WATCH: Ex spin doctor Alastair Campbell says level of political discourse in UK is ‘terrifyingly badly informed’
Tony Blair’s former spin doctor told Inverness Chamber of Commerce chief executive Colin Marr he wants to see levels of political engagement and understanding across the country raised.
As the guest speaker at this year’s recent Highland Business Dinner, Alastair Campbell, - also a former journalist and now leading author and podcaster - had a sit down session with Mr Marr to discuss the state of politics today: and what, in his opinion, needs to be done about it.
Following on from a chat he had with The Inverness Courier before the dinner - and speaking before Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the general election - he said: “I think we are terribly ill-informed in this country about politics.
“If you think about the day after the Brexit referendum - the most Googled question in Britain was: ‘What is the European Union?’!
“When you think about the level of discourse inside politics, let alone the level of discourse about politics outside politics, I think sometimes it is terrifyingly badly informed.
“So I think it’s about trying to get across to young people that politics really matters, that it’s interesting and that it can be fun, but above all, unless we all get engaged and involved in it, it’s just going to carry on being what we have seen in recent years which frankly, at a UK level in particular, has been a complete and total disaster.”
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He hit out at former Conservative Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss as, respectively, “amoral” and “utterly unsuited” for the job, though he was prepared to admit “there are good people in politics” and hoped a change of government would bring about positive change - while admitting it would not be the whole answer.
Circling back to ideas of increasing engagement, he told Mr Marr he supported the idea of lowering the voting age and of compulsory voting as well as increasing education about politics in schools.
Not just there to share his views on politics though, he also discussed ways of helping young people make their way in the world - and ways that they can help themselves.
Saying he would never have believed in his teens and even early twenties that he would have been a journalist, let alone had the career that followed in politics, he said that the most important thing he had to tell young people was “don’t rule out stuff, don’t cut your options down”.
And for those sure of the path they wanted to follow, he said it was important to have the confidence to seek out the people who can help to open doors, adding it was part of the responsibility of those people to help where they can.
