The Rise of The Podcast Expert: Alastair Campbell, The Rest Is Irony and Unsuitable Punditry

This Sunday morning, I sat with my coffee, basking in the spring sunshine, with my book and reflecting on the current geopolitical climate. My read, A War Of Choice - Honour, Hubris and Sacrifice: The British in Iraq by Jack Fairweather, was a Christmas gift. I started reading it recently, in light of the ongoing US-Iran conflict. I thought it prudent to seek a better understanding of another 21st-century military intervention in the Middle East and see if any lessons could be learned, or analogues drawn. Undoubtedly a military and political disaster for the Coalition powers, Fairweather focuses largely on individual instances or events to portray a larger picture of unpreparedness and failure, interspersing these vignettes with the resulting political consequences in the UK. I wanted to investigate how the commentary surrounding this topic can be co-opted and manipulated by those culpable for similar mistakes in previous Middle Eastern campaigns. Finally, I wanted to answer these two burning questions: is this justifiable, and how might we distance ourselves from any historicist and manipulative actors? I suspect the answer lies in how contemporary commentary abstracts responsibility through selective historical framing.

By the end of Chapter 7, the first real mention of Britain’s contested and later discredited reasoning for joining the Americans is laid bare. The tragic death of Dr. David Kelly and the ‘sexed-up dodgy dossier’, as described by commentators of the time, are contrasted with the attempts in Southern Iraq to rebuild government, where the hubris in Fairweather’s title perfectly sums up both exercises. Alastair Campbell, then Tony Blair’s comms man, is largely suspected to have had a hand in the creation of this mendacious piece, which suggested that Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime – which the Coalition has desperately searched for meaningful reasons to topple – possessed weapons of mass destruction, with the express intent to use them against the Iraqi people and the wider populace of the Middle East. It was later discovered that these conclusions were directly lifted from a university student’s research, even down to grammatical errors.

Campbell never apologized for his role this report played in the enquiry launched, and the weapons inspector’s subsequent suicide. I should clarify that although he was cleared of legal responsibility by the Hutton Inquiry, he’s never openly expressed remorse for Kelly’s death, despite being reputably instrumental in leaking his name to the UK press. Instead, he chose to focus on, according to the BBC report from the time, “how it would fuck” any reporting on Iraq. It acts as the most prominent blemish on Tony Blair’s political CV, highlights how short-sighted the Americans and British are when engaging in foreign wars, and how little our governments understand the Middle East and its people. Of course, the subsequent fallout, which led to between 250,000 – 500,000 deaths and almost £9 billion spent, throws this into stark reality. The fact that Iraq is still in the process of recovery nearly 25 years after this invasion only underscores the failure of the Coalition.

It is this history that makes Alastair Campbell’s current position on Iran so striking. As Director of Communications under Tony Blair, Campbell was central to the presentation of the case for the Iraq War—a crusade now widely regarded as a profound strategic and moral failure. On The Rest Is Politics, his condemnation of President Trump’s handling of Iran is delivered with characteristic clarity and force. Yet what is missing is any sustained reckoning with the parallels—however imperfect—between that earlier intervention and the present crisis. The result is not simply a question of hypocrisy, but of perspective: a tendency to frame current events in ways that emphasise immediate political fault while leaving deeper historical continuities largely unexamined. This matters because podcasting, as a medium, trades heavily on perceived authority. It is not just authority; there’s an implicit trust between the podcast listener and the podcaster that their information is trustworthy. When that authority rests not only on experience but on contested legacy, the line between insight and self-exoneration becomes difficult to discern.

I thought that I should listen to The Rest is Politics then, in an earnest attempt to understand Campbell’s point of view on the issue. Podcasting has created a space in which former political actors can convert proximity to power into perceived authority—often without a corresponding reckoning with their past decisions. It is important to understand this in order to properly recognize the discrepancy between Campbell’s past behaviour, and his current view on Middle Eastern interventionism.

Fellow host Rory Stewart was this week replaced by guest, Dominic Sandbrook (from The Rest is History and The Book Club). They exchange pleasantries briefly, before Alastair launches into sandbagging his guest into declaring Trump a fascist. The first 15 minutes of the episode (‘518. Is Trump a Fascist and is His War on Iran Unwinnable’) are focused on this debate, with the usual host egging Sandbrook into admitting or agreeing with his classification [that Trump is a fascist]. Of course, this can only go one of two ways. Either his co-host agrees and Alastair can stand mock-triumphantly at being right in his assertion and then follow on by professing that a fascist would, of course, behave in such a despotic way; or Dominic disagrees and Campbell can deploy the inverse argument: ‘well, of course Trump is a fascist, look at all these boxes he checks’. It’s a difficult one for an interviewee to properly counter.

Alastair’s examples also seem hyperbolic and emphatic; in many ways this is The Rest In Politics’ raison d’être. One instance from this episode that rises to the top is him recounting a list he recalled seeing from an article in The American Holocaust Memorial which listed the 14 signs of fascism. He reads out all fourteen, hoping his co-host will agree and move on to the next topic on the agenda. Untrue to form, however, Dominic contests, and concludes that while Trump is not to be trusted and his actions are increasingly worrisome and antagonistic, it is imperative to maintain a high bar in applying labels such as fascism because of the historical weight and significance such labels carry. By using this example, Campbell knowingly draws this comparison, and it is useful for Sandbrook to maintain this distinction, as it would otherwise serve to dilute Trump’s aggression. What this framing overlooks, and what Campbell seems insistent on doing, is not representing matters as they are playing out in sequence. Ironically, it takes a historian to remind him of this. Crucially, it is a line of inquiry that serves only to distract from the pertinent issues with the ongoing US-Iran conflict.

I’m always stunned when I see (especially) liberal people of around my age mention in dating profiles or social media bios their reverence for this podcast. Frankly, I’ve never been particularly drawn to the show, but that is beside the point. How are we accepting of a man like Alastair Campbell being such an active participant in his own rebranding? While the Iraq War was still ongoing, critics—including journalist Andrew Gilligan—argued that he was a bully and intimidator, and more worryingly, he has been accused of having deceived the British public. At the time it was argued that the government’s case for war was overstated and politically shaped. While the Hutton Inquiry cleared Campbell of wrongdoing in relation to Dr David Kelly’s death, the episode continues to cast a long shadow over his role in the presentation of the Iraq War. With this at the forefront of our minds, is this the sort of figure we want commentating on the equally disastrous war with Iran? How can we expect parity and impartiality?

During the second of their most recent episodes, ‘519. Trump’s NATO Threat & a Critical Question in Hungary (Question Time)’, Campbell makes direct reference to his role in the Blair government that jointly invaded Iraq. What is striking is the limited effort to reconcile. Instead, it sounds more like an anecdote intended to clarify his standpoint in opposition to the Iran conflict. Under scrutiny, this is even more egregious. Campbell inadvertently lessens Trump’s aggression by inviting direct comparison to his own role in an invasion [of Iraq], versus Trump’s escalation of violence against the Iranians. While he is not solely to blame, as a communications official working on behalf of the sitting government, we should not diminish his role in understanding and refining how actions and consequences are relayed to the wider public. Perception is everything. In this case, it is difficult to justify how somebody so closely associated with those mistaken intentions that drew Britain and the United States into a Middle Eastern war that they were unequipped, unwilling and unable to comprehensively see through should be able to freely comment on another incident that has echoes of Iraq so prevalently. The podcast economy allows figures like Campbell to convert contested past authority into present influence—without sufficient scrutiny.

There is more to this than just personal dislike towards Alastair Campbell and his moralising. His hosting of The Rest is Politics, as previously mentioned, a flagship show for Gary Lineker’s Goalhanger series of podcasts, reveals a concerning trend. Political and current affairs podcasting is a tight clique, where the successful shows are hosted either by former political affiliates like John Bercow, George Osborne or, (god forbid) Liz Truss; or by people who rely on these political connections for their work, such as The News Agents. In principle, this is not entirely terrible; insight from figures who were intimately involved in the top levels of government can serve to offer perspectives and conclusions the average person might not stumble upon of their own accord—a welcome inclusion to the discourse. In practice, however, it serves as an opportunity for these figures to reframe and reconstruct their images, and present themselves as moral arbiters or authorities on the current political landscape with no meaningful recourse. In essence, there’s no culpability or recourse for past mistakes for the individual, and the creation of an echo chamber for the listener.

Alastair Campbell then not only cuts an unsuitable pundit to discuss any modern war, but his commentary can have the effect of obscuring similar mistakes he himself has made in the past. We know this from experience. We should not be hoodwinked into thinking this dishonest behaviour has been renounced, and we should expect nothing less from a former journalist—somebody aware of the power of personal image, fabricated or otherwise. We should treat this, as with all other podcasts covering current affairs and politics, with inherent scepticism, and be discerning before agreeing with or parroting any of their opinions as our own.