The BBC’s Jon Sopel & ITV’s Robert Peston ride to the defence of Alastair Campbell

For many, Alastair Campbell’s expulsion from the Labour Party is long overdue after his role in the Iraq war. Instead, his undoing was confessing to voting Lib Dem at the European elections.

But Campbell’s had plenty of support since the decision. And two defenders who’ve ridden to his aid are Robert Peston of ITV News and Jon Sopel of the BBC.

What Campbell did wrong

An outspoken critic of Corbyn’s leadership of Labour, Campbell was asked by the BBC which way he voted in the European elections:

I voted Liberal Democrat. I didn’t vote Labour for the first time in my life.

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For this, the party expelled him (a decision Campbell says he will appeal). Labour’s press team clarified:

Read on...

To be absolutely clear, the way Labour Party members vote is a private matter. But publicly declaring or encouraging support for another candidate or party is against the rules and is incompatible with Party membership.

— Labour Press Team (@labourpress) May 28, 2019

Campbell’s protests at Labour’s decision are strange considering he recognised the potential consequences of his actions during an appearance with Jeremy Vine on Channel 5 on 20 May:

"For the first time in my life I'm really thinking about it…"

Longtime Labour member Alastair Campbell reveals he's not yet decided how he'll vote in Thursday's European elections.@campbellclaret | @TheJeremyVine | #AlastairCampbell | #jeremyvine pic.twitter.com/SpaQd7K0Re

— Jeremy Vine On 5 (@JeremyVineOn5) May 20, 2019

He also showed that he knew this wasn’t allowed in a previous interview with Owen Jones. Jones tweeted a copy of the Labour Party rules Campbell had broken:

And finally, to end this really silly and disingenuous debate – Alastair Campbell knew that publicly declaring he'd voted for another party would lad to auto-exclusion. How do I know this? Because we discussed it on camera! pic.twitter.com/8MgNPwR9qY

— Owen Jones🌹 (@OwenJones84) May 28, 2019

The media rushes to his defence

Many have rushed to Campbell’s defence, including Labour deputy leader Tom Watson.

But members of Britain’s media have as well. And both Sopel and Peston used similar arguments:

I've known @campbellclaret for 25 years. A more tribal, Labour to his finger-tips person you would struggle to find, yet expelled from @UKLabour with lightning speed brutality.
But anti-Semites?
Hard to avoid conclusion Labour is making deliberate choices…

— Jon Sopel (@BBCJonSopel) May 28, 2019

antisemites, sends out the oddest of messages. Parties that are so intolerant of political dissent rarely prosper in our first-past-post system, where the coalition is the party itself

— Robert Peston (@Peston) May 28, 2019

Social media responds

Twitter reacted strongly to what it saw as partisan commentary from key figures in the media.

Novara Media’s Aaron Bastani highlighted the hypocrisy of Sopel focusing on the Labour Party:

Did you comment on Heseltine’s suspension last week or do you only abuse your position at the BBC to defend friends from having rules applied to them?

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) May 28, 2019

Bastani was referring to the Conservative Party removing the whip from Michael Heseltine for also pledging to vote Lib Dem in the European elections. This was arguably not portrayed as an unjust purge the way it was with Labour

How Labour dealt with dissent under Campbell’s watch

Mark Seddon, a former member of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) and critic of British policy in Afghanistan during the Blair years, reminded Sopel of his treatment when Campbell’s team controlled Labour:

PS Labour's ex Chief Whip said that I had narrowly avoided expulsion for writing to Reg Keys, who lost his son in the illegal Iraq war promulgated by Blair & Campbell. Keys ran against Blair. I had said he was brave to do so. He put that in an election leaflet. @BBCJonSopel

— Mark Seddon (@MarkSeddon1962) May 28, 2019

Others highlighted the petty reasons the party used for some expulsions while Labour’s right-wingers still held power:

He made a full, public, televised admissions that he voted LibDem. In a world where party members were expelled for retweeting Caroline Lucas, or saying on Facebook that the "F***ing love the Foo Fighters", bragging about this was Campbell's downfall, not the doing of it.

— 🕊CrémantCommunarde🦁🖐 (@0Calamity) May 28, 2019

Was there media outrage when Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell accused the right of the party of conducting a “rigged purge” of Corbyn supporters prior to the 2016 leadership election?

Comparatively slow handling of anti-semitism?

Bastani also addressed Peston and Sopel’s dig contrasting the speedy expulsion of Campbell against the allegedly slow handling of antisemitism cases:

A murder trial takes months. A speeding tickets takes minutes. Thank god you never studied law! 😂

— Aaron Bastani (@AaronBastani) May 28, 2019

And Seddon clarified why Campbell’s expulsion was so rapid:

It is called 'automatic exclusion'. Been in the rule-book since the party's inception. What isn't promotional about telling all & sundry what he was doing — and on the BBC which he spends most of his time attacking for 'bias'? Come-on, Robert @Peston , raise your game.

— Mark Seddon (@MarkSeddon1962) May 28, 2019

 Campbell, a friend of the media?

 Others have speculated about why such journalists seem so fond of Campbell:

Jon Sopel casually acknowledging there's a chumocracy at the top of our media and politics.https://t.co/hoUVCSORi6

— epiplexis (@epiplexis_) May 28, 2019

Alastair Campbell is a typical Londoncentric ‘media-friendly’ careerist – he’s no friend of the vast majority of Labour’s huge membership

— martyn ware (@martynware) May 28, 2019

Former Labour MEP David Hallam gave some insight into the friendly relationship Campbell had with the press. He highlighted an incident involving him that actually appears in one of Sopel’s books:

I'm not that exercised about Alastair Campbell leaving the Labour Party. This extract from Jon Sopel's book "Tony Blair: the moderniser", explains why. The key phrases are "private meeting" and "feeding tit-bits to the press". As I left that meeting Campbell said "that's Hallam" pic.twitter.com/GsKz2HlqLn

— David Hallam (@DJAHallam) May 28, 2019

The media’s rehabilitation of Campbell

Writer Tim Holmes argued in a 2012 openDemocracy article, Britain loves a war criminal, that after Campbell’s role in the Iraq war he should never have been welcome in the media again.

And yet today, senior broadcasters are defending him for undermining his own party, and have completely forgotten his role in Iraq.

Featured image via YouTube – ITV News / YouTube – Good Morning Britain / YouTube – University of Southampton