Alastair Campbell, the former chief strategist of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, insisted today that David Cameron should challenge UKIP's agenda rather than pander to Nigel Farage and his party once he did not want the UK to leave the European Union.
He also praised Malta and its government saying, with regard to investment attractiveness, that Malta had a good story to tell, but could do more to tell it.
Asked what advice he would give the government, which won by a landslide majority of 36,000 votes, Mr Campbell urged Prime Minister Joseph Muscat to have an agenda that addressed the future if he hoped to win a second term in office.
On the Opposition, Mr Campbell said the Nationalist Party would not necessarily have to build itself from scratch but that a winner was a loser who best understood defeat.
Speaking in a lively edition of TimesTalk on TVM, Mr Campbell denied conspiracy theories about what led the UK to the Gulf War, insisting that his boss had to take the decision as UK prime minister according to the information available to him.
He brushed off criticism that the war was fought on misguided information, pointing out that Saddam Hussein had used chemical warfare before.
He expressed serious concern about Islamic State which was "now at the doorstep of Europe", on the Turkish border, and hinted that stronger European leadership was needed to keep it in check.
Like Mr Blair he insisted that governments could not take decisions on the basis of billboards. Listening to the people before taking decisions did not mean listening most to whoever shouted loudest. Silent majorities needed to be heard as much as the others.
He admitted that gone were the days when being able to influence the front page of a nation newspaper, a tabloid and the BBC were enough to set the national agenda. The growth of the social media meant that the only control governments now had were over their own actions and over what they themselves did, he said.
Earlier in the programme Campbell said he had never regretted being open about his bouts with depression. He insisted that taboos needed to be broken down and depression needed to be seen, particularly by employers, like any other medical condition, which one suffered from, but handled.
Mr Campbell will be speaking tomorrow in an Ernst and Young conference during which Malta’s Attractiveness Report will be issued. He said today that Malta was competitive and had a great story to tell about its economic attractions, but it may not be doing enough to tell that story.
About Malta's Labour government, he said that governments, once elected, could only be guaranteed re-election by governing well. The Maltese government, he said, was doing well and had to have an agenda for the next election.
He said that after meeting with a number of Maltese Labour Party ministers he was pleased to see that the issue of whether or not to join the EU was done and dusted in Malta.
Malta’s path to EU referendum in 2003 had been fraught with division and Mr Campbell feared the same would happen in the UK if British Prime Minister David Cameron won next year’s election and will have to deliver on his pledge for an in/out referendum.
“I think if a referendum was held the in-vote would win, but even just discussing whether we should be in or out is going to paralyse the country,” he said.
A recording of the programme will be uploaded on timesofmalta.com.