Alastair Campbell on combative politics, social media and who will lead the UK

Former Labour spin doctor and The Rest Is Politics co-host Alastair Campbell has described his internal battle to carry out political debate in a non-combative way.

Speaking at Campaign Media 360, Campbell said he could understand US president Donald Trump’s divisive style because he saw it in himself.

Campbell was known for his abrasive manner when in Number 10 and is widely considered the basis for the famously sweary character of Malcom Tucker in the political satire The Thick Of It. 

The basis of The Rest Is Politics, however, is “disagreeing agreeably” with his co-host and former Conservative MP and cabinet member Rory Stewart. The show gets 15 million downloads a month, and is second in popularity only to Goalhanger stablemate The Rest Is History. 

“I am a tribal person, I can be very aggressive in the way that I communicate and I’ve definitely tried to curb that in order to show… there’s a different way to do it,” Campbell said.

He described Trump as a “controversial, consequential president” who has “changed the nature of debate in every country in the world and we want people to be aware of that and to do it in a different way”.

“The thing I’ve got to watch for myself is that sometimes I can easily fall into, I hope I will never communicate like [Trump]… but at the same time I know where that comes from inside a political animal.”

Interviewed by Campaign editor-in-chief Gideon Spanier, Campbell was asked about the high turnover of UK political leaders. He predicted either Sir Keir Starmer or Andy Burnham would end up as prime minister following the latest turmoil, but said social media had created unrealistic expectations among the public about how fast political change could take place.

“There are a lot of big problems in the country, and it's the easiest thing in the world, particularly if you have the media we've got and the social media element added to that, to think the guy at the top is the one we're going to kill,” he said.

“And added to that the speed of the advance of technological development, you have a sense of being able to get anything you want now. Thanks to our iPhones, we shop like that, date like that, all the stuff that people do, they do it very quickly. Politics is not like that. 

“And then you have something like Trump coming in who basically operates as though he is like that. He says, ‘We're going to wipe out a civilization tomorrow’, but then they don't do it. He moves on to the next story line.

“Whereas if you’re a serious politician… they’re operating necessarily by old-fashioned processes.”

Campbell also highlighted the problem of modern politicans not communicating properly with the electorate, and how Trump’s “unique” speech was part of his success.

“They’re trapped in this form of communication that every time I look at a politican on television, [I think] are you speaking to me like you speak to your wife, mother, husband, kids, best friend, and the answer is no, they're speaking to you like it's a different language, and I don't know why it's happened. This is Trump's success. Trump is speaking, it's very unique, but it is human speak.”

Campbell described the UK news media landscape as “massively tilted to the right”, while social media and a “lack of any regard for accuracy and truth by people who are monetising… hatred and division” had made “real journalism” harder and less lucrative.

He also criticised Brexit and said he found it “hard to understand the appeal” of Reform leader Nigel Farage.

“The fact is, 10 years ago next month, this country voted to make us weaker, poorer, less respected in the world, and we're now thinking, as a country, seriously about giving the whole of the government to the guy who, along with [former prime minister Boris] Johnson, was most responsible for that.”

Goalhanger has more than 250,000 subscribers, which head of content Tom Whiter told the audience “insulates us against downturns in the wider advertising market”.

Whiter said there was an “upper limit” to the amount of advertising the audience would accept and they want to do “fewer, bigger, better campaigns and we want to have longer-term partnerships where we can go deeper and learn more about brands”.

At the end of last year Goalhanger, which was co-founded by former footballer Gary Lineker and co-managing directors Tony Pastor and Jack Davenport, rebranded from an audio-first group into a multi-platform media brand across video, live experiences, social storytelling and membership.