236. Question Time: The fight to be Donald Trump’s VP nominee

Who will Trump pick as his running mate? How much do you know about ‘Project 2025’? What’s the story behind Angela Rayner’s tax affairs? Join Rory and Alastair for TRIP Question Time as they answer all these questions and more. TRIP ELECTION TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 1:57Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:00Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 2:02Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, what do you think was the subject which produced the biggest volume of questions this week? It wasn't overwhelming, but it was definitely the subject with the most questions.

• 2:11Rory Stewart?

  Uh, Gibraltar?

• 2:15Alastair Campbell?

  No, William Rag.

• 2:17Rory Stewart?

  Oh, William Rag. He was in Parliament with me, William Rag.

• 2:20Alastair Campbell?

  Let me give you a few of them. Dave Cussell, why is Willie Gate being covered up? What's hiding behind this story? Sarah C, why doesn't employment law apply in Parliament in any other working situation? If a member of staff gave away contact details of colleagues to an unknown party which resulted in high risk, they'd be immediately suspended, most likely sacked. Katie Parker, why are the Tories circling their wagons around William Rag? So, do you want to do one of your famous explainers about Willie Gate?

• 2:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. So William Rag was an MP at the same time as me, still in Parliament, stepping down. He very much became a, I guess, a professional backbencher. He did quite a lot actually about parliamentary ethics and standards in public life, which is why it's been particularly, I guess, ironic that what seems to have happened is he's openly gay, but he went on to a website and somehow shared something that he felt made him blackmailable, maybe an image or something. And the man who he was dealing with then demanded, as I guess the price for not revealing this stuff,

• 3:29Rory Stewart?

  that William Rag share the phone numbers of members of Parliament with him. And the man who got the phone numbers then went on what we'd call a phishing expedition, which is that he started sending texts to members of Parliament, quite cleverly disguised. You know, they would say, hi, just getting in touch. We met in the House of Commons bar. And do you remember? And, you know, send me an image yourself. So they're quite kind of flirting images, trying to, I suppose, find gay MPs who might...

• 4:01Rory Stewart?

  Vaguely think that they'd met someone in the House of Commons bar they were flirting with a few years ago, and a couple of MPs then responded, I think, by sending presumably sex explicit images back. Anyway, this has obviously led to real horror in the House of Commons, that William Ragg decided to share the confidential phone numbers of members of parliament on the basis of blackmail.

• 4:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So what the question seemed to be saying is that although they're vaguely aware of this story, it hasn't really taken off as one of those sort of big scandals. And there does seem to be a sort of pretty concerted effort to keep it low profile. And I think, who knows who it was, but the two, the stuff that I've read by the journalists who were targeted by this same operation, it was two women, one called Chadi, one called Abby, who tried to get these people sort of into their, into their network. And anyway, I guess it just does show you, be very, very, very careful about stuff that you sort of, when you start getting unsolicited stuff on WhatsApp or wherever else it might be. But it does seem that he's, he's not getting the normal sort of, you know, British media

• 5:09Alastair Campbell?

  scandal treatment.

• 5:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, my friend Matthew Paris, who was a member of parliament in the eighties and was gay, has written very movingly and perfectly about some of the problems of being a gay MP at that period, when it was career destroying for people to be aware of, of what you were doing. And of course, you, you talked a little bit about, I think, was it your secretary of state for Wales who had to resign?

• 5:35Alastair Campbell?

  Ron Davis, yeah.

• 5:36Rory Stewart?

  Ron Davis, because he had been, I guess, had lied about being with a man. But I thought this was something that we were over, that there are many openly gay members of parliament now, that it isn't career destroying anymore. Sex scandals shouldn't be career destroying. And therefore, it's very worrying that somebody could be blackmailed in this way, because we generally assume now in government, I mean, you know, when I joined the Foreign Office, people were worried if you were gay, that you could be blackmailed into revealing national secrets. But we've largely given up on that view, because generally, I think we think that if somebody's openly gay, that they shouldn't be. Available to blackmail.

• 6:13Alastair Campbell?

  So I guess, I guess it depends on what was exchanged with Charlie Abbey or whoever else was there. Let's move on to Dozy Daisy. What are the implications for Europe and the geopolitics of Russia infiltrating European politics following the Slovakian presidential result? Did you follow that at the weekend?

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, we talked a little bit about this. So Europe remains, as we go into these European elections, on a knife edge between, I guess, traditional social democratic politics, which has been fading in Europe. And broadly speaking, Europe has got more and more right wing governments. But the real push now is shift further right towards right wing populism, driven a lot by people focusing on immigration, on climate change, and taking Russia's side and Russia Ukraine. And Slovakia was an election we were watching carefully. Over to you.

• 7:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the general election, the parliamentary election, was won by this, by this guy, Robert Fico, who took power for the fourth time. But the presidential election was fascinating because the guy who was, were anti him and anti the sort of pro Putin stance was well ahead in the first round, well into the sort of 40s. And it is one of those where you have a runoff and it's the first one to get to 50%. And what happened during the second part of the campaign, when it was down to two, the challenger plus this guy, Peter Pellegrini, who was the pro Russian candidate, is that they managed to turn it. And this just shows you the power of campaigning and the power of lies as well, I'm afraid, because the president has no say in foreign policy, okay?

• 7:48Alastair Campbell?

  And yet they managed to turn the whole thing into an argument about who was for or against war. Not who was for or against Ukraine or Russia, but basically they projected the opponent as being for war. And lo and behold, Pellegrini has won it. And so I think it does, 53.2 to 46.73. So Ivan Korcock, who was the guy who was challenging, he's, you know, well ahead and loses it in the second round, and Pellegrini, I suppose, would have made Vladimir Putin quite happy. That being said, Orban, who is the sort of European poster boy for this stuff, he is facing some massive protests in the, at the moment, one at the weekend that was really, really quite huge.

• 8:29Rory Stewart?

  Next question, which I think is, is really, really good and really central, is around Trump and his vice president. So we've got a couple on this. Kenneth John Miller. Who do you believe Trump will choose as his running mate for November's election? And if you were both presidential candidates, who would you choose as your running mate? So I don't know whether people have been following this closely, but predictably, Trump, there are two things we know about Trump that he really cares about. One of them is making a massive media hoo-ha, sort of celebrity hoo-ha. And the other is raising money. And predictably, he's turned his vice president's search into both. So his approach to vice presidents vaguely reminiscent of your approach, Al, such as trying to find somebody to do this podcast with you.

• 9:13Rory Stewart?

  He's, he's gone out in a series of social media events, asking his supporters, who should be his running mate? But unlike you, he's also linked it to a fundraising campaign. So you get rafts of emails from Trump's campaigns, asking you to think about firstly, you know, who his running mate should be, what issues the running mate should focus on. And, and as you know, Trump has decided, although, you know, a lot of the polling suggests that the big problems for Biden are around cost of living and Biden's age. Trump's focus is on electoral interference. So this claim that, you know, the election was stolen, border control and crime, that's what he really seems to be leaning into. And then he keeps asking people not just to send him money, but to tell him who on

• 9:58Rory Stewart?

  that basis should be his vice presidents.

• 10:01Alastair Campbell?

  And who are they suggesting?

• 10:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, some of them are obvious people who were frontrunners against him. So there's been a bit of talk about Marco Rubio. There's been talk about Ron DeSantis, but he's seems to have ruled himself out. He was the, his main contender from Florida. Talk about Nikki Haley, but she also seems to have said that she wouldn't serve as his vice president. And I think that's smart because she should be in a good position to run again for the Republican leadership in four years' time. And anything that touches the Trump brand is likely to be sunk. Tim Scott, who is an African American senator, is seen as a front leader. And you can see an incredible range of, of other people coming forward. But I think one thing that we can be certain about.

• 10:47Rory Stewart?

  Is that, boy, is he going to humiliate all these candidates? He's going to put them through a sort of apprentice style run. He's going to tease them, pretend they're going to get the job. Then he's going to slag them off and knock them out. And he'll create a huge media circus out of it, won't he?

• 11:00Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, how did Mike Pence emerge? He just sort of emerged, didn't he? Wasn't he a bit of a surprise at the time?

• 11:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, the story there is that Melania had been his great backer. But since, as we keep hearing from your friends Scaramucci, that Trump and Melania actually barely speak,

• 11:17Rory Stewart?

  it's unlikely that she's going to have much weight this time. There's quite a lot of talk about Representative Elise Stefanic of New York, who's seen as a bit of a kind of rot viler. Anyway, any of your thoughts on this whole thing?

• 11:29Alastair Campbell?

  I guess the name that popped into my head was one of these kind of Fox News people, you know, the sort of awful Tucker Carlson or something like that. I mean, he won't, let's just think about the psychology of Trump. Why did he like Mike Pence until he hated Mike Pence? He liked Mike Pence when Mike Pence was sort of not very visible and didn't do very much. The minute that he became visible by saying, you know what? I think the American Constitution is quite important. He turned right against him. So I think you're going to have to have a very, very large ego to take this on. So that means it's quite a wide pool. You're then actually going to probably, if you've got any sense, realise that it will end in tears for you personally. So, yes, you'll get to be able to say you were Vice President of the United States, which is quite a big deal.

• 12:13Alastair Campbell?

  But it probably will end in tears, so that narrows it down. And then I think you've got to work out which of these people are either going to be motivated by a massive self-confidence that they think they'll be able to tame him, or they genuinely, genuinely, genuinely believe in the guy. Now, you and I find that impossible to believe, but a lot of people do genuinely believe in the guy. Might he even go as far as, you know, something like that Marjorie Taylor Greene woman? Who, you know, because he probably would have quite liked the idea of putting a woman on the ticket. So I don't know. What do I know, Rory? Because I can't claim to be inside Donald Trump's head and nor do I really want to be.

• 12:47Rory Stewart?

  He's interesting, isn't he? Because he, you know, we talked a lot about polling in the last podcast. And it's interesting how he very much does seem to be somebody who is making the weather rather than being uniquely guided by polls. I mean, often his moves are quite counterintuitive. And his focus is a bit counterintuitive.

• 13:06Alastair Campbell?

  It's very interesting how Joe Biden, who I follow his social media stuff, he's putting stuff out about Roe v Wade and abortion all the time at the moment. So the Democrats clearly think that they're on to something with Trump's various positions on abortion. And he does seem to realise he's in a bit of trouble because he's trying to sort of, he's trying to get into a different position. He's now saying it should be the responsibility of the states, not a federal matter. And that has upset both the Democrats and the kind of, you know, the real hard right Republican people as well.

• 13:35Rory Stewart?

  We should do more on that, but you're absolutely right. Roe versus Wade's overturning by the Supreme Court and the pushback on abortion rights in the US has massively alienated and horrified a very, very large number of voters. And if Biden wins, one major reason is going to be people's anger with Trump on what he did on abortion. And this is important because Trump won the majority of the vote of white women when he got his victory in 2016. So this is a really critical issue from him. And as you say, we can expect to see him softening his position on abortion. But of course, by doing so, taking the risk of alienating a very pumped up Republican base.

• 14:18Alastair Campbell?

  Mark R. with what he calls growing questions over Angela Rayner's tax affairs. Is this going to damage Labour in the general election? I don't think there are any growing questions at all. There is, there is one question, which was part of Michael Ash, a book that Michael Ashcroft published about Angela Rayner to do with capital gains on a council house that she bought.

• 14:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, this is, this is just to explain to people in UK law. If you sell your primary residence, you don't pay capital gains tax. And so people are always concerned that people are going to game this and claim that something's their primary residence when it isn't. If they, if they're, they're living between two homes and she has a. Partner who has another house which she spends some time in. And so the conservative tack line is that they think they've picked up by following her social media that she was spending more time in her partner's house, not her own house, when she sold it, and therefore she should have paid more tax. She's then said, and I think this probably is a political mistake on her part, that she received expert advice from lawyers, saying that she'd done

• 15:22Rory Stewart?

  the right thing, but then she's refused to produce that expert advice. It's, I don't know. I mean, do you think it's getting much traction? Do you think it's doing much damage to her?

• 15:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think there's an awful lot of snobbery going on here. I think if I think of some of the scandals which the newspapers barely bother with, and yet this one, some of them, particularly the right wing papers are going at it hammer and tongs. And, you know, the guy I look to a lot on tax is this guy Dan Needle, who played a big part when Nadeem Zahawi was, he was looking into his tax affairs. And he said, capital gains tax, complicated over the law, very hard to blame Angela Rayner if she doesn't understand. And if she, if she has done something wrong, or paying the wrong amount of tax, that's not necessarily a crime. So her saying, you know, that she got the advice and so on. I just think this is something where the right wing have got so little to go on at the moment

• 16:15Alastair Campbell?

  that just sort of like, you know, this looks like a bit of a bad one for Labour, let's just keep banging it. And I am suspicious of the fact that it started off in one of Michael Ashcroft's books. And, you know, I'd love to know how much tax he's paid down the years as a non-dom. Okay, Rory, lots more questions to come. Let's take a quick break.

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• 17:50Rory Stewart?

  Question for you from AsparagusNextLeft. Oh my god. Which is an amazing name, AsparagusNextLeft. Why is the Scottish hate bill law, highly controversial, causing uproar when the exact same law's been happily in place in England and Wales with no complaints from anyone for the past couple of years? So this is the introduction of a hate law in Scotland, which apparently, almost as soon as it came into force, led to thousands of complaints being mounted by Scots against others, accusing them of hate speech. And, and, and the centre of this is J.K. Rowling, the Harry Potter author, whose people tried to report for tweets around the transgender issue.

• 18:30Rory Stewart?

  So as I'm sure almost everybody in the world knows, J.K. Rowling is a committed feminist who finds a lot of the transgender movement threatening to what she thinks are the interests of women and has found herself right in the centre of this controversy. And she then slightly made more of this by, I think, slightly saying, you know, send me to prison and presenting herself as a bit of a martyr. And Humza Yousaf said, you know, I disagree with these, or I found your tweets offensive, but I don't think you should go to prison. Anyway, any insights into this whole hate speech stuff in Scotland?

• 19:05Alastair Campbell?

  I do find the hoo-ha that it's generated quite hard to understand. Essentially, what they've been saying is that this sort of, particularly with online stuff, that this hate, abusive, threatening and abusive behaviour has been on the up. And it focuses on age, disability, transgender identity and sexual orientation, not women, because apparently they're doing something separate about that. I've got a lot of time for J K Rowling in terms of her sort of, you know, her amazing status as the creator of one of the most extraordinary literary success stories of all time. But I've found the way that she stirred it up, I just couldn't quite get the point. And so I think that we do have

• 19:49Alastair Campbell?

  a problem with abuse and intimidating and threatening behaviour online. And all I see this is an attempt to warn people that there are limits. And I think they were fairly clear about what those limits are. It's not an attack on free speech. So I just think the whole thing was weaponised in a way that, whether that could have been avoided, I don't know. I suspect it will settle down, and I hope it does.

• 20:09Rory Stewart?

  It's part, though, isn't it, unfortunately, of a lot of political problems that Humza Yousaf is facing. I mean, I was obviously, you know, liked him a lot, very sympathetic towards him when we interviewed him on Leading. But he does seem to have been, to put it mildly, unlucky in quite a lot of his political moments since he's taken office. And one might suggest more than unlucky, that he's getting things wrong. He's not being as skillful a politician as one would have hoped, because he seems to be perpetually generating these issues.

• 20:39Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, that's taking me right into the next question, Rory. William Stuart Lockhead, question for Rory. I've noticed that your usual rational approach to issues disappears when you're talking about the union. I find that disappointing. You normally employ reasoned arguments. I'd like to hear your defence. Do you accept anything in that?

• 21:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I accept something in that. I think I've always noticed this in my view about Scotland. I mean, because I'm a Scottish unionist, and very, very proud of being Scottish, and very proud of the United Kingdom. I find it roarer and more personal than any other political issue. And I find it very difficult to be relaxed about it. And you're absolutely right. I mean, I'm able to detach in dealing with Labour much more easily than I can with dealing with the SNP, Scottish National Party. And 2014, I was very passionately committed to the campaign for the Union, built a huge, you know, had volunteers bring a hundred thousand stones, think the Scottish border to get involved in that.

• 21:42Rory Stewart?

  And I, I don't know, something about nationalism really triggers me. So I think that's a good observation. All my normal objectivity, all my normal ability to say, oh, come on, surely you can see the other side of this disappears. And I think it's where probably I come closer to understanding some of the things that you can see, I mean, it's obviously much more extreme, but with Israel Gaza, that, that people feeling identity so strongly that they don't find it easy to, to hear the other side.

• 22:13Alastair Campbell?

  What I, I thought, by the way, that the interview we did with Ed Kessler on leading, and by the way, we had a question which slightly relates to this. It said that, you know, whether we always agree, Carla, do you always agree about who to interview on leading? Is there someone one of you would like to interview? The other has said no. This was one where I was, this was somebody you'd heard speaking and you'd met him and, and so you were pushing for him and I was, oh God, are people really going to get this guy and what have you? But I found it fascinating. The most fascinating thing relates to what you've just said, when he was talking about the difference between dialogue and conversation and that dialogue is when you put yourself in the other person's shoes. So if I ask you to put yourself in the shoes of somebody who does believe in Scottish independence, can you do that?

• 22:58Alastair Campbell?

  Can you see their point of view?

• 23:00Rory Stewart?

  I find it very difficult. I mean, I can do it as a kind of debating trick.

• 23:05Alastair Campbell?

  But you don't believe them.

• 23:06Rory Stewart?

  Well, it was a bit like when I was asking Angela Rayner to tell me what she thought a Tory like me thought. And she, she made a stab at it, but it was pretty unconvincing because she's so

• 23:17Alastair Campbell?

  She doesn't believe it.

• 23:18Rory Stewart?

  Basically out of sympathy with Tories. And so, yeah, I can, I guess I can try to produce an account of it, but. No, I, I, um, God, it's difficult. And you're not quite like me on this. I mean, I guess you're, you are more on the unionist side than against, but you probably felt more passionate about the Brexit referendum than you did about the Scottish referendum.

• 23:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And I think the Brexit referendum sort of shook up my moorings in relation to independence for a while, I'd say. I actually thought, God, if you imagine if Scotland could get out of the UK and get into Europe again, that would be pretty cool. But it's so, so yeah. But I think that's a very good question. That's a very good example there, Mr. William Stuart Lockhead, of you asking a question that I suspect you thought Rory would push back on, but actually he's accepted the premise of your, of your question. Catherine Glover, between you, you must have visited quite a few British embassies. Which is your favourite? Why? I've been to dozens of embassies and my favourite embassy by a mile, just because it's such a beautiful building with an incredible garden is Paris.

• 24:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's, it's, we're so lucky there, aren't we? I mean, so the British Embassy in Paris is this wonderful kind of small palatial mansion, very, very near the president's house, with incredible history in it. And, you know, going all the way back to Duke of Wellington and Napoleon's mistress and all this kind of stuff.

• 24:43Alastair Campbell?

  Beautiful staircase.

• 24:44Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful staircase. The British Embassy is a very mixed bag, though. I mean, if you go to Qatar, it's a kind of small little box. In Indonesia, we got rid of one big residence, built another while I was a diplomat there, and then got rid of that again. So there's always a war going on in the Foreign Office. And one of the things they keep doing, which is very unfortunate, is that they will sell these things. So they sold one in Bangkok for, I think, nearly a hundred million, because a lot of them are on prime real estate.

• 25:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:14Rory Stewart?

  And then they blow the money. They don't use it as capital investment in the Foreign Office estate. What they do is they blow it on the current account. So they're essentially endlessly selling off the family silver. So the pattern over the last 50 years is that our embassies worldwide are increasingly getting sold off. The accommodation for diplomats is getting worse and worse. You know, over the last 30 years, I mean, the housing's getting worse and worse. And this is a problem because British diplomats are civil servants and they're not on great salaries. And one of the great perks of the job that used to encourage very interesting, talented people to take those salaries is that they could live in these beautiful buildings and have an amazing life when they were abroad.

• 25:57Alastair Campbell?

  They still get pretty healthy allowances for the private school education, don't they?

• 26:01Rory Stewart?

  No, well, that's been hacked to pieces too, yeah, because now they can only get it if they're abroad for a very significant amount of time and otherwise it gets removed from them. So sympathy for diplomats is pretty limited because the Daily Mail can always generate a headline attacking champagne-swilling diplomats. But if we care about getting really good people into the Foreign Office, I think it's unfortunate that we're taking away a lot of the compensations of the job.

• 26:27Alastair Campbell?

  We should maybe put in the newsletter on that. Tom Fletcher, former diplomat, worked for, I was, worked for David Cameron, ambassador in Beirut. He wrote a very thoughtful piece in the FT yesterday about the need to essentially modernise diplomacy to get new and interesting people into it. So I think we're all on the same page. Washington's very nice as well. And also, there are some pretty crotty embassies around the world, but it's nice, it is nice when you're working for the government, if you're zipping around the world, that you get into somewhere where it does kind of feel quite British. And they do, even in some of the ones you've been in, some of those parts of the world, where I suspect you do at least feel a little bit more British when you get there.

• 27:10Rory Stewart?

  And the justification for them is that these places are designed to put Britain on the map. They're designed to be places that locals want to visit, want to see. And so the Paris Embassy has been amazing at being a place that the French president wants to go to, that leading French cultural figures want to visit. And if you start giving up on all those buildings, then people have much less of an incentive to turn up and see the British ambassadors and British ministers. So I'd want to keep. Here's a question which maybe we could do more on with more time, but NDS, what's going on with Project 2025 from the Republican Party? Project 2025 is something that's been pushed forward by the Heritage Foundation, which is a right-wing think tank in the US.

• 27:54Rory Stewart?

  Which is proposing very, very radical changes against what they call the deep state. So this is words that Liz Truss used a bit in Britain, but basically their idea is that the federal government is stacked against the type of right wing Republicans that they want to dominate. So they're proposing going in and giving the president the power to basically bring in incredible numbers of right wing Republican appointees. And I think abolish the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security, get rid of environmental protections to allow polluting industries and carbon to flourish. I mean, pretty radical stuff, which some critics see as a sort of proto dictatorship.

• 28:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I saw an interview recently with one of the people who's behind this. He was coming out with some really, really weird stuff about, I think it was to do with surrogacy, children through surrogacy. It was really kind of weird, off the wall stuff. This is, and of course, they call themselves a broad coalition of conservative organisations. It's sort of, if you imagine kind of 55 Tufton Street, but you know, even larger. They associate themselves with having sort of, you know, been part of the very influential with Ronald Reagan. You know, I don't know if you read Ronald Reagan's speech now, I mean, at the time he was seen as a sort of right wing devil. You read Ronald Reagan's speeches now and compared to these guys, he's like, you know, he really is a moderate.

• 29:23Alastair Campbell?

  So they, what this is about moving the dial further and further to the right. And of course, they, you know, Liz Truss in this project is something of a useful idiot. She's somebody who's a, you know, we all know she was utterly useless, but she's the former prime minister and she can turn up at these guys' events and, and literally parrot this rubbish about the deep state. So yeah, you're right. We should, we should come back to this. We should maybe try and get one of the Project Twenty Five people on the, onto leading if we can find one that sort of, you know, isn't completely off the wall.

• 29:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. And I think that's, that would definitely be worth doing. Final question for me. Matt Sheed, Israel. It's been reported that Israel's using an AI missile targeting system named the Gospel and its bombardment of Gaza. Given the excellent coverage you do on AI advances, keen to hear your thoughts of it being used on the battlefield. Well, there's a lot of different use of AI in, in Russia, Ukraine and in the Israel Gaza conflicts. One thing that's been reported is the use of lavender system, which is the use of AI to identify Hamas militants and claims by Israeli intelligence that increasingly humans are just rubber stamping selections being made by what they would call clean clinical objective machine learning mechanisms to identify who a target should be or shouldn't

• 30:42Rory Stewart?

  be rather than in inverted commas, an emotional soldier. And this of course has raised a lot of concerns and you can see the UN talking about it. You can see other governments talking about it. But this will become more and more important because AI is not just a story around productivity and business. AI is going to be more and more central to the development of weapon systems.

• 31:01Alastair Campbell?

  No, you're absolutely right. In both of these conflicts and doubtless others, AI is already a major part of what's happening on the battlefield. My last question. Richard Booker. Very excited that my wife and I are going to PMQs and a tour of Parliament in May after having met our well-known local MP on the doorstep and he offered. How did you feel on your first time in the Palace of Westminster? And is there anything quirky we should look out for? I love the central lobby. I think the central lobby has got an amazing feel to it. Partly you stand there and you see these, that you've got the sort of four parts of the United Kingdom represented on the, on the ceiling. Just, I think just sitting on one of those big. Comfortable leather, green leather sofas, just sit there for a while and watch the world go by and you'll be amazed at who and what you see.

• 31:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I love it. And I think the details, the architecture, look at the doors, the brass molding on the door handles, the glass. And obviously, think about people like Churchill and Gladstone sitting in the same chamber.

• 31:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And if you get into the central lobby and you see the statue of Churchill, you can see that one of his shoes is, the gilt has worn out because I think, I don't know if you ever did Rory, but don't worry, MPs always touch that shoe as they go in.

• 32:10Rory Stewart?

  Touch the shoe, yeah. Well, thank you, Alastair.

• 32:13Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 32:14Rory Stewart?

  See you soon. Bye bye.

• 32:15Alastair Campbell?

  Bye.

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