‘Your politics is better than people realise’: A cup of tea with Alastair Campbell

Sometimes Alastair Campbell lies in bed at night convinced that the current global mess is all his fault.

It is an insight into the mental health honesty of the once loathed and feared UK government communications director, who 25 years ago helped Tony Blair win three elections and become Britain’s longest-serving Labour prime minister, and then reinvented himself as a politics-obsessed journalist/podcaster/author and guest speaker.

And on a book tour of Australia this month, audiences have lapped him up.

Alastair Campbell in Melbourne. Credit: Eddie Jim

With the US, Britain and India all set to go to the polls this year, 2024 could be the biggest election year in history. So it is a surprise to hear that Campbell, a soccer obsessive and mental health campaigner, occasionally finds he has convinced himself that Trump, Putin and our era of global instability rose to prominence because he didn’t do enough to try to stop Britain voting for Brexit in the fateful 2016 UK referendum.

“My mind sometimes gets into a weird loop where something bad happens and I work steps back from it and can end up blaming myself for absolutely anything,” Campbell says during his visit Down Under.

“It doesn’t happen very often and when it does, I am much better these days at working out quickly that it is nonsense and the moment will pass.”

It says something about the dynamic between the political celebrity – and the mere political leader – that it is Steve Bracks, the former premier of Victoria, who stands in a graffiti-scrawled Melbourne laneway awaiting the arrival of Campbell, and not the other way around.

Finally, Campbell hoves into view, a tall rakish figure on the skyline nearly at the end of his whistle-stop book tour of Australia. This evening’s stop is noted Melbourne restaurant Lee Ho Fook, where the great and the good including former federal treasurer Wayne Swan will gather for a Chinese feed and to listen to Campbell in conversation with Bracks, whose many hats include chair of tonight’s host, communications agency The Shannon Company.

“I can’t believe you are three years older than me,” Campbell says, noting the smoothness of Bracks’s Victorian ALP skin in contrast with Campbell’s own British New Labour cragginess. He concludes Bracks must have quit politics at the right time.

Former Victorian premier Steve Bracks engages with former UK government communications director Alastair Campbell.Credit: Eddie Jim

It is 5pm, and at the downstairs bar Campbell folds himself into stool and orders a drink. “I’ll have a cup of tea. Breakfast.”

Scottish-born Campbell, who grew up in Yorkshire before grammar school and Cambridge and a traineeship with the Daily Mirror group, praises our local politics.

“I actually think your politics is better than people realise. Honestly, I wouldn’t underestimate how much compulsory voting holds you accountable. We don’t do that. And we should.”

Bracks nods in agreement.

“Everybody sort of feels that they ought to have a view,” Campbell continues. “And I also think that what compulsory voting does is it pushes extremes, it pushes them out. Extremists are overwhelming the centre in the US, UK, some of the European countries.”

A waitress arrives with three little cast iron teapots. Such is Campbell’s authoritativeness that his order counts for us as well.

His 18th book gets its name –What Can I Do? – from the question people always ask him. “Politics is shit, the government is awful, the country’s falling to bits, there are massive challenges no one seems to be confronting. What can I do?”

His simple answer: get involved, and the book shows how to do that while also protecting people from the crushing nature of politics. But when he says get involved, he means get properly involved.

“Too many – not just young people but adults as well – think activism means being on your phone. Tweeting, signing petitions abusing your opponents. Activism means act. Do.”

Twenty-five years ago, Campbell played a central role in helping Blair get elected in 1997 after Labour’s 18 years in the political wilderness. He was a national firebrand who briefed the press twice a day and was an inspiration for the character of Malcolm Tucker, the aggressively sweary spin doctor in the TV satire The Thick of It.

Alastair Campbell, left, with then prime minister Tony Blair in 2001. Credit: AP

Now, sitting at bar at Lee Ho Fook sipping his tea, he is reasoned and measured and seems at ease with his contradictions: the political animal who never himself stood for election, the political backroom boy constantly on the front page, the hard man who quit his job and spoke openly of his mental health vulnerabilities and revealed his depression.

All in all, the vibe is similar to his extremely popular (and highly lucrative) podcast The Rest Is Politics, where he and former Conservative MP Rory Stewart each week “disagree agreeably”.

Nowadays, everyone loves the intensely tribal Alastair, except ironically his own tribe, the Labour Party, which moved sharply to the left after the Blair era and, deeply unhappy with the Blair and Campbell role in taking Britain into the Iraq War, eventually expelled Campbell in 2019 after he backed the rival Liberal Democrat party in the European elections.

The book tour to promote his book But What Can I Do? was intense: At Adelaide Writers’ Week former NSW premier Bob Carr interviewed Campbell, who serenaded festival director Louise Adler with the bagpipes alongside Anthony Albanese speechwriter James Jeffrey. There was also a meeting (and a selfie) with South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas.

In Sydney, he attended a mental health public meeting at the University of Sydney, and had a meeting (and a selfie) with NSW Premier Chris Minns.

“What impressed me (about Chris Minns and Peter Malinauskas) was they spoke like human beings. They were young. I sensed real empathy about them. I sort of felt they were all in politics for the right reasons.”

Along the way there were gigs at consultancy group KPMG, plus a chat on a park bench (and a selfie) with federal teal independent Zoe Daniel. He later had lunch (and two selfies) at Government House with Victorian Governor Margaret Gardner, whose husband Glyn Davis is the secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet in the Albanese government. Separately he met with Premier Jacinta Allan (three selfies, including with Allan’s office staff). Then he flew home.

He met Allan with fellow mental health campaigner Pat McGorry. “I found her very warm and very smart and with a clear idea about what she wants to do with the job. We talked politics UK and Australia, but we also had a good discussion on mental health.”

When challenged that it is unusual for a 66-year-old who quit his frontline job decades ago to be still obsessed with politics, he appears slightly indignant and talks rapidly. “I can talk about lots of other things. What do you want to talk about? I can talk about anything you want! I can talk about music, I can talk about football.

He explains his continual fascination as a product of leaving full-time work in 2003, partly through burnout. “I decided that I never wanted a full-time job again, but I also decided that I wanted to try and make a difference.”

In Adelaide, a man in the audience asked him about his regret over never standing for a seat. “I think I would regret it if I did it as well. And the reason for that is that having done the politics in the way that I did it, if I had carried on the way … I think I was pushing right at the outer edges of marital tolerance.”

The timing was never right, he concludes, while praising his partner, British journalist Fiona Millar. The couple entered into a civil partnership three years ago after being together for 42 years.

“I think we kid ourselves. I have three grown up kids now, they have all had struggles. But I think we kid ourselves that we can do these kinds of jobs and still be great parents.”

The looming global elections and the Trump phenomenon will be a focus of the podcast. “Once you decide that there is no concrete factual basis for political debate, where do you go? And with Trump, I realised that it was a strategy,” Campbell says.

“There’s populism of the left as well as the right. But I do think that populism, it almost gives a kind of big intellectual upper towards just nasty extremists.

“Populism actually is just the exploitation of people’s misery and suffering for your own political gain. That’s what Trump does. That’s what Johnson did. That’s what Morrison tried to do.”

Campbell breezily admits he is a combination of a big ego wanting personal success but also someone with a sense of service to country and his political ideals.

“What I have had since I left is at least a form of freedom that I just enjoy. It doesn’t mean I have a perfect life, as I still get very bad depression and I still struggle with stuff – but I am conscious of having a good life.”

The evening’s guests have started to arrive and collect their name badges. Has the issue of the republic gone away, Campbell wonders.

“It is not a high priority. But I am not pessimistic … it is possible, if you look at the polls it is 50/50,” Bracks explains.

But when Campbell mentions King Charles’ planned visit and possible itinerary, Bracks flips from republicanism to state pride.

“Charles is sort of a Victorian, he was educated here,” the former premier says, before acknowledging that a visit from the Prince and Princess of Wales would be very popular.

“It’s all very strange to me,” Campbell concludes.

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