But What Can I Do?: Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It

Product Information

In the old days, I would live with the feeling, get up, carry on, pretend I was fine, drink to drown the depression, work to chase it away.’ Photograph: Grégoire Bernardi/The Observer Our politics is a mess. Leaders who can't or shouldn't be allowed to lead. Governments that lie, and seek to undermine our democratic values. Policies that serve the interests of the privileged few. It's no surprise that so many of us feel frustrated, let down and drawn to ask, ' But what can I do?'

He is, looked at one way, extremely parochial, obsessed with – passionate about, if you prefer – the Labour party to a degree that can be unnerving even to other devoted members (this, he tells me, easily survived his expulsion from the party in 2019 for voting Liberal Democrat in the European elections on the grounds of their support for a second Brexit referendum). Outside it, football is his principal other interest (though he makes time for park runs and cold water swimming). He’s also a bruiser: tribal, pugnacious, overly confident, and apt to lose his temper – as he did in the middle of a discussion about Brexit on the BBC’s Newsnight only the other evening. Part of The Speaker’s mission is to inspire a new generation in politics and improve young people’s understanding of politics; from breaking down complex stories, or delivering resources to teach about our political system. Campbell makes this a large theme of his book and he is a strong believer in the importance of good political education in schools. The dynamo I normally feel 24/7 whirring inside me is switched off. Literally, you feel as if there is a power cut. Energy gone. Power gone. Desire gone. Motivation gone. The ability to feel anything other than the numbing pain the cloud has brought into you – gone. Everything gone, gone, all gone. Does the scale help? I find it does. Ruling out one and 10 helps, but I have definitely been at nine. In Australia recently, where I was announced as a global ambassador for Australians for Mental Health, a road transport official talked to me about the official suicide statistics. He said the real figures were totally underestimated “because so many road traffic deaths, which are classed as accidents, are actually almost certainly suicides.” That really resonated with me.

Retailers:

I do know people who felt they couldn’t stay with partners once serious mental health issues threatened their own wellbeing, and it would be dishonest of me to say there haven’t been a few moments when I questioned if it was right to stay. But we now know it is possible to live better with depression, and that is what I would wish for anyone existing in the shadow of this terrible illness. I found his giving a pro and contra on medication healthy. His transparency around his own medication was brilliant for fighting stigma. Fiona Millar leaves Downing Street with her partner Alastair Campbell after his resignation from Tony Blair’s government, August, 2003. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters MPs, he stresses, don’t have to be rotten, corrupt, self-serving; they can effect change. Wary of “dadsplaining”, he speaks to millennials for their perspective, and is admiring of Greta Thunberg, a lone young voice who spoke up against the global establishment. If she can, so can others. Fiona Millar, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson at the Labour party conference in Brighton in 2000. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

That is the opening line of Alastair Campbell’s new book, ‘ But What Can I Do? Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It’. The ex-Labour communications chief is a prolific writer and has turned his attention and considerable political experience to the question in the title of his book. It is the question Campbell says he gets asked more than any other; its answer required a book. The Speaker spoke to Campbell about his new book, and about why young people should get involved in politics. But no, they weren’t friends. The podcast is made by Goalhanger, a company co-founded by the ex-footballer and Match of the Day presenter Gary Lineker. “I knew Tony [Pastor, also co-founder of Goalhanger, and the executive producer of TRIP] because he, like me, is a Burnley fan. I’ve known him for years. Anyway, they started this podcast, The Rest Is History [with Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook]. Big triumph. Tony came to see me in the Westminster Pret. He said: ‘This podcast thing is huge. It’s just two guys talking, but it is huge. So we should do one called The Rest Is Politics – you and a Tory.’ Their idea [for the Tory] was Dominic Cummings [Boris Johnson’s controversial former chief adviser]. Disaster. Not going to happen. So I went on social media and asked people: if I did a podcast with a Tory, who should it be? A good quarter said Rory. Other nominees were Ken Clarke, William Hague, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve, but he was way ahead.” Campbell, 65, is well-placed to opine on the subject. A former communications director for Tony Blair, he seemed less Machiavellian than, say, Dominic Cummings, and instead determined – often belligerently – to do the right thing by his country, even if half the country was convinced he was wrong. But then, such is politics. Despite quitting in 2003, he’s never really left the field because he can’t. People, he suggests, are always coming up to him, either to blame him for New Labour’s failings, or else to ask what “we” can do to improve things. His book is, in part, an answer. Alastair Campbell was born in Keighley, Yorkshire in 1957, the son of a vet. Having graduated from Cambridge University in modern languages, he went into journalism, principally with the Mirror Group. When Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, Campbell worked for him first as press secretary, then as official spokesman and director of communications and strategy from 1994 to 2003. He continued to act as an advisor to Mr Blair and the Labour Party, including during subsequent election campaigns. He now splits his time between writing, speaking, politics in Britain and overseas, consultancy and charity, as chairman of fundraising for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, and a leading ambassador for the mental health campaign Time to Change.

Earlier, Campbell told me that in a forthcoming podcast in which they interview Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff, Stewart can be heard losing his temper over Iraq (he has come to believe the invasion was a catastrophic error). “I could see his body start to shake,” he said. So why isn’t the matter a problem between Campbell and Stewart? (Campbell was involved in the preparation of the Iraq dossier, the briefing document that was ultimately used to justify Britain’s participation in the war.) “Well, we did two hours on it on the podcast for the 20th anniversary. We did it in real depth, and he managed to keep his cool then. But he does still mention it, yes.” By the time MPs have been there for 10 years, they’re not fully rounded human beings any more Rory Stewart Absolutely. It is frankly shameful, and an indictment of the parties, the media and the education system that the day after the Brexit referendum the most googled question in the UK was “What is the EU?” We teach our kids that PE is good for them. We should do the same with citizenship and we should make sure that anyone who goes through the schools system has a basic sense of how our politics works and their role within it.’ Our wellbeing and emotional happiness should take precedent over work and superficial titbits of life. It’s easy to say such a thing, but near impossible to act on. Former spin doctor Alastair Campbell reveals his battle with depression, and how he’s living better in his latest book of the same name. At a time where the mental health of many is under consistent strain, Living Better couldn’t have released at a better time. Some other lists, like his ‘Rules for campaign persevilience’ are very useful and funny at the same time (“If you see water, drink it. (Yellow piss is loser’s piss.) If you’re offered alcohol, ask for water. If you’re offered drugs, call the cops.” and many more). Similarly, he presents useful tips for communication and mental preparation to work on campaigns and speak in public. All wrapped in personal anecdotes and experiences that add a lot of extra value. I feel that there are enough people genuinely concerned and who want to make a difference and change the nature of political debate. Equally, I worry how many people are just switching off and turning away from the political debate altogether. That helps nobody but the charlatans. In a serious democracy where people took their role in the debate seriously there is no way in the world that a Johnson or a Trump would ever get to the most powerful positions in their countries. On a good day, I think it can never happen again. At other times I worry that defeating individual populists is not the same thing as defeating populism. The reason I have written the book is to try to encourage people – not just the young but anyone who is worried about the direction of travel – that we all do have some agency. The question is how we use it.’

I find it difficult to believe that somebody with Campbell’s career history and behavioural tendencies, and who has spent so much time in the company of mental health professionals, has never had it suggested to him that narcissism might be at least part of the explanation for his mental health struggles. And yet the word narcissism doesn’t feature once in the book, which leaves me wondering whether he has been more selective in what he exposes about himself than he purports to have been. And as soon as doubts start to creep in about the reliability of the narrator, the whole concept of the book starts to feel quite deeply flawed.Though there is a lot of sadness and grief in what I am saying, I hope you also find… hope. The sub-title of my book is important – Living Better: How I Learned to Survive Depression. It is about how I survived depression. The thinking and exploring I have done in writing it has undoubtedly helped me add to the strategies I deploy to stay, most of the time, pretty well. But I also hope the book serves a broader purpose, to help change the lens on the way we think, speak and act in relation to mental illness. Overall, a solid 4/5. Somehow, I still do allow the pessimism to triumph over my optimism and say, “it really is not that easy.” But more than anything, it is motivation - I am more than willing to put myself out there into the political ring. I even landed a new political job while in the midst of reading this book, which certainly sourced some of my courage to take it over another opportunity.