

And it basically, it basically starts with,

So it goes from 2022 to the end of 2025.

And so we're reliving this as she's writing about what she was going through.

She was saying, what were you doing at the time?

I'm flicking back through my diary going, oh my God, I was doing this.