Alastair Campbell is to address a conference on foreign investment.

One of the most prominent and controversial strategists of the Blair governments, Alastair Campbell, will be in Malta next month to address a conference on foreign investment.

The journalist-turned-spokesman and strategist for former UK prime minister Tony Blair will be a main speaker along with Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and Opposition leader Simon Busuttil at an Ernst and Young conference titled ‘50 Years of FDI Looking Forward’.

Mr Blair appointed the 57-year-old as his official spokesman in 1994 and from then on he became the British prime minister’s closest adviser.

He is widely regarded as instrumental in Labour’s breakthrough victory in 1997 and subsequent elections.

He remained Mr Blair’s right hand man right up to the time he left his position as Number 10’s spokesman and Director of Communications and Strategy in 2003.

If you’ve been compared to Goebbels, and occasionally Hitler, and Pol Pot and Rasputin, [being called duplicitous] doesn’t bother me

He announced that he would be stepping down days after facing questions before MPs investigating on whether he helped the government “sex up” the case for invading Iraq.

David Kelly, a former Ministry of Defence weapons expert, had claimed to BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan that Mr Campbell was personally involved in embellishing the dossier on Iraq with a claim that the regime was able to deploy weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order being issued.

No such weapons were found after the Allied forces invaded in 2003.

Mr Kelly, who had spoken to the BBC anonymously, was exposed as the source of the story and after being grilled by MPs, committed suicide. However, the inquiry kept probing the issue but cleared Mr Campbell of any wrongdoing.

Many regard the former political editor and news editor of the Daily Mirror and Today tabloids respectively as the most effective and influential spin doctor the UK’s political establishment ever had but his exuberant style also generated its fair share of controversy.

In a 2010 interview with The Independent, he famously said it did not bother him being called duplicitous.

He was being asked to react to a statement by the former editor of The Daily Telegraph, Max Hastings, who described him and Peter Mandelson, one of the founders of New Labour, as the two most duplicitous men in public life.

“It just doesn’t bother me. If you’ve been compared to Goebbels, and occasionally Hitler, and Pol Pot and Rasputin – it doesn’t bother me... someone like Max Hastings, he liked Tony Blair, he fell for the New Labour thing, but he’s basically a Tory.”

Since leaving Downing Street, Mr Campbell has published two novels and a memoir, The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries, which dropped a few bombshells on the political scene in 2007.

He has been in high demand as a consultant and speaker in both academic spheres.

The conference will be held at the Westin Dragonara on October 8.