304. Question Time: Could Trump try and subvert the US election results?

Why is there civil unrest in Slovakia and Bulgaria? Are they legitimate tools at Trump’s disposal to subvert an election result? Do we have the technology to fact check debates in real time? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more on this week's Question Time. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ 🇪🇺 New subscribers to The New European receive a signed copy of Tony Blair's new book. Claim yours at theneweuropean.co.uk/trip 📚 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. TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Producer: Nicole Maslen & Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 1:58Alastair Campbell?

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

• 2:01Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 2:02Alastair Campbell?

  And Rory, we are still in Chicago.

• 2:04Rory Stewart?

  We are indeed, yeah.

• 2:05Alastair Campbell?

  For the DNC, Democratic National Convention. Let's start with something election-related from somebody called RV. Following Rachel Maddow, Rachel Maddow is a presenter on MSNBC, recent piece on Republican electors in the US who will refuse to certify state elections if needed. What are your thoughts on how Trump could try and subvert the US election results to win, including potential interference from Russia?

• 2:32Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, I think this is something that will be unfamiliar to a lot of European and British listeners. The American system is obviously very, very constitutional, and these decisions are based on micro-interpretations of the electoral rules. And in this particular case, it seems that a lot of people who are on the Trump side are trying, and in the case of Georgia, appear to have succeeded in actually changing state laws, so that electors, instead of merely being, or either electors or even election counters, instead of merely being neutral transmitters of results, have the independence to make their own minds up about whether or not results are valid.

• 3:13Rory Stewart?

  And of course, the problem with that is that there are more than 30 officials who refused to certify the last election, who've been reconfirmed as electoral officials, and a general sense that across the states, Republicans are already preparing themselves for the possibility, if Trump were to lose, that they would refuse to certify, and that would then push the decision to probably a Republican-dominated Congress, and Trump would try to get in that way. Over to you.

• 3:38Alastair Campbell?

  I got out of bed this morning and walked down for breakfast and on the television.

• 3:46Alastair Campbell?

  Donald Trump was on the news and the rolling thing at the bottom said, Trump, I'm better looking than Kamala Harris.

• 3:54Rory Stewart?

  Hmm.

• 3:54Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 3:55Rory Stewart?

  Do you agree with that?

• 3:56Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 3:56Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 3:56Alastair Campbell?

  Um, I don't think many people would agree with that. Uh, and I just, I sort of feel like he's losing the plot.

• 4:04Rory Stewart?

  Haha.

• 4:05Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we've got to be very-

• 4:06Rory Stewart?

  You would say that that's not the key message at the moment.

• 4:09Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think his advisers would be saying, what you want to do is get on the news, say, I'm better looking than her. Now, I think that sort of stuff about Trump used to be quite funny and used to be quite interesting, and I think he's just become incredibly boring. And I've noticed a lot of people who used to find him quite compelling-

• 4:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 4:27Alastair Campbell?

  Sort of turning off.

• 4:28Rory Stewart?

  My memory of this is that he would generate these completely daft statements every day, 2015, 2016, and by doing so, get the media attention. And his objective is he wants to see himself on Twitter. And your sense is that actually, after eight years of this, people are just losing attention, losing interest, and he can say whatever he wants, really, and nobody's actually going to pick up that much.

• 4:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think so. I mean, you've got to be careful because here we are, we're in Chicago, Democrat city, surrounded by Democrats, all of whom have got the vibe. We bumped into a guy this morning called Dan Bolts, who is a veteran, veteran Washington Post journalist. He used to be in London. He was telling me, I don't know if he's giving a secret, he's 78 and he's still their sort of chief correspondent. But he was saying he was at Milwaukee for the Republican convention, he's now here. He said, it's the first year he can remember where both parties felt like they were absolutely on the march. But of course, what's changed is the big change. Joe Biden stepping down, Kamala Harris now going for it. So I think it is still, it was interesting listening to Anthony Scaramucci and Kathy Kay the other day, both of them still saying, this thing is too close for comfort from the Democrats' point of view.

• 5:35Alastair Campbell?

  I think that's probably right. You can find people who'll say, hold on a minute, don't rule this guy out. But I just sort of feel that this, and this week will show whether the Democrats still have this momentum. I sort of feel the wind is going out of his sails. It feels like that.

• 5:49Rory Stewart?

  I guess the problem for international listeners is whether to see this stuff about Trump and Republican states lining up officials to refuse to certify valid elections.

• 6:03Rory Stewart?

  Is something to be seriously worried about, which of course is the view of many, many Democrats?

• 6:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 6:07Rory Stewart?

  Or is this a hysterical conspiracy theory generated by liberals? And in fact, this isn't actually going to happen.

• 6:12Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the only thing about that is you just have to go back to what happened last time. Hang Mike Pence, you know, storm the Capitol. So I think it's within him never, ever, ever to admit defeat. I also think, by the way, that is why it's so important that the Democrat Party somehow does keep this momentum going. And they win big.

• 6:30Rory Stewart?

  Because if they win seriously big, then these silly tricks won't help them.

• 6:33Alastair Campbell?

  Although we did, I'm not comparing the United States to Venezuela, but we sort of said that about Venezuela. If they win big, he won't be able to claim, Maduro won't be able to claim he's won. They did win big, Maduro claims he won.

• 6:43Rory Stewart?

  But I guess in that case, Maduro controlled the release of the results. In this case, Trump won't control the release of the results.

• 6:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, this will be done by a body that most sane people will think is doing a decent job. Listen, you mentioned Georgia there. Let's go to the other Georgia.

• 6:56Rory Stewart?

  The Georgia for listeners, which is between Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia, a pretty tricky place to be in the world.

• 7:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it could have been Georgia Gould, newly appointed Minister for Cabinet Office. Wendy Shannon, would you be able to offer an explainer on what's happening in Georgia right now? There is not a lot of media coverage and we also got questions about Bulgaria and Slovakia. I mean, I think it is worth just saying this because, you know, we've talked about Orban, Viktor Orban, quite a lot. Leader of Hungary. So you've got a situation going here. Georgia, the big thing there, massive protests against this foreign agents law, which is totally based on a Russian law and modeled on Hungary, where essentially if you're a NGO, you won't get money. If you're basically taking foreign money from countries like America or Britain, you are a foreign agent.

• 7:47Rory Stewart?

  That then means if, for example, you are an election observer and many of the election observers receive foreign money. If you are any of these classic NGOs, which is so important getting civil society going, so there's German things like the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, or Soros's Open Society Foundation, or any of these groups, Human Rights Watch, et cetera, but also local groups. So in the case of Russia, it was human rights organisations that received foreign funding. Very, very difficult often for civil society organisations in small countries to have the funding to really hold governments to account without raising some money internationally. This cuts them off the knees, but particularly potentially cuts off the election observers when the election coming.

• 8:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but it's the fact that it's so clearly modelled on something that they have seen work elsewhere, work in inverted commas. So you've got that going in Georgia, then in Bulgaria, you've just had a new law passed, which it brought to mind Thatcher's section 28, the promotion of homosexuality in schools. But it's another anti-LGBT thing, which is also happening in Slovakia. And in Slovakia, you've got a culture minister who, and it's one of these things where it's not entirely clear whether she is doing this completely with the support of Robert Fesco, the prime minister. She's called Martina Simgovicova, and they're essentially purging from senior positions in the arts, people who are not

• 9:13Alastair Campbell?

  utterly committed to the government and to its values. So for example, the National Theatre director's gone, the National Gallery director's gone, and their crime is pursuing progressive liberal political activism, which does not conform to the heritage of our ancestors.

• 9:28Rory Stewart?

  I think, and this is something where we can get into in a bit more depth, I mean that there are two very related stories around populism here. But one of the big differences is some of these countries are members of the European Union.

• 9:41Alastair Campbell?

  Bulgaria.

• 9:41Rory Stewart?

  And some of these countries are not. And so Bulgaria, Slovakia, and to some extent even Hungary, are slightly more constrained in what they can do. The much more dangerous places potentially still are Georgia, where there is this Russian oligarch called Ivanishvili.

• 9:58Rory Stewart?

  Who basically controls the whole thing. Moldova, which has been through a very tricky, unstable time. Serbia, where now, and we talk about Serbia, we keep reminding people Serbia. Recent polls, thirty two percent of young Serbs are now in favor of a military invasion of Kosovo, compared to twenty two percent of young Serbs against. Croatia now looking at introducing compulsory military service because of the potential threat from Serbia.

• 10:25Alastair Campbell?

  Not as an internal security thing, not as a sort of right wing populist thing.

• 10:29Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, as a defensive thing.

• 10:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:32Rory Stewart?

  But I think one of the cases that my friend, who I'm very keen to introduce you to, Gerald Knouse would make, who's a huge enthusiast for European Union enlargement, is he would say, despite all the troubles in Hungary and elsewhere, actually, the fact that populists were defeated in Poland, the fact that Romania has gone on a remarkably positive journey in some ways. When Romania in the nineties, people will maybe remember, gangsters, secret service, massive corruption charges, anti Semitic politicians being elected. Now it's done better in per capita GDP in many other countries, relatively stable Baltic countries, doing very well. So a lot of former Eastern Europe that went, and this is a credit, he would say to Tony Blair and the accession, Britain pushing a lot of this,

• 11:17Rory Stewart?

  were brought into the European Union after nineteen eighty nine.

• 11:19Alastair Campbell?

  Isn't that interesting, because of course, the argument against that is that that is what led to the immigration that led to Brexit, that led to Britain's decline, et cetera.

• 11:28Rory Stewart?

  So he would say, what you achieved was something really important in terms of stability, democracy, economic growth, that actually, apart from the oil-rich states, some of the fastest economic growth in the world has been those new European Union member states in Eastern Europe. And that if Blair and others had not pushed to bring them in, those states would be like, Romania would be like Belarus, Bulgaria would be like Moldova or Georgia. And that actually, it's a really smart strategic move that's made for a much more stable, prosperous world.

• 12:03Alastair Campbell?

  It's very hard to see how, so Serbia, we talked about, as you say, a lot. Serbia, which says it wants to join the European Union, yet is pointing so much more towards Russia now. And likewise, it's very hard to see how Georgia. Doing this foreign agent stuff and so clearly also pointing towards Russia in terms of the way it's conducting its politics, how that helps? Or do you think they've just sort of parked the idea of joining the European Union?

• 12:27Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. So just to remind listeners, this was in some ways quite interesting and exciting. Georgia suddenly was, the EU approved it to be on an accession track and started talking about Georgia joining NATO and all this kind of stuff. And it really felt as though Georgia had become, really becoming a Western friend. But in the recent rhetoric, over the last few months, it's sounding more and more pro-Russian, more and more anti-US, more and more anti-EU. And if it's turning up in the EU at all, it's turning up at Orban conferences, talking about the decline of the West. So I think it's very, very sad. It seemed for a moment as though Georgia might be a success story. But yeah, I think it's a reminder that all these things are on a knife edge. And again, as I think we discussed in our interview with Albin Kurti, the leader of Kosovo, had

• 13:12Rory Stewart?

  Serbia been brought into the European Union, it's possible that it would be much more like Slovakia or Bulgaria, which is a slightly populist, unstable, but not an existential threat, not a country thinking of invading one of its neighbours. By remaining outside the EU, some of these countries can be profoundly dangerous.

• 13:30Alastair Campbell?

  Final point on Georgia. This in the week when Yvette Cooper, the British Home Secretary, was talking about violence against women and girls and misogyny possibly coming under terrorism legislation. In Georgia, they've got this history of releasing secretly filmed explicit videos of women politicians and journalists and trying to shame them and push them out of public life. And they've just also now removed quotas for women in parliament. So misogyny is becoming a bigger force. And back to Slovakia, one of the things that the Culture Minister there is saying is that the LGBT community is sort of undermining

• 14:13Alastair Campbell?

  the white race. Now, how they mix up race and LGBT, I don't know. So all of this stuff goes back to this kind of, it is the sort of Putin Orban playbook.

• 14:23Rory Stewart?

  It is. And the smartest person in this story still seems to be Orban. You saw him at the football. And one of the things I've now realised he was doing when he wasn't being polite to you at the football is he was charming all the big German companies. He continues to know that his bread is buttered on big German factories, Mercedes-Benz, et cetera, investing heavily into Hungary.

• 14:45Alastair Campbell?

  He was certainly getting his picture taken with quite a few of the sponsors, I'd have to say that.

• 14:48Rory Stewart?

  So he, gentle, social democratic, progressive German businessmen are still putting their money into Hungary. So he's able to play it both ways. He can sound pro-Chinese when it suits him, pro-Russian when it suits him, very pro-Trump. He's talking about, he wants Trump to win not just one but two more terms in his latest speeches. This is all bad. But at the same time, he's just about staying on the right side of the law. But, you know, there is still very weird stuff going on. You will have seen at some of the football matches, some of his supporters carry flags of ancient Hungary, which includes quite a lot of Romania. But because he's part of the European Union, unlike the Serbs, he's not actually talking about invading his neighbours.

• 15:27Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one. James Mules, what do you think is the most politically significant year of the 21st century so far?

• 15:32Rory Stewart?

  I think 2014. What's your year?

• 15:34Alastair Campbell?

  I think, I thought you'd say that. I was going to go 2016.

• 15:37Rory Stewart?

  Because?

• 15:38Alastair Campbell?

  And I think the most significant day was June the 23rd. I'm really well over it by now, obviously. But, no, I do think 2016.

• 15:47Rory Stewart?

  Two things happened in 2016, didn't they?

• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  Brexit and Trump.

• 15:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, that's pretty big.

• 15:50Alastair Campbell?

  And I think, look, I think we are still living, certainly from the British perspective and the European perspective, with the consequences of both. I think 2014, I can see why you say that, but maybe why don't you just tell our listeners what you think?

• 16:02Rory Stewart?

  2014 is the inflection point where we suddenly see Putin invading Crimea and not getting a proper response. We see Narendra Modi elected for the first time in India. We see ISIS taking over Mosul and creating this caliphate. And it's really from 2014 onwards that you can see a distinctly dramatic annual decline in the number of democracies and increase in the number of refugees and increase in the number of civilians in conflict, from which 2015 Law and Justice Party in Poland and your 2016 date come. Listen, your 2016 date, though, does relate a little bit to what we were talking about before because those two things are at the core of the European story. Again, Britain's removal from the European Union.

• 16:45Rory Stewart?

  Is a serious issue for European foreign policy, although Europe doesn't want to emphasise that too much. Britain played a very important, positive, interesting role on issues like EU enlargement, security in the Western Balkans, which it's no longer playing.

• 17:00Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's interesting. We talked about Project 2025 on the main podcast and Britain barely figures. Where it does figure, there's a mention of Margaret Thatcher because there is the Margaret Thatcher Freedom Centre at the Heritage Foundation, which produced this document, and she gets one mention. There is a mention about Brexit, which the Heritage Foundation report essentially says it regrets because Britain had this influence within the European Union and so many of Britain's positions were aligned with the United States. And it says that America should start, it talks about this trade deal being kind of not going to happen for years and years and years, but it says America needs to get closer alongside the UK before it, quotes, falls back under the orbit of the

• 17:45Alastair Campbell?

  EU. So that was interesting that we think of Project 2025 as this kind of, you know, mad right wing, et cetera, lots of which it is. But on that, it was kind of speaking to the point you're making.

• 17:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's interesting, isn't it, that actually many, many Republicans were upset about Brexit and couldn't quite compute that. Okay, here's a question for you from Tom Gorman. We now have the technology to fact check what people say in real time. What would be the merits and demerits of using this in TV debates such as Trump Harris? Would it be like the VAR in the political world? So I think our friend David Dean was involved in introducing VAR in football. Will you just explain to listeners who aren't football fans what VAR is and whether you think it's a good thing?

• 18:21Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know what VAR stands for?

• 18:22Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 18:22Alastair Campbell?

  Video Assistant Referee.

• 18:24Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 18:25Alastair Campbell?

  So this is where something happens in the field of play and there is some dispute as to whether it was handball, whether it was a foul, whether it was offside or onside.

• 18:35Rory Stewart?

  And this way you see the referee go to his earpiece because somebody's looking at a television screen.

• 18:38Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody's looking at it. In fact, a team of people are looking at it on, on whole banks of television.

• 18:43Rory Stewart?

  Does it work in football? And what's the controversy in football? Because some people are against it, aren't they? I know some people are against it.

• 18:47Alastair Campbell?

  Well, lots of people were for it before it happened.

• 18:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Alastair Campbell?

  Now that it's happened, the bait argument, my bait argument against it is it. Rugby League, which as you know Rory is a wonderful sport.

• 18:58Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 18:58Alastair Campbell?

  I know as a northern MP you're one big supporter probably. Rugby League is brilliant at using VAR because they make it part of the spectacle. The fans see what the VAR referee is seeing in the same time.

• 19:09Rory Stewart?

  Got you.

• 19:10Alastair Campbell?

  So it's part of the thing, whereas in football.

• 19:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 19:12Alastair Campbell?

  You basically stand there, something happening happens, you celebrate a goal.

• 19:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 19:16Alastair Campbell?

  And then, oh no, he's gone to VAR. So you have to hang around, sometimes for like two, three minutes.

• 19:20Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 19:20Alastair Campbell?

  While they're looking at every angle.

• 19:21Rory Stewart?

  So it takes the drama out of it.

• 19:22Alastair Campbell?

  And people, people watching on television.

• 19:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 19:24Alastair Campbell?

  They can see what's going on, but the people in the stadium can't. So that's why I don't like it. But I think on balance, it's been, it's been quite a good thing. Whether it would work in this context, I mean, in a sense, this is happening already. So is that when the TV debates happen, say between Trump and Harris, millions and millions of people will be watching and social mediaering at the same time. The question I guess is whether TV people should do it in real time. I think there's a case for it because the, the fact is normally you'd expect the interviewer to pick up and say, excuse me, President Trump or excuse me, Gheer Star, that is not factually accurate.

• 20:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 20:03Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. But there's a real danger, particularly with Trump, that he wants that because then he just gets into a fight.

• 20:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Alastair Campbell?

  So actually having something that comes on the screen.

• 20:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 20:13Alastair Campbell?

  Fact check untrue. I think that could be quite a powerful thing to do.

• 20:17Rory Stewart?

  You'd have to develop an institution, wouldn't you? I mean, it's for it to really work. You'd want a pretty independent institution which would have to develop its rules over time because there'd be a lot of judgment calls.

• 20:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:28Rory Stewart?

  Is that something important enough to stop players that were and come in? And of course, all the parties after the debates are going to protest massively.

• 20:37Alastair Campbell?

  About any check.

• 20:38Rory Stewart?

  More fact checks. So if you think about the Biden Trump debates, obviously you and I particularly enraged by Trump's nonsense. But of course Biden, partly because of his age, was saying an enormous number of things which were simply untrue. You know, he would say billions when he meant millions, he'd say thousands when he meant millions, etc. So the screen would have been crowded.

• 20:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Exposing all of Biden's mistakes as well. But go back to who we discussed earlier. I'm better looking than Kamala Harris. So it's true. Well, that's what I see. But when he says things like, you know, I created more jobs than any president in history, somebody who's kind of embedded in the facts ought to be able to to say that's, you know, fact check. President X actually created more jobs during. But I suppose so much of this stuff is subjective. I guess, I don't know. It's a tough one, that. It's a good question, but I think. But be good to. As we've discussed it, I've realised there is, there are many, many, many downsides. Okay, Anna, so a quick break and then more questions.

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• 23:29Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Restless Podcast's Question Time with me, Asda Campbell.

• 23:32Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 23:33Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we've just done this, I think, really, really interesting interview with the Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinowski. But there's a question here from Meg Davis. Can we please revisit Nick Clegg's statement that you will not find any studies showing correlation between social media and polarization in light of several studies like this one, which it took me 30 seconds to find. And we'll put it, we'll put it in the, in the newsletter.

• 23:57Rory Stewart?

  And as I said, there's really good reporting by a New York Times journalist, which is really relevant to where we are here in Chicago, which is that when Facebook, Nick Clegg's company, was promoting reliable news sources, there was much less polarization on social media before the November election in 2020.

• 24:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Rory Stewart?

  After the election, they released those constraints because they weren't making enough money by people reading reliable news sources, it seems, or the New York Times journalist's claim. And this appears to have a good correlation to the violence on January the 6th. So it's a very, very odd claim. I mean, we forget research, we experience it in our daily lives. As I keep saying, if I put out a tweet saying, interesting fact, people, you know, call Chicago the windy city, but it's not because of wind, right? I'll get 10 likes. If I say Rory Stewart should be casted off to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, right? I'll get 15,000 likes.

• 24:52Alastair Campbell?

  That's often said about me, actually, but not by you yet.

• 24:55Rory Stewart?

  Um, so we, we experience it, right? And, and of course, as regular users of X or Twitter, we realize that these algorithms train us as much as we train them. Because if you pay attention to likes and retweets, you begin to realize that the more snappy, outrageous and provocative you are, the more likely you are to get good responses.

• 25:14Alastair Campbell?

  As I, in common with lots of other People continue this sort of agonizing about whether to just dump the whole thing. I have migrated to Blue Sky.

• 25:21Rory Stewart?

  Oh, right. Okay.

• 25:22Alastair Campbell?

  And I noticed.

• 25:23Rory Stewart?

  That sounds a bit boring.

• 25:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but it's quite. Well, I'll tell you what's something that was interesting. So I set up an account with help, obviously. And I then sort of posted, I think, one post. And then I got an email saying that I'd been suspended.

• 25:36Rory Stewart?

  You've been suspended from Blue Sky?

• 25:37Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So, so I thought, what the hell's going on? So I emailed Blue Sky and said, what the hell's going on? And they said, oh, if you announce on Twitter that this is you, we will reinstate it. But we worried that it was somebody impersonating you. So I then went back on Twitter and I said, I'm, I've just done my first post on Blue Sky. Blue Sky saw it and I'm back. But one thing I noticed is that my tree of the day.

• 26:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:02Alastair Campbell?

  Got a lot of love on Blue Sky.

• 26:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, that's true.

• 26:06Alastair Campbell?

  So maybe they just like nicer stuff.

• 26:08Rory Stewart?

  When I post, you know, beautiful pictures of me in Afghanistan and historical buildings on Instagram, you know, I get like crazy number of likes, which doesn't happen on Twitter. So, but I also slightly worried that Blue Sky's trying to do a marketing trick there. They're trying to get all your Twitter followers. You've got a million Twitter followers to notice you've moved to Blue Sky. So it seems them to.

• 26:26Alastair Campbell?

  I'm sure that's right. I'm sure that's right. I do, I must say, Leighton Andrews, whose Substack piece we talked about last week or the week before.

• 26:33Rory Stewart?

  On what?

• 26:34Alastair Campbell?

  On social media, on how the government doesn't need to change the law. But I, I think he's, he's got this new word for Twitter, which is shitter. X I double T E R. It's, it's pretty good that sh X. Is that how you pronounce X I double T E R?

• 26:48Rory Stewart?

  It would be.

• 26:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I'm, I am getting really quite sick of Musk. And, and also just, it's just sort of, it's just so unpleasant being on there. I don't listen, as you know, I don't mind unpleasantness. I don't mind. And, and I get the war criminal stuff every day and it doesn't, you know, it just, it's water off a duck's back. But it's, it's a bit like I said, Trump is boring. I'm finding Twitter really boring. Anyway, I pinged off the Peter Malinowski's interview to Nick Clegg.

• 27:12Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 27:12Alastair Campbell?

  Did you have a listen?

• 27:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And, and this is him banning social media from children.

• 27:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, because he, he wants to ban social media for children up to 14.

• 27:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 27:22Alastair Campbell?

  And 14 to 16, there should be parental concerns. And anyway, I picked it up to Nick Claggen, he's sort of, hmm, quite interesting, I thought.

• 27:30Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 27:30Alastair Campbell?

  On verre.

• 27:31Rory Stewart?

  Good, on verre. So Peter Maloskis, I was really charmed and thought he was amazing on my way to Adelaide and may try to see him. Couple of things, some of my Australian friends are saying, be a bit careful with the banning political donations because they see it as a bit of a move against

• 27:47Alastair Campbell?

  Independence.

• 27:48Rory Stewart?

  And a party difficult to get off the ground. The other thing that I was wondering is, he is such an attractive politician. I mean, he's got a great communication style. He sort of sounds down to earth, accessible. I was wondering, what are the similarities and differences between him and Tim Walz? I mean, are they similar sorts of politicians, kind of regular guys? Or is Maloskis more sophisticated than Walz? A different style, is it?

• 28:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's very good looking. I'm not saying.

• 28:15Rory Stewart?

  Walz is not.

• 28:15Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not.

• 28:16Rory Stewart?

  You don't put Walz in the Trump category.

• 28:19Alastair Campbell?

  I think Trump is obviously the best looking politician on the planet. Um, but Peter Maloskis, he's very tall, he's taller than I am. He's sort of really lean and ripped.

• 28:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 28:30Alastair Campbell?

  Um, he was photographed on the beach during this other holiday, looking pretty ripped.

• 28:34Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 28:34Alastair Campbell?

  Um, but I think he's just got a nice manner and I think that came through.

• 28:38Rory Stewart?

  But indifference with Walz, apart from what they look like?

• 28:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think the look is important because I think that Walz's appeal is everybody's favourite uncle.

• 28:45Rory Stewart?

  Got you. More sort of down to earth.

• 28:47Alastair Campbell?

  And so, no, I don't, I don't.

• 28:49Rory Stewart?

  You don't see them as similar?

• 28:50Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 28:50Rory Stewart?

  I, I, I just thought both of them are such attractive visions at the moment of what a modern democratic politician could be.

• 28:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 28:58Rory Stewart?

  And we don't have equivalents of either of them exactly in Britain. I think generally politicians in most countries come across as slightly strange people.

• 29:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 29:06Rory Stewart?

  To be polite. Whereas both Peter Maloskis and Walz come across as relatable, normal people.

• 29:12Alastair Campbell?

  The responses we were getting from particularly British listeners who didn't know much about him was overwhelmingly saying that.

• 29:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Alastair Campbell?

  Why don't we have politicians who talk like he does, you know, kind of thing. I hope our politicians do listen to people like that and understand that there are. There are different ways of communicating it. Now, what about this one, Rory? This is from somebody called Pinarol of Fish. "Any thoughts on the extent of Nigel Farage's outside earnings, which have now been published? Is it time to ban MPs from having other jobs?" And this one from Anne McKinley. "Nigel Farage has not been to his constituency since he was elected. Does the MP's code of conduct state how much attention and time should be allocated to his constituents?" No, it doesn't. It's up in the end of the electorate, but we did warn you, Clacton, that we wouldn't really be hanging around there very much. In his declaration of earnings, where he's now...

• 30:00Alastair Campbell?

  I think Sunak is the wealthiest MP, but Farage is the highest-earning MP. He's earning over a million a year from GB News.

• 30:09Rory Stewart?

  From GB News?

• 30:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:11Rory Stewart?

  Wow. So Paul Marshall is basically funding him to the tune of a million a year?

• 30:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:16Rory Stewart?

  Because that's not a profit-making organisation, that is a massive loss-making organisation.

• 30:20Alastair Campbell?

  But we know GB News isn't there to make money, it's there to influence policy.

• 30:23Rory Stewart?

  And this is something I... maybe this is unfair, but I'm slightly worried also when Boris Johnson was being paid £250,000 to write columns by, I think, the Barclay Brothers. One of the anxieties might be that it's a way of wealthy people paying politicians who they like by employing them, in inverted commas,

• 30:43Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 30:44Rory Stewart?

  to be journalists or news presenters, whatever.

• 30:47Alastair Campbell?

  He also had to declare who funded him, including some guy who's been to jail for all sorts of stuff, for his foreign travel. And he described his trip to America, this is Farage, as going to comfort or support a friend who'd been shot, even though the friend didn't bother to see him at the time, and represent Clacton on the world stage.

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  Oh, Trump didn't meet Farage, didn't meet his dear friend when he turned up.

• 31:13Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 31:13Rory Stewart?

  How interesting. So you suspect maybe Donald Trump may not be as close to Nigel Farage as Farage suggests.

• 31:20Alastair Campbell?

  I wonder that Rory, I wonder. And also, he was interested, he talked about this company. This money was paid to his company.

• 31:26Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 31:27Alastair Campbell?

  And I remember when I first left Downing Street, lots of accountants telling me, you really should set up a company. Because you pay a lot less tax.

• 31:36Rory Stewart?

  I can see a criticism, though, from listeners to this podcast for people saying that you and I doubtless making a lot of money from our media appearances. But I guess the point is we're not serving members of parliament.

• 31:46Alastair Campbell?

  No, but also the company point is, no, we do make way more money than we thought we would. In fact, we'd never even talked about money at the start of this podcast. But no, my point is, he was elected as an MP in Clacton, having tried eight, nine, whatever it was, times to get there. If it's true that he's not been to Clacton once since the election.

• 32:07Rory Stewart?

  It's pretty bizarre.

• 32:08Alastair Campbell?

  It is bizarre.

• 32:09Rory Stewart?

  It's a very odd way of putting it.

• 32:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and it's just, it's not, it's not on. So if you're from Clacton, don't forget, is my message. Mind you, will he stand again next time? It will depend on whether he thinks he's going to win or not. But I think this thing about, I don't know.

• 32:26Rory Stewart?

  It's very, very odd, because actually, it's the first time he's in parliament. And generally, at least in their first couple of years, MPs are quite good at spending time in their constituencies.

• 32:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but you've written a book about how awful Parliament is. He's going to hate Parliament. When he walks into Parliament, he is not le grand fromage.

• 32:42Rory Stewart?

  No, and most people will walk out when he speaks. I remember going as a, the one time I think I went to Parliament before I was elected was as a relatively young person. And I remember seeing George Galloway stand up to speak and most of the Labour benches walked out and all the Tories started talking to each other.

• 33:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 33:01Rory Stewart?

  And I saw Galloway, who's of course, you know, horrible man, but a very, very good speaker, delivering this incredibly impressive oration in Parliament and absolutely nobody listening. And of course, I had no idea of the backstory. I couldn't understand what was going on. That's what will happen to Farage, right? Well, he'll have four people from his party sitting actually there.

• 33:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and also because he is, though, a pretty good communicator, he probably won't care about that. Because he will just then clip. Post, he's all about, he's a media thing. I mean, that's all that Farage is. All he cares about is media.

• 33:32Rory Stewart?

  And this is true, isn't it? Because when you see on Twitter, or when our listeners see on Twitter, a 30 second clip from an MP speaking in Parliament, often the chamber is entirely empty. So I did a speech on hedgehogs.

• 33:44Alastair Campbell?

  Famously.

• 33:45Rory Stewart?

  Now, I think that was seen.

• 33:47Alastair Campbell?

  We should put it in the newsletter again.

• 33:48Rory Stewart?

  Seen, seen in Parliament by something like nine or 10 people.

• 33:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 33:53Rory Stewart?

  And then seen, whatever, 3 million times on social media.

• 33:56Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly.

• 33:56Rory Stewart?

  Unless you are concentrating, you don't particularly notice the fact that the entire chamber is completely empty, because they're obviously not that interested at 10 o'clock at night hearing a speech on hedgehogs.

• 34:05Alastair Campbell?

  MPs will work out where the cameras are. And Farage will definitely work out where the cameras are.

• 34:09Rory Stewart?

  How to speak.

• 34:10Alastair Campbell?

  And if you, if you go near the back, so if you're not a front bencher, you can kind of park yourself in. If you go to the back, and you've got a big, that nice old fashioned wood behind you.

• 34:19Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 34:19Alastair Campbell?

  It could be full.

• 34:20Rory Stewart?

  Could be full. You never know, do you? Okay. Victoria Gray from the Royal Society Let's Share. Love to hear us speak about the importance of providing access to reading in prisons. How much could this help in resolving problems of critical overhang? And then Josh Nightingale found that the ADHD population in prisons is 10 times what it is in the general population. 25% compared to 23%. What do you think can be done to help people with ADHD currently in prison, prevent people with ADHD going to prison? It's not just ADHD. So 25% ADHD compared to 3% of the population, something like when I was prisons minister, 35% of the prison population have been in care compared to 2% of the general population. Maybe similar number, about a third have been excluded from school compared to about

• 35:02Rory Stewart?

  2% of the general population. So these are different ways of looking at the fact that prisoners are not representative of the general population, and that it's, it's daft to pretend that we shouldn't be looking at where they come from, their childhoods, their mental health, addiction issues, learning difficulties, literacy difficulties, because prisoners remain.

• 35:27Rory Stewart?

  Probably along with, in many cases, deserving their punishment have inflicted untold misery on the public, but are also themselves often very vulnerable marginalized people from very screwed up backgrounds.

• 35:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, no, and the point about reading in prisons, and listen, I think the best prisons try their best to encourage that kind of stuff. Some prisons are just going to push it away, others it's not the case. I've been in prisons, I know you will have been, where actually you get, you get book clubs, you get art classes, you get people who really kind of try to get into this stuff. I, I find it really quite strange in the last couple of weeks because, you know, like you, I'm a bit of a liberal when it comes to prisons, and I think far too many people are in prisons who, who shouldn't be there. But I do think these people that have been seen going down for the, for the riots for two, three years, although one or two I see now are being charged with riot, which is

• 36:21Alastair Campbell?

  a more serious offence than, than violent disorder. But listen, the government has really got its work cut out in prisons, that, you know, James Timson has got a hell of a job.

• 36:31Rory Stewart?

  A hell of a job. And I think one of the, the low hanging fruit, if I could cheekily suggest to, to James Timson, is that there are so many charities that want to support prisoners. I think there's literally thousands of them. I think at one point, somebody told me, I can't quite believe it's true, that there are 12,000 registered charities that work with prisoners legally.

• 36:48Alastair Campbell?

  Really?

• 36:49Rory Stewart?

  But they have real difficulty often accessing the prisons because the prisons are understaffed, there's no prison officer to greet them at the door, the prisons are locked up, they can't see them. So they have all this stuff to provide. Give a book, which is Victoria Gray's charity, which works in prisons, a fantastic example of prison charity. If each prison, and there are only about 80 in Britain, had a designated charity liaison officer, they could bring in incredible amount of philanthropic and voluntary support into prisons off the back of that. And if a philanthropist listening to this was looking for something they wanted to do which would make an incredible difference, funding the position of a kind of charity liaison officer in a prison would unlock untold amounts of volunteers, tens of millions

• 37:34Rory Stewart?

  of investment.

• 37:35Alastair Campbell?

  Something else I've noticed, since James Timson was appointed, because of what he did as a business guy at Timson's, working with people coming out of prison, is that other firms are now trying to get into that same space. So listen, he's going to have a lot of goodwill, but I think. You know, you know, I know, anybody who's looked at our prison estate recently knows it is going to be very, very difficult and long term to turn the prisons around.

• 37:58Rory Stewart?

  We should try to get, and we'll get James on to interview, but it's going to be fascinating. I mean, so James, his brother was a Conservative MP, so he knows a little bit about Parliament. But I saw a lot of him when he was a businessman and I was the Prisons Minister. And of course, he was incredibly frustrated as an outsider at what he saw understandably as our uselessness bureaucracy and general lack of progress. Very interesting to see now what he feels when he's there because he'll find it's very different from being the Chief Executive of a company, being a junior minister in the Ministry of Justice.

• 38:26Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, yeah. Now, let's start with prisons in a different place. Charlotte, what do you make of the reports of the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israel? Can the international community do anything about it? And this relates to a report that I think you'd seen.

• 38:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. The situation in Israeli prisons is very, very disturbing. There are currently 10,000 Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons, approximately. Of those, 4,781 have been detained without trial. No charges, no ability to defend themselves. It could be that they are young men of a certain age who might be considered by the Israeli Defence Forces as potential allies for terrorist groups. Some of them appear to be in purely for posting stuff on Facebook that seems to be critical of the Israeli government. And Beis Salam, which is an Israeli human rights organisation founded by progressive Israelis who are critical of the Israeli government, have conducted interviews with

• 39:24Rory Stewart?

  57 of these Palestinian prisoners and have recorded what they believe is an absolutely systematic policy. Systematic policy of physical torture, mental torture, deprivation of food, deprivation of water, deprivation of sleep, stripping of personal possessions, 12 people being crammed in a prison cell designed for six, some of them sleeping on the floor, obviously no beds, no mattresses, no blankets. And this appears to be in line with the fact that the Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, who's on the right of the Israeli Cabinet, has made it absolutely Clear that he intends to make conditions in prisons worse for prisoners.

• 40:04Rory Stewart?

  He's trying to hit the absolute legal minimum of provision for Palestinian prisoners, which is leading to this systematic abuse and torture. Related to this, five Israeli soldiers are still currently charged for sodomizing a prisoner in a desert camp. The Associated Press, in case people thinks this is just Ba'th Salam making this stuff up, has also been conducting interviews with released prisoners, revealing people who are being allowed into a daylight for 15 minutes in a period of a few days. One of them hadn't been outside, I think, for 87 days. So this is very, very, very disturbing. You know, whatever one thinks, heinous attacks by Hamas on October, horrifying terrorist atrocities, but the response from the Israeli government

• 40:49Rory Stewart?

  is being challenged and should be challenged and is being challenged by Israeli human rights groups, quite correctly, because this is horrifying stuff.

• 40:56Alastair Campbell?

  I guess the thinking behind Charlotte's question is that, is it really being challenged? And, you know, here we are in Chicago, in the biggest demonstration that's going on. There's quite a few demonstrations around the place. The biggest demonstration is about the American administration's position on Gaza and there's pretty steadfast support for Israel. And the other thing in this context that was, I thought, quite newsworthy and interesting this week was this letter of resignation by a civil servant at the Foreign and Commonwealth and Development Office, Mark Smith, who essentially has said, you know, I've been trying to raise alarm about our system for selling arms to Israel and what they're being used for. I get nowhere, therefore I'm resigning. He's made it public.

• 41:40Alastair Campbell?

  And I actually, it didn't, it didn't make that much of a splash. It didn't. And I think it's, this is the point that we've been making repeatedly is that this stuff has just become very, very normalized. Now, as it happens, I think David Lammy, he is reviewing this position about Britain's arms sales, Britain's arms relationship with Israel. I don't know when that's coming, I don't know what the decision will be. But I wonder whether Mark Smith's was a deliberate move trying to push in that direction. I'm sure you've talked to people in the Foreign Office who are pretty alarmed about this.

• 42:09Rory Stewart?

  Yes, but there is of course a consensus between the main political parties in Britain and pretty much a consensus between the main political parties in the US as well and pretty much a consensus between the main political parties in Germany, which remain pretty steadfastly pro-Israel. And again, I'm very aware that in quoting this report and criticizing the treatment of prisoners, I can see the flood of emails that's about to come in.

• 42:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:35Rory Stewart?

  Saying, well, at least we investigate, at least we have human rights groups, at least, you know, we have imprisoned our soldiers for sodomizing people. But I don't think you can get around the fact that the Security Minister has made it entirely clear.

• 42:50Alastair Campbell?

  This is a strategy.

• 42:50Rory Stewart?

  This is a policy, yeah.

• 42:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:52Rory Stewart?

  Nor can you get around the fact that almost 5,000 people are detained without trial.

• 42:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, or the fact that 40,000 people have died and they're not all Hamas.

• 43:02Rory Stewart?

  And this is where, in Chicago, we need a very clear sense from Kamala Harris on what she's actually doing. What is her strategy? Because clearly Biden's strategy hasn't worked. And I assume that the way to do this, if she wants to try to hold the two parts of her party together, is to say to Israel, your strategy is not working. This is not the way to win a war and you're going to have to stop doing this. Meanwhile, let's not forget about Lebanon. Let's not forget about the possibility of a war with Iran.

• 43:34Alastair Campbell?

  Here's one, Rory. What's happening to votes for 16-year-olds? Why is this hardly mentioned? What should the Conservative Party respond to be when it comes up again? This is really interesting because, of course, 16-year-old votes for 16-year-olds are in the Labour Party manifesto.

• 43:46Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 43:46Alastair Campbell?

  And the question is basically saying, where's it gone?

• 43:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 43:50Alastair Campbell?

  And.

• 43:50Rory Stewart?

  And was it in the King's Speech?

• 43:51Alastair Campbell?

  It wasn't in the King's Speech.

• 43:52Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 43:53Alastair Campbell?

  But that, but I think it's important to understand that. They're going to be in for a few years.

• 43:59Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 44:00Alastair Campbell?

  There are going to be several King's Speeches.

• 44:01Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 44:01Alastair Campbell?

  There's not going to be another general election. So as long as this is in place before a general election.

• 44:05Rory Stewart?

  But sort of tactically, why not put it in the King's Speech?

• 44:08Alastair Campbell?

  Of course, there's so much other stuff to go in there, I guess.

• 44:10Rory Stewart?

  There wasn't that much in the King's Speech, was there?

• 44:12Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there's quite a lot that requires legislation. I mean, there were, you know, very large number of bills.

• 44:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I would have thought Votes for Sixteen Year Old was a pretty simple bit of legislation, isn't it?

• 44:20Alastair Campbell?

  I'm guessing that they just think, well, you know, with a limited number of bills that we can do.

• 44:24Rory Stewart?

  You don't think it could have given a sense of excitement, progress, action, something changed?

• 44:29Alastair Campbell?

  And I think that we had another question saying, you know, why did Labour not get the sort of Harris-Waltz buzz vibe that's been going?

• 44:37Rory Stewart?

  This is a bit mean to you, but I honestly struggle to really understand, even after the election, what the big ideas of the policy are. What's in this King's Speech? What's Labour trying to do? I mean, I knew, obviously in 2010, we knew, whether we liked it or not, what Cameron Osborne were about, which was austerity. We knew what Boris Johnson was about, which was supposed to be levelling up, even if he didn't do it. What are we meant to understand Labour's about? At the moment, what we're getting is they've met the public sector pay rise. They're doing stuff on housing. They're cutting spending.

• 45:08Alastair Campbell?

  The message from the King's Speech that they were trying to land, which I think the legislation then has to has to show that they're serious about is growing the economy. And I think the big focus on that was planning and building.

• 45:18Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 45:18Alastair Campbell?

  So I think that's what it was about. And then it got completely kiboshed by the riots.

• 45:23Rory Stewart?

  By the riots, yeah.

• 45:24Alastair Campbell?

  And then since then, you've had, we've had Rachel Reeves setting out some pretty tough spending. And I think the one that went down, clearly went down pretty badly in some places, was cutting the winter fuel allowance for lots of pensioners.

• 45:36Rory Stewart?

  Which honestly, I always supported. And many of my Conservative colleagues always wanted to cut the winter fuel allowance pensions. That was something Gordon Brown introduced, wasn't it? Yeah. Because not that we don't think pensions he support, but my mother's getting the winter fuel allowance. And she would be the first to say she doesn't need it. So wealthy pensioners definitely don't need it. It's something that should be means tested, no?

• 45:55Alastair Campbell?

  I'm glad you said your mother rather than me. I'm in that bracket as well. So yeah, I don't particularly want it either.

• 46:03Rory Stewart?

  And so how did that go wrong, given that conservatives like me thought that it should be cut and should be means tested?

• 46:07Alastair Campbell?

  Because the government is now in opposition, because the Tories are now in opposition.

• 46:10Rory Stewart?

  So they've all been out campaigning for the pensioners, attacking the government. And that landed, did it?

• 46:15Alastair Campbell?

  No, a little bit, a little bit. They've sort of, they've banged on about it. I mean, the Tory leadership election isn't really, it's not breaking through to the public, I don't think. I think Tugendhat's made quite a lot of noise.

• 46:25Rory Stewart?

  He's done well on social media. I've been really impressed. So in praising Tom Tugendhat for a moment, I mean, I think he made an exceptional speech in Parliament in Afghanistan, probably one of the best speeches I've ever heard. I've been really impressed by the way he's using social media to communicate his journeys around the country, how active he's being, the people that he's speaking to.

• 46:43Alastair Campbell?

  And Jenrick, Jenrick's pretty active.

• 46:44Rory Stewart?

  Jenrick's been very active too. Tugendhat's just been up in Scotland, so my mother's chiefly been invited along to hear him speak to the Scottish Conservatives. Yes, I think Jenrick and Tugendhat at the moment seem to be the people who are gaining some momentum.

• 46:56Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, Kenny Barlow seems to have a strategy of not doing much and not saying much.

• 47:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And I guess part of the question is the way in which people handle social media. Because of course, one doesn't know with any of these candidates, this is true when I was running, exactly how many people are turning up to these events. All you see is a little clip, obviously cut to show as many supporters behind as possible, saying, here I am in, you know, Godalming.

• 47:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:19Rory Stewart?

  And as the final question, hopefully a slightly more cheery question, and apologies to the person who asked about water companies and sewage. Izzy, how do I spread positive of, sorry, it's so rare on this podcast, I can't even pronounce it. How do I spread positivity and hope for the future in my friends and family? The world may be bleak, but I don't want to contribute to the bleakness. I want to fight it.

• 47:42Alastair Campbell?

  Good old Izzy, I'm with Izzy.

• 47:43Rory Stewart?

  I think that there is reason to be hopeful, even about democracy, even about democracy. And I think it's both that actually not all the elections are going in the wrong direction. We're not in a populist hellhole. It's touch and go in many countries, but good results from Poland, keep praising the teal independents in Australia, decent results in Britain, the pen did less well in France. But it's also the moral argument for democracy should inspire us in the future. It's obviously better to believe in equality, human dignity than it is to believe in grim autocracy, patronising authoritarian governments. And I think that in the end, the right will still win through. The right in the sense of the correct view will still win through.

• 48:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I mean, look, go back to the point I made about that Dan Bowles said that, you know, he went to Milwaukee and the Republicans felt they were home and dry. And here we are in Chicago with the Democrats who are all telling each other, let's not get carried away. But one thing you know is they are completely back in the game. And, you know, when you talk about, I hope Peter doesn't mind me, say, I had a message from Peter Badlos in this morning, who knew I was in Chicago, and he said, every time I see Kamala Harris laugh or smile, I feel a little song in my heart. And she has sort of brought that mood back.

• 49:03Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing.

• 49:04Alastair Campbell?

  And that's not going to put food on the table, but it is giving people a sense of hope. And I think the other thing to say is, is that you get so much good stuff that, you know, we talk, this is the rest is politics, we talk about politics all the time. But there's so much good stuff that happens outside. I mean, I spoke, told you last week, it was about amazing, the Olympics, as it were. The Paralympics, I think, were going to be even better. The football season's back, which is always good. Burnley are top of the championship. We've played two and scored nine goals, Rory. So there's loads of good stuff. There are amazing films being made, amazing books being written.

• 49:39Rory Stewart?

  So you're getting it from films, you're getting it from football, you're getting it from the Olympics.

• 49:42Alastair Campbell?

  Music.

• 49:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I know, music.

• 49:43Alastair Campbell?

  Kindness.

• 49:44Rory Stewart?

  Music. So I've just been listening to an amazing, I think it's the 37 hour course by a guy called Robert Greenberg on the concerto on Baroque and classical music.

• 49:52Alastair Campbell?

  You're listening to 37 hours?

• 49:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 49:54Alastair Campbell?

  When?

• 49:54Rory Stewart?

  Well, I haven't got to the end of it. I'm still struggling my way through Bach's Branabo concerto. But the lovely thing about it is you get beautiful bits of classical music, and then he explains what's going on and how it's done, and then you get another bit of classical. Anyway, that's me. I mean, you don't necessarily want to listen to that. But what I suppose I'm trying to say is that all of us can find joy in our life in very different ways. I was in the New Hampshire mountains yesterday. I didn't have much of a bath or a shower because I was sleeping in one of those wooden huts with five other people and the kids and all that kind of stuff.

• 50:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 50:19Rory Stewart?

  But the trees gave me a lot of joy. I took a picture of a tree, which I'm going to share with you for tree, tree of the day.

• 50:24Alastair Campbell?

  Tree of the day, yeah.

• 50:25Rory Stewart?

  Coming on that.

• 50:25Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent.

• 50:26Rory Stewart?

  I think for me, trees. Classical music keeping me very happy at the moment. And for you, football, Olympics, swimming, still?

• 50:34Alastair Campbell?

  Every day.

• 50:34Rory Stewart?

  Every day.

• 50:35Alastair Campbell?

  I think the important thing is not to allow yourself to be ground down by all the negativity, even when it feels overwhelming. Now, I'm the last, sometimes I do get overwhelmed by it and, you know, I go off into one of my kind of head funks. But I think that if you go out every day and say, I am going to look for something today that makes me feel better about the world rather than worse, you'll find it very, very quickly.

• 50:59Rory Stewart?

  Izzy, great end. Thank you.

• 51:00Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 51:05Speaker 07

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 51:22Speaker 08

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 51:26Speaker 07

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 51:29Speaker 08

  I'm not the first then.

• 51:31Speaker 07

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a middle without parent.

• 51:36Speaker 09

  Espolone Tequila, balanced, delicious, 100% acave, 0% ego. Just add ice, lime and your mouth. For a real margarita, ride the rooster.

• 51:46Speaker 08

  Espolone Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Compendium America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.