163. Question Time: Privatisation vs. Nationalisation

Are UFO sightings a purely English-speaking phenomenon? Should we give more or less praise to privatisation? What's Dominic Cummings up to now? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more on today’s episode of The Rest Is Politics: Question Time. 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. 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. And 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.

• 1:11Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:15Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alistair Gamble.

• 1:16Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And Alistair, you have a very, very splendid shirt on. I have my, what you call my Penrith Vet shirts on. But you have something which looks more like sort of Saturday Night Live.

• 1:26Alastair Campbell?

  It's a car driving across my chest.

• 1:29Rory Stewart?

  That's very good.

• 1:30Alastair Campbell?

  I'm already into cars. Fiona has this sort of desire, I think, for me to be a man that I'm not.

• 1:36Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 1:37Alastair Campbell?

  So she regularly will go out and buy me shirts like this.

• 1:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's interesting because you definitely have a desire for me to be a man that I'm not. So I think you're obviously passing it on.

• 1:46Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I have no desire over you whatsoever.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  You do have a perpetual desire for me to be a football-loving, beer-drinking dude.

• 1:54Alastair Campbell?

  Can you remember the name of the Bulgarian international footballer?

• 1:57Rory Stewart?

  No, sadly not. Go on, what's his name again?

• 1:59Alastair Campbell?

  Kostas Diodos. Listen, let's get a couple of quick, easy ones out of the way to start with, okay? I'm going to reward some perseverance. Michael Reese, question attempt number 18. And I've checked. He has asked this question eighteen times. So stop whinging all you people who say I've asked this question eight times, nine times, ten times. Michael Reese's question is quite simple, Rory. Will we go to Cardiff to do a show in 2024? Wales is the only nation in the UK that we've not hosted a show yet.

• 2:25Rory Stewart?

  We'll definitely go to Wales and Cardiff sounds like a good spot, right?

• 2:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, although it doesn't have to be Cardiff. I think we've got to be, you know, but I, by the way, Michael, have been to Wales at least three times in the last few months. And here's another very quick, snappy one we can do, Rory. Chi Honra MP. Few people have got in touch to say on a recent podcast, you couldn't think of any MPs with a scientific background. So I thought I'd send you a link to the BBC's live scientific episode that covered mine. So there you go. We'll put that in the newsletter.

• 2:52Rory Stewart?

  I'd like to pay tribute to Chi. So Chi did a lot with me in the early days on mobile coverage and broadband. And absolutely, she is a person with a serious scientific background in Parliament, as of course, as I've pointed out, is Therese Coffey. She's got a doctorate in strange bits of biochemistry.

• 3:09Alastair Campbell?

  And whose name keeps appearing in stories about the pending reshuffle.

• 3:13Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 3:13Alastair Campbell?

  Hey ho. Now, let's have a couple here on education, even though the first one from Kate Grant is only the eighth time that she's asked it. Kate from Buxton, over 20% of secondary age young people have been persistently absent from school this year and the suspension rate is 49% higher in 2022 than in 2017. Is the education system in England fundamentally broken? If so, how can it be fixed? Cath, given the growing rates of absences in our schools, is our education system fit for purpose anymore? And should educators rather than politicians not be at the forefront of a complete overhaul? Why aren't Labour being bolder in their education policy as currently it seems to be more of the same?

• 3:54Rory Stewart?

  So what do you think accounts for the growing absences from school? What's going on there?

• 3:57Alastair Campbell?

  I think a lot of it's Covid. I think it's children who got used to not going to school and then found it hard to go back. But actually, if I can plug an excellent piece, which answers, partly answers both questions from somebody, I think you've probably met her actually, Rory, somebody called Fiona Miller, who's a writer and a journalist specialising in education and parenting issues.

• 4:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's right. Fiona Miller, yes.

• 4:18Alastair Campbell?

  You've heard of Fiona Miller? Yeah, I know her very, very well. She's the mother of my three children.

• 4:23Rory Stewart?

  Yes, exactly.

• 4:23Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, we shall put in the newsletter a piece she wrote in The Guardian, which just tried to answer this question. And I think the final point is partly because of some of the things that Michael Gove, in his wisdom, undid that the Labour government have put in place. A lot of the support that's there for teachers has gone. And a lot of the outside school support has gone. I saw your friend Gillian Keegan recently said that teachers should sort of, you know, if kids aren't turning up, the schools should go and find them and haul them back in. But of course, the schools are pretty overwhelmed as it is. So I think there's a whole load of things that were taken away that have not been replaced. And the schools are operating at full pelt. And they're just not able to keep up with some of these kids who are not there.

• 5:03Rory Stewart?

  Gosh, I was also reading actually the US Department of Education struggling with the same thing. They've got about sixteen percent absenteeism. And there, people with non-native English much more likely to be absent, people with disabilities much more likely to be absent. I mean, it is such a problem. Shishana taught in very difficult schools, both in Harlem and in Boston. And there, they did literally go to people's homes to try to find children, bring them in. And as you say, it's incredibly time consuming. I mean, it's sort of half-broke the teachers trying to stay on top of that.

• 5:32Alastair Campbell?

  And I do think the point of Labour, we talked in the main podcast about the government being behind on the NHS. I do think on education, I really like Bridget Phillips, and I think it should be a terrific Secretary of State. But I think within the public debate, partly I think because the current Education Secretary Gillian Keegan is, I think, pretty low profile and doesn't say much about education, is just vanished from the debate. It's not at the centre of our debate about what sort of future we want as a country. And of course, we're going in, you know, in the next couple of weeks, we're going to get A levels, we're going to get GCSE results. And we're going to get them at a point where you've had kids who've had the whole COVID experience, which is bad enough. And then now you've also, you've had the teacher strikes, some of the marking issues have not been resolved.

• 6:14Alastair Campbell?

  You're going to have all sorts of kids not getting downgraded because of some of the changes that have been made in the marking systems. And I just think these are things that, because they're not, if I may revisit one of my, my central themes, because so many of our leading journalists. List and editors use private schools. I don't think they focus on education nearly as much as they should. And I think that that is another reason why the politicians don't focus on it as much as they should either.

• 6:40Rory Stewart?

  So here's a couple of questions then. Sam Calvert Smith, a while ago, you pledged to do a good news only episode. I realise it's almost impossible at the moment, but wondered if between you, you could find any good news. There we are. So come on some good news for us.

• 6:55Alastair Campbell?

  Well, look, one person's the definition of news that was one of the greatest definition of news ever. News is something that somebody somewhere doesn't want to see printed, right? So I would argue that it's good news that Donald Trump has been indicted again, right? But it's bad news for Donald Trump. But, you know, we talked the other day about there's a serious point to this, because we talked recently about the the Canadian legislation where they're changing the the arrangements with Meta and Google and what have you. When we were looking into that, I came across this piece on the Conversation, which had some figures. I think it for the UK, it was forty six percent of people who now deliberately avoid the news. And that's massive.

• 7:36Rory Stewart?

  But it's unbelievable. And it's fatal for politics, because

• 7:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Rory Stewart?

  Politics are the centre of the news. And obviously, democracy depends on informed citizens and holding people accountable. And once almost half your population is actively refusing to visit these, how on earth are you supposed to hold politicians accountable?

• 7:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:52Rory Stewart?

  So here's a good bit of news for you. Scientists have found a naturally occurring strain of bacteria which can stop transmission of malaria.

• 7:59Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. That is good news.

• 8:01Rory Stewart?

  That's quite exciting. So they went and looked at a 2014 experiment, went back and looked at it again. And they think that this may be a real breakthrough. And of course, malaria still kills 600,000 people every year. So there we are. There's something, a little bit of good news for you. Generally, if you go on the BBC, BBC's got uplifting news, but most of it tends to be about teddy bears stuck on the top of mountains, or rescuing dolphins and dogs.

• 8:24Alastair Campbell?

  And now, listen, I try to defend the BBC. The BBC's online top 10 stories is becoming absurd and ridiculous at times. The BBC is a serious news organisation. Can they please focus on serious news? Thank you very much. Over and out. Right, Dan Taylor. I'm enjoying reading Rory's book about the Scottish Borders Walks with his dad. I love the reference to his dad saying Archimedes every time tea is poured. Why is this Rory?

• 8:51Rory Stewart?

  Ah, and he follows up for Alistair, if you've been brought up by Rory's father, can you imagine how your worldview might differ? And do you think you would have gravitated to being a Tory? Okay, let me try Archimedes and then we'll throw this thing. So my father was completely, I think you would have enjoyed meeting him. He was born in nineteen twenty two, he fought in the war, he became an intelligence officer. He was trained to land in small submarines off the coast of Borneo during Confrontation with Sukarno. He was a passionate Scot. He was very close to his brother. There were just two little boys, their father was in India, my grandfather was in India. And these two little boys grew up in Kirimura and Angus and then went off to war together. And his brother, who was just a year older than him, was killed fighting with the Black Watch in Sicily.

• 9:33Rory Stewart?

  And my father never really, I think, developed close male friends again after that.

• 9:37Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, is that, is that why you joined the Black Watch, by the way?

• 9:40Rory Stewart?

  Yes, yeah, my father, my uncle, my grandfather, my great grandfather, yeah. My father was so proud of being Scottish and kind of petulantly and childishly anti-English at almost every opportunity he was given.

• 9:54Alastair Campbell?

  Would he want Australia to beat England in the Women's World Cup semi-final tomorrow?

• 10:01Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think he'd be quite amused by that sort of thing. But his, his sort of Scottishness was much more about, he loved trying to improve his Gaelic. He loved playing with his chanter, he was very interested in Scottish music, Scottish place names he was very interested in. I mean, he'd wear tartan trues in Vietnam to give a sort of sense of kind of how, what a sort of campaigning Scot he was. Anyway, the Archimedes point is that he was terrified about the fact that when he poured a teapot, he worried that the lid's going to fall off the teapot. And Archimedes was some sort of way of him talking about the leverage problems. He actually basically felt the entire family were really messy and that all we were ever going to do was pour tea all over the place. And as a result, his mother-in-law was so terrified by him that every time he came to visit her, she'd just pour tea everywhere.

• 10:46Alastair Campbell?

  Right, the bit for me, if I had been brought up by your father, can I imagine that my worldview might differ? Yes. Do I think I would therefore have gravitated to being a Tory? Definitely not, absolutely not. It would have made me even more Labour. I must tell you, Roy, I wasn't going to tell you this until I saw you face to face, but I am carrying with me, because you have a significant birthday coming up.

• 11:08Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 11:09Alastair Campbell?

  A book written by the man in the Foreign Service who followed your dad in Hanoi.

• 11:17Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 11:17Alastair Campbell?

  But unlike your dad, he travelled with a really, really high quality camera and did some amazing photographs and has published a rather beautiful book about his time in Hanoi there, just after your dad left. So there you go. So I've got a copy of that book for you, which I shall be presenting to you from my friend, John Ramsden, on your significant birthday. There you are. Freddie Jewitt, what is your view on Dominic Cummings' startup party, brackets, see Substack, brackets? Where is he right or wrong on the problems with the status quo party and whitehall setups, focus on media rather than voters, systems thinking approach to politics and government, lack of, I imagine, and the key problems

• 11:58Alastair Campbell?

  and policy areas for the UK? Now, I haven't read Dominic Cummings' piece on Substack, but if he's saying that there should be a new startup party, or that if there is one, it should focus on the problems with the status quo party, whitehall setups, focus on media, not voters, systems thinking approach, et cetera, then I know these are things that he's banged on about for some time. And I think, although I come at it from a very, very different political perspective to his, I do think there is something fundamentally wrong with our politics. And I think it's partly what gave us Brexit. I think it's partly what's given us this succession of, I think, pretty useless prime ministers. And it's partly what's making people frustrated that the Labour Party is not sort of coming in with that sense of real change and radical change that the country's crying out for.

• 12:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so Cummings, I'm coming from really interesting character. I think he's a, he has actually done a lot of harm. I think him endorsing and getting behind Boris Johnson was terrible, because I think Boris Johnson was a terrible Terrible, terrible Prime Minister and Dominic Cummings enabled him and should bear responsibility for that. And it's no good him them saying now that he's left, are the guys like a shopping trolley careering around? He should have known that in advance and he shouldn't have enabled that. But of course, what he is good at is at the negative critique bit. I don't think he's actually very good at positively running the country. But his critique, which he put in his Substack, I think you'd agree with a lot of. He says that Rishi Sunak is diligent, but is mostly dealing with second order issues. And this then is his criticism. He says, there's no grip of power.

• 13:29Rory Stewart?

  He says the Cabinet Office is a dumpster fire. There's no governing plan for the NHS, crime, the war, productivity, growth, R and D or anything else. No message, no serious polling communications or political machine. No political strategy worth spit. A humiliating awful level of argument on every major issue. Reduced to defending idiot MPs and political disintegration. So as with a lot of these people, I think he's got a clear eyed analysis of what's wrong. But I don't think that means that I want Dominic Cummings in running the country again. Here we are, question on Ecuador from Louise Barrett. Interested to hear more on your thoughts of what's gone on in Ecuador. Hadn't realised how fractious it was there. Any insight is welcome. So very quickly on that one for listeners.

• 14:11Rory Stewart?

  Ecuador has had a horrible, horrifying explosion of drug violence. In fact, one of the things that's been happening across Central Latin America has been an explosion from old centres in Colombia and Mexico, partly to do with the disintegration of Venezuela, of criminal drug gangs right the way across the continent. And this has resulted in Ecuador in these moments of political violence. And the leading anti-corruption campaigner in the presidential election being killed. And now another major local politician being assassinated in the lead up to the election.

• 14:45Alastair Campbell?

  And now even as we're speaking, a third, somebody called Pedro Briones, who was an organizer for Citizen Revolution, that's literally just been announced. So. I mean, it does sort of bring home as well that there are parts of the world. Look, we've had political assassinations, Joe Cox, David Amos, but I think for people to be out on the campaign stump as they are now, and clearly the senses that the first guy who was murdered, Fernando Villavicencio, he has been very, very vocal, speaking out against corruption, against the drug gangs and so forth. And, you know, the suspicion is that they're the ones who wiped him out. So it's a classic kind of, you know, mafia style silencing operation.

• 15:28Rory Stewart?

  And a reminder how quickly things can change them on world because Ecuador, you would have said a decade ago.

• 15:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Rory Stewart?

  Was a pretty stable, peaceful place. And it's just in the last five years that it's basically become like Colombia in the nineties. And there are whole bits of the country now controlled by these criminal drug gangs. So it's a real reminder of how fragile countries and politics can be, that the kind of assumptions that you would have had five, six years ago can be turned on their heads so rapidly, the way these international criminal gangs can just destroy a state.

• 16:00Alastair Campbell?

  And I don't, I can't claim to be an expert on this, but you may know more than I do. But is it not the case that Ecuador doesn't have its own drug trade as such, but it's sandwiched between Colombia and Peru and therefore is essential to their kind of routes, the trafficking routes?

• 16:13Rory Stewart?

  Next question. Tony Blair Institute, a force for good. Ralphie, is the Blair Institute for Global Change a force for good? Hugo Alman, having read the news about Tony Blair and his Saudi connections, wouldn't it be wise for Keir Starmer to keep as much distance as possible from this heavily tainted predecessor? That's a slightly unfair question to you because obviously Tony Blair is somebody you admire immensely.

• 16:33Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody, somebody you admired immensely as well, Rory.

• 16:35Rory Stewart?

  I also like Tony Blair very much. But there's been some very interesting reporting, which I think it'd be fair for us to report on, which has been getting into the funding and the way in which it's funded by Larry Ellison and some of the different ways in which the money is generated. There was a really interesting detailed article written by Tom McTag. Tom McTag is a really interesting long form journalist who did some really good reporting on Northern Ireland, did a very interesting profile of Boris Johnson, was the correspondent with The Atlantic. And has spent the last few weeks getting into real detail on the on the funding of the Tony Blair Institute. So I think it's it's worth reading. I mean, it's a very interesting account. I don't think I came out of it feeling that Tony Blair was guilty of great wrongdoing.

• 17:18Rory Stewart?

  But it is an interesting example of some of the perils of how you fund yourself. And what happens when you have to try to raise tens of millions of dollars a year, often in his case for good causes. I mean, he's he's using this money to do a lot of support for governance work and delivery work in developing countries around the world. But an interesting long form piece.

• 17:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I've not read it. I was vaguely aware of the stories because I was getting phone calls from journalists asking if I wanted to say anything about them and and I didn't. But as you raised, as you raised on the podcast, I will. No, I I think that Tony left office in two thousand and seven. And I think he struggled for a while to establish exactly how he was going to kind of operate. I think he has now found his feet and he runs this organisation, which I think is a force for good. I think it's a force for good in the way that it contributes to public policy debate. I think it's a force for good, as you say, in some of the work that it does in some of the poorest parts of the world. I mean, Tony's Institute is operating in dozens of countries now and doing it in a way that I think is, you know, he he he.

• 18:21Alastair Campbell?

  Some of the work he's done in Africa has won a lot of praise from some of the organisations who said that even some of the big charities were pulling out to some of the poorest places in the world. And I think what happened in the in the early years is that he he stopped being a politician in a way. He stopped explaining who he was and what he did, which is part of what a modern politician has to do. And I think he's doing that more now, and I think it is giving people a better sense of of what he does. Now, I don't know what connections he has with Mohammed bin Salman. I don't know what connections he has with with Saudis in terms of any financing. I just don't know. But I do know that he raises a lot of money in part to fund these projects and also in part to hire the people that he worked that worked for him.

• 19:02Alastair Campbell?

  And he's now hiring several hundred people, including people I keep saying to saying to people in around Kier's thumb. Never mind Kier having a relationship with them. Hire some of these people because he's got some of the smartest people currently working in. Policy work going.

• 19:17Rory Stewart?

  Claire McCord, would love to hear your thoughts on the PSNI, Police Service Northern Ireland, data breach, particularly as I feel the seriousness this may not be quite understood in the rest of the UK.

• 19:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Rory Stewart?

  In an age of constant breaches and leaks of people's data. So take it back then to end of February, John Caldwell, he's the Detective Chief Inspector, is coaching some kids, he's leaning into the back of his car to put his footballs away, and he is then shot from behind by two gunmen and ends up in hospital. And it's a reminder of the risk. And off the back of this, there's now been a data leak where the names and the stations of, I think, almost every police officer in the Police Service in Northern Ireland.

• 19:57Alastair Campbell?

  And the roles crucially. So for example, you've got people who's, you know, role liaison with the security service, for example, you know, there's some pretty serious stuff there. And the PSNI Chief Constable, Simon Byrne, who's a very fine man, he has been open about the fact, he says, they're now confident that dissident Republicans do have possession of this stuff. So I mean, it's really, really alarming and really quite scary for a lot of people, this.

• 20:23Rory Stewart?

  And a reminder for all of us, I mean, it's incredibly, unfortunately, easy for this to happen. And we are so dependent, obviously, on data and IT. And it's complicated. I mean, I'm running a big charity at the moment where we're dealing with data in 14 different countries. And every time you upgrade or move to a new system, there are going to be other forms of cyber challenges and backdoors. And staying on top of this stuff is vital, particularly though, for governments, and particularly for something as sensitive as the Police Service in Northern Ireland. So I can't really understand how this happened, but I think it's a reminder for anyone listening that this stuff can happen so easily and does.

• 21:01Alastair Campbell?

  And also, I don't think most people, when we're, you know, and I'm as bad, I'm as guilty of this as anybody, but when we're sort of, you know, just working on our computer and you're sitting there and it says, accept this, decline that, agree to this, not agree to that, I don't think we really think through what we're doing with that stuff. But this is clearly some sort of cyber attack. But the document, it had the names of around 10,000 officers and staff, it had their surname, first initial, rank or grade. Where they were based and the unit they work in and the responsibilities that they had. So that's a lot of information. And as you said earlier, John Caldwell, you know, they, they obviously had the intelligence, they knew that that's what he did in his spare time. He coached kids' football.

• 21:40Alastair Campbell?

  Now, that's the sort of thing that you can probably find out anyway. But if you, if you are wanting to target police officers, then having the information that they now have is pretty alarming.

• 21:51Rory Stewart?

  And terrifying, obviously, if you are a police officer and all that. I mean, if you, every time you go coaching football and are leaning into the back of your car to put the footballs away, you think two people are going to come up and shoot you from behind. Your life becomes impossible. So here's a question for you. Jonah Woodward, what are your thoughts on the recent UFO congressional hearing in the US?

• 22:11Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't know there was one. Did you know there was one?

• 22:14Rory Stewart?

  I, I did, actually. I've been following. I mean, it's, it's the sort of thing that gets people very excited on social media.

• 22:18Alastair Campbell?

  This is probably going to make every conspiracy theorist in the world think that I just don't like conspiracy theories and I go over the top. But every time I see anything to do with UFOs and congressional inquiries, am I wrong just to sort of turn off?

• 22:33Rory Stewart?

  You're absolutely right. There's been some wonderful graphs of almost all the UFOs spotted in the world have been spotted from the United States or Britain, because clearly aliens are English speaking people. But then there's a town called, which I think maybe I've talked about before, but it's a town called Bonnybridge, which is in the central belt of Scotland. Anyway, it's right next to Falkirk. So it's, it's called the Falkirk Triangle. My friends Luke and Will went down there because they were really excited because they had 300 UFOs spottings in a year. And they were really, really excited to go down there and see a UFO. And then a bit disappointed to discover that I think out of the 300 sightings, 298 have been made by the same man.

• 23:11Alastair Campbell?

  So you have close friends who believe all this stuff?

• 23:15Rory Stewart?

  No, I don't, I, I don't know whether Will and Luke really believed it. I think it may be their idea of a, their sense of humour going down.

• 23:21Alastair Campbell?

  But I have to say Falkirk played a very, very important part of my life.

• 23:24Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:24Alastair Campbell?

  Because it was there in 1986 at the Falkirk Labour Club that I was drunk for the last time in my life.

• 23:31Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good. Very good.

• 23:34Alastair Campbell?

  So that's probably one of the many, many reasons to love the Labour Party.

• 23:37Speaker 02

  But why was that the last time in your life? You behaved so badly that that was a turning point for you?

• 23:41Alastair Campbell?

  That was when I, about three hours later, I was arrested and then I was locked up and then I was taken to hospital and then I was advised that, you know, this drinking at this level wasn't really very good for you. So, good old Falkirk, I say.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  Well done Falkirk. So, let's take a break.

• 24:09Speaker 03

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 24:16Speaker 04

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 24:23Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 24:25Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 24:28Speaker 03

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

• 24:41Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 24:52Speaker 05

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 24:59Speaker 05

  New from Gullhangar. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 25:03Speaker 08

  You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy!

• 25:07Speaker 05

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 25:09Speaker 08

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 25:13Speaker 05

  Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.

• 25:16Speaker 08

  We have two tight, friendly KIA.

• 25:18Speaker 05

  Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 25:45Alastair Campbell?

  I had one for you. You've been firing questions at me deliberately provocative.

• 25:50Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 25:50Alastair Campbell?

  Matt, Rory spoke very highly of Alex Chalk when he took over as Justice Secretary. What did he make there for of Alex Chalk's defence of Lee Anderson's comments on migrants?

• 26:01Rory Stewart?

  Well, obviously makes me a little bit uncomfortable. I think Alex Chalk, Cheltenham MP, he's very bright, he was a stalwart on Brexit, he really worked hard to try to get a decent compromise Brexit deal together with me. He pushed for customs union. I'm very proud he's Justice Secretary. I'm obviously disappointed by that. I think it's worth though, bearing in mind, as somebody who's been through the mill on this, and as you have too, that one of the problems is that you end up defending your party, right or wrong, and it's very difficult for outsiders to quite appreciate the pressures that you're always under in a government to defend your colleagues. And I think, you know, I would try to find a

• 26:45Rory Stewart?

  way of sort of defending a little bit half-heartedly and not getting out there, but it's a tribal game, isn't it? It's a very tribal game.

• 26:52Alastair Campbell?

  Let's say it had been you. You're the minister being sent out by Downing Street's spin doctors to defend everything the government says and does. Surely you, a civilised, reasonable, rational, well-educated man, cannot possibly defend the comments of Lee Anderson that are all over the papers this morning, which he told these poor bedraggled people getting on the Bibi Stockholm to fuck off back to France if they don't like it.

• 27:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, Alex, I mean, thank you for the compliments towards what a civilised man I am. Obviously, I wouldn't use that kind of language, but there is a serious issue here, which is the issue around whether or not France is a safe country.

• 27:35Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, you wouldn't use that language, so he was wrong to say that.

• 27:38Rory Stewart?

  Definitely not the language that I would use.

• 27:40Alastair Campbell?

  No, you're talking about yourself. I'm asking you, Mr Anderson, would you please, for the benefit of our listeners, condemn what Mr Anderson said?

• 27:49Rory Stewart?

  So I think you've done it beautifully. You've explained exactly what the issue is, right? And exactly what the problem facing Alex Chalk is, which is you'll bug it if you do and you bug it if you don't. If you go out there and say, he's a racist pig.

• 28:04Rory Stewart?

  You've just laid into the vice chairman of your own party and you turn up. And so it's no, it's it's tough. And I think when Labour's in government, they'll find themselves stuck in the same situation.

• 28:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, hopefully Keir Starmer won't appoint a Lee Anderson person. You know, really obsess me. If you'll say Lee Anderson's like Dennis Skinner. Dennis Skinner was a giant compared to Lee Anderson.

• 28:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, Lee Anderson's very weird, isn't he? Because he was a big Labour councillor.

• 28:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, he was.

• 28:30Rory Stewart?

  He ran the constituency office of Gloria Del Piero. He's quite a moderate Labour MP. It's kind of really weird that he's now flipped to being not just a Conservative, but a kind of far right Conservatives.

• 28:42Alastair Campbell?

  Converse, Rory, they're often the worst. Now, listen, we also, it's not just ministers who have to kind of watch what they say, particularly now in the world of artificial intelligence. Steve the chemist, I think, quotes, amazing, close quotes, is the most banal, overused.

• 29:00Rory Stewart?

  Oh, what an amazing question. It's an amazing question.

• 29:03Alastair Campbell?

  It's the most banal and overused word in the English language. So to stop me reporting on the Rest is Politics 2023, weekly usage of it, AC 51, Rory Stewart 127. What single word do you wordsmiths both detest currently and why?

• 29:24Rory Stewart?

  Okay, my, my big complaint, which I get to a lot when we're doing international development stuff, so working particularly in countries in Africa, is the way that jargon replaces any description of what's actually going on in a country. So I went through the South Sudan Development Report, and there's no mention of anything real, no mention of any of the names of the warring groups, or issues over oxen or guns or anything like that. Instead, the word governance appears 150 times.

• 29:53Alastair Campbell?

  But you can't not lie the word governance.

• 29:56Rory Stewart?

  Sustainability 175 times. And so I actually have developed a real sort of.

• 30:03Rory Stewart?

  Allergy to to to words like governance, not because I, you know, obviously I like governance, but I think they are amazing how we use those words to say nothing.

• 30:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:15Rory Stewart?

  And create create plans for countries which don't allow you to really grip the local, particular, real issues on the ground, but just cloak it in words like governance, sustainability, which nobody can disagree with, without specifying what they mean. I mean, sustainability can mean about five different things.

• 30:31Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. My um, mine is in a similar place. It's stakeholder.

• 30:34Rory Stewart?

  Stakeholder.

• 30:35Alastair Campbell?

  Can't stand that word.

• 30:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, stakeholder engagement.

• 30:39Alastair Campbell?

  And and and then there are certain phrases, getting round the table.

• 30:43Rory Stewart?

  Yep. So Priti Patel, when she was my boss, was always using the phrase rolling the pitch. I can never quite work out what she meant, but she would come into every meeting and she'd say, we're going to have to roll the pitch here.

• 30:53Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I know what you mean by that.

• 30:55Rory Stewart?

  What do you mean by that?

• 30:56Alastair Campbell?

  She's she means get the ground ready to do what it is she wants to do.

• 31:00Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 31:00Alastair Campbell?

  So, for example, it's a cricketing thing where you roll the pitch.

• 31:05Rory Stewart?

  Thank you.

• 31:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, talking of sport, Ruth Lampard, no relation to Frank, do you know who Frank Lampard is, Rory?

• 31:11Rory Stewart?

  Uh, yeah, he's a footballer, isn't he?

• 31:13Alastair Campbell?

  He was, he was. He's he's now a sacked manager. Great question this, though. Should there be a referee with VAR in place with power to pause to fact check statements made by ministers and MPs in Parliament and on any news media outlet? Clarity, transparency, better politics, better decisions. The penalty? Microphone to the other side for three minutes. That's a great idea.

• 31:41Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 31:41Alastair Campbell?

  Isn't it?

• 31:42Rory Stewart?

  It's fun. I like the microphone to the other side for three minutes, too. That's a way to go. Um, so final question for me. Sign of the times, privatisation, good or bad? What are the best examples? What are the worst? So here's, I, obviously, we're in a world which is very, very sceptical of privatisation. And we've talked a lot about problems with water privatisation. And I I went through with David Gorton, my colleague in the Ministry of Justice, we had to renationalise the privatised probation industry. It was a catastrophic attempt to. Privatise probation. But there are times when I I can see the point of privatisation. And perhaps the most striking example for me every day in the House of Commons was the House of Commons coffee shop.

• 32:24Rory Stewart?

  So in in the in Portcullis House, and and I, you know, I'm really sorry for the people working in the coffee shop who are going to be listening to this and hate me. But you would queue for about 12 minutes to get a really bad cup of coffee. And it was costing, when I looked at the accounts, the House of Commons an unbelievable amount to run it. The salaries were quite high, and I could totally believe that if Costa or Cafe Nero or Starbucks came in, they would produce a cup of coffee much more quickly. It would be a much better cup of coffee, and they'd probably pay the House of Commons for the privilege rather than us losing money on it.

• 33:00Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not sure that was the kind of privatisation that the question had in mind.

• 33:04Rory Stewart?

  Oh, well, why was that not a good example of why privatisation can work?

• 33:08Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I see where it could work. Yeah.

• 33:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 33:10Alastair Campbell?

  Which, let's go through the ones, the big ones thus far. Which ones do you think have have worked the least well? I'm going water.

• 33:18Rory Stewart?

  So I think the definition of bad privatisation is where there's a natural monopoly, so you can't really get competition. And the obvious ones on that are are rail, where you just have the rail tracks laid down, and water, where the costs of creating new water pipes doesn't work. I think it it can work. I think it did work with BT. I think the days when you waited famously, you know, nine days to get your telephone installed and was crazy. Um, I think the British automobile industry being run by the government was mad and led to crazy subsidies and crazy forms of politicians getting jobs, running all these things. I mean, one of the weird things is that British Leyland and British Coal and British Gas were all became sinecures for retired politicians

• 34:02Rory Stewart?

  who were pushed in there by Labour or Conservatives, putting their cronies in. So I think that there were things that that made sense to privatisise, but I think it's all about competition firstly and and strong regulation. I mean, there's never strong enough regulation to actually make sure these people are doing what they've undertaken to do.

• 34:20Alastair Campbell?

  Ryan, and my final question, I can't decide between the one about a modern political musical from Kate Leslie or the one from James Pickering about what do we think about King Charles getting a 45% pay rise during a cost of living crisis. So what do you think of the King getting a 45% pay rise?

• 34:39Rory Stewart?

  How did I predict that? That was absolutely astonishing, I predict that. Well, okay, so what that really is, is that in 2012, I think it was, the government decided that instead of the royal family being paid with votes in Parliament from taxation money, instead what they were going to do is say that the royal family could take money from its traditional crown estates and get back to the days when, you know, it wasn't a constitutional monarchy, but monarchs ruled the whole country. There's obviously huge land holdings that the monarchs had. And so the agreement was that the government

• 35:20Rory Stewart?

  would, I think, split the income from the crown estates with the monarchy. The idea of that was to de-pleasurise. It means that you didn't have to have an argument in Parliament about exactly how much they were getting every year. But what's happened is that the value of the crown estates has gone up. That means the government's getting more revenue from them, but it also means the royal family's getting more revenue from them. And it's been a particularly good year for the crown estates because there's been a lot of construction, I think, on some of the offshore sites that they own.

• 35:49Alastair Campbell?

  I thought you were going to say that, this is what I'm going to say, is that, you know, he's had a massive promotion. He's gone from being, you know, a mere Prince of Wales to being the King. So he's bound to get a pay rise. Also, Roy, I have to tell you, did you know, I mean, you know, the guy a lot better than I do, but did you know that he actually identifies as a Burnley fan?

• 36:10Rory Stewart?

  He does not. He's a Burnley fan.

• 36:12Alastair Campbell?

  He does. He's a, and I can send you, and we should put in the newsletter, I can send you the picture of him holding a Burnley shirt. And it's because the Prince's Trust has done an awful lot of stuff up in what's known as the Weavers' Triangle in Burnley. So he does identify as a Burnley fan.

• 36:27Rory Stewart?

  Well, so here's, here's the actual way that this all works. So there's something called the sovereign grant, and it is 15% of the income account net surplus to the crown estate for the financial year that began two years previously.

• 36:39Alastair Campbell?

  That was quick word by the Buckingham Palace Press Office. How did they get that just straight away?

• 36:43Rory Stewart?

  Pretty, pretty quick. And it, and it goes up and down. So, you know, some years it drops, some years it goes up. And at the moment, it's higher because they got a concession to take 25% for a limited period for renovation and repairs to Buckingham Palace. But it is still much, much, much cheaper than a residence around the world. So almost every time people try to measure this, work out how much a head of state costs, generally, the British monarchy is considered a bit of a bargain, although, of course, it does, I understand, sometimes frustrate some of our listeners. I am obviously largely a conservative because I am a huge admirer of the King and a great believer in the British monarchy. But part of that

• 37:28Rory Stewart?

  is an emotional, romantic nostalgia.

• 37:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, we know that. Well, I do. I do like the fact that he identifies as a Burnley fan. And also, I'm sure you have some friends, and I have some friends who send you messages literally about every single episode. Do you have friends like that?

• 37:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:45Alastair Campbell?

  One of the ones that does that to me is Malky Mackay, who is the manager of Ross County. And amid his message this week was a picture of himself with the King at the Port of Nig.

• 37:59Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 38:00Alastair Campbell?

  You know where the Port of Nig is? It's one of the school's most important energy industry facilities. And there was the King up there, meeting the people, including the manager of Ross County.

• 38:11Rory Stewart?

  Just to finish on that, one of the things that is amazing is how incredible I found it in Cumbria, that when David Cameron would come to visit, almost nobody would come out in the streets to meet him. But when, and I'm afraid probably the same would be true of Keir Starmer, but when the King, or then the Prince of Wales, turned up in Wigtown, which was a town of about 5,000 people, there must have been 7,000 people in the streets in driving Cumbria in rain for an hour and a half, standing there waiting. And he really took the time to go around, talking to a very, very large number of people. And he's doing sort of, I mean, I don't know, he still does this. But those days in Cumbria, he would do, I think, 11 meetings in a day, wouldn't stop for lunch, he probably would meet.

• 38:57Rory Stewart?

  I don't know, thousands of people have a comm social and I don't know how he found the energy to do that. And I think he's genuinely enjoys it. He really likes meeting people, but it was a reminder of the fact that politicians don't have that level of enthusiasm or support in the way that I felt that he did, at least in Cumbria.

• 39:16Alastair Campbell?

  You know, maybe they, one of the functions of the royal family is to have that. Because I mentioned the Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary series that I watched. Funny enough, when he was out and about, he did get that sort of turnout in different places that he went to. And I guess Trump does. We mentioned Zimbabwe in the main podcast. Honestly, looking at the size of some of the rallies, absolutely unbelievable, to be, you know, 200,000 people turning out. So I think it depends. I think it's part of the British sort of, oh, God, here they come, sort of mood that attaches itself to politicians. Rory, next time we go to Scotland together, though, we're going to, you know, we've got several thousand coming to see us.

• 39:53Rory Stewart?

  Yep, absolutely. And the Albert Hall, Albert Hall end of this year, looking forward to that very much.

• 39:59Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly.

• 40:00Rory Stewart?

  But unlike, unlike Yoval Noah Harari, who we're just going to plug as we come to the end, because we've got a second interview with him, he has managed to do what we have not done, which is sell out the O2.

• 40:10Alastair Campbell?

  We haven't tried.

• 40:11Rory Stewart?

  Oh, there we are.

• 40:12Alastair Campbell?

  And also we did sell out, we sold it out for Anthony Joshua. We talked to Anthony Joshua on the Rest is Polity's leading and lo and behold, even though he wasn't even fighting the guy who was meant to be fighting, O2 packed out.

• 40:24Rory Stewart?

  And anyone interested in finding out why a young Israeli historian, scientist and philosopher can pack out the entire O2 arena, listen to our leading podcast out this week, second podcast interview on the life of the universe and everything with Yoval Noah Harari.

• 40:44Alastair Campbell?

  All right, Rory, that's it for this week. Speak to you very, very soon.

• 40:48Rory Stewart?

  Speak soon. Bye bye.