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16th November 2018
07:08pm GMT

You can listen to the fifth episode of Ireland Unfiltered, Dion Fanning in conversation with Alastair Campbell from this Tuesday, 2o November by simply subscribing here.Dion Fanning: There's been a surge of sympathy recently.
Alastair Campbell: That's lethal. That is lethal.
Dion: You don't think that's admiration for her resilience?
AC: I think people do admire her resilience and I think that people do feel like she has a really strong sense of duty and I think people feel that, they'll give her that.
But I think once you're a leader... there was a period when people were starting to feel sorry for Gordon Brown. I can remember once Dennis Skinner saying to me, ‘Once you get sympathy you've had it.'
I once had this conversation with Bill Clinton. Tony [Blair] had asked me to go see Bill Clinton to talk about myself, because I was at a period where there was a real crossroads in my life and I was getting battered left, right and centre and I was thinking of leaving.We ended up talking about Tony and I can remember Clinton saying, 'Sometimes I get the feeling he thinks he should get a blue ribbon for doing the job. The job is the blue ribbon.' It's such a privilege to do the job. So I think that once you start to say about leaders, 'I'm beginning to feel sorry for her', that's a bad place to be.
Dion: I'm not sure how she can think it's a privilege to be Prime Minister at the time she became Prime Minister, considering post-Brexit, it's been all anyone has ever talked about in Britain since.
AC: That's partly because of the way that she's been handling it. Look, I accept it was a very difficult thing to pick up. I don't think it's ever not a privilege to be Prime Minister.
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