Hill climber

If Alastair Campbell should leave, then informed opinion suggests a move to 10 Downing Street by Bell Pottinger consultant David Hill. Roy Hattersley, writing in Media Guardian, recalls a previous phone conversation that demonstrates his scrupulous honesty:

I asked him if its real purpose was to make sure that I would not be publicly critical of his decision to work for Tim Bell – adviser to Margaret Thatcher and part-architect of several Labour Party defeats. He answered, without embarrassment or hesitation, that it was. Hill finds it almost pathologically impossible to deceive or dissemble. That is why he is the right man to re-establish a relationship of trust between Downing Street and the press and, in consequence, between Downing Street and the general public.