Nobody’s perfect, according to former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell. At an Intelligence Squared talk in Islington last night, a young audience member came to Campbell with a conundrum: her friends no longer want to vote for Keir Starmer because of his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. What should she do?
“Get off your high horse and vote Labour,” he instructed with classic Campbell finesse. He explained to the idealistic questioner that “there’s no such thing as a perfect candidate. Abraham Lincoln was not a perfect human being, Nelson Mandela was not a perfect human being”. Steady on with those comparisons, AlCam. Starmer hasn’t earned them just yet.
He explained that Starmer was probably thinking about his relationship with Joe Biden. “Does he really want to use up political capital now with the Americans in a way that would make your friends feel a bit better for a few days?” he added. He also said it was "not true" that British Muslim support for Labour has halved since the war in Gaza, as recent polls have recorded.
Interviewer and Sunday Times journalist Josh Glancy asked Campbell whether the 2003 Iraq War led to a loss of trust in politics. "I think there have been a number of things," said Campbell, citing the MPs expenses scandal and the financial crisis, before acknowledging that "Iraq, definitely" was one of them.
"I know Tony didn’t lie, I know I didn’t lie," he said. "But when you have made as part of your case, the fact that you have stated in your honest conviction, that this is about tackling Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the inspectors go in and they don’t find them, that’s a pretty obvious trust moment.”
