I personally found his insights riveting, his cornucopia of highly pertinent anecdotes both entertaining and didactic, and his sharing of knowledge and understanding profoundly interesting. I put it to him that the book had much to offer a youthful mind, entirely forgetting that it had broadened my own with its penetrating truth : Just the other day, I was doing a debate with Gary Neville for Debate Mate” the charity that pairs working class young people with adults to help them gain confidence in debating. “I was arguing that politics was the best route to changing the world.”

But What Can I Do? by Alastair Campbell | Goodreads

Does Britain’s relationship with the USA prevent independent decision making? What does conservatism mean to Jordan Peterson? How do you disagree agreeably about politics with your partner? And what about the country’s issues and challenges in overcoming them? Here again, Campbell emphasises that there is more to change than we might expect. Campbell is a master communicator. He knows the power words have to change the world. Such is his love of language and the ideas it conveys, he’s even coined his own neologisms. Combining ‘reliance’ with ‘perseverance’ saw him invent a word sitting at the epicentre of his thinking and his book’s can-do optimism - ’Perseviliance’… What advice would Campbell give to those following the election campaign today? In his new book But what can I do: why politics has gone so wrong and how you can change it, Campbell attempts to set out the recipe for success. Written as a guide for a new generation of leaders and campaigners, who he thinks could help turn politics around, it’s part campaign tool, part inspirational guide and part support manual. After all, Campbell knows all too well how bruising politics can be. It was not a happy time for me or for the family. I remember David Blunkett coming for dinner and I overheard a conversation between him and my daughter Grace.I know my depression will always be a part of me. I’ve accepted that now. I still have suicidal thoughts and dark days, and I always will. But at least now I can recognise them, I feel them coming on, and I can deal with them better than I used to. There may one day be a vaccine for Covid-19. But I doubt there will ever be a vaccine or a cure for depression. It is part of the human condition; it is certainly part of mine. I’ve spent decades learning to live with that. And now, through trial and error, through medication and therapy, through highs and lows, above all through grief and love, I have finally got to know my enemy. I live better for having dealt with it. And I deal with it, through living better. I hope that for some of you out there, this book can help you do the same. A visceral sense of individual impuissance, rooted in apathy and bathed in disgust, threatens to silence the voices of those who could challenge the status quo and worse still, leave society per se soporifically walking into the maws of those least interested in its common good. Having diagnosed the disease, the second half of his book abandons the conspicuously jarring notes of the minor key for the major, powerfully articulating its author’s solution to our political woes - individual political engagement. Just the other day, I was doing a debate with Gary Neville for Debate Mate” the charity that pairs working class young people with adults to help them gain confidence in debating. “I was arguing that politics was the best route to changing the world.”

Podcast | Alastair Campbell Podcast | Alastair Campbell

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. His latest authorial outing, But What Can I Do? was published recently. Part call to arms, part practical handbook, Campbell presents us with his trenchant analysis of why our nation’s politics has become a septic imbroglio threatening to undermine our democratic values, and democracy itself. For Campbell, contemporary political dialogue has been insidiously corrupted by a divisive culture of ad hominem argument, ignored malfeasance and the shrewd promulgation of falsehoods designed to sustain the influence of elitist dissemblers at the expense of the societal good. To find out more about Policy Lab and get the latest news events, sign up for their newsletter here. I am not yet at the zealot stage. But I can no longer defend the system we have. For most of my life I did defend it, believing that it gave us strong and stable government, to quote Theresa May’s 2017 campaign mantra.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?'

But What Can I Do? by Alastair Campbell review: A doom

Having diagnosed the disease, the second half of his book abandons the conspicuously jarring notes of the minor key for the major...In a recent piece for The Guardian, Campbell cited the book that I suspect underpins much of the thinking animating the ideas coursing persuasively through his own: This event will explore the hopes and concerns of young people from across UCL and London about engaging in politics and consider how our political system can become more open to their participation. Most of the newspapers are not really newspapers at all, they are political players as well as spectators and their bias and tendency to sensationalism has grown worse...I’ll resent, to the day I die, that on those three election wins I didn’t enjoy them. I was already thinking of the next thing.” Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions, followed by a discussion of The Voice referendum in Australia and the election results in Poland and New Zealand. In the old days, I would live with that feeling, get up, carry on, pretend I was fine, drink to drown the depression, work to chase it away. Now I tell Fiona straight away. She always asks, though she knows what my answer will be, “What triggered it?” and I say, “I don’t know.”

What Can I Do? by Alastair Campbell - Signed Edition But What Can I Do? by Alastair Campbell - Signed Edition

It started out as a letter to the next generation. But it turned into something very different. Speaking to young people, I soon realised it could be a guide based on what I’ve learnt and what they can do.”Mutating the genetic DNA of our Parliamentary system is a seminal strand running through Campbell’s book, its imperative force gives Promethean fire to the kindle fuelling the flames of his core argument. I put it to him that ingrained tribal bias, ignorance and internecine conflict, not to mention rank self-interest characterising much of our political landscape, paradoxically serve to make his argument more valid, but less appealing to those he urges to act upon it : This episode is available 24 hours early to members of TRIP Plus. It will be available on the public feed on Thursday 2nd November*