Living Better is Alastair Campbell's honest, moving and life affirming account of his lifelong struggle with depression. It is an autobiographical, psychological and psychiatric study, which explores his own childhood, family and other relationships, and examines the impact of his professional and political life on himself and those around him. But it also lays bare his relentless quest to understand depression not just through his own life but through different treatments. Every bit as direct and driven, clever and candid as he is, this is a book filled with pain, but also hope -- he examines how his successes have been in part because of rather than despite his mental health problems -- and love. 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. Fiona only having a chapter / found it difficult to relate to her. What did she think and feel when AC hit himself in the face? Or when he told her he was having suicidal feelings. What do you say to someone when they say that? We need more transparency around how to deal with this conversation. Because if we are going to talk more about mental health, then we need to know how to respond. Campbell and Stewart are quite different people, and they bring radically different kinds of knowledge and experience to the podcast. Campbell began his career as a reporter at the Mirror, leaving journalism to become Blair’s press secretary shortly before the 1997 election. From 2000-03, he was the Downing Street director of communications and strategy; he also worked for Labour in various guises during the election campaigns of 2005, 2010 and 2015. Yes, he has since written many books, including novels and a volume about mental health (he suffers from depression). But it is his political diaries that take up most space – several metres, at this point – on the nation’s bookshelves. 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.

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. But there are other things, too. For instance, as previously discussed, Boris. “Yes! His loss was a real threat to the podcast. We had an amazing nine months of being fantastically rude about Boris. Then Liz Truss came along. There was a moment after she left when I thought: who’s going to listen to this any more? Our audience is here to be angry about Boris and Truss, and Rishi Sunak is just not as awful.” What about Campbell? Has he come to like him? (I know: it’s as if I’m Derek Batey, and this is Mr and Mrs.) He grins. “The accusation my friends make is that he’s grooming me to join Labour.” This, he says, will never happen. It's an interesting book for anybody, not just those who have experienced depression themselves. Everybody gets the occasional low mood, and some of the self-help tips may be widely applicable. Personally, I am extremely fortunate in never having experienced proper depression of the kind Campbell describes, yet his techniques for getting out of a trough were fairly familiar to me. Many, if not most, people will know someone who gets bouts of depression even if they don't suffer with it themselves, so it's useful to get this insider's viewpoint.I admire Campbell and the whole New Labour project, so I am obviously biased. But I must also say I am genuinely jealous of the generation of people that were able to work with Alastair Campbell and his operation - it was quite fascinating to read that unlike in the Dominic Cumming era, none of Campbell’s former staffers ever left and them publicly briefed against him. Similarly, to read about his loyalty towards and cooperation with Tony Blair is just fascinating and again, working in teams like this must be just incredible. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what qualifications you have, haven’t got, or where you come from. There’s no fixed route into politics. You do it your way. Fiona thought we were still going through a period of intense recrimination – she blamed me for bringing so much pressure into the family, I blamed her for forcing me out of the role I felt I was made for – was really trying her best and suggested we go for a walk to talk things over. Again. 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.’

Fiona Millar leaves Downing Street with her partner Alastair Campbell after his resignation from Tony Blair’s government, August, 2003. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters For Campbell, Brexit is the reason for the state we’re in. It was the Leave campaign, he argues, that fundamentally changed the way politics operated, openly encouraging MPs to become wilfully duplicitous, “to seek to divide, create chaos, dominate the airwaves with insults”. I enjoyed reading this. Read it in a day and enjoyed Alistair's honest reflections on his depression/alcoholism/workaholicism and his family history of various difficulties. Fiona Millar, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson at the Labour party conference in Brighton in 2000. Photograph: Dan Chung/The Guardian

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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.

In chapters entitled Resist Cynicism and Develop a Campaigning Mindset, he cajoles and pleads younger people from every sector of society to overcome their disillusion, and to adopt the Obama mindset of Yes We Can. Quite a loose narrative appears from time to time, and some chunks feel a tad forgettable. Campbell details his early life and relationship with his brothers in vivid detail and a level of honesty that surprised me, but the latter half of the book feels rather underwhelming. Pacing does feel like an issue to some degree, with some chapters ending far too soon, others eating up whole swathes of paper. There is certainly value to be found within, but much of it comes from the odd line here or there, rather than the chapter on the whole. It’s worth digging through the build-up to see what pay-off there is. Some advice feels rather obvious, but without the explanation before it would be just an empty gesture, so it’s nice to see Campbell explains the simplest of quips used when combating stigmas surrounding mental health. Part autobiography, part mental-health guide, Campbell’s writing blurs the line between personal experience and fact-finding expedition. There are attempts made consistently throughout this piece to do away with the taboo of talking about your mental health. For that, Campbell should be commended, especially after generations of “manning up” or “putting the right foot forward”, he attempts to undo some of that damage by giving thoughtful recollections of what addiction, depression, anxiety, and workaholism entail. I found his giving a pro and contra on medication healthy. His transparency around his own medication was brilliant for fighting stigma.I remember when the Hutton Inquiry into the death of government weapons inspector David Kelly was under way. I got a fax while on holiday in France saying that Lord Hutton wanted to see my private diaries.

Last Christmas I almost killed myself. Almost. I've had a lot of almosts. Never gone from almost to deed. Don't think I ever will. But it was a bad almost.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.’