192. What David Cameron’s return means for Israel-Gaza

What does David Cameron's appointment as Foreign Secretary mean for the UK's policy towards Israel and Palestine? What happened at the pro-Palestinian and against antisemitism marches? Has prime minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez behaved undemocratically? Rory and Alastair discuss all this and more in today's episode of The Rest is Politics. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ 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] 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.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:36Speaker 03

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• 2:11Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Azd Campbell.

• 2:13Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart. And we're straight out of an amazing emergency pod. Did you enjoy your live streaming?

• 2:20Alastair Campbell?

  I did, although I don't know if you could tell, but where I was recording it was in my office at home and it's a complete mess at the moment.

• 2:28Rory Stewart?

  I couldn't see, no, you were being rude about my hotel room and I missed all this.

• 2:31Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, good, good, good, because it was a bit of a chaos is the word. But interesting, was it? I did enjoy it. I really did enjoy it.

• 2:37Rory Stewart?

  And amazing, I mean, a real sort of introduction to a certain kind of 24 hour news. So we were doing, for listeners who haven't caught up on our emergency podcast, we were covering Rishi Sunak's decision to fire Suella Bravman and bring in David Cameron, the former prime minister, through the House of Lords to become the new Foreign Secretary. And at the same time, there were these thousands of comments coming in on everything from, I'm not looking at the screen in the right way, I've got the wrong headphones on, and various weird jokes going on.

• 3:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but some serious points in there.

• 3:07Rory Stewart?

  Some serious points in there. And some interestingly, I mean, quite a mixed audience. So there were people clearly from the left who reckon Suella Bravman has no support at all, people clearly from the right who reckon Suella Bravman speaks for 70% of the country.

• 3:20Alastair Campbell?

  Which she doesn't.

• 3:20Rory Stewart?

  Which she doesn't. But really, I mean, I thought it was good to get that debate happening in life.

• 3:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, in real time, yeah. No, we should definitely, we should definitely do it again. It was, it was interesting today. I just came out of the tube and I was, walked into the newsagent and all the papers were laid out there. Every single, this is very rare that this happens, every single national newspaper had the same, basically the same picture on the front, which was a huge picture of David Cameron. And I think only the Daily Express had a tiny little headshot of Suella Braverman. And the headline was something like, you know, who's going to speak up for the red wall now? As if Suella Braverman was some sort of great campaigner for places like Burnley and Accrington.

• 4:03Rory Stewart?

  But that, of course, is what her pitch was, wasn't it?

• 4:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I think it's nonsense.

• 4:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So just, just again, quick reminder for people. So Suella Braverman has been positioned herself as the voice of the right of the party. And it seemed to be important for Rishi Sunak when he was running against Boris Johnson, basically. So Liz Truss, you remember, fell after, you know, less than 50 days in office. And there was a rumor that Boris Johnson was going to try to come back as prime minister. And the whole question was, who was going to be able to cross this threshold of 100 votes? So Suella Bravman was signed up to come in behind Rishi Sunak and was meant to be critical to stopping Boris Johnson's momentum and letting Rishi Sunak get through because she's supposed to speak for a right wing element in the party represented by figures

• 4:50Rory Stewart?

  that many people won't have heard of like John Hayes, who's a veteran right wing Conservative backbencher. Tim Bale, who's an academic who we often quote on the show, has done some analysis on it.

• 5:01Alastair Campbell?

  That's because he sends a lot of messages.

• 5:03Rory Stewart?

  He does send a lot of messages.

• 5:03Alastair Campbell?

  And some of them are very good.

• 5:04Rory Stewart?

  They're very good. Anyway, he points out that actually he's done the numbers and he's decided that Rishi Sunak didn't need Suella Bravman and that she brought over far fewer votes than people would have expected. It looks like she only brought over about seven votes and that's one of the problems. Somebody presents themselves as being the leader of a faction of the party, but when they swap sides, they can't actually bring their followers with them. Boris Johnson experienced this. When I was running against him in the leadership, I remember he convinced Matt Hancock to join him, promised Matt Hancock the chance to be Health Secretary. Matt Hancock promised to bring over all the people that had voted for him in the previous round, but actually in reality, those voters almost entirely went to me and to other candidates. They didn't go over to Boris Johnson. So

• 5:48Rory Stewart?

  I think the same problem with Suella Bravman. So anyway, on this basis, this legend which has been built up, which she was an important voice for dozens of MPs, he kept her in the cabinet despite repeated tension, tension over her language around invasion of immigrants, tension around her saying homeless people living in tents was a lifestyle choice. And then most recently, the thing that really blew it up was that she wrote a column for The Times in which she described the pro-Palestinian marches as hate marches and said the police were playing favourites and Downing Street had not cleared this. Anyway, over to you.

• 6:24Alastair Campbell?

  Look, when Johnson, when there was this stuff about Johnson coming back. I thought it was utterly ridiculous. I thought it was even for the Conservative Party impossible and a complete nonsense. It was never going to happen. And I think we said on the podcast at the time, I was not of the view that Sunak needed to do what he did with the Bravman. He lost the trust. And then, when he didn't have a challenge, I think had Johnson managed to get the numbers, which he wasn't going to do, they're not all crazy, then he would have beaten them. And I think it shows a lack of political judgment on his part, that he felt he had to do that deal.

• 7:04Rory Stewart?

  He must have been desperate. I mean, as you often remind people, he came into politics in 2015. He was running very, very, you know, early in his political career. He'd just lost a leadership race less than two months earlier. So he must have been not wanting to take any risks.

• 7:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. That point about experience is incredibly important. In fact, just outside before we came into the studio, the other podcaster who's performing today in this building is Ian Wright, the former Burnley footballer.

• 7:29Rory Stewart?

  I was very pleased because you said to me very embarrassingly in front of him, come on Rory, who is this guy? And fortunately, I did actually recognise Ian Wright.

• 7:35Alastair Campbell?

  You did. And he then said that, you know, we were, what was his word? We were rocking it. Anyway, he was making the point, we were talking about Burnley, because he did play for us for a while, and Burnley, as you may know, Rory, were currently bottom of the league. And he was talking about the importance of experience. And then we got on to the thing about Cameron. And he was making the point, he said, look, say what you like, and everybody's saying all sorts of things about him, but at least he's got a bit of experience. You know, I think that is, that is a significant thing, you know, to have somebody now. I've been, I've been thinking about it a lot overnight. I think there are massive risks in it. But I think on balance, it's a, it's a pretty good move for them. The risks are obvious, you know, he's the architect of austerity, he gave us the stupid referendum, which has ripped the country apart. His money making. I think there will

• 8:20Alastair Campbell?

  be a problem. And interestingly, I watched an interview with Rhys Mog last night, Jacob Rhys Mog. And this is their line. It was very.

• 8:26Rory Stewart?

  And Rhys Mog representing the Tory right.

• 8:29Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. First of all, his first.

• 8:30Rory Stewart?

  And not, not a fan of Cameron.

• 8:31Alastair Campbell?

  Not a fan of Cameron. And his first point was, it's a terrible mistake. He's bought this nonsense that Suella Bravman sort of speaks for the working man, you know, Suella is this and Suella is that. But then he went on to say, I know how you think David Cameron, very, very, very impressive prime minister, did some marvellous things. I think the risk for Mr. Sunak. Will be that David Cameron will rather overshadow him, that people will look at him and think he's much more prime ministerial. And I think that's, so that's the line they're going to run. And that is a risk. There was a picture, Downing Street released a picture of Cameron and Sunak together in the Cabinet Room. And it was a little bit like that Elon Musk picture.

• 9:08Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 9:09Alastair Campbell?

  Cameron sort of looked very kind of.

• 9:11Rory Stewart?

  Well, he's taller.

• 9:12Alastair Campbell?

  He's tall, he's quite sort of well built and he's, he looks prime ministerial in Sunak there and his sort of white shirt.

• 9:18Rory Stewart?

  But on the other hand, I suppose it's, you, you could spin it around if you wanted to spin it and say it's a sign of confidence from Sunak that he's prepared to have his predecessor work from. Um, and as you say, the experience point's really important. I mean, David Cameron basically entered conservative politics in nineteen eighty nine. He really served his time. He was a special advisor famously during, uh, to Norman Lamont during the ERM crash. He, I think, first started getting on the candidate's list in the mid nineties. Um, tried to run in ninety seven, got in in two thousand one, became party leader in two thousand and five. I mean, he's really.

• 9:52Alastair Campbell?

  No, he's been around.

• 9:53Rory Stewart?

  And, and he knows, I guess, I mean, he'll be a bit rusty, I suppose, after six, seven years, but what, what do you make of him as a media, what's his strengths and weaknesses as a media performer?

• 10:02Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I think he's, I think he's a very effective media performer. Um. And, uh, you saw that yesterday, actually, he, he was, um, being interviewed in the Foreign Office and the interviewer trying to run him ragged on Greensell, this financial scandal in which he was involved. And, and he, he just, he shut it down quite effectively. Now, I think there will be.

• 10:20Rory Stewart?

  What's his line to shut it down?

• 10:22Alastair Campbell?

  His line to shut it down was, that was then, this is now. I now have only one interest and one job and it's the Foreign Secretary. And he's, you know, he just, he, he, he dealt with it pretty effectively. I think he's also got a, you know, he's, he's got a calm about him, which I think is incredibly important in politics. Tony Blair always had that, even if he was raging underneath or he was sort of boiling with anxiety, he had a calm about his public demeanor. Which Johnson never had, Truss never had, and I think Sunak sometimes looked.

• 10:46Rory Stewart?

  And Gordon Gordon Brown never had.

• 10:48Alastair Campbell?

  No, Gordon, you always felt the kind of the tensions in there, but Cameron does have a calm about him. I think some of your former cabinet colleagues will be looking at him a bit of scance. I'd love to know what's going through Michael Gove's head. If you think Michael Gove, who, you know, basically destroyed it as Prime Minister in a way. I mean, he and Johnson, between them, effectively destroyed Cameron. So there's Gove, who would Gove have thought he might have been up for one of these jobs? I bet he did, you know?

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes, would have already hoped. I mean, Michael Gove has been dreaming of being Foreign Secretary for a very long time.

• 11:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, or, you know, he's never had one of the top four jobs, has he?

• 11:23Rory Stewart?

  And he's and he's barely left the cabinet since 2010. I mean, he's one of these real veterans. I mean, there are a couple of them. Jeremy Hunt left during Boris Johnson's period, but has also been in a lot since 2010.

• 11:35Alastair Campbell?

  It's very hard though now, let's be frank. There's Rishi Sunak at the party conference, basically. And by the way, sources close to David Cameron have told me in the past that Cameron was very pissed off with Sunak's speech at the conference because he was, he wasn't saying Labour were a failure. He was saying we've had 30 years of failure.

• 11:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, and I think pissed off in the same way that many people amongst your friends were very angry with Ed Miliband's attempts to repudiate Tony Blair. They, they, people don't like the idea that you're trying to represent change by shitting on your.

• 12:08Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly, but that was his big message at the party conference. I am the change. And now, you know, if you think, if you think about the various stages of Sunak, he comes in at the start and says, I'm going to be competent compared to the others. That has sort of now got lost in, oh, all he cares about is spreadsheets. Then he was going to be the change. And yet his answer to change within a few weeks of that speech is to bring back the guy who he was pissing all over in his conference speech. So it's just a lack of strategy to me.

• 12:38Rory Stewart?

  And who attacked him over HST.

• 12:39Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Cameron will be a team player, though. I think that one of my favourite quotes about politics, Truman, saying it's amazing what a small group can achieve, provided nobody cares who gets the credit. I think Cameron, he didn't look like somebody yesterday who wants people to think he's more powerful than Sunak. I think he's a team player.

• 12:57Rory Stewart?

  And the great advantage is he doesn't want to be Prime Minister. Every other member of Rishi Sunak's cabinet wants to be the next Conservative leader. This is the one person who's been there and done that and doesn't want it again.

• 13:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but you know what? Do you think, yeah, possibly. He might think if it crashes and burns and renounces the periods, get a seat last minute.

• 13:16Rory Stewart?

  Oh, that would be interesting. It depends what he's felt actually of the last six, seven years of his life. I mean, I think as a, as an ex politician myself, I mean, there are definitely moments where you really do feel incredible nostalgia and lack because there's a sense of purpose in government that is very difficult to get in private life. So I, to some extent, it's a wonderful gift for Cameron. I mean, it's a chance for him to re-establish himself as a statesman in a way that Tony Blair and John Major managed to do, but he really hasn't managed to do, partly because of Greensill, partly because of Brexit. So I think it is a, a great gift for him.

• 13:53Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. It's interesting, within like minutes, sorry.

• 13:59Alastair Campbell?

  Actually, he's very loyal to get a, a text during the thing, but this one's worth getting. I'm not going to say the author of this, but it's almost as if he was listening. This is, you'll see from a senior Labour figure, why is everyone being so nice to Cameron? Holding the Brexit referendum was the worst single decision by any prime minister in British history. In the words of my physio this morning, he's destroyed the country. Why doesn't he crawl back under a rock? So that is a different view.

• 14:27Rory Stewart?

  So he's not, I mean, I'm, I'm fascinated by this question because I'm, I've not traditionally really been a fan of his. I, I, I really liked working for Theresa May. Cameron was not my style of politics. To, to help my career, I actually wrote an article in the New York Times in two thousand and eight saying I thought Gordon Brown would be a more serious prime minister than David Cameron, which really, really kind of helped me. But I've been fascinated by the way in which somehow, even if you look at his individual mistakes, which are very, very many, I mean, it's quite difficult.

• 14:54Alastair Campbell?

  And huge. I mean, the referendum is catastrophic.

• 14:56Rory Stewart?

  My friend John Hat came up with a list of two hundred and fifty seven mistakes that David Cameron made, which he'd be happy, happy to share with you.

• 15:03Alastair Campbell?

  Who's this?

• 15:03Rory Stewart?

  This is my friend John from Cumbria, but he used to write down every catastrophic strategic.

• 15:07Alastair Campbell?

  Can we have it for the, can we have it for the newsletter, please?

• 15:10Rory Stewart?

  Get him on. But, and, and I, you know, really felt that he, my problems with David Cameron, I think probably began with his refusal to come out against the Iraq war, his refusal to actually come out boldly on Afghanistan. But I also thought the style of the way in which he ran things was not profoundly serious. I felt that, you know, he was, he was loved because he was very calm. He was loved because he'd chaired meetings very efficiently. People said, you know, compared to Gordon Brown, who would get really into the details of things and spend, you know, hours agonising like some great spider brooding over the system. David Cameron was very efficient, you know, meetings were run on time. Civil servants often liked him because he made decisions quickly and easily and he

• 15:54Rory Stewart?

  didn't get too anxious about things. Journalists always responded more positively to him than I could ever quite understand. So there's something I didn't quite get about him. I think it's, it's, it's the same with George W Bush. I could never really get him. I could never really understand why people said he was somebody they want to have a barbecue with. I don't have a barbecue with him.

• 16:13Alastair Campbell?

  No, I get that completely. I think the answer to my friend's question, why are people being so nice to David Cameron is also partly because he is now the person who's not the guy in charge and some people will be building him up to use him against that, including on the right and on the left. So Labour will, and I do think with, I was speaking to somebody pretty high up in the Labour Party yesterday and I was saying that I think actually you should use this to signal to the rest of the Labour Party, this is an opportunity to up the game. You know, this is an opportunity to remind people the Tories are going to do anything they can, anything to try to hang on. And I think that, you know, Labour should take this on as a, as an opportunity.

• 16:55Rory Stewart?

  And what is the opportunity? How would you characterize it and, and, and use this?

• 16:59Alastair Campbell?

  I think the opportunity is actually about the fact to the point of Sunak not really knowing what he's about and what he wants to do for the country and he doesn't have any clarity about his plans. And it doesn't really change the fundamentals for people's lives. So it becomes, and if you think, if you think about it, our conversation is reflecting this. It's really about how this is playing politically, how people within politics are feeling about this, but it's not going to change the fundamentals for most people's lives. And that's where I think Labour can play in Cameron. The story of, the reason why the Tories have to go is not just because Sunak's not up to it, not just because Johnson was a liar, not just because trust was awful, but we've had five prime ministers now, starting with Cameron, who gave his austerity in the referendum. Theresa May, who, you know, couldn't hold the party together, Johnson, who's an exposed

• 17:44Alastair Campbell?

  charlatan liar, Truss, who smashed the economy, and now Sunak, who doesn't know what he's doing. So I'd build the five in as part of the narrative.

• 17:50Rory Stewart?

  Build the five in. Before we move on, I think two things interesting about this, if we take the position seriously. One of them is that the advantage of being a Foreign Secretary in the Lords is that you can travel much more. You don't have a constituency, you're not bound in to voting in the House of Commons the same way. That was something I felt. So I was the Minister of State in the Foreign Office, in this number two position. And it was absolutely unbelievable how often really important trips had to be cancelled.

• 18:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, because you had to vote.

• 18:19Rory Stewart?

  For me to come back and vote, or get up to the constituency, and how much trouble I got my constituents, who would say, you know, why were you not in the constituency this weekend? And I was saying, well, I had to go to the inauguration in Kenya or whatever.

• 18:29Alastair Campbell?

  To be moved out for a Chinese junior dip.

• 18:32Rory Stewart?

  To be moved out, exactly, for a junior dip for China. Exactly. That was my experience. So I think it will be good to have a Foreign Secretary who's actually able to be abroad. The other thing that we're really going to have to concentrate on is what will this mean for the British government's policy towards Israel-Palestine?

• 18:50Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 18:51Rory Stewart?

  David Cameron was somebody who, often in the House of Commons, in fact, I think in his very first Prime Minister's Questions, his second answer, he says, as a friend of Israel, and I consider myself a friend of Israel, he put into the House of Lords, the head of the Conservative Friends of Israel, he was very supportive of Eric Pickles, who was very much campaigning on that side. And he was very, very much against the Muslim Brotherhood, which is allied to Hamas. He's tended, and of course, we heard when we interviewed on leading with Saad Wasi, that she was suggesting that one of the things that disappointed her about David Cameron is that he tended to

• 19:28Alastair Campbell?

  Go radicalise them, she said.

• 19:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, to buy into negative stories about Muslims and connections between Islam and terrorism. So. I think from Israel's point of view, they will feel that they have got an ally here. And we'll have to see how Cameron negotiates that, and of course, Europe. I mean, he is somebody, I mean, you know, he's a foreign secretary. He's somebody who makes no secret of the fact that he thought that Brexit was a catastrophe. Am I right in saying that he flirted with you with the second referendum idea?

• 19:58Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I think there was, we were in two minds about whether actually having, having Cameron out there on the cause was a good thing or a bad thing. I, I think on balance, you know, he'd, he'd moved away, I think he wanted to stay out of the debate. And I think also he was one of those Tories who thought that, well, you know, the referendum's happened and we're going to have to try and make the best of it. I, I, so I, I think flirt is probably about as close as it ever got. So I thought it was very interesting yesterday, within five minutes of leaving Number 10, he was, he was having a meeting with the Indian Foreign Minister. And then he was doing a phone call with Blinken. You know, there are some pretty big issues there and it's, there's no doubt that he will get more traction, being Cameron going around the world.

• 20:40Alastair Campbell?

  There'll be, there'll be more of an interest in him than there would be had Sunak appointed, I don't know, Michael Gove.

• 20:46Rory Stewart?

  No, it's a really big deal. And of course, remember that many of the leaders who are still in place were in place when he was the Prime Minister.

• 20:53Alastair Campbell?

  There were lots of, I mean, I saw, you know, I mean, Mark Rutte, he's, he's leaving, but Mark Rutte, the Dutch Prime Minister tweeting, welcome back, David. Karl Bilt.

• 21:03Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 21:03Alastair Campbell?

  Former Prime, he, he's one of the few who's been a Prime Minister and a Foreign Minister and saying, you know, join the club.

• 21:08Rory Stewart?

  And Narendra Modi was leading India when Cameron was Prime Minister. Xi Jinping was leading China when Cameron was Prime Minister. Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden was the Vice President of the United States when, when he was Prime Minister. So, and of course, in the Gulf, most of those monarchies, he would have had a very close, long-standing relationship with, yeah. He was at the King of Jordan's son's wedding, you know, so he's, yeah, that's a few months ago.

• 21:31Alastair Campbell?

  He's plugged in. There's a lot of, the Israeli press have been running this story about Tony becoming Netanyahu's. He's sort of, you know, advisor on how to get out of it.

• 21:40Rory Stewart?

  Is that true?

• 21:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think it's true that the Israelis would like Tony to to be involved in some way. But I think Tony's view is that only if it's a really serious proposal.

• 21:50Rory Stewart?

  It is the right way to approach it, to be working for Israelis as opposed to be independent of both.

• 21:55Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think that that would, no, I think that's what it would be. It would be a bit like the role he had before, but but it's, as it were, the idea is coming from them. Because I think they understand that he does have access and traction on both sides. I think he'll only do it if he thinks this is a genuine, serious attempt by the Israelis to get this thing to a better place. And I think he needs probably a bit of convincing about that.

• 22:16Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 22:17Alastair Campbell?

  One, my final point on the reshuffle, something which I did think is quite interesting. I think we've discussed this before. Politics is about the only arena in life where you never see people going down a few pegs. So there's me talking to Ian Wright. You regularly get managers who've been in the Premier League, then they pop up in the Division Two.

• 22:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:37Alastair Campbell?

  And you get players who start at Arsenal, but they end up at, you know, Watford or.

• 22:42Rory Stewart?

  That's partly about getting older, isn't it?

• 22:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, yeah, but it's also about the fact of in politics, if you're out, you're out. Whereas I saw, I thought it was interesting that Andrea Ledsum.

• 22:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:50Alastair Campbell?

  And Damien Hines, both former cabinet ministers, he's brought them back.

• 22:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:54Alastair Campbell?

  In positions.

• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:56Alastair Campbell?

  A couple of levels down, which which I think is, I think is a good thing.

• 22:58Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's also says a lot for people like Damien Hines, who's who's been the President's Minister, having been Secretary of State for Education when in entries made cabinet with me and a really good cabinet performer. That he has been prepared to just keep pushing on now for a long, long time.

• 23:12Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 23:13Rory Stewart?

  As a junior minister, having been a cabinet minister, says, says a lot, lot for him.

• 23:16Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, here we are talking about Cameron being a serious figure, et cetera, et cetera. And Sunak getting the Conservative Party in a better place. But then he goes and ruins it all by, what, I mean, what, I heard the new chairman, Richard Holden, majority one, one, four, four, just to give him a few sleepless nights. I heard him this morning trying to answer the question, what is the Minister for Common Sense? And what is this estimate of a person going to do? And he didn't seem to me to have an answer. I mean, what a complete nonsense. Minister for Common Sense.

• 23:48Rory Stewart?

  That's pretty peculiar. And I do think although we in Britain pride ourselves on common sense, although the Conservative Party loves to see itself as part of it, I think defining common sense has defied most of the greatest analytical philosophers.

• 24:00Alastair Campbell?

  They had a minister for levelling up, that didn't work.

• 24:03Rory Stewart?

  Levelling up, at least, I think you get.

• 24:04Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:05Rory Stewart?

  Common sense, I think, is very difficult to get your head around, partly because everybody thinks they have common sense and almost none of us do.

• 24:14Alastair Campbell?

  It also does say, I suspect, the other thing that will be a problem is that there'll be a lot of MPs thinking this is basically a judgment on us that he felt he had to go to the House of Lords or put somebody in the House of Lords to get a Foreign Secretary.

• 24:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think there'll be people across for that. Right now, just to finish the first half, France. So there's been these extraordinary march in Paris, very, very moving march. Over a hundred thousand people marching against antisemitism. And it was a rather wonderful march. I was talking to someone who was on it. The decision was, there were no banners, no slogans, no chanting. So people walked in a very respectful way, but there was applause as people walked through. It is a complicated issue in France, to put it mildly.

• 24:57Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Third biggest Jewish population in the world.

• 25:00Rory Stewart?

  Very large, kind of half a million people. And even though there's been an increasing immigration from France to Israel over the last 10, 20 years, still a very significant, significant population. France, of course, a very complicated, deeper history of antisemitism. So it's a slightly different context to Britain, you know, Dreyfus affair, but also, of course, the Second World War. And I think, though, now antisemitism in France is largely at least perceived as being driven by Muslim communities. And one of the tensions in French society is between quite a large Jewish community and an increasingly large Muslim, mostly North African community.

• 25:39Alastair Campbell?

  The incidence of what the police and the security services define as antisemitic acts has tripled since October the 7th.

• 25:49Alastair Campbell?

  One thousand two hundred and fifty. And, you know, we said last week that some of the Jewish people we've been speaking to, who have noticed that this is their, what Braverman calls the hate marches, which was one of the most offensive things to say. But what they feel is that when they see these pro Palestinian marches, you see people of all classes, all colors, all ages, et cetera. But when you have pro Jewish marches, you tend only to see Jews. And what was different about the one in France was that this did have much more of a feel of people coming out and saying, look, there is this rise of antisemitism, but we are not going to be part of it. And it was much more of a classless kind of exhibition. And of course, the big news story out of it was the fact

• 26:32Alastair Campbell?

  that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far right, whose father, Jean Marie Le Pen, was an avowed antisemite, that she was on the march, but Mélenchon, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who leads the hard left.

• 26:44Rory Stewart?

  Just sort of Jeremy Corbyn.

• 26:45Alastair Campbell?

  Jeremy Corbyn type figure in French politics, was not there.

• 26:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Alastair Campbell?

  Presumably either because they're worried about offending his Muslim supporters, or because he's part of that hard left tradition that does have a little bit of a problem with Israel.

• 26:58Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, like Corbyn himself. One more thing that was very interesting is there's been the daubing of Stars of David on walls in France. And it appears from the early reporting as though the people doing it were Moldovans, who appear to have been in contact with some kind of Russian handler. And this has raised the possibility that quite a lot of what is happening, or some element of what is happening, is the Russian intelligence services trying to stir up strife in Europe. And they have real, I mean, this isn't just a conspiracy theory. There's now very good documentary evidence that they did exactly that in Germany in the late nineteen fifty's, early nineteen sixty's,

• 27:39Rory Stewart?

  and very, very successfully. So deliberately backed German far right groups to do antisemitic things, really shook the German government, got the British Parliament and others very angry with Germany, caused huge rifts in Europe. And certainly, Russian bots have really been pushing hard, this kind of divisiveness.

• 27:56Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. God, the world without social media, you'd think it might have been better.

• 28:00Rory Stewart?

  Just possibly.

• 28:01Alastair Campbell?

  Shall we have a final word before the break on the, the, the future of the weekly marches in the UK?

• 28:08Alastair Campbell?

  We are talking about pretty big numbers now. The police normally give underestimates of this numbers and even the police were saying three hundred thousand at the weekend, plus out marches in different parts of the country. And I do think that some of the, I thought Sunak's statements on the weekend, the policing was was an outrage actually because it was a little bit like Trump's, there are good people on both sides. They were essentially saying that these far right protesters, or they called them counter protesters, but who were trying to get to the Senate out, that the violence was sort of equivalent to what was happening on the pro Palestinian march, which just was not the case. I mean, if you just look at the numbers of the far right and the level of violence, it was horrible. And then you look at three hundred thousand with just a few arrests.

• 28:48Rory Stewart?

  There was quite a good balanced article, I thought, in The Times by somebody who'd been with the pro Palestinian march, which we can share in the in the notes, in which he got the sense that a lot of it was very moderate, very frondy. And I saw bits of it. I took my kids out to Hyde Park that afternoon and I saw a lot of people coming back with flags. But there were also things that he picked up.

• 29:10Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah, no, for sure.

• 29:11Rory Stewart?

  And definitely, there's something visually very, very disturbing about people deliberately dressing in balaclavas with headbands, because that's kind of sort of ISIS weirdness going on.

• 29:23Alastair Campbell?

  And again, to be fair to the police, the police get a lot of flak. They were put under horrible pressure by what Bravman and the right wing press did. And I thought it was quite interesting how they they police things as fairly calmly, apart from where it got really violent. But then on the, I think it was the Sunday or the Monday, I think it was after the Almstons commemorations, they put out a series of pictures, quite a lot of them, essentially saying, we'd like to interview these people on both the far right and some people on the on the pro Palestinian march. And I suspect that very quietly now it'll be going around interviewing these people and saying, you know, why did you carry that antisemitic placard? Why did you offend that person at Waterloo Station? Whatever it might be. So I think they handled it pretty well under pretty intolerable pressure.

• 30:06Rory Stewart?

  Good.

• 30:07Alastair Campbell?

  Take a break.

• 30:08Rory Stewart?

  Take a break.

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• 31:29Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 31:32Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 31:34Rory Stewart?

  Now, Alistair, what I want to know is what legacy do you think you'll leave?

• 31:37Alastair Campbell?

  God, well, I was asked this at Britport Book Festival. I think they wanted me-

• 31:42Rory Stewart?

  You put me on a plug for Britport Book Festival.

• 31:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I enjoyed it. I did enjoy it. And the thing I enjoyed most about it was my dog coming on the stage at the end.

• 31:48Rory Stewart?

  That was very moving.

• 31:49Alastair Campbell?

  It was very moving, yeah. But no, and somebody asked me about what my legacy would be. And I said, well, I don't think I'll really have one because I was part of working with a genuinely historic figure who Tony Blair will have and Gordon Brown will have big legacy. And I can talk about legacy for things like changing communications and mental health campaign, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But then I did say, I found myself saying, what I'd quite like my legacy to be is on the day I die. People say he was the one who never stopped banging on about what a disaster Brexit was, and that's part of the reason why we're back in Europe.

• 32:23Rory Stewart?

  Okay, that's good. No, that would be good. On that subject, there is a series which has just come forward by the rather wonderful Peter Frankopan, who's the author of Silk Roads, great bestselling Silk Roads and many others, and Afua Hirsch, the journalist and broadcaster. And they are looking at the subject of legacy, legacy of great historical figures. People like Mikhail Gorbachev, Nina Simone, Pablo Picasso, Napoleon. Is that sort of thing you might want to engage with, Alistair?

• 32:51Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's fascinating. On the Tube this morning, second plug for the Tube today, posters of the new Napoleon film, the Ridley Scott film, all over the place. So that is legacy, that is part of legacy. When centuries later, people are making films about you.

• 33:05Rory Stewart?

  I just can't, my great grandfather must have been completely obsessed with Napoleon at the end of the 19th century, beginning 20th century, because we've got these sort of silver busts of Napoleon and all things, but he was a businessman and maybe he thought, you know, I'm a Napoleon of my age.

• 33:22Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think it's great. And the other one I think about a lot is when you saw in more posters, Hamilton. So Hamilton, one of the sort of founding fathers in the States, had a legacy. But in a way, his legacy now gets redefined and redeveloped.

• 33:36Rory Stewart?

  Because everyone had largely forgotten about Hamilton. You and I had forgotten about Hamilton until somebody produced a massive musical about it. So I think that that could be our hope. They could produce a podcast musical.

• 33:46Alastair Campbell?

  Rest in politics, the musical.

• 33:48Rory Stewart?

  150, 200 years' time, it could be all over the Tube.

• 33:50Alastair Campbell?

  Do you want to have a legacy? When you die, do you want people to say, ah, Rory Stewart, he left us this and he left us that?

• 33:56Rory Stewart?

  I would really like that. I just need to work out what it is, yeah.

• 33:59Alastair Campbell?

  Maybe you need to take up Fiona's suggestion and go and work for the King.

• 34:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, or convince Keir Starmer that he really needs a foreign secretary with sort of deep international experience.

• 34:08Alastair Campbell?

  Keir, Keir, are you listening? I think, more to the point, David Labby, are you listening? That could be a problem. Anyway, this podcast, Legacy, it's a collaboration between Goalhanger, which makes our podcast, and Wondery, another leading podcast producer. Search Legacy wherever you get your podcasts and you can binge entire seasons of Legacy ad-free on Amazon Music. So Rory, the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and Portugal. Let's start with Spain. It is amazing what's happening there and yet I know there's a lot going on, there's the Middle East, there's the Sunat reshuffle, et cetera, but you've really got to dig into the British media to find anything of what's happening there and it's kind of cataclysmic what's going on.

• 34:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's amazing. So little summary, a lot of the root of this is the movement for Catalan independence, which maybe we can talk about a little bit because there's some interesting parallels with Scottish independence referendum, Brexit referendum. And what happened after that Catalan independence referendum and now an amnesty that's been declared. But give us, give us your sense on the current politics and then maybe we can go back a little bit into the history of Catalunya.

• 35:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, so you had an election where essentially nobody really won and to put a government together, Pedro Sanchez, Prime Minister, has done a deal with a series of Republic Catalan independence movements and parties. Part of the deal is that there'll be an amnesty for people who, in the eyes of the courts, broke the law to set up an independence referendum and broke the law sufficiently for the leader, Carl Puigman, that he, he had to sort of flee the country and go off in exile. So you've got a lot of people who've now basically, who were seen as lawbreakers and are now going to

• 35:56Alastair Campbell?

  be given an amnesty as part of this deal. And this has led to massive protests in Spain.

• 36:00Rory Stewart?

  This is one of the classic questions, isn't it, in democratic politics, trying to form a coalition, whether you're prepared to bring in parties who are outside the pale in order to shore up your coalition. Big question in Israel, of course, big question again and again with far right parties in Europe. Germans trying to work out whether you bring the AFD and things into coalitions, which they wouldn't want to do. But certainly from the point of view of traditional Spanish, I suppose, moderate nationalists who really believe in the rule of law and the constitution and holding Spain together, they are completely horrified. And something like two thirds of the Spanish public is totally horrified that in order to Push himself into power, Pedro Sanchez, who is this sort of relatively good looking left wing leader.

• 36:44Alastair Campbell?

  Two weeks in a row, you've talked about how good looking he is.

• 36:47Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, I think, you know, I was also praising the Argentinian. I mean, I think this is.

• 36:50Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, sorry. That's right. That's right.

• 36:51Rory Stewart?

  This is generally my theory that.

• 36:54Alastair Campbell?

  Good looking leaders.

• 36:55Rory Stewart?

  That Latin politics likes good looking leaders. Although you then told me that actually this wasn't true. This is universal and that basically good looking people win elections and that they did research in the US and that was true there.

• 37:05Alastair Campbell?

  It wasn't just about good looking. It's about looking like they're winners. You don't always have to be good looking for that. But the thing is that I think the only thing that's driving the anger is they've had an election where actually the vote for the independence parties really fell.

• 37:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  So it went down from forty two percent in twenty nineteen to twenty seven percent in Catalonia. So you've got lack of political legitimacy is how the rest of Spain is looking at this.

• 37:32Rory Stewart?

  And Sanchez also didn't win. The right wing party got slightly more votes than him. So he's also, it would be like Gordon Brown in Britain, losing the twenty ten electoral, getting fewer votes than Cameron, and then pitching together a deal with the Lib Dems in order to to stand power. Just quickly back.

• 37:48Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think you can. I mean, hold on. Let me just pick you up on that one. You can't quite compare the Liberal Democrats to the Catalinians.

• 37:55Rory Stewart?

  Certainly couldn't do that. No, of course not. Those fine, proud, moderate nationalists and the Lib Dems cannot be compared. Of course, they'd have a lot of trouble if I did that. So Catalonia, really interesting. I mean, I think a huge difference between Britain and Spain on this issue. So to remind people, Catalonia, like Scotland, had a very interesting, distinct history from the rest of Spain, different institutional history. It was originally an independent territory, then became part of the Spanish monarchy, but even after it became part of the Spanish monarchy, had very different legal and parliamentary systems, and of course, had a different linguistic heritage, different language, much more so

• 38:35Rory Stewart?

  than in Scotland, a very, very distinct language. And it then became the industrial powerhouse of Spain. So obviously, the central Catalina is Barcelona, amazing footballing heritage and all this kind of stuff. And of course.

• 38:49Alastair Campbell?

  Maradona played for them, you know.

• 38:50Rory Stewart?

  Maradona, your friend Maradona, yeah, your teammate. They also had, you know, this was very important, of course, during the Spanish Civil War. And the question of whether parts of Spain break away and become independent is even rorer because not just the Catalan movement, but also Basque terrorism and the movements there, so that it maybe feels to, it's difficult to get an analogy, but maybe a moderate Spanish nationalist feels more about it in the way that people would have thought about Ireland in Britain in the 19th century more than perhaps people think about Scotland today. Anyway, which one was elected into the regional government in Catalonia? And he decided in 2017 to hold a referendum.

• 39:34Rory Stewart?

  Now, unlike Scotland, where basically Cameron said, fine, you want to hold a referendum, you can hold a referendum, and if you get more than 50% of the vote, you can go independent. Spain has very strong constitutional structures to prevent that. Was that one of your friends' 257 mistakes? Yes, I would have said that was one of those mistakes, yeah. And I actually think the whole idea, I think the Spanish are right and we're wrong. I don't think major constitutional changes should be able to happen just because one politician wants them. Every other country, Spain, the United States, et cetera, these big constituencies would require a supermajority, not just a slim 50 plus one vote, and that's what got us in trouble with Brexit, and that's what would have got us in trouble in Scotland, too. Anyway, in this case, he pushed ahead.

• 40:15Rory Stewart?

  It was boycotted by anti-independence voters. It was declared illegal by the Spanish government. The garde de la vie was deployed. And the courts. Deployed and the courts. So you end up with the Spanish police, you know, 15,000 of them deployed into Catalonia to try to prevent these elections happening. It's almost impossible to imagine that British context is happening. People then turn out to vote, 92% of those who voted, vote for independence, on a 43% turnout. Quite high. Yeah, so to put it in context, if you do the maths, in Scotland, it was 44.7% on 84% turnout. In Brexit, it was 51.9% on a 72% turnout.

• 40:58Rory Stewart?

  And the maths works out like this, 37.47% of the British population voted yes, of eligible voters, 37.82% of the Scottish population voted yes, and in the case of Catalonia, 39.56. Even on that low turnout. Yeah, more people, as a percentage of the registered voters, voted for Catalan. Even with a massive boycott. Voted for Catalan independence than voted for Scottish independence or for Brexit.

• 41:25Rory Stewart?

  However, it was completely disallowed and Pujimont then

• 41:31Alastair Campbell?

  Fled.

• 41:31Rory Stewart?

  Fled, went into exile. An arrest warrant was issued for him. He had to skip around different European countries, was eventually picked up, I think, by the German police. And he's being chased for lots of things, including misuse of public funds, because he had to pay for the ballot boxes, which are normally funded by the federal government. And for the majority, it seems, two thirds of Spanish people, this is not something they take casually at all. They see it as an existential threat to the existence of Spain. In fact, it appears as though there's a strong argument that what Pedro Sanchez does is actually illegal. He doesn't have the power to grant an amnesty. The king can pardon someone like the president in the United States, but Pedro Sanchez can't. And in fact, the apparently the European Union is now demanding an explanation on what he's done.

• 42:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, no. And, and, and of course, this is all to avoid him having to, he could just have said, well, election result was unclear. Let's have another go. And the coalition he's now putting together, the number of parties involved in it is going to be in double figures. So it's a very, very, very unstable situation.

• 42:34Rory Stewart?

  But it does give some leverage, doesn't it, to the Catalan independence people?

• 42:37Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, huge.

• 42:38Rory Stewart?

  Because if they hold the balance of power, they can then push for another referendum.

• 42:40Alastair Campbell?

  Look, I think it's, it's, it's very hard to see how he holds it together. There is an argument that it's taking what is such a clearly political issue out of the legal framework and back into the political framework. There is an argument.

• 42:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and certainly in a British context, I think we would probably see it in that way. If Nicola Sturgeon had decided to push ahead, holding a referendum which wasn't approved by Westminster, I think it's unlikely that she would have been pursued through the courts, prosecuted for illegal use of money and had to flee the country.

• 43:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, she has other legal difficulties to. But the, and these protests are getting, you know, pretty, pretty violent. The, the former right wing leader, Cuadras, he was shot in the face. On a street in Madrid whilst out at a protest and while we're recording this, he's still in hospital. And of course, that's the sort of incident that gets all sorts of conspiracy theories going. So the assumption at the start was that it was a sort of left winger. Now, there's the serious suggestion that actually it was an Iranian hit job. So this is yet another what feels like quite a local issue where there may be kind of quite international factors at play as well.

• 43:50Rory Stewart?

  That's extraordinary, what the Iranian government thinks they're doing in China. I mean, that seems unlikely to me that they would think.

• 43:57Alastair Campbell?

  Not necessarily a government, but you know, there could be all sorts of other tensions going. Because don't forget, a lot of tensions play out from that part of the world and as we're seeing, you know, we're seeing in the UK right now as well. So anything else you want to say about Spain?

• 44:10Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 44:10Alastair Campbell?

  Shall we cross the border into Portugal?

• 44:13Rory Stewart?

  Portugal. And so this is Antonio Costa, who again is a bit of a sort of hero for the moderate progressive left. He's the leader of Portugal Socialist Party. This is his second term. He was seen as doing well with Covid. He had sort of relatively gentle measures to come out of austerity, seemed to be getting economic growth off the ground. Very, very interesting backstory. As I think you pointed out to us when we were celebrating the fact that Rishi Sunak was the first British Asian Prime Minister, I think you pointed out that actually this in Europe, he was actually the third because we have a Prime Minister of or Tishok of Asian descent in Ireland. And in the case of Antonio Costa, his father

• 44:58Rory Stewart?

  Orlando Costa is part Goan, part Goan Indian and partly from Mozambique. Anyway, over to you on this.

• 45:06Alastair Campbell?

  It's a, you know, I think when he was running for his last election, I did a big profile of him in the New European.

• 45:16Rory Stewart?

  Did you go to interview him and stuff?

• 45:18Alastair Campbell?

  Not interview him, but I went out there and sort of met people around him.

• 45:22Rory Stewart?

  What did you learn?

• 45:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I wrote, I wrote a very, very positive piece essentially saying this guy is bucking the trend. He's a left of centre leader at a time Europe seems to be shifting right, who's competent, who's popular, and who has taken Portugal in an interesting and different direction and doing it very, very well. And our old friend Corruption. Comes along. Now, he is pleading his innocence, but the fact is that a lot of cash was found in his, in his offices and in his official residence and his chief of staff, a guy called Vitor Escario, has been arrested along with five others. And the reason that

• 46:04Alastair Campbell?

  they've been singled out is that the authorities say they were worried about them fleeing. Costa is also a subject of a criminal investigation. And this relates to some pretty major projects, building and hydrogen projects in different parts of Portugal. And he, he didn't technically in a way have to resign, but I suspect they have quite an interesting relationship between the president and the prime minister. The president was pretty clear that he was going to call a new election. And so Costa's stepped down. He's the caretaker prime minister until an election. And we're waiting to see who's going to represent which parties at that.

• 46:41Rory Stewart?

  And Portugal's a very positive story, really, within the European Union. In some sense, it's reminiscent of Ireland. It was a country that was very poor after the Second World War. In the case of Portugal, part of a dictatorship until the 1970s, Salazar, joined the European Union in the 1980s and changed very, very quickly from a very poor place to a place that began to get into the middle of the league tables on life expectancy, GDP per capita, developed quite a good tourism industry. It's also had, as we've discussed, managed to avoid a lot of the problems of far-right populism, although I was called up on that with somebody pointing out that there is the emergence of a far-right populist party in Portugal.

• 47:25Alastair Campbell?

  Who, who, who will benefit from this, I suspect. But they didn't do nearly as well as people expected with the last election. They were the big fear and it just didn't happen in the way it had elsewhere. So I think, I think Costa has held that off. But you know, corruption, when you think the populism part of it is about turning the people against an elite, there's nothing worse than

• 47:45Rory Stewart?

  Corruption.

• 47:45Alastair Campbell?

  Corruption for that.

• 47:46Rory Stewart?

  And unfortunately, Portugal has had a bit of a bad reputation for corruption. I'm fascinated by corruption because we talk about it a lot in British politics, but the scale in Portugal has been much more dramatic. Socrates, who was the successor, Antonio Guterres, who is now the UN Secretary General, was the Prime Minister of Portugal, and his successor from the same party, the same Socialist Party, Socrates, got caught up in a big corruption investigation in which he managed to get a dodgy university to award him a fake engineering degree, in which he ended up with millions of euros being held by a mate for him. So he was in real trouble.

• 48:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, and even though Costa, this is the first time that he's been right at the heart of one of these corruption scandals, there've been ten senior government officials who've lost their job since he won in 2022.

• 48:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so one of the ones I touched is I knew slightly the lady who was the chief executive of Portuguese Airlines.

• 48:40Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, TAP, that was a big one.

• 48:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. And she had to step down as part of one of these scandals in which the Treasury Secretary of State received a 500,000 euro severance payment when she stepped down from the board of TAP. So quite a lot of these scandals are, these are companies which are partly nationalised, and politicians and senior civil servants get on positions in these companies and end up getting payoffs. And then, as you say, the Secret Intelligence Service of Portugal then recovered a laptop. Somebody called Galamba then came in as the new minister and then was also accused of conspiracy in this whole thing. So it is, it's a bit, it's a bit messy.

• 49:19Alastair Campbell?

  It's a bit murky.

• 49:20Rory Stewart?

  It's a bit messy. And there, there's investigations, as you say, about hydro, about a data centre, about lithium, lithium exploration. So unfortunately, just as final thing on Antonio Costa, his father, Orlando Costa, if people want to read about him, was a Goan writer. Go was, of course, historically part of the Portuguese empire, as was Mozambique. And strangely, actually, Antonio Costa's cousin is a senior politician in Mozambique as well. And he was imprisoned. And then his mother is a really interesting figure. So she's called Maria Antonia Pala, and she was a radical atheist, communist, republican, radical feminist journalist who campaigned to make abortion not a crime in Portugal

• 50:02Rory Stewart?

  when it was a very traditional Catholic country, married his dad because Antonio Costa's dad was in prison. And because it was a conservative Catholic country, you couldn't have conjugal visiting rights unless you were married. So when he was vaguely briefly released from prison, she married him before he went back into prison, so that she could continue her conjugal visits. And so he comes from this very kind of interesting radical, left wing.

• 50:25Alastair Campbell?

  There's an opera in there. There's an opera to be written about.

• 50:27Rory Stewart?

  That's a good, that's a good.

• 50:28Alastair Campbell?

  One of my, even though I'm not really into opera, but one of my, as yet unfulfilled ambitions is to write an opera.

• 50:35Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't think it sounds like a very good idea if you're not into it. I think you should be doing things that you love, shouldn't you?

• 50:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, because then I could be, I could get into it by.

• 50:42Rory Stewart?

  Why not a musical? Or do you like not them like them any more than operas?

• 50:46Alastair Campbell?

  I love musicals.

• 50:46Rory Stewart?

  Oh, you should do a musical then.

• 50:47Alastair Campbell?

  No, but I think operas are just sort of sound a bit grand. The other thing, just to, just to maybe close on this, the Public Prosecutor's Office, this just shows how things could go horribly wrong. They confused the name of Costa with the Economy Minister, who's called Antonio Costa Silva, when they were transcribing all the wiretaps. So there were lots of wiretaps involved. This is going to be a great scene of the opera. There were all these wiretaps that were transcribed. So according to the lawyer of one of the defendants, the, there was this terrible error where Prime Minister Costa was being confused at one stage with the Economy Minister in the, in the wiretapping.

• 51:30Rory Stewart?

  But if you think about it also, I mean.

• 51:32Alastair Campbell?

  That could be a good defence.

• 51:34Rory Stewart?

  But also, if you think about it in the context of British politics, if the security services started wiretapping the Prime Minister, you'd have to be pretty confident what you were doing before you got a secret.

• 51:44Alastair Campbell?

  And also, well, I don't know what the system is in Portugal, but certainly here. I don't know what would happen because here sort of really intrusive surveillance, the

• 51:53Rory Stewart?

  The home secretary has to sign off.

• 51:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So that'd be good. And if, if, if James Cleverly's first, first sign off was to say, we have reason to believe we need to wiretap the prime minister.

• 52:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 52:06Alastair Campbell?

  So there, this is, I'm, I'm loving it. What should we call the opera?

• 52:08Rory Stewart?

  The cost of Costa.

• 52:11Alastair Campbell?

  The cost of Costa.

• 52:12Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, no, no. No, I think we're going to stay off.

• 52:15Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, so there we are. And next week, I think we should have a little discussion. It was, we're in Europe, which have a little discussion about the Netherlands because they've got an election coming up.

• 52:22Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Well, look forward to that very much. Thank you. So we've, we've done a lot. Portugal, Spain, a bit on the Middle East.

• 52:28Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, and Donald Tusk has now finally got his coalition together.

• 52:30Rory Stewart?

  Which is great news in Poland. And just to remind listeners, that is the election of a really impressive moderate force in the breaking of the back of the populist stranglehold, which has been in, in Polish politics since 2015. So really remarkable victory.

• 52:44Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, enough for now. See you soon.

• 52:47Rory Stewart?

  Great. Bye bye.

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