147. Question Time: The next global superpower, a royal panic, and Rory on Austerity

How did Rory get stuck in the royal panic room? Why do Labour politicians attend Murdoch parties? Which country will be the next global superpower? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more on today's episode of TRIP Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, 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] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 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 Crete. 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 1:59Speaker 05

  I'm not the earth net.

• 2:00Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 2:13Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:17Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. We've got to ask this one first, I think. Soccer Mama.

• 2:24Rory Stewart?

  That's a good name.

• 2:24Alastair Campbell?

  My question is, why should I bother asking, as you'll never read it, let alone answer it? That is all. So there you go Soccer Mama. We've read it.

• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  But I have noticed that if you put at the beginning of the question, I've asked this seven times, Alistair is more likely to ask your question. I might also sometimes suggest, if your question also involves, do you think the Tories are the most hopeless government that have ever been seen in world history? You're probably quite likely to get your question asked.

• 2:51Alastair Campbell?

  I think we do it a little bit more subtly than that, a little bit more subtly. So on the perseverance points, Jane Wilkinson, I realise I need to ask at least 10 times to win a perseverance award. So for the fourth time and counting, please respond properly to the year 12 question which you chose to read out about medical school places. Mark Richardson, will you please answer the question you had weeks ago from a 17 year old asking why finding training places to be a doctor is so difficult? You promised to research it, so please can we have an answer to an excellent question? So I have done a bit of research and let's start off by saying something that is unspeakable in the current populist post-truth politics that we have, it's very complicated.

• 3:35Rory Stewart?

  Oh, good. Oh, I'm glad. We don't often say that. Go on then.

• 3:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it is complicated. I'm going to try and go through some of the complications. The first thing is, it's the General Medical Council rather than the government which determines which institutions are allowed to offer medical degrees. They are looking to extend it so that they can grow the number of places. The next thing is that there does seem culturally to have been a bit of a sort of BMA leverage point about protecting the quote special profession. But because I think it's now agreed that there is a workforce crisis, that is no longer holding. The big point as well that's been made is about quality of teaching. Um. How do you advance the numbers without also advancing the number of medical

• 4:22Alastair Campbell?

  teachers and where are you going to take them from when you want those people to be working? And of course, students have to learn from qualified doctors. They have to go in larger groups into clinics, into theatres, into A and E, into GP surgeries. But the planning of those clinical placements is something that is not easy when the NHS is under as much stress as it is now.

• 4:44Rory Stewart?

  In an attempt to get on top of this, I did have a brief look at a very, very good briefing from the House of Commons Library, which I recommend for anybody who's interested in nerdy questions on British politics. So it points out that each year around 9,500 medical school places are made available across the UK to train new doctors. And since 2013, this figure has increased by around 2,000. So it was 7,500, it's now 9,500. And they're currently capped in England, and the government claims, for all the reasons you've pointed out, part of it's about making sure the standards are kept high and high quality placements. There is an issue around money. So it costs about £230,000 for each medical or dental school place. So another 5,000 students would cost approximately a

• 5:27Rory Stewart?

  billion pounds. But the biggest question, I think, isn't just the money. It's about getting the high quality capacity to train the doctors. And in the meantime, of course, the problem is we're bringing a lot of doctors from overseas because we're not training our own, which is not kind to other countries. And it means we're stripping countries like Zimbabwe of some of their most qualified medical professionals and bring them to the United Kingdom.

• 5:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I've told you before about the in the Balkans. They are, you know, the Germans are absolutely, they're having massive advertising campaigns to get nurses in the Balkans, to go to Germany, to fit the gap there. I do think as well that the other issue that has come through some of the questions in the many weeks that people have been asking us to try to address this is the whole thing about students from poorer backgrounds, even though they might have good grades, finding it really, really hard to get into medical schools. And some of them, some of the schools are now trying to trying to address that. But of course, as you say, people want to be sure that the standards are very, very, very high.

• 6:23Rory Stewart?

  It's unbelievably competitive. 9,500 places. Only I mean it's incredibly small of the total number of university places and other subjects.

• 6:31Alastair Campbell?

  Also, I didn't see it at the weekend, but is Rishi Sunak is apparently talking about moving to some sort of system where you can, we literally can begin to have what they will be termed, you know, apprentices working within the health service. And I don't know whether that applies to doctors and nurses, but we need to maybe check that one out as well. So listen, I don't think we can do justice to this because as we've both shown, we are very reliant on on reading from other people's analysis as opposed to any direct experience, but our shorthand answer is that it's more complicated maybe than we thought when we first addressed it.

• 7:02Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay. Now, Alistair, since last week, you have appeared on the second Question Time in the country, not the Restless Politics Question Time, but the kind of BBC budget version of Question Time. And you appeared in Clacton and it was a very unique event in which the audience were all people who had voted for Brexit, Clacton, very famous, strong Brexit voting town. Tell us who you had on the panel. Give us a sense of the panel.

• 7:28Alastair Campbell?

  Well, scandalously, in my view, nobody, the government put nobody up. They told Question Time they were going to, and then literally on the day, I think they said, no, we've decided we're not putting anybody up, whether that was because they didn't want to celebrate Independence Day seven years on, whether it's because they didn't want to have me raging at them, or whether it's because they didn't actually want to face the people that vote for Brexit to be told that they'd been let down, which a lot of them felt. I don't know. So there's John Redwood, Ben Habib, former Brexit Party MP, Jenny Chapman for Labour, and Alan Menon, who we talked about when you gave me your very, very sensible advice, Rory, last week, which I have to tell you was echoed, and this actually, may I say, had even more of an impact on me.

• 8:12Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going to give a shout out for Clacton Coastal Academy, which I mentioned on the programme, because I went there. When it was announced I was going, this school got in touch with me. They know that, you know, I've been going to lots of schools in, particularly since the book came out. And I went into this school, Clacton Coastal Academy, very tough area, included Jerric, which is one of the poorest parts of the country, the whole country. And the kids were absolutely, they really were good. I mean, they were very shy at first and quite timid in expressing an opinion, but by the end, honestly, they were absolutely brilliant. And anyway, I said at the end, I said, right, I'm going off from here to question time. Brexit only audience, as you know, I'm not a big fan of Brexit. What's the best way to kind of, you know, to deal with them? And this young woman called Annabelle, she said, don't trim your views.

• 8:58Alastair Campbell?

  Say what you think, but say it in a respectful way. Try to persuade rather than criticize and try to understand why they did vote the way they did. And that is why that was the prism. So I actually, when John Redwood started talking absolute nonsense. I just had Annabelle in my head saying, just let him spout it, just ignore him, talk to the audience.

• 9:17Rory Stewart?

  Now, here's, here's a question from Jude. I really like this question from Jude. I voted remain, but feel sorry for the audience members in Thursday's question time. Who have been pilloried on social media for their opinions. Should they, and I don't know if this is possible, have been edited out, corrected? Anyway, it's played to a stereotype. What do Alistair and Rory think? So she's, she's worried about that, isn't she? And it's true, isn't it? Some of the questions were kind of mocked on social media. There was one which I saw played a lot. There was a lady who said, I think she was trying to say the problem was that whenever rules were passed by Brussels, the British obeyed them and other people didn't. But she ended up saying,

• 9:58Rory Stewart?

  it's all about the roofs. When we go on roofs in Britain, we had to follow the rules. And whenever she goes to France and Germany, there are all these people on the roofs who weren't following the rules.

• 10:07Alastair Campbell?

  Very similar question, Jamie Crawford. Is it fair game to have a go at the not on my roof? Or from the beaches to the benefits office, audience members? Or should our ire be directed at the cabal that fed them this nonsense? And he says, I felt Alistair was calm and collected, won people over. That has to be the approach. I mean, look, just to give the context, the first there was this quite elderly lady who talked about the rules and it became a thing about the roofs. And then there was a guy who said he'd literally seen people come off, you know, come, arrive in the country and go straight down the benefits office. And James O'Brien, for example, did a, you know, a pretty splenetic takedown of that one. Again, I had Annabelle in my head again. I basically said, right, I could say, well, actually,

• 10:51Alastair Campbell?

  no, I think that's unfair because da, da, da, da, but I didn't.

• 10:56Alastair Campbell?

  And I do think it was unfair. And I also do agree with Jude that I think we do have to criticize the people who. Peddled a lot of this nonsense. The truth is that we've had three, four decades of anti-European propaganda in a lot of our papers. We did have liars like, I've got to tell you, Roy, I got a round of applause for saying that, you know, the whole thing was run by a bunch of liars, Johnson, et cetera. So, but I went into it with the aim of trying to understand why people voted, but also to get a proper sense as to whether many, any of them or many of them were changing their minds. And there was, there was another question which I thought was really perceptive. Rebecca Gould, this week's question time

• 11:37Alastair Campbell?

  seemed much quieter and sadder than I thought it was going to be. Was it everyone trying very hard to disagree agreeably? What did it feel like in the studio? What it felt like was that a lot of people, there was no anger, apart from one or two people, there was very little anger directed at me. There was a lot of anger directed at Brexit and the way it was happening. And my favourite question of the lot, Josh says this, I'm a huge fan, enjoy your commentary, just wanted to know what was your funniest moment from question time? For me, it was a member of the audience saying Brexit could be good if it had gone to a different school. What it was, what the woman was saying was to Ben Habib, she said, I'm sick and tired of you people telling me if only we did Brexit the way I wanted to do Brexit, it would have worked.

• 12:19Rory Stewart?

  And what did, so one of the central characters in this is this figure called John Redwood, who was a cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher, was a sort of academic, he's a fellow of all souls, meant to be kind of very, was obviously a very, very brilliantly clever student because he managed to get into all souls, and has been the kind of Vulcan ideologue of the Brexit move. What, what did you make of him? I mean, he's kind of famously sort of clever, but slightly uncanny in his manner. What do you make of his communication style? What do you make of who he is and how he ended up where he is?

• 12:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we had a, we had a question as well about what the mood was like in the green room before and afterwards. But at a personal level, I've always gone with, I find John Redwood somebody that's perfectly straightforward to talk to and doesn't, really doesn't mind you challenging his views and will come back and give as good as he gets. I thought Peter Kyle, by the way, who I know you think is terrific. It's wonderful. So do I. Well, look at Peter's takedown. We should put it, I tweeted it yesterday, we should put it in the, in the newsletter. Peter Kyle did an absolutely brutal demolition of John Redwood by, he'd gone back to look at John Redwood's website back in the days before the referendum, saying what was going to happen and he absolutely took him down.

• 13:36Alastair Campbell?

  I wish I'd had all the same stuff. No, I think John Redwood was just one of those guys who he, he's always believed the same thing. He always believes that John Redwood is right about the economy. He always believes that, and he says what he says with absolute conviction. And if you challenge him, as I challenged him, for example, when I said, you know, he said he'd never, you know, the trade deal's not that big a deal. We don't need to worry about America, blah, blah. And I said, well, hold on a minute. Why did he say that we were, one of the big wins was going to be getting this trade deal? He just said, well, I never said that, the populist thing. And lots of people posted lots of occasions where he had said it. But I don't, I don't sort of loathe him in a way that I loathe the liars because I think that, I said on the program, I think people like him have always believed in what he tried to achieve with his very eurosceptic views. I mean, with the interview

• 14:19Alastair Campbell?

  with John Major, for example, John Redwood challenged John Major because he felt John Major was going the wrong direction on, on Europe. So I think he's a perfectly honorable kind of guy. I just think he's very, very wrong about a lot of stuff. Okay, over to you, questions. Right. Lord of the Sheep. Lord of the Sheep? Rory seems a decent person, says Lord of the Sheep. How does he reconcile his ethics with the harm done to the public as a result of austerity? I have seen at firsthand the harm that's been suffered. It cannot be denied. I believe the current mess in our country is largely due to austerity. So I think there was another question about this, Rory, that was about, could you explain, lots of people often post on social media quotes your voting record. And I'm giving you an opportunity again to explain why.

• 15:04Alastair Campbell?

  If you're in a government, you have to choose.

• 15:06Rory Stewart?

  Look, it's a very good challenge, but this question around voting record is a question about what political party you belong to. Unfortunately, for better or for worse, in the British political system, you vote with your party, even rebels. You know, even people who are seen as famous rebels are voting with their parties ninety five percent of the time. But it's even more extreme if you're a government minister, because it's a constitutional rule that you have to always vote for the government. If you're a government minister, because it's called collective responsibility, ministerial responsibility. And if you don't vote with the government, you resign. And if you don't vote with the government on something important, you're kicked out.

• 15:43Alastair Campbell?

  On how many occasions did you vote for something as a government minister? That had you been a back bencher, you'd have felt very, very queasy about.

• 15:51Rory Stewart?

  I I never voted for anything that I felt deeply queasy for. I often voted for things that I thought, oh, I'm not quite sure about that. But when push came to shove, on things I felt very queasy about, I voted against the government. But the result of that was the first time I did it, I was not promoted for the next four years. And the second time I did it, I was kicked out of the Conservative Party, so I voted against the no deal Brexit. But people need to understand that the deal is that it's better or worse a team sport. And the justification for that is that the public vote for a manifesto, they vote for a party and they expect the party to deliver that manifesto. They don't expect the local MP they voted for to start rebelling against what they think they've signed up for.

• 16:34Rory Stewart?

  And we can debate that, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, but that's the way the system's worked. So these these these things where they say, look at the voting record is completely absurd. All you say when you say, yeah, this guy looks like a nice guy, but look at his voting record is what you're saying is. This guy looks like a nice guy, but he was a member of a Tory government. That's all you're saying.

• 16:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but if but when you were not in the government. When people sort of raise things on your voting record, is there anything on your voting record when you were a back bencher? That you sometimes think, oh, we shouldn't have done that.

• 17:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think that the way that austerity was done.

• 17:14Rory Stewart?

  Was very, very, was often incredibly damaging. So I saw that very directly in prisons.

• 17:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Rory Stewart?

  Hacked the number of prison officers, hacked the budgets of prisons, increased the number of prisoners and ended up with drug-filled, violent, filthy, unsafe prisons. So that's a very good example of austerity gone completely wrong. Why did I support the principle? I mean, I, you know, that, that goes into the question of how much debt I think the country can handle, how much deficit I think the country handled. And I disagree with people who believe that there is an easy way to just borrow money and spend money and generate growth by doing that. But I guess that's because I was a conservative, not on the other side of the house.

• 17:57Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Rory, while I'm being the interrogator here, I've got one here from Amy Minchin. Would Rory kindly regale us with the story about the time he found himself trapped inside the King's Panic Room at Highgrove? Then I'll tell you my Highgrove story.

• 18:09Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay, so I was, I think, nineteen years old and I had been employed as the tutor to Princes William and Harry.

• 18:18Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. For how long?

• 18:20Rory Stewart?

  Uh, well, it's for the summer holidays, for the summer holidays. So I had just arrived and I went off to have a bath about eleven o'clock at night. And weirdly, there were two doors on the bathroom. Anyway, I locked the, the door that I thought was the right door to lock, got into my bath, got out of the bath, tried to unlock the door and I couldn't unlock it. And I thought, for goodness sake. And I kept struggling with the key and I couldn't shift it. Eventually, there was a knock on the door. And this familiar voice, it's the voice of the King, but I'm not going to commit laissez-manger today by trying to imitate the voice of the King. But anyway, the voice of the King then says, Rory, would you mind turning out the lights out when you go to bed? He obviously cares about the environment, wants to turn the lights out. So I say, I'm really sorry, sir. I'm now a very, very scared nineteen-year-old. It's my first proper job. I'm really sorry, sir. I seem to have locked

• 19:05Rory Stewart?

  myself in the loo. And he says, don't be so ridiculous, Rory. Turn the key in the lock. So I'm so terrified, I turned the key in the lock so hard that I, I'd snap it off at the haft. And I'm left with this thing. And I then look around and I say, I'm really, really sorry, sir. I've snapped the key off in the haft. And he said, You're not seriously suggesting it's midnight that I have to wake up the whole house and get them to axe down the door. And I say, no, no, no. So it's absolutely fine. I'll, I'll sleep the night on the bathroom door.

• 19:36Rory Stewart?

  So there is a sort of haram from the other kind of the door.

• 19:38Alastair Campbell?

  And did you sleep there?

• 19:39Rory Stewart?

  The Prince of Wales disappears. So I then look around this thing and realise what's happened is that this is the anti terrorist panic room of the building. And there's a big sign up saying ring Scotland Yard and, you know, jump out of the window. And the thing that I've I've locked is this kind of bomb proof metal door to prevent a terrorist getting in. So about 20 minutes later, there is the sound literally of axes on the door. And eventually the door is broken through and there is the Prince of Wales in his dressing gown, directing a group of people with axes. Driving out. And for the rest of my time at Highgrove, literally, I would sit there at, at the breakfast table, on the lunch table. And all the people serving me could not stop themselves sniggering every time they tried to pour the soup.

• 20:22Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, Rory, that is just such a great story. I think we should have a separate podcast. The, the, the rest is Rory's time at Highgrove.

• 20:30Alastair Campbell?

  I've got a, that's quite impressive though, that he's going around turning the lights off. Is that part of his eco warriordom that he goes around making sure there's no lights on?

• 20:37Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I think, I think he does care about the environment. Yeah. Are you going to tell us your Highgrove story? Are we going to move on?

• 20:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, my Highgrove story is that at one point when Tony and Cherie were going for lunch with the then Prince of Wales at Highgrove. And we were meant to be going on to Coventry. So I was with them in the car behind and I just texted ahead to one of the protection people and said, look, can you check out if there's a swimming pool? So, because while I'll have a swim while Tony's having lunch. And I later discovered this caused absolute sort of protocol consternation. Because of course there is a swimming pool, but only he is meant to swim in it. And I don't think, I don't think he swims very much. So after a sort of bit of, you know, Republican badgering, uh, uh, eventually they sort of, you know, rather grumpily agreed

• 21:24Alastair Campbell?

  that I could go in this swimming pool. But I've got to tell you, Rory, I don't know if you ever went in the swimming pool at Highgrove, but it didn't feel like it was swimming very much. There were a lot of green things in there.

• 21:35Rory Stewart?

  You've swum in a lot of unique places. I mean, someday we need a book out of you on places you've swum. Right then, we'll be back in a second. So let's just take a quick break.

• 21:44Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 21:47Speaker 04

  On October 2nd.

• 21:48Speaker 03

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 21:53Speaker 04

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 22:01Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 22:08Speaker 05

  I'm not the first then.

• 22:09Speaker 04

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• 23:14Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's a more serious one, right? I think we'll both be interested in this.

• 23:17Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 23:17Alastair Campbell?

  James Mules, what would you say are the key criteria for a country to be considered a superpower? And which countries do you believe have the potential to meet that criteria in coming decades? Related to that, Tim Johnson, why does the UK still deserve a permanent seat on the UN Security Council? If the UN was founded now, would the UK be in that same position?

• 23:38Rory Stewart?

  Well, so I think the answer is, of course, if the UN was founded now, the UK would not be likely to be in the same position. I mean, its only claim is that it's a nuclear power, but in population terms, it's very small compared to the global population. Its economy is increasingly small compared to its big competitors like the US and China. Criteria to be a superpower? Well, I guess the obvious rising powers are China and then India.

• 24:04Rory Stewart?

  And I think to be a superpower is really about being able to hyperbolically project your power globally, not just on a regional basis, but be able to bring the full force of your economic and military might to bear almost anywhere around the world. Gone, over to you.

• 24:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, yeah, I think that's right. And I think it means that actually, although we talked during the Cold War about America and Russia, or the Soviet Union being superpowers, the Soviet Union was only really a superpower because of the strength of its, the size of its military arsenal, in particular its nuclear arsenal. America are a genuine superpower. I'd say at the moment that China and America are both, are the only two superpowers. And I think there are others that could emerge in that way. I think it's economic, military, cultural. And it's also, it's also really about how they really relate to the rest of the world. I mean, there's not a single other leader in the world who doesn't, you know, if the phone goes and it's, it's the Chinese embassy saying President Xi would like to have a conversation,

• 25:04Alastair Campbell?

  or it's the White House, President Biden would like to have a conversation, they're kind of the top level. And I do think that the UK, I said this on Question Time, I really do feel that Brexit has reduced us further, that we're no longer, you know, we're no longer top tier, other than, you know, for the historic reasons in the UN. But I think there's a danger that we're, we're going down, you know, not just from second tier, but lower than that.

• 25:30Alastair Campbell?

  I think, what about the African countries? Do you think any of the African countries could ever emerge as a?

• 25:33Rory Stewart?

  Well, one in 10 children born in the world will be born in Nigeria by 2050. That actually is a segue into a question from Fred Gray. A friend of mine in the US sent me an email which mentioned a community work programme in Rwanda called Umuganda in Kenya, Rwanda, which means uniting to achieve a common purpose. So this is an amazing event. He's asked whether either of us have seen it, and I have definitely seen it, and it is for real. So on the last Saturday of every month, If you are a citizen without disabilities aged between eighteen and sixty five, you basically have to get out there from eight in the morning for three hours picking up the rubbish and doing some other stuff too. That's the other community meetings.

• 26:13Rory Stewart?

  And essentially, you'd get arrested if you're not picking up the rubbish. And it's incredible. I mean, on a Saturday morning, the traffic is at a complete standstill and the streets are full of people tidying up the capital city or out in the rural areas having community meetings. And as a result, Rwanda is pretty clean. It's like the Switzerland of Africa.

• 26:32Alastair Campbell?

  I nearly got into an altercation yesterday when Grace and I were out walking the dog and she stopped me from confronting these people who were literally just throwing litter.

• 26:44Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 26:45Alastair Campbell?

  This was on Hampstead Heath. They were having a sort of picnic type thing.

• 26:48Rory Stewart?

  And you didn't get in an altercation?

• 26:50Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't because Grace said, no, please, Dad, don't, please. I'm fed up of getting you out of fights. But it was, it was, it just disgusted me so much. It was literally, she was like wiping things and throwing the tissues into the grass and then her husband or partner or boyfriend, whatever, necking this bottle of beer and just chucking it over his shoulder. It does my head in. Now, we said on the main podcast, we were going to cover this. Dorothy Darling, disappointing to see Keir Starmer west streeting et cetera at Murdoch Party. Why toadie up to him instead of rejecting his poison? Are they too worried about lack of or negative coverage? I think people will be thrilled to see politicians giving him the cut, prove that they're not just more of the same.

• 27:29Rory Stewart?

  So I mean, I was quite proud not to go to his parties and I thought it was actually a bit embarrassing to do so. But colleagues went, Labour politicians, Conservative politicians, because they believed that if they didn't go, I guess they would get negative coverage in the newspapers, didn't they?

• 27:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think it is about this sort of, you know, it's like they, I think it's the Murdoch empire in particular sort of feel that they are almost like a kind of state and you have to treat them like that. And they have diplomats, they have ambassadors around the place. And I do think, I was pleased that Miliband, when he was leader of the party, really went for them over, you know, over their role in phone hacking and the criminal abuse in the media and so forth. I get why Keir does it, but I think there will be quite a lot of people like Dorothy there who.

• 28:15Rory Stewart?

  Why does he do it? Sorry, just to.

• 28:16Alastair Campbell?

  For the reason, for the reasons you said in the main podcast, that it's about trying to neutralize something that could be quite a nasty enemy. No, I think there'll be a nasty enemy anyway. I don't think that Keir Labour are going to get a fair deal.

• 28:29Rory Stewart?

  And do you really think that if you don't, I mean, I didn't turn up, didn't respond to the invitation. Do you think he actually is vindictive against people who don't come to his party?

• 28:38Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think he'll be about necessarily vindictive about people who don't, who don't go to his, his jamborees. But I think vindictive to people who he feels do not show him what he considers to be respect or who, you know, veer too far away from political views that he deems to be palatable. I don't think he's just vindictive, but I think he puts the word out to his papers, you know, do what you can do this guy in. Final question, Rory. This one, this one made me laugh. Paul Cutterford, how does Rory feel when having made a good point, Alastair usually says right in a way that illustrates that he hasn't listened to the point as he's so consumed by what he's about to say. It's not a criticism. I find it quite funny. It happens a lot and I love your work. And let me just tell you,

• 29:21Alastair Campbell?

  Paul, I say right in that way when Rory has made a point that I actually think is worth just allowing to stand on its own. Unlike Rory, who regularly, after I make a point, says good or very good and then moves on. Is that not true, Rory?

• 29:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right.

• 29:45Alastair Campbell?

  Very good.

• 29:46Rory Stewart?

  Thank you.

• 29:46Alastair Campbell?

  Let's go. Bye bye. Goodbye. Heads off.

• 29:53Speaker 03

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• 29:56Speaker 04

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• 29:57Speaker 03

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• 30:02Speaker 04

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• 30:09Speaker 05

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• 30:14Speaker 04

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• 30:17Speaker 05

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• 30:18Speaker 04

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