A 'broken Britain' mentality has taken hold. Alastair Campbell sees a way out

Alastair Campbell is a self-described pessimist, and the past decade of UK political turmoil certainly hasn't helped. 

Over a coffee at an old gastropub in north London, the former Labour Party strategist turned podcaster told me the last time he felt really good about Britain's place in the world was in 2012.

"When we had the Olympics, that's the last time when I really feel that the country felt strong, powerful, confident, at ease with itself," he said.

"Since then, we've had Brexit — disaster, economically, strategically, politically — we've had COVID … and we've had political instability leading to now seven prime ministers in just over a decade."

He also despairs at the levels of inequality fuelling voter disillusionment and distrust in politics.

"We see phenomenal wealth, but we see phenomenal inequality. Why isn't it more equally shared?" he said.

"My kids' generation, and the generation below them, are probably the first two generations in the history of Britain where you can't say, 'We're going to be better off than our parents were.'"

As Tony Blair's former spin doctor and now co-host of the popular The Rest Is Politics podcast, Campbell has a keen ear for political messaging.

It's little wonder, he said, the "broken Britain" slogan has been so successful for right-wing political parties such as Nigel Farage's Reform UK and the MAGA movement in the US.

"Those people who maybe feel their life isn't great, and that's quite a lot of people, they're wide open to messaging like that," he said.

And yet, despite all of this, Campbell is feeling "moderately" hopeful at the moment under the leadership of UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

"It's early days, and there's some very, very, very big challenges coming down the track," he said.

"But I think he's giving a sense of optimism, positivity. I think he's desperate to try to change the kind of sense of what the country's for, what its values are."

National 'doomscrolling'

If you want to get a real temperature check of the nation, the humble British cab is often a good place to start.

My most recent cabbie, who was driving me to the UK Labour conference in Liverpool last week, had a long list of grievances: illegal immigration, inequality, the health system.

It's an all-too-familiar narrative and one the UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham is desperate to turn around.

His new slogan "Hope Again" was plastered all over the Liverpool conference venue where the cabbie dropped me off.

Here, Burnham delivered an emotional hour-long speech to the party faithful, in which he urged Britain to stop "doomscrolling" itself and start believing again.

Burnham, who took the premiership from Sir Keir Starmer in a bloodless coup just 10 weeks ago, promised to "put Britain on a new path".

"I am ready to do things my predecessors wouldn't," he said. "I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years."

Despite winning a big majority in 2024, Labour took a dive in the polls under Sir Keir.

Now under Andy Burnham — the soft-left former Manchester mayor and talented orator — things are starting to look up.

Recent polls, if you are to take them seriously, have Burnham as the UK's most popular leader since Boris Johnson's COVID-era peak in 2020.

Burnham is promising a different approach to his predecessors, including by shifting more control away from Westminster and into the hands of England's regional councils.

He's also pledged to fix the country's "broken" adult social care system, which looks after the nation's elderly, as well as people with disabilities and dementia.

Unlike the NHS, social care isn't free in England, but means-tested, leaving some people with huge bills.

Successive governments have tried and failed to fix the system, partly because it would be expensive.

"What an indictment of my generation of politicians, myself included," Burnham said.

"Too cowardly to fix something as basic as the care we give to each other. Is it any wonder people are giving up on politics?"

For Burnham, fixing the system is personal.

His father had been in longtime care with Alzheimer's and unable to comprehend that his son had become prime minister, up until he died a few weeks ago.

Burnham's proposed solution is to create a new NHS-style care system that would be paid for in part by making the state pension system less generous, but not until after the next election (due in 2029).

It's a risky move Burnham acknowledges could backfire.

"I accept I may pay a political price," he said. "I will do it in memory of my dad and out of complete respect for everyone who cared for him."

A 'vibes' PM?

Not far from the Labour conference, I met one of Burnham's best mates, Steve Rotheram, at his office overlooking the River Mersey.

Rotheram, who is the Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor, served as an MP alongside Burnham in the 2010s, during which time Burnham had two unsuccessful tilts at the Labour leadership.

They both quit parliament in 2017 to become mayors of neighbouring northern cities.

Coming from working-class Liverpool, both men have described feeling like "outsiders" while inside the Westminster bubble.

"There were a lot of people who were very privileged in their upbringing and who believed that [Westminster] was a plaything for them," Rotheram said.

"And people like myself and Andy, from our backgrounds, there was certainly a bit of a culture shock."

Rotheram is convinced Labour made the right choice by installing Burnham as PM.

"We're trying to see whether by having a much more visible prime minister who has got a very attractive persona to sell, whether that might cut through some of the negativity and the misinformation, disinformation and absolute lies that are told far too often," he said.

"He won't fail. I've got no doubt at all that he'll be successful."

But Burnham has no shortage of critics.

Political opponents on both sides were quick to slam the PM's proposed changes to the state pension system.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage accused him of "launching an offensive against the elderly", while the Green Party's Zack Polanski said the government should "tax the rich" instead of "going after pensioners".

Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch has accused the PM of being all "vibes", a nod to Burnham's everyman-style social media videos showing him having a pint, rating pub snacks and playing guitar.

Alastair Campbell isn't convinced that will be an effective line of attack.

"Actually, people probably quite like the idea that he went to Ukraine and he sat down with some of our troops and started playing guitar," he said.

"If [the public] think that's all he is, that's a problem. Alongside that, you then have to have the really serious stuff, the tough decisions, big speeches, the budgets, the foreign trips, and all that stuff.

"But I think if I were the Tories, I'd be a little bit worried about where he is right now."

Campbell first met Andy Burnham when he was a young MP and has watched his career over decades.

"If I go back to when I first knew him 30 years ago, if you'd have said he'd be prime minister one day, [I'd have said] 'I'm not sure about that,'" Campbell said.

Part of that is because he didn't believe Burnham had the necessary ruthlessness.

"But I think we've now seen he's got a ruthless streak in him," Campbell said.

"What he did to engineer the situation, so that he … becomes leader and becomes prime minister, without a contest, that took some doing.

"And to have people at the end of it saying, 'One of the reasons we picked [Burnham] rather than Keir [Starmer] is because he's a much nicer guy'… I mean, that's brutal realpolitik."

Watch The Burnham Gamble tonight on Foreign Correspondent, 8pm on ABC TV and ABC iview.