34. Question Time: The last days of Blair and May, carbon footprints, and remaining hopeful

May's downfall, Blair-Brown, Celtic vs. Rangers in Belfast, remaining hopeful, charter cities, climate change, carbon emissions, and wildfires. Join Alastair and Rory as they answer all your questions on the above and more in the latest Question Time episode of The Rest Is Politics. Reading list: The Brexit revolutionaries have barely begun, Britain need to wake up fast (The Sovereign Individual) - Alastair Campbell The Tories are upping their attack on our democracy, under cover of the leadership contest - Gina Miller (The Guardian) The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy - Mariana Mazzucato Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: 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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• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Hello. Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  Thank you very, very much for everyone who's sent in questions for us to answer. I think we're up to 1,000 again. And I can see Alistair's incredible stack of handwritten questions. If anybody hasn't seen it, you can go on Twitter. And I think there's thousands of people peering at this stack of questions. So then, Alistair, having gone through 1,000 questions, what's your first one?

• 2:06Alastair Campbell?

  We've got a lot of questions about our interview with Keir Starmer. For the sake of completeness, I should read the one from Ian Johnston. "Alistair, why did you give Keir such an easy ride when you were quite critical of him sometimes?" I don't think we gave him an easy ride. We tried to let him speak, which we would do to Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss if they would come on. But let's just run through some of the things that other people said, because I think they coalesce around certain points, which actually you made at the time. Julian Donovan, how do we get Keir Starmer to stop chasing unicorn red wall voters, e.g. no return to EU, no PR? When will he set out an agenda we can get behind and not keep being defined by Johnson and Brexit? Peter Howe, was Keir right to discard the idea of rejoining or even the single market? How

• 2:50Alastair Campbell?

  is he going to grow the economy? Scotland, he can't just keep ignoring the demands for a referendum. Stephen said, my biggest disappointment was his lack of acknowledgement of the need for democratic and constitutional reform. And here's one for you, Rory. Jake Ferris Woolley, Rory, I tried to ask you this question at the Kite Festival. You're obviously getting far too many questions at the Kite Festival. But he was quoting Dominic Cummings, who'd said that one of the systems failures in our politics is the relationship between the lobby and Westminster. Is Keir Starmer falling into that trap? So I think if I summed up all the questions, Rory, I'd say where they were was they thought he came across very well. A lot of people like him. They felt he was honest compared with Johnson.

• 3:35Alastair Campbell?

  They felt he was in touch, that he understood the world. But they were a bit underwhelmed, as you were, I know, by what he was saying about this great plan for economic growth.

• 3:45Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think the problem is that it's too much business as usual. I feel very strongly, and I think you do too, that we are in a much worse situation than he acknowledges. I think we're going into a 1970s style possible decade of recession. I think that we're in a brutal geopolitical situation. I think our constitutional system is very close to broken. It's not good enough to think, well, if you can just slip in and defeat the Conservatives at the next vote, somehow it's going to be fine, because it's going to have to take the most incredible intellectual clarity to see what a hole we're in, explain to people what we're a hole we're in.

• 4:28Rory Stewart?

  And work out how to chart a path out of it. And I just, I, I thought there was just, he just didn't seem to be acknowledging how bad the problems were. He seemed to be hoping that somehow, you know, there was something that he could, could just rely on to get us out.

• 4:41Alastair Campbell?

  I think also the, the, the other thing that came through, I mean, as I said last week, I get why he wants to focus very resolutely on the economy, public services and unity. I get that. But at the same time, there was lots of people saying they were disappointed, for example, that he just very quickly dismissed the idea of, you know, following up on Leveson for press regulation. I had somebody else who actually got in touch with me, two or three people got in touch and said, you know, why doesn't he just stand up and say, we will not be privatizing Channel Four? Now, he may, maybe get nearer the election, he'll do that.

• 5:12Rory Stewart?

  Well, why is he not saying that? Wait, wait, that, that should be an easy one. That's not exactly a big red wall issue. Privatization of Channel Four.

• 5:18Alastair Campbell?

  My point is, I think is that maybe they're just deciding to focus on these, these three big areas. But I also do think that, you know, there are a lot of, maybe, you know, we're both kind of, were very much on the same side in the, in the, in the referendum, the European referendum. I think there are a lot of people out there. There's another question we had was from somebody who said, you know, is he, is there a danger he's going to make the same mistake that Tony Blair made, this is Aidan Lyons, in thinking that anti-Tory voters have nowhere else to go, whereas eventually they will find other places to go. And I think, of course, you know, we won three majorities. For Labour to get any sort of majority, they're going to have to win back people that did move away from Labour to other parties.

• 6:00Rory Stewart?

  So there's something really good there, isn't there? Because, and this partly comes to something we talked about last week, which is, if we're right, that we're living in an age of populism. And I, I think we both feel that populism is essentially about challenging the establishment, challenging the elite. The problem for Rishi Sunak taking on this trust is she's managing very cleverly to pigeonhole him as the voice of the establishment, the kind of voice of the Treasury. She's, she's the unorthodox one. And that will be the same problem for Keir Starmer. We're in an age where trying to say, business as usual, safe pair of hands. Is not quite enough. He's going to have to get a bit angrier. He's going to have to

• 6:39Rory Stewart?

  show that he gets what's wrong. For listeners, somebody pointed out one of the questions, and actually, I'd love to get the name, we'll get the name a bit later, but pointed out that a lot of the stuff that he was saying seemed to be lifted from an economist called Mariana Mazzucato, very interesting economist, I suppose broadly speaking of the left from London University, read a book called The Value of Everything. So I think people who want a bit more of an insight to Kierkegaard may be worth having a look at that book. But there wasn't much theory, was there? A lot of anecdote.

• 7:11Alastair Campbell?

  Also, I think that part of the damned side of this whole sort of populist approach to politics and the dumbed-down media is that politicians have, seems to me, are giving up on the role that I think they've always had historically, which is partly educating the public about the state of the world, explaining what goes on. As opposed to what you're seeing in the Tory leadership debate, was essentially they're playing back to people what they think is going on based upon what they want to think is going on.

• 7:38Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'd give Rishi a bit more credit. I mean, I think he's, Rishi Sunak's doing something quite difficult. I don't think it's the right thing for him to be doing, and I probably don't necessarily agree with all the content, but he does know that people want to hear that he's going to cut tax, not raise it. And he is, he's decided to double down and try to explain.

• 7:56Alastair Campbell?

  But he's not really, he's not really explaining the scale of change that technology is wreaking upon the world economy, or the extent to which these supply system changes are going to have a massive impact upon all of us.

• 8:08Rory Stewart?

  Now, we're on question time, so here's a cheeky question for you. Raymond Bucken, was this Alice's worst ever idea? Number 10 adviser proposed Celtic Rangers match in Belfast.

• 8:21Alastair Campbell?

  No, worse, it was worse, Rory, it was worse than that. It was Celtic versus Rangers, where Celtic wore the Rangers strips and Rangers wore the Celtic strips. It was, was it the worst idea? It was definitely, as Brian Clough would say, it was definitely in the top one. It was in the top one. Um, I, look, I don't remember, look, it's, it's in the government papers that came out last year. I can only imagine that during the Good Friday Agreement referendum, I had a brainstorm, a brainstorming session with lots of different people and we kicked ideas around. There's one idea I do remember from that period, which was bloody good, I have to say. And that was we got Tony Blair to do these handwritten, we had handwritten posters all over Northern Ireland.

• 9:06Alastair Campbell?

  Um, and you know, that was a great, we talked about David Trimble yesterday. It was a, it was a great campaign that, and it was so exciting and was so happy when we won it. But no, that was without doubt, one of my worst ideas. Um, and Jonathan Powell, to be fair to him, uh, Jonathan doesn't like football. He's got no interest in football. He knows that I'm obsessed with football.

• 9:25Rory Stewart?

  You mean there's somebody else who's not interested? I thought you thought, said I was the only person in the world who wasn't.

• 9:30Alastair Campbell?

  No, you're not the only person. You're the, you're the only person who knows absolutely nothing. Jonathan does know what Rangers and Celtic are.

• 9:38Rory Stewart?

  I do know what Celtic and Rangers is. I, I would like to, like to clarify, I'm speaking to you here from Scotland.

• 9:43Alastair Campbell?

  You can't, you can't, you can't live, live up where you, you do in Scotland without knowing what Rangers and Celtic are.

• 9:48Rory Stewart?

  In fact, my, my great memory of this is your friend Frank Roy, the Labour MP for Motherwell. He's a great Celtic supporter. So I said to him, what's your political philosophy? He said, it's very straightforward. He said, Monday to Friday, my body belongs to the trade union movement. Saturday, my heart belongs to Celtic and Sunday, my soul belongs to the Catholic Church.

• 10:06Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, fabulous, fabulous. Listen, here's one for you, Dan, because you keep telling us how this sort of 10 year global recession that we're going into, Dan Simpson, how do you two remain resolute and hopeful when politics is so bleak?

• 10:20Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think it's quite, it's quite tough and it's, it's something that Alistair and I keep, you and I keep, keep going around. I mean, I think that it's not just bleak what they say, but that there's a relationship between what an incredibly unpleasant, weird system it is and the bleakness of what you see on your television. That there's a reason why you don't get clear, critical thinking and honesty out of politicians. And that's because some weird combination of the public, the media, social media, force them to warp their minds, force them to stop thinking like normal people.

• 10:57Alastair Campbell?

  I think the thing that keeps me resolute and hopeful is the fact that there are so many people out there who remain resolute and hopeful. And I know you said the thing about, you know, young people aren't always right, but I do still detect an awful lot of passion and a lot of ideas. And, and I, look, I think we're going through a terrible, terrible period in history. I think it could actually, it could eventually be on the par with the 30s and even, even worse, and all that followed. But at the same time, I think there's enough energy, enough youth, enough passion out there. So I guess young people is the answer, the answer for me.

• 11:31Rory Stewart?

  So let's link this in. I mean, one thing I am hopeful of, Max Mazuki has written in with a question, Rory, do you believe that foreign aid actually helps the most vulnerable? This is an example of somewhere where I think we could be about to see something very, very radical. We've talked about this quite a lot on the show before, but I think the pressures that are now on may mean that we start doing assistance to the poorest countries in the world in a smarter way. And for me, of course, that means doing much more assistance in the form of cash, trusting the poorest people in the world to know what they actually need, rather than giving them objects they don't. I was very struck recently in a refugee camp. People were being given cooking oil, they were being given blankets, they were being given tents. And the first thing they were doing was selling those things

• 12:15Rory Stewart?

  to turn them into cash so they could get things that they actually needed. And you imagine all that you could save in terms of the transport, the planes. I was actually a bit shocked in the United States to see people who were spending tens of millions hiring planes to take American goods to Ukraine, thinking that that was the most helpful thing they could do. When of course, that money would have been much better spent, giving it directly to Ukrainians. So they can actually buy the goods that are very much available in the European markets. They don't need 37 million spent on American planes bringing American stuff over.

• 12:46Alastair Campbell?

  Now, by the way, Rory, one of the reasons I wanted to talk about charter cities yesterday is we actually had a lot of questions about charter cities this week.

• 12:52Rory Stewart?

  Oh, go on then.

• 12:53Alastair Campbell?

  Ian Smith, I've been reading up on charter cities. I find it very, very scary. Tom Hickmore, this looks to me like the return of medieval baronies. Susan Cox, I've been reading about charter cities and this terrifying vision of having parts of Britain where UK laws won't apply.

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  Just to remind people, just in case you missed yesterday's podcast.

• 13:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's essentially it's creating cities within our own country that wouldn't be governed by the laws of our own country.

• 13:18Rory Stewart?

  And it's an idea from this World Bank chief economist, Paul Roma, who originally dreamt it up as an idea for international development. So it was dreamt up by Roma because he believed that it was the thing to do. He thought the fundamental problem in international development was governance and corruption. So he thought there's nothing you can do. For example, the example he gave me when I talked to him in the States was Libya at the time, where there was a civil war going on. So he thought, give up on the idea that you're going to somehow be able to do it through the government. Instead, what you do is you just set up a little enclave and you just let capitalism rip. So it's created this very odd coalition between far right, kind of Ayn Rand, sovereign individual.

• 14:01Alastair Campbell?

  Peter Thiel, sovereign individuals.

• 14:03Rory Stewart?

  A fringe bit of the international development community. And the model in their head has always been Hong Kong, which basically started as a barren rock, was taken out of Chinese government control, allowed to rip with very few laws and took off. But it's a very, very odd thing to think about doing in Britain, which is a very mature democracy with very highly developed rules.

• 14:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but where our rights are being taken away left, right and centre. Not least, by the way, check out Gina Miller's article about the Northern Ireland Protocol, where she draws attention to an awful lot of the other stuff that's going on that we haven't been focused on. And the other thing, I gave a shout out yesterday to the Charter Cities Institute website, which is the sort of propaganda about the whole thing. The Baker Street Herald is where I recommend people go if they want to find the other side of the argument. And the guy who runs that website is the guy who actually ran up to me at a railway station a few years ago and thrust the sovereign individual into my hand. And that's what I wrote about, and we'll put the thing I wrote about in the show notes. Now Rory, we're getting a bit of flak, I've got to tell you this.

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  Quite a lot of questions this week about the climate, okay, and about the wildfires and so forth. And, you know, quite a few of them say, they do say, you two regularly bang on, Charlotte Baker says this, Alan Viner says this, that we bang on about how much we care about the planet, but barely a week goes by that we don't talk about having got on or off a plane.

• 15:25Rory Stewart?

  Andy Moore, based on what sounds like both presenters' global workload, I want to ask how either Alistair or Rory defend the amount they fly for their jobs. They often seem to be residing in a hotel about to leave or have just landed at an airport. So it's a good challenge.

• 15:38Alastair Campbell?

  I find it hard to defend.

• 15:39Rory Stewart?

  I, I, I, I'll give it a go.

• 15:41Alastair Campbell?

  Go on, then, you're a Tory, you're a Tory, you're still a Tory, give it a go.

• 15:44Rory Stewart?

  I work in international development, and I believe that the fundamental problem in international development is execution on the ground and the quality of projects. And if I'm to raise money for projects on the ground, I need to be able to look donors in the eyes and say, I was there, I was in the village in Rwanda, this is how it works. And I've seen such bad stuff done by people trying to manage things remotely, particularly in conflict zones in some of the poorest countries in the world. So I don't think I can do my job without getting out on the ground. And unfortunately, that involves being in a plane.

• 16:15Alastair Campbell?

  And would you say, Rory, that you find it very hard to do your job without me flying around the world as well? Do you think that would be even harder for you?

• 16:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I'm going to hand over to you to defend your flight schedule.

• 16:25Alastair Campbell?

  No, I, I, I say, look, I'm a lot better than I used to be. I mean, I regularly now will take the train if I'm going to Europe. I, internal flying is virtually a thing of the past. I've turned, in recent months, I have turned down quite a few trips. And partly that's mainly because, you know, maybe it's partly because I just don't want to travel as much as I was. But at the same time, it's in the back of my mind the whole time, every time you get on a plane, should you really be doing this? But, you know, I kind of agree with you. It's, it's very, very, it's hard. But I'll tell you that one of the other questions we got, John Duncan. Tory leadership contenders keep saying we have to take the country with us on climate change is their sort of excuse for inaction. But if that's the case, why are

• 17:08Alastair Campbell?

  there no education campaigns going on within government about just how we need to change our habits? And he's absolutely right.

• 17:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Well, I also think we need to be realistic. I mean, one of the horrors that I came across and differed Department for International Development when I was Secretary of State there, in the middle of the Syrian crisis, so we're now going back a few years, they decided to move our Syrian team up to East Kilbride near Glasgow. And they did it on the grounds that it would be good for the regeneration of the area around East Kilbride, and it would save money on office rent. And I said, well, how are they going to be able to participate in all these Syrian meetings in London? Because everything's done in the margins, face to face, Ministry of Defence, Foreign Office. And we claimed at the time that Syria was our number one global security priority. And they said, don't worry, they'll always be able to fly down for meetings whenever you need them. Well, sure enough, as the weeks

• 17:58Rory Stewart?

  and months went on, I saw less and less of them. And I finally went up to East Kilbride, tracked down the team, and was given a lovely presentation by a manager who said he'd arrived, and his job was carbon, and he'd found far too many unnecessary flights were taking place. So he stopped the Syrian team from coming down from London. So we need to join these things up a little bit more, I suppose is what I want to say politely.

• 18:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. There was John Ranford, I think it's Ranford, because it's in my scribble, having read through it a couple of days ago. Will the wildfires be the tipping point in the debate in the UK? Or will backbenchers continue to sort of back the fossil fuel lobby?

• 18:36Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's get farmers involved. I mean, I think that's really important. And I think the drought is showing us much more clearly the way that these impacts are going to happen. We'll see it on our own food security much more clearly. And I think people are feeling that in California. I think the drought that's now running from Colorado right the way through to California, and it's going to wipe out probably half of the fruit and veg in the United States, is going to bring it home to the United States. There were too many people, I think, who felt gently, well, we may not get flooded in Britain, and we could do with a bit more nice weather, seemed to be the sort of view 10 years ago. And I think people hadn't Thought about actually what extreme drought is like, what extreme weather conditions are like, what extreme gales are like. And all of that, I think we're

• 19:21Rory Stewart?

  beginning to feel much more directly.

• 19:23Alastair Campbell?

  Just before we go to the break, Chop Suey, taking back control versus the Australian trade deal, this great trade deal that Liz Truss claims to have done, where frankly, the Australians seem to have won hands down. We've had no scrutiny, virtually no scrutiny of it in Parliament. And he says he's very worried about the, his capacity to undermine our food's capacity and food security.

• 19:45Rory Stewart?

  So let's, let's finish with that and go to the break. And it's a big difference between Britain and the United States, because of course, in the United States, the Congress would really scrutinize these trade deals in terms of the impact on their constituents. And we're not really doing that. Thank you very much. Off for the break.

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• 20:27Speaker 04

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• 20:38Speaker 05

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 20:44Speaker 06

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• 20:48Speaker 05

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 20:51Speaker 06

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• 20:52Speaker 05

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only appears October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 20:57Speaker 07

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• 20:59Speaker 08

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• 21:00Speaker 07

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• 21:02Speaker 08

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• 21:04Speaker 07

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• 21:12Speaker 07

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• 21:18Speaker 07

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• 21:29Speaker 09

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• 21:58Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics question time with me Rory Stewart.

• 22:02Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 22:03Rory Stewart?

  Now, Alistair, you're a bit of a linguist and a linguistic analyst. And there's a particular thing, which I don't know the word for, but there'll be a technical word for it, which is when you turn an O into a sort of UO. So I was caught out. Instead of saying Como, I said Cuomo. Now, somebody called Max de Haldabang has convicted you of the same crime. It must be a sort of common, common thing. He points out that Max de Haldabang, after Alistair's delight at Rory mispronouncing Lake Como, I can't help but tell him he's been saying Putin wrong all his life. It's Putin, not Putin. Now, in Russian, and then he writes it out in Cyrillic, it's written Putin.

• 22:47Rory Stewart?

  Alistair's pronunciation would be the U, Putin.

• 22:50Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, well, Rory, the thing is, having met Putin many, many times, I know that it

• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  You almost said Putin again.

• 22:56Alastair Campbell?

  I, I, I Having met Putin many

• 22:58Rory Stewart?

  You see, now you've done it.

• 22:59Alastair Campbell?

  You've done it. Met Putin many times, I know, I know that it really pisses him off. And so it's a very deliberate thing. It's like when the, it's like when the Daily Mirror sub editors used to deliberately spell Alistair wrong on my bylines, knowing it would get up my nose. So it's very, but my, my favorite, I said, I mean, we shouldn't really joke about Putin at the moment, but my favorite Putin, Putin, uh, story in terms of his name is the fact that in French. Is called Poutine, P O U T I N E. Because of course, as any French.

• 23:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, we don't need to translate that.

• 23:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, probably won't translate it, but it's sort of somewhere between the.

• 23:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 23:39Alastair Campbell?

  It's a very rude word. Yeah. Right. If you're going to have a go at me. I'm going to have a go at you now.

• 23:44Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 23:45Alastair Campbell?

  And I'm going to, last week, right, I wasn't going to raise Eaton, but you've, you've really provoked me. You've pressed my buttons now. So last week you were defending Eaton because it's created all these great soldiers and wonderful prime ministers like Boris Johnson and great actors like Dominic West, Eddie Redmayne, Damian Lewis. I went to visit the website afterwards of Eaton and it said this. There are three different theatres staffed by professional theatre practitioners. This includes a resident designer as well as a theatre director and filmmaker in residence. Appointed every year to bring the most up to date perspectives into the department. I then went on Rory to read about their 50 tennis courts, 40 football and rugby pitches, 19 cricket pitches.

• 24:29Alastair Campbell?

  And oh, isn't it marvellous? They're going to build four new floodlit artificial pitches. So honestly.

• 24:34Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's, it's, it's completely bonkers. It's not just Eaton, actually. It's all these private schools.

• 24:40Alastair Campbell?

  No, Eaton's definitely got the best.

• 24:42Rory Stewart?

  And no, they're, they're all putting more and more crazy money. It's true in the US. It's true in the UK. And there seems to be a sort of arms race to see how much money there and it's, it's.

• 24:52Alastair Campbell?

  But why can't we get some of that money? Why can't, why can't some of these people pay tax, put it into the government's checker? And let, let us have state schools with goods facilities.

• 25:00Rory Stewart?

  Part of the reason for this, I think, yeah, one of the things that had happening there is that the fees have also gone through the roof. When I went to that school, I think the fees were around in modern terms, what be now about nine thousand pounds and they're now about 40, 45,000 pounds.

• 25:16Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I, I feel that I've, I, I love the fact that you now refer to it as that school. I like that.

• 25:22Rory Stewart?

  Oh, you're, you're getting into me and I want to make a massive defence of it. I'll do that next. I'll do that next. Now, here we are. Here's a more serious question and we're not.

• 25:29Alastair Campbell?

  That was a serious point.

• 25:30Rory Stewart?

  Well, I didn't know who the question was from. Just sounded like you having a go at me about Eaton.

• 25:33Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, sorry. It was. It wasn't the question at all. Yeah.

• 25:35Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Here's a question from Dylan Johnson. As we're currently in the middle of a leadership contest, my question for both of you is, Alistair, at what moment did you realise that Tony Blair staying on as PM was untenable? And what were your feelings? And Rory, at what moment do you realise that Theresa May staying on as PM was untenable? And what were your feelings? Do you want to start with that?

• 25:56Alastair Campbell?

  Wow, um, I think it was volume seven or eight. It's all recorded.

• 26:02Rory Stewart?

  But whenever we get on to feelings, you always talk about volumes. It's very disturbing.

• 26:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I have, I have very large volumes of feeling. Um, I'll tell you exactly how I think I felt. And it, I know that sounds strange, but it's very difficult sometimes to divorce divorce yourself from what you feel now, what I feel now about big events that were happening at the time, where the reason I do, to be honest, rely on my diary so much is because I get more of a sense of what I felt if I look at them, because I often forget how I felt. But I can remember in particular, having the inside, I remember going for a walk with Philip Gould and we were chatting over Tony Gordon, Tony Gordon, Tony Gordon. I remember at dinner that night Fiona and Gail, Gail, Philip's wife, saying,

• 26:48Alastair Campbell?

  have you two ever had a conversation that doesn't involve the names Tony and Gordon? And we looked at each other and said, not for a very long time.

• 26:58Alastair Campbell?

  But I remember we went for a walk and, and basically we, we had agreed, Tony was in agreement, that the third election campaign had to be fought on the economy. And he wasn't, he decided, he was settled in his own mind, he was not going to get rid of Gordon as Chancellor. And I just had an instinct that if we were going to get them to campaign together in a meaningful way for our third election win, then there had to be some sort of indication.

• 27:26Rory Stewart?

  And could, could, could he have got rid of him? I mean, in retrospect, could he have got rid of him?

• 27:30Alastair Campbell?

  He could have done, but I think he, he felt, yes, he could have done, he could have done.

• 27:34Rory Stewart?

  He had, he had, he had the legitimacy, he'd been, it would have been, what, what would have been the impact? Let's play it through. If you were planning for that, try to get rid of Gordon Brown in 2005.

• 27:42Alastair Campbell?

  Two big things. The first is Gordon was, you know, established as the Chancellor, established as a huge figure within the government.

• 27:50Alastair Campbell?

  And I think, you know, you'd, you'd have had to thought really long and hard about who would take over. He could have sort of, the only job you could think of that maybe could have offered him was Foreign Secretary. I'm not sure Gordon would have gone for that. So then you've got, you're back to the old thing about, do you have the big bear outside? Now, I think that's manageable in most circumstances, but it makes life a lot more difficult.

• 28:08Rory Stewart?

  So what would have happened? You would have had a very grumpy Gordon Brown on the back benches.

• 28:11Alastair Campbell?

  Which might, which might have been, which might, he might not have plotted and planned and I don't know.

• 28:17Rory Stewart?

  No, he would have done, wouldn't he?

• 28:19Alastair Campbell?

  I think he probably would, he probably wouldn't. And I think, but, but the truth is Gordon, deep down, I think, knew that Tony was not going to do it.

• 28:27Alastair Campbell?

  And but how I felt was we, I remember Philip and I flew up to St Andrews, I think it was. And Tony was at, um, I don't, I can't remember what he was doing up there, but, and I remember he, we had this meeting and we walked in and said, oh, here we go. I've got my pollster and my closest advisor coming through the door to tell me my time's up.

• 28:47Rory Stewart?

  He said that as soon as possible.

• 28:48Alastair Campbell?

  He basically says, we walked in, it's not as simple as that, Tony. What we're saying is, what we're saying is.

• 28:53Rory Stewart?

  But he was right.

• 28:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there are others, I think Peter Mandelson and others felt that we probably were too convinced that that was the way to go. I was always thinking as, whenever I was Philip, with Philip, we were always thinking about election strategy. And I could not see a way of putting together a successful, winning campaign, fought on the economy. If we did not have the two of them like that. And we were in a position where at the time, the friction and the tension between them, and I don't think it was six and one and a half dozen the other, I think far more of it came from, from, from Gordon's people than from us. But, but, but that was the political reality and we had to address that.

• 29:35Rory Stewart?

  So let me, let me try and Theresa May, I mean, I felt really distraught, I very, very sad. I, I had a lot of affection, admiration for her. It was extraordinary. I mean, just, just to remind listeners, she had come in and in 2017, beginning of 2017, she had the most incredible approval ratings, very, very strongly in the opinion polls. Looked as though if she went to an election, she'd win a majority of well over a hundred.

• 30:01Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, Rory, before you get to your main point, I just want to jump in with another question. David Browning, Rory, given your admiration for Theresa May.

• 30:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 30:10Alastair Campbell?

  What do you think about the fact that she gave Boris Johnson such a great office of state?

• 30:14Rory Stewart?

  I think that was a big tactical error, big tactical error. He wasn't expecting it. In fact, Boris thought sort of things were over for him. He was astonished that he was given that. Well, just give a credit for a second. I mean, I think she was a real believer in the team of rivals theories. She's one of the only prime ministers who's really tried to say, okay, I'm not going to have just a narrow group that agrees with me. She genuinely tried to bring in every different bit of the party. And I wish Boris Johnson had been more willing to do that. She believed Conservative Party was a coalition.

• 30:41Alastair Campbell?

  She told Michael Gove to bug her off and learn about the party.

• 30:44Rory Stewart?

  She did, and she got rid of George Osborne, which made him very angry. But she brought in the left, David Green, David Liddington, David Gork, and she brought in David Davis, Boris Johnson on the right. And she tried to hold that all together. And I think it was a, it's quite an old fashioned thing to do. So just to come to it, I mean, in the end, I think she went into that election where she was well in the lead. She was, and it was blown, completely blown, blown by a combination of Corbyn and by a brave attempt to try to sort out adult social care in the manifesto that went wrong. She then came out limping and then for the next two and a half years, it's not like you describing Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Because Tony Blair was in a very powerful position going into that election, 2005.

• 31:28Rory Stewart?

  Theresa May, it was a miracle that she lasted as long as she did. You'll remember Grenfell very soon after the election damaged her a lot. Questions about her health and of course Brexit grinding on in the background. So I thought she did something miraculous, but of course, in the end, the thing that killed her right at the heart of it was losing that majority because if she'd kept that majority, unfortunately, I think we might have been able to get a reasonable Brexit through.

• 31:55Alastair Campbell?

  Now, listen, talking of Theresa, talking of Theresa, Rory, can we, I'd like, I'd really like to get her on the podcast. I keep delivering these Labour giants.

• 32:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, I've got, I've got a Tory giant lined up for listeners in the next episode.

• 32:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it better be big, it better be big and it better be good.

• 32:10Rory Stewart?

  Better be big, better be big. That's right. It is. I can announce now, Redman Shishki.

• 32:19Alastair Campbell?

  Though I would rather have the person who almost voted for him. That would be really interesting.

• 32:27Rory Stewart?

  See you all next.

• 32:28Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, pleasure as always.

• 32:29Rory Stewart?

  Thank you. Bye bye.

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