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

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Phillips, Adam (25 October 2008). "Feel the fear". The Guardian. London. Archived from the original on 28 October 2008 . Retrieved 31 October 2008.

In March 2022 he launched a new podcast, The Rest is Politics, discussing politics home and abroad with former Tory cabinet minister Rory Stewart. It became an instant hit, rising by week 2 to the top of the Apple UK podcast charts, and leading to calls that he and Stewart form a new centre ground party. [52] [53] Alastair Campbell". Trusupporter. Archived from the original on 30 June 2009 . Retrieved 8 September 2011. 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.”Rawnsley, Andrew (2001). Servants of the People: The Inside Story of New Labour. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-027850-8. In July 2019, in the week Boris Johnson became prime minister, Campbell penned a 3,500-word open letter to Jeremy Corbyn saying he no longer wished to be re-admitted to the party despite legal advice saying he would win a court case against his expulsion. He called on Corbyn to step down and cited his "failure" on Brexit, antisemitism, broader policy and "above all the failure to develop and execute a strategy". The story was broken in The Guardian and the full letter published in The New European. Corbyn said he was "disappointed", prompting Campbell to ask why he had been expelled. [75] [76]

He attended Bradford Grammar School for a short period of time, [8] followed by City of Leicester Boys' Grammar School [4] and the University of Cambridge where he was an undergraduate student of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. [4] [5] He studied modern languages, (French and German), gaining an upper second (2:1) degree. Campbell is an emeritus professor in media at Cambridge University. [ citation needed] Journalism [ edit ] Three personal films airing as part of BBC's mental health season". bbc.co.uk. The British Broadcasting Corporation. Archived from the original on 10 May 2019 . Retrieved 14 May 2019.

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Politics and government [ edit ] Campbell lecturing at the LSE series 'From Kennedy to Blair,' 7 July 2003 For god's sake': Alastair Campbell in angry Newsnight exchange over Brexit 'lies' ". The Independent. 12 May 2023 . Retrieved 16 May 2023.

He was sponsored by US President George W. Bush to complete the London Marathon in aid of leukaemia research charity Bloodwise. In 2007, he appeared on Comic Relief Does The Apprentice as project manager, having several clashes with Piers Morgan including his comment of "again?" when Morgan got fired, which went viral. [29] Brexit, Europe, Macron, Trump, Turquie: Alastair Campbell répond aux questions de Pierre de Vilno". europe1.fr. europe1. Archived from the original on 20 August 2017 . Retrieved 21 July 2017. Campbell made his first appearance on the BBC One political discussion programme Question Time on 27 May 2010. At the opening of the edition, presenter David Dimbleby said that the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition would not allow a frontbench member of the government to appear on the show unless Campbell was dropped. The BBC refused to do this. The government later accused the BBC of behaving improperly for allowing Campbell to appear as a more in-depth version of his diaries was due to be published the following week, and a Downing Street spokesman told The Guardian, "Campbell seemed to be on because he's flogging a book next week, so the BBC haven't behaved entirely properly here." [33] Campbell said that he had waited until Labour were in opposition before appearing on the show and that the date was a coincidence as it was the only time he was free. He suggested the discord was part of a Conservative anti-BBC agenda. [33] The minister who had been scheduled to appear was the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws, who Campbell produced a picture of during the programme. Three days later, Laws resigned his post following revelations about possible irregularities in his expenses claims in The Telegraph the day before. Exclusive interview: Alastair Campbell – 'families aren't equipped for mental illness' ". www.mentalhealthtoday.co.uk. Mental Health Today. Archived from the original on 9 November 2017 . Retrieved 9 November 2017.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. Campbell was part of Tony Blair's core team that conducted the negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, and he has been honoured by several Irish universities for his role in the peace process. He became a close friend of, among others, Martin McGuinness, and attended his funeral in 2017. It emerged McGuinness was helping Campbell with a novel which had an Irish Republican Army (IRA) active service unit as part of the plot. Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell's odd-couple podcast". Financial Times. The Financial Times. 28 March 2022. Archived from the original on 20 April 2022 . Retrieved 5 April 2022.

In 2018 Campbell worked for the People's Vote campaign's planning and organisation of a march on Parliament on 20 October, which drew an estimated 250,000 people [58] onto the streets. The march was described by the media as the second biggest ever, after the protest against the Iraq war in 2003. He was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (FRCPsych) on 6 November 2017. [100] [101] How do you start that conversation to get to the truth? Where to get help when the behaviour spills over into something more dangerous and toxic? How do you persuade someone you love, but can also recoil from and resent, to accept that need? Mental ill-health is far less tangible than physical disease. How do you know it isn’t you that is deluded? 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. Alastair Campbell: Why I no longer want to be readmitted to Labour". The New European. Archived from the original on 8 January 2020 . Retrieved 3 February 2020.So if one and 10 are out of bounds, how does the rest of my scale work? Two feels great. I wake, having slept well; Fiona [Millar, a journalist and education campaigner] is alongside me and I feel blessed that she has stayed with me for four decades of considerable ups and downs; I have a day ahead that will keep me busy, motivated, doing something vaguely important. Three and four are slightly downscale variations on the same themes. I’ve written it in three parts. The first is an analysis of how we got to this state of affairs, with the global financial crisis a key moment, and the 3Ps of the modern age, populism, polarisation and post-truth politics, exploited by opportunistic politicians around the world to change the nature of political debate in a way that threatens to undermine democracy itself. Chapter 5, The Threat of Fascism, underlines how seriously I think we need to take the danger. Chapter 6, on the perils of disengagement, acts as a bridge to Part 2. In May 2012, Campbell took a role at PR agency Portland Communications, at the invitation of Tim Allan, a former adviser to Tony Blair. [38] [39] Along with Tony Blair, Campbell has also provided consultancy services to the government of Kazakhstan on "questions of social economic modernisation." [40] [41] [42] Campbell worked again for the Labour Party as Campaign Director in the run-up to their third consecutive victory at the 2005 general election. Campbell also acted as an adviser to Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband at the 2010 and the 2015 general elections. Sir Clive Woodward recruited Campbell to manage relations with the press for the British & Irish Lions tour to New Zealand in 2005. Campbell wrote a column for The Times during the tour.