Campbell’s daughter takes him to task over attitude to women

ALISTAIR Campbell, the former spin doctor to Tony Blair, was left red-faced when his daughter grilled him on live radio about his attitude towards women.

The former Labour adviser, who was standing in for Nigel Farage on LBC in London, was debating feminism when his daughter Grace called in.

Grace, a writer and film maker, told her father he needed to “unpick” certain behaviours in order to “truly be a feminist.”

She said: “So I’ve thought of some examples with you, which I’m going to talk about.

“Firstly, you still call women ‘birds’, which I think you don’t even think about the impact that has.

“If you truly want to be a feminist, women aren’t birds; birds are birds, birds can fly, women can’t fly.

“You call women ‘women’; you don’t call them ‘birds’.”

Mr Campbell (inset) responded by saying he did not remember calling women birds, but promised not to do so again.

Grace (28) then went on to criticise her father for not doing jobs around the house.

She said: “I’ve noticed what you do – which a lot of men do – they make up the excuse of ‘I can’t.’

“So ‘I don’t know how to change the laundry, I don’t know how to use the coffee machine, so I can’t.’ Instead of saying you can’t, just learn how to use an espresso machine.”

Mr Campbell said he was “very impractical,” adding: “Anything else you want to tell your dad off for?”

His daughter said he needed to feel more comfortable talking about periods. She said: “If you really want to be a feminist, you need to be able to talk about periods; periods are a natural thing.

“If I tell you I’m going to change my tampon, you grimace and cover your ears. “Being able to talk about periods like they’re a normal thing that happen to women, they’re not disgusting, this is a big thing for the whole period conversation. “We need to break down that taboo and make them normal things.” She concluded: “You’ve got to educate yourself on things, it’s work, you’ve got to really do that if you really want to properly be a feminist. “You’ve got to educate yourself and talk to women properly.”