357. Political New Year's resolutions, Elon Musk, and what happens next in Taiwan?

What should Labour’s new year resolution be? How worried should we be about Elon Musk? Could China move on Taiwan in 2025? Join Rory and Alastair in this New Year's Day special episode to hear them answer all these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across England, Scotland & Wales. Use referral code POLITICS after signing up for your chance to win a TRIP merch bundle. Learn more at GetFuse.com/Politics ⚡ 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley + Alice Horrell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen and 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. 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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• 1:58Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:01Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. First of 2025 Rory, Happy New Year.

• 2:05Rory Stewart?

  Happy New Year to you. Scottish Hogmanay happening.

• 2:09Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, absolutely. No place on earth like Scotland at any time of the year, but especially around about now.

• 2:14Rory Stewart?

  Well, Alistair, Happy, Happy New Year. And we're going to follow a, a plan that you've brought together, where we're going to talk through New Year resolutions, but we're going to talk about what future plans the British should have, Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems, but also what the future might hold for Donald Trump, for Elon Musk, and what things might happen in 2025 that nobody has yet really thought about. What could this year hold? But before that, can I just quickly cheekily ask, are you somebody who does New Year resolutions?

• 2:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 2:50Rory Stewart?

  You do? But are they secret? Do you tell us what they are?

• 2:53Alastair Campbell?

  I sort of, I, I kind of do do New Year's resolutions, but I don't really hang on them for very long.

• 3:01Rory Stewart?

  Very good. They last about three days, do they?

• 3:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, maybe a week. What are yours?

• 3:06Rory Stewart?

  I don't do them. I don't do them. I should start. Here we are. My new New Year's resolution for the year is I'm gonna, I'm gonna get going writing a, a serious book this year.

• 3:15Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Not long ago, you were talking about writing a novel. Has that gone off the boil?

• 3:19Rory Stewart?

  It's no good, my novel. Unlike you, I don't think I'm able to write a novel. You, you've actually written novels successfully. I, I've decided I'm no good at the dialogue.

• 3:27Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, don't give up.

• 3:31Alastair Campbell?

  No, that should be your New Year's, New Year's resolution is to be perseverant about your novel.

• 3:35Rory Stewart?

  Perseverant, no.

• 3:36Alastair Campbell?

  I actually, very, very rarely, actually, that, I will have a New Year's resolution. This is the first time I can remember in about 15 years where I haven't got a book actually on the go. I've always had a book on the go and, and often I've had two or three books on the go. And at the moment, I literally don't have a book. I wonder whether it's because the podcast is taking a lot of my-

• 3:56Rory Stewart?

  I know, it is consuming a lot of mental energy, isn't it?

• 3:58Alastair Campbell?

  Time and mental energy, yeah, yeah.

• 4:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, good. I mean, yeah, so my, yeah, um, let, let's start with New Year's resolutions then. So how about some political New Year's resolutions? I'm going to start with you. What should Labour's New Year's resolution be?

• 4:11Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, right. Okay. Labour's New Year's resolution should be- I think pick fights with the right people and the right causes. I think one of the reasons why the Labour government is sort of had a very short honeymoon and and is just sort of surrounded by this sense of negativity. Partly media, the media has gone absolutely back into kind of traditional anti-Labour mode. But I think in part it's because Labour have been picking lots of fights with the wrong people.

• 4:41Rory Stewart?

  And so you mean pensioners ever went to fuel farmers, now WASP-y women? Just to remind people that don't know about WASP-y women, that's about women who got caught on a cliff edge on when their pensions were going to kick in.

• 4:53Alastair Campbell?

  Another one in in in Keir Starmer's reset speech just before Christmas, through his sort of picking a fight with the civil service, which wasn't necessary, this sort of, you know, sitting in the tepid bath of complacency, whatever.

• 5:05Rory Stewart?

  Managed decline, yeah.

• 5:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, you know, I I think some some good fights. I I think one of Tony Blair's best speeches as Labour leader, best conference speech, and actually, he didn't agree that it was one of his best, and he retreated from it. But I I would recommend that Labour go and read Tony Blair's Forces of Conservatism speech, where the fights that we wanted to take were the fights against the people who were holding the country back. I think you could have a a very good, and some of these are about thematic fights. I've been really alarmed the extent to which the kind of the fight against poverty and the fight against inequality and the fights against injustice have sort of, you know, slightly gone off the radar.

• 5:51Alastair Campbell?

  I think they should pick a fight properly, probably with Elon Musk. I know that's a dangerous thing to do, but, you know, this is a guy who's a pretty dangerous force right now. Pick a fight, I know you think that the the the super rich are are taxed enough already, but the super rich who do not contribute taxes, who try to spend all their time avoiding taxes, I think there's a good fight to be had there. I think there is a good fight to be had with people who are trying to take the country back on, sorry to echo Kamala Harris, but on some of what the right defines as woke issues, which are proper campaigns of social justice.

• 6:27Rory Stewart?

  And just tactically, would you be picking a fight with Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch? Or one of the two particularly, and is there a risk of putting the spotlight on Farage? How would you think about that?

• 6:40Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, the spotlight is on Farage, whether they like it or not, because Farage is very good at getting the spotlight set upon him. I think they are both, Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage are both absolutely forces of conservatism. They are people who are on the right of politics, and I think they have to be taken on. One of the reasons Nigel Farage, and he was your politician of the year, and the reason for that is because he's exploited his arrival in Parliament and his addition to the strength of his political platform, he's exploited it very, very well. That's, I think, the point that you were making. So you can't ignore him, you have to take him on

• 7:22Alastair Campbell?

  in argument all the time. So I'm not saying you make him the big figure of your attacks, but he is a big part of why the country is moving to the right and Labour's got to drag it back to the centre. Having done so very, very well in the election campaign, having won that election, but since then, I just feel they've been picking fights with the wrong people.

• 7:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's a really, really, really good observation. I mean, I'll give my penny worth, but I think actually what you've just said is more interesting. I mean, my sense of where Labour's gone wrong is that they've done a lot of small things which appeal to the UK Treasury, sort of sensible, small, democratic decisions. The Treasury has always wanted to get rid of the Winter Fuel Allowance, has always supported raising the pension age on WASP-y women, has never liked the exemptions for farmers in inheritance tax. And Rachel Reeves, I think, is at the heart of this problem. I think she is thinking too much still like a civil servant, as though she's a sort of Bank of England economist still. So she's doing these

• 8:28Rory Stewart?

  things which have presented to every minister, George Osborne makes jokes about this, this is basically the entire shopping list that every chance has been prevented with for 14 years, and most of them have had the political nous not to make those, their first moves. And the problem is that they don't add up to enough. Going back, I mean, you often are quite self-deprecating, interestingly, about your early-stage Labour, but I think that it is true that almost everything you did felt like it was about modernisation, or it was about social justice, or it was about economic dynamism. There was a kind of sense that everything tied into this. And they almost had this with the word growth.

• 9:10Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 9:11Rory Stewart?

  And I think it's a terrible, terrible decision to give up on a target of growth and talk instead about this sort of slightly tepid thing that everybody basically has achieved since the nineteen fifties of GDP per capita and rising living standards. Because that would then allow them to do quite radical things instead of short term things. And so anyway, that's, that's the enemy. And, and I think my final thought on that, as whenever I reflect back to my own time in government, is it is partly about Keir Starmer really working out what he thinks. It took me nearly six months, I remember, as a prison minister, before I really worked out what the one big thing was. And for me, that was violence in prisons.

• 9:53Rory Stewart?

  And once I got it, I could then tie everything back into it.

• 9:57Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 9:57Rory Stewart?

  So, you know, I could explain that because the prisons were unsafe, people weren't getting educated, because the prisons were unsafe, there was reoffending, because the prisons were unsafe, drugs were getting in, et cetera. And, and I remember resisting it, a bit like Keir is at the moment, saying, well, you know, it's very complicated, there are many things we have to do, it's not about a slogan. But actually, it was really helpful when I finally got to that, boiled it down to the big insight. And I think that should be growth.

• 10:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that goes back to something we discussed a few weeks ago, when I, this was before Keir Starmer did his recess speech, when I said, I thought they should sort of, you know, take a deep breath, analyse the last few months, weeks and months, and then come back in the new year with the plan for growth. Here is the plan for growth, almost like a big set piece event. Now, it's difficult to do that now because it will, it will look like what the media will call another relaunch. But I still think if growth is the big thing, going through every-

• 10:53Rory Stewart?

  And presumably should be, shouldn't it?

• 10:55Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it should be for two reasons. One, because the economy is in a bit of a mess, and two, because they said it was going to be.

• 11:01Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 11:02Alastair Campbell?

  So it's always, you know, and even though, as we said, at the time of the budget, they were specific about taxes, they were definitely not going to raise, and quiet about the others. But the impression has been created and landed that they said they weren't going to put up taxes, and they have. They said everything was funded, but now it seems there's this black hole. And, you know, therefore winter fuel payment, et cetera. So, but I think actually it is still important that they come back in the new year. And this is the plan for growth. Here are the big chapters of the plan for growth. Here is where we're, you know, we're addressing industrial strategy. Here's where we're doing skills. Here's where we're doing, you know, Europe. Here's where we're doing all these different things that relate to growth. And give themselves a kind of big roadmap.

• 11:47Alastair Campbell?

  That takes them through the next 12 months. And then, because, you know, I was speaking to a minister a couple of days ago. Who was saying, you know, and actually said, look, you, you sounded to get a bit grungy on the podcast. And I said, well, yeah, I am getting a bit grungy. And he said, look, just relax a bit. We've got four years. And I said, listen, you haven't got four years. This is the period at which, yes, you can, this is a period where there's pre-delivery. You know, we used to talk about in 1997, Tony had this phrase, post euphoria, pre-delivery. And it got, and it did get very kind of negative in terms of the overall mood. And you have during that period. That's when an awful lot of opinions are being formed that are very hard to shift. Once they get, once they set.

• 12:32Alastair Campbell?

  So the second half of the parliament is when you can begin to think about, you know, the next election. Right now should be absolutely focused on this idea of a roadmap. Where are we going month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year? How are we building the economy? How are we getting the health services set up properly? Now, I think that they're doing parts of it well. And I know Kier doesn't like this idea of what I call the narrative arc of a parliament, but you need one.

• 13:01Rory Stewart?

  Why, why doesn't he? What, what's he got? I mean, it seems to me completely central. I mean, even someone like me who can be a bit too verbose and a bit technocratic. I really concluded that my big lesson is narrative has to be tied to action. That there's simply no point because, and, and there's a reason for that. The, the point that I tried to make to him is that it's not, as he might be tempted to think, just a question of sort of cheap spin to the media. It's totally essential for leading and managing the government itself. That narrative is almost more important internally than externally. It's the thing that makes everybody at their desk understand this is what we're aiming for. This is where we're going.

• 13:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I think why not? I think because he feels that the way that he's done the job so far, he's done it by being this, you know, hardworking, serious, sensible, steadfast. These are all good qualities, by the way, don't get me wrong, they're good qualities. And I think he thinks that, possibly thinks that people are trying to make him something that he's not. They say, well, you know, that's what Tony Blair did, that's what Bill Clinton did, that's what Macron was doing. He's not that style of politician. But I think for the government as a whole, and you're absolutely right, this is for internal communications as well as external public communications. You have to have this sense of that everybody inside the government knows what the whole of government

• 14:27Alastair Campbell?

  is about and trying to do. And I still feel they're kind of, they're struggling to get to that. Now, their one big advantage, Rory, is that they've still got the main opposition party that seems to be struggling to find its feet as well. So what's your new euro resolution for the Conservative Party?

• 14:43Rory Stewart?

  Well, the Conservatives are in crisis, and I was with senior Tories yesterday.

• 14:50Alastair Campbell?

  Hold on, Rory, before you go on. My definition of a crisis is an event or series of events that essentially comes together to form an existential threat. So when you say a crisis, do you think that is an existential threat?

• 15:05Rory Stewart?

  I think it's close to it, close to a threat to its existence, because the crisis is about whether they essentially merge with Reform.

• 15:14Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 15:15Rory Stewart?

  And what's happening is that a lot of their major funders are holding the money back. They don't feel there's anywhere for their money to go. And the most live debate is what to do about Farage. It's this extraordinary situation where Farage with five MPs appears to have more momentum, more clarity than the Conservatives with well over 100. And it's a situation where despite the fact the Conservatives lost far more seats, the Lib Dems and Labour than they did to Reform, they're totally obsessed with Reform. And Kemi Badenoch... Has really got to find that oxygen. So she has to find a way of making sure that Farage

• 16:00Rory Stewart?

  seems irrelevant and that she's the leader of the opposition, not him. And how does she do that? I think she's firstly got to get out of her comfort zone. So instead of doing interviews with the spectators, she should be doing an interview with the rest as politics.

• 16:15Rory Stewart?

  Secondly, I think that there is an absolutely golden opportunity to nail Labour now on growth in the economy. If Labour doesn't manage to do what you're talking about in the beginning of next year, there's a really good story for the Conservatives to tell that this Labour government is failing to make the investments, failing to reform, putting money into wages and unions. And I think there's also a gaping hole in defence, international security, foreign policy, where again, there's a good Conservative message about investing in the armed forces, Britain playing a bigger role in the world. So she should take that opportunity and I can't see her yet taking it. What do you think she should do?

• 16:56Alastair Campbell?

  Well, this relates to what I was going to say, that I think the New Year's resolution should be, which is to be serious. I don't find them very serious at the moment about the sort of things that you're saying. So I'll give you away your point about, I think at the moment, I think on defence and foreign policy, actually, the Labour government's been pretty good. I think John Healy's very effective as Defence Minister. I think he's saying and doing the right things. I think that David Lammy's actually been pretty good. And I think they both come across in the jobs that they're doing as being serious. Whereas I don't get that sense from, as a whole, from the Shadow Cabinet, notwithstanding that, you know, our friend Andrew Mitchell is very good. But I'll tell you what I think

• 17:40Alastair Campbell?

  in relation to what you've just said. So I'll give you an example of what I think she should say and do.

• 17:46Alastair Campbell?

  There's no way that they can sort of turn around and say, ah, but we would invest more in defence, because even though it irritates the public that Labour keep banging on about the inheritance that they got from the Conservatives, it's true, they left a complete mess. And if I were Kemi Badenoch, I would own that. I would own that. I would say, look, I'm not going to deny, we left an absolute mess on so many fronts, and we all have to take responsibility for that. But now, the question, the challenge that I face is the new leader of the Conservative Party, is what would I do now? How would I rebuild the economy now? And here's a new set of ideas. How would I shape a new foreign policy now? And here's a different approach

• 18:28Alastair Campbell?

  to the one that we did before. But I think while she, this has been her weakness in primus's questions so far, it's almost as if the last government never happened, and the world started six months ago when the Labour government was elected. And I just don't think that can be effective. So she should own, this may sound counterintuitive, but she should own the perceived and real failings of the last government and use that as her lever for change.

• 18:56Rory Stewart?

  She did more of that in Robert Jenrick, didn't she? Because I remember her speech began with a bit with apologies. You're absolutely right. She's, I mean, however unfair it is to Labour, tactically, it's inevitable. She's got to say, I'm really sorry, we fucked up, and this is the way that I'm going to turn it around. And I inherited a dismal situation. But here's the new plan, and this is the way in which we're going. And it's that that we're not yet feeling. And she's got to work out what on earth she's doing with reform, because I think that's the thing to just keep watching, because it's going to feel increasingly as she struggles. You know, reform is now, in opinion polls, ahead of both Tories and Labour.

• 19:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, in some, let's not overstate it.

• 19:38Rory Stewart?

  In some, but that's almost more of a problem internally within the Conservative Party than it is for Labour. Labour's not, it doesn't really have the option of being reformed. But the Conservatives have that kind of dangerous temptation. Okay, last one on the UK before we move on to some good international stuff. How do you think the Lib Dems get more traction in the national debate? And I'm going to let you talk about that, because I've got absolutely no idea what to do about Ed Davey.

• 20:06Alastair Campbell?

  But he was your runner up in politician of the year. He was your, he was, he was beaten only by, by Nigel Farage in your eyes. Um, I, this is not going to surprise you, but it'll probably go down like a bag of sick with them. As you said, the Tories were more under threat from the Lib Dems than Reform. And when we're talking, looking at the last, last election and where the, the reason he fought the campaign he did, I'm not talking about the silly funny stuff, but the, on the, on the policy and the messaging was much more focused that sort of, you know, soft Tories as it were. Um, I think the Lib Dems need to properly lead the debate on the

• 20:49Alastair Campbell?

  impact of Brexit. I just don't understand why they've gone quiet on it. I mean, they say their thing, but really they, they've kind of, they've let it go. Look, the fact that you and I, how many events have you and I done between us this year? Dozens of them. I, I was in, I did an event the other day with a law firm and it was a mixture of adults. It was a sort of bring your kids thing. It was adults, kids, and I did my usual thing. How many people here think Brexit's been a success? Zero, zero. And that's the same wherever you go, north and south.

• 21:21Rory Stewart?

  Wait, can I just, can I just interrupt for a second? This law firm for their family Christmas party, instead of getting Santa Claus, got you to talk about Brexit. Were the, were the, were the toddlers not a little bit disappointed when they were turning up?

• 21:33Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the youngest was a, a, a young boy. He was only about six, but most, some of them, they were mainly.

• 21:42Rory Stewart?

  I tell you what my kids would think if they turned up for the company Christmas party and instead of getting Santa, they got Alastair talking to them about the single market.

• 21:50Alastair Campbell?

  You're constantly dragging your kids off to see exhibitions of Tibetan carpets and the like. I mean, you know, I think so, kettle, black pot, et cetera. I honestly, anyway, this was a law firm that was bringing, they, they were also inviting schools in. I'm going to give them a shout out. It was Pinson Mason's and they, they, they have relationships with local schools. So the kids came in from the schools as well. Anyway, my point is. Every single one of them thought Brexit was going badly and it was a bad thing. And yet you have, just last week, Keir Starmer rightly setting up some sort of unit in government to talk about how do we get close relationship with the trade with, on trade with the European

• 22:34Alastair Campbell?

  Union and break down some of these barriers that have been set up. And you have the idiot Johnson out saying, you know, this is a, we've got to fight, fight, fight to stop the Brexit sellout. I'll tell you what, the other reason why I think it'd be a good thing to do, because one of the things that, the, the, the growing influence of Reform in the debate, Reform being a classic populist party that doesn't really have serious thought through policy positions, it has positionings which it exploits for politics and that is sort of, you know, to sort of negativise the debate in terms of, of, of how that debate is conducted. Actually, the Lib Dems saying, can we stop focusing on this debate on a set of myths? And can we actually focus on fact and reality?

• 23:19Alastair Campbell?

  And I think that would give them traction.

• 23:21Rory Stewart?

  And their tactical problem presumably is that they ran a campaign which was all about focusing on very much doorstep, local issues and it was triumphantly successful. They got a lower percentage of the vote than they got under Nick Clegg, but enormous numbers of seats. And they deliberately didn't really have big national policy issues. It was all about, you know, cleaning up the waterways here, working with this community hospital. So the question is, is Ed Davey as a leader going to be able to transition, having had this enormous success following one strategy? Is he going to be able to become a national leader? Now, I would say that is their opportunity. With the Conservatives this week, this could be an enormous, and Labour Week, could be

• 24:03Rory Stewart?

  an enormous opportunity for a really dynamic Lib Dem leader to really do a kind of Macron and establish themselves properly in the centre ground and roar into the next election. Dominating the airwaves.

• 24:15Alastair Campbell?

  Let's say it was Brexit, or it could be net zero.

• 24:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:19Alastair Campbell?

  Or, or it could be devolution. It could be to take a big issue and basically say, I'm sick to death of living in a political system where the debate that we have is really not focused on what is actually happening, but on these political myths created by these charlatans like Farage and Johnson. I'm going to tell you the facts about this and I'm going to hammer them because as an opposition party, you need campaigns. Now, what are the Lib Dems right now campaigning on? I don't know.

• 24:51Rory Stewart?

  And I'm afraid you need to stop at this point, appearing in Santa hats. I mean, enough already. We've got the point. He's funny. He does bungee jumps. He does this stuff, but he needs to now start positioning himself as a potential man in government in four years' time. And that involves getting rid of that stuff.

• 25:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you can't have watched it because otherwise you'd raise it. I presume you didn't see him on Have I Got News For You?

• 25:14Rory Stewart?

  Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

• 25:20Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, let's, let's go from Have I Got News For You to another celebrity politician in the form of Donald Trump. How worried should we be after January the 20th, when Donald Trump becomes president?

• 25:32Rory Stewart?

  Well, the, the answer is very, very worried because America really matters to the world and because he's coming into a world which is much more dangerous and unstable than it was in 2016, 17, when he took over last time. So the whole post-war system believes that the way that you stop wars, stop the First World War, Second World War, was based on four things. One of them was making sure that there was open trade, so economies were interlinked. And the great example there obviously is Germany, France, where they decided that the way to avoid going to war again was to, to get into this European Union. The second thing that people decided is that you needed generous international assistance

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  to rebuild economies, and that was the Marshall Plan, that was rebuilding Germany and Japan after the war. The third thing was the setting up of this rule-based international order, which was the International Court of Justice and eventually the International Criminal Court and the UN and all these attempts to try to create an international system with rules. And those rules were around respecting borders, so Putin not invading Ukraine, but also respecting human rights, which is, doesn't matter if you're a Western ally or not, you should be held accountable if you commit war crimes. And the final thing was American hegemony that put this whole thing together. And I think the problem with Trump is he hits every single one of those four things.

• 26:57Rory Stewart?

  He replaces open trade with protectionism, he replaces a rule-based international order with cozying up to tyrants, he replaces development and support for other countries with cutting development age and America first, and he puts America into an isolated position that's undercutting the world order. Over to you.

• 27:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think it's potentially horrific. I guess, and maybe this is wishful thinking, I was sort of, I was talking to somebody who was trying to explain to me, and somebody who is not naturally a Republican but did vote for Trump, who was trying to explain to me why he thought that he is not going to be as bad as we thought this time. That last time, he wasn't very well prepared, and it was all totally chaotic. This time he's much better prepared, and he's doing what classic sort of art of the deal negotiation of staking a very, very tough position on all sorts of difficult issues, and then he's going to sort of, you know, wind his neck in a fair bit. I don't know if that's right or wrong.

• 28:02Alastair Campbell?

  I do think on Ukraine, the one interesting thing I took out of that interview he did not long after the election. He did a big TV interview. He was definitely signalling a kind of change of tone on Ukraine, either to the one that he was pursuing the election or that the ones that the real kind of, you know, the JD fancies who say have nothing to do with it were saying. So it may be that he'll be, he'll be different. I think his, I think his economic stuff, if he goes ahead with the sort of, you know, tariff is the most beautiful word in the English language line that he had during the campaign. I think that could be a disaster for the world economy. But again, is that sort of part of a, you know, I'm the tough guy, get used to dealing with me approach to things?

• 28:42Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know. But no, I, I, I think it's alarming. But the fact is that, you know, we're going to have to live with it for four years.

• 28:49Rory Stewart?

  Well, predicting the American economy is, is a mug's game. And people predicted, you know, people I admire immensely like Larry Summers predicted recessions and inflation that didn't happen. But it is true that he's taking over an American economy that's very different from 2017 because there's higher inflation and interest rates are higher. So if he decides to push ahead with tariff barriers, which will drive up the cost of goods, say, you know, 110% import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles or 60% general tariffs on Chinese, Chinese goods. If he does that, if he throws out 11 million undocumented migrants, illegal

• 29:28Rory Stewart?

  immigrants, that will create a labour shortage crunch. If he begins spending like Billy O through on defence and cutting taxes very dramatically, that'll roar up the deficit. So the worst case scenario you could see is that you end up with inflation taking off, the cost of servicing, the debt taking off, and America finding itself in stagflation, finding itself in a situation where it's got inflation and recession at the same time.

• 29:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 29:58Rory Stewart?

  We're not really. Factoring that in, and I don't know what percentage chance you put on that, is that 20, 30% chance, but my gut is that too many of the kind of people that we meet working in the markets have been so excited by the fact that the stock markets responded positively to Trump and that they see him as a business guy. And they're focusing too much on the appointment of the Treasury Secretary who reassures them because he's a hedge funder, and not enough on the Thomas Homan, Stephen Miller stuff that's going on, which is the appointment of these much more right wing, anti-immigrant, pro-tariff, more aggressive figures within the administration. So, and that will change a lot of things because we're in a conversation in Europe where we've gone from five years ago thinking

• 30:43Rory Stewart?

  we all need to be like Germany to thinking we all need to be like the US. Now that will cease if the US economy begins to falter.

• 30:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. What about Musk? How worried do you think we should be about Musk? I mean, again, you know, we're back to talking about Farage again, I'm afraid, because of course just before Christmas, one of the things that happened was Farage and this billionaire property developer, Nick Candy, Elon Musk in Mar-a-Lago. I'm Anthony Scaramucci, who I like a great deal, and we love his podcast with Kathy Kay, but he did something very, very badly wrong in the past because he told me absolutely, hand on heart, it's not going to happen. Donald Trump will never, ever be president again. Now he's saying to us, hand on heart, Trump and Musk, it's done, it's finished. Musk is, you know, he's just

• 31:31Alastair Campbell?

  pandering now. I'm not convinced about that. I get the sense that Musk is, is, is really, really locked in there and is very, very powerful within it. And one of my favorite tweets towards the end of the year from our friend Tommy Vita at Pod Save America, I personally think having a ketamine-addled billionaire oligarch deciding which bills get passed by Congress is a great way to run the government. Now, and I think that the, I also, you know, you know what's really weird about these right wing people? And I know social media is not a great place for irony, it's not great, but you know, when Tice and Farage and Rupert Lowe and these people were all saying absolutely nothing wrong. If Elon Musk wants to give a hundred million dollars.

• 32:16Rory Stewart?

  Just for listeners, these are all the Reform MPs.

• 32:18Alastair Campbell?

  The Reform guys, yeah. You know, why are we getting so excited? These are the same people who used to sort of invent conspiracy theories about George Soros buying elections around the world and this was terrible. So in response to this, I did this, I don't think you saw it, I did a tweet. Breaking news. French billionaire Jean-Louis Le Riche and German industrialist Hans-Dietrich Geltmann have decided to donate 200 million euros to a new campaign to get Britain back into the European Union after the disaster of Brexit. I'm happy to announce I will be campaign director. I'm sure that Nigel Farage will see nothing wrong with this at all, common sense in it. You would not believe how many people took that seriously. One of them actually said, your podcast should

• 33:02Alastair Campbell?

  be called The Rest Is Hypocrisy. Why is it wrong for Musk to do this, but it's okay for this French and German couple to do it? I mean, absolute madness. But the principle is, that is the principle. If it is okay for Elon Musk to give money to Reform, then it's okay for French people, Chinese people, Russian people.

• 33:22Rory Stewart?

  Before we get on to the sort of bigger issue of Musk, campaign finance reform in the United Kingdom.

• 33:28Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, got to happen.

• 33:29Rory Stewart?

  Work backwards, absolutely necessary. If it is even theoretically possible for somebody to give a hundred million to any party, it should be stopped at once.

• 33:39Alastair Campbell?

  Well, for an American citizen to do it, it should be stopped for five pounds.

• 33:42Rory Stewart?

  Our elections at the moment go at about 10, 20 million pounds. A hundred million pounds coming in is completely insane. It would be like, you know, aged 18, sitting down to the poker table and suddenly realising that one of the people sitting down to the poker table is able to put 10,000 pounds on the table when you're all betting a fiver. I mean, it's mad and we need to change the rules to prevent that from happening. I think Musk is more of a threat than Trump. I think he's a genuine fascist. I think that he is somebody who loves the idea of being connected to stirring up a massive political movement. He loves the propaganda tool and he's showing the power of social media. X is a small platform

• 34:27Rory Stewart?

  with a few members, but he's doing something with it that nobody's tried to do with social media before. We saw with Facebook and Twitter in the Arab Spring that it was dangerous. But in those days, it was still just about pretending to play by the rules. If you put a weapon like that in the hands of somebody who actually wants to promote tweets from far-right groups in Germany, Austria, troll the British Prime Minister, fan a vision of anti-immigration, anti-climate, anti-development aid, you're doing something which is extraordinary. It's like the £100 million coming into the British election. And I think nobody should underestimate Musk. I think he's incredibly clever. He's very, very ruthless.

• 35:10Rory Stewart?

  Look what he just did in backing Californian policies. He bucked the Californian policy on restricting his rivals so that he could then boost his business in Texas. And he's been like that ever since he was at PayPal. So I think he'll stick with Trump because he's actually a pragmatic businessman and a very ruthless businessman, and he thinks being close to Trump is going to allow him to get away with this crazy fantasy.

• 35:35Alastair Campbell?

  And does Trump stick with him? I mean, the mooch is convinced that Trump has already sort of decided he's outlived himself. And I saw that guy, Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican who sort of turned against Trump. He has started to call Musk President Musk and Vice President Trump. That's how he now defines them. Which is a clever way of undermining both Trump and J D Vance.

• 36:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's right. I think the more you lean into the idea that Elon Musk is the first husband, the more you can begin to irritate both Musk and Trump.

• 36:15Alastair Campbell?

  But just on the funding thing, you see, and I think this again is part, they start at £100 million, they're probably going to end up where they say, well, why, if we can't give £100 million, why can't we give 50, why can't we give 20, or have you? But the fact is, when Kamala Harris was up against Donald Trump, I had so many people saying to me, why can't we donate? This is an election that matters to us as well. But you cannot, as a British citizen, you cannot donate to an American politician.

• 36:39Rory Stewart?

  Two principles, isn't there? There's the, it should be a British citizen. The second is, even if it's a British citizen, nobody should be able to give £100 million, even if they wanted to. It's completely grotesque.

• 36:51Rory Stewart?

  Totally grotesque and we need to stop a Conservative Party being funded by hedge funds, oligarchs and a Labour Party being funded by trade unions and all of them being in hock and we need to move, I think, to something that everybody hates, which is state funding of political parties or very, very strict restrictions on how much you give.

• 37:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I don't know whether the Labour Government is yet really focused on the potential danger and damage that this can do. Look, and the thing that we're worried about as well is if they do bring in campaign reform, funding reform, which they should have done anyway, the idea that it's going to be seen just as a way to try and stop Farage, which then again allows him to play the sort of I'm the little guy up against the establishment, they're all trying to stop me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 37:42Rory Stewart?

  Okay, Alastair, halfway through, rest of 2025 to come after a break.

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• 39:36Alastair Campbell?

  Now, what about Europe, Rory? Here's a, here's a starter for 10. Who do you think will be the German chancellor after February the 23rd?

• 39:44Rory Stewart?

  Well, we know the answer to that because you've told us the answer to that. And you're presumably 99% on that. So tell us who will be the next German chancellor.

• 39:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, probably Friedrich Merz, who's the leader of the Union, this Christian Democrats and CSU, the Bavaria Party.

• 39:58Rory Stewart?

  And the great, great survivor, Alistair, as we picked up in the Angela Merkel interview. Because he was her rival back in the day, 20 years ago.

• 40:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, when, when Steuber was the, the kind of the chancellor candidate, you know, hovering in the background, you had Angela Merkel and Friedrich Merz, and they didn't really get on that well. Merz is a little, is to the right of, he's probably more of a conservative than, than Angela Merkel. There's a part of Merz that I like, Rory, which is, I know how obsessed you are with politicians and their hair. But you may know that I really don't like this bit of my hair, this sort of, this will, this will mean nothing to you, but this sort of Steve Claridge thing that comes down the front of my forehead. But Merz, if you look at him, he's got this in isolation from the rest of his hair. So he's sort of bald, but with this little sliver at the front. But he's, I think he's going to win.

• 40:49Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's well ahead in the polls. But listen, we're living in such volatile times. That, you know, you can't rule anything out. Scholz, Scholz really does look like a man who thinks he can, he can do something in this campaign.

• 41:03Rory Stewart?

  I mean, interesting, isn't he? I mean, he can look a bit from a distance like a kind of Biden figure. I mean, he's almost seventy. He's got there by just hanging around and never giving up in the way that Biden did, who kept losing his chance.

• 41:15Alastair Campbell?

  Who, who, who, Mertz or Scholz?

• 41:15Rory Stewart?

  Mertz, Mertz. So Biden obviously ran for the presidency many times, beginning in the nineteen eighties, never really worked out, just kept plugging along and eventually came through. And Mertz is an older guy who you get a bit of that sense of somebody who's just stuck with it, been in the system, made it through. Or am I underestimating him? Has he got more of an edge to him than Biden had?

• 41:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think so. I think, I, I, I think also he's getting on towards seventy. He's got a lot of energy. He's definitely got energy. He's pretty strong in Ukraine. I think what both of them have, but of course it's back to our thing about incumbency, it's much easier for the person out of government than the person in government. Neither of them are really articulating a strategy that says that the German economy, which we all used to think was kind of humming away nicely, is going to get back on track. But I'll tell you the other thing that's really been interesting in the election so far, much, much, much more robust campaigning, more aggressive campaigning than the Germans maybe are used to. And I wonder again whether that's the influence of the, of the alternative for Deutschland and the way that they campaign.

• 42:17Rory Stewart?

  Presumably one of the things that we may see and to look at as we go into this is what happens to the AFD on the right and what happens to the far left, the Wagenknecht party.

• 42:28Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Yeah. Well, listen, it's a, it's a totally different voting system. Whoever wins, in quotes, will have to form some sort of coalition with other parties. I think it's possible that you end up with a grand coalition between the CDU and the SDP, but that's why the nature of the campaign is, is, is maybe interesting. But look, it's going to be, it's going to be one of the most important elections in the, in twenty twenty five. And I could be wrong, but I think Mertz will be the next chancellor. Now, what about France, Roy? Beru at the time of recording is the prime minister. They had four in twenty twenty four, but can you see that last thing?

• 43:09Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I can't, I'm afraid, but it may be that I'm just becoming a French bear. I mean, it's true that, you know, they have had this thing called cohabitation in the past occasionally, but it's a very unstable situation, their constitution.

• 43:23Rory Stewart?

  De Gaulle's constitution basically creates this super powerful president and assumes that they're going to be able to work with the parliament, with the prime minister. And Macron, by triggering this election, has created this situation where I can't see how you keep things going if fundamentally either the far right under Le Pen or the far left under Mélenchon can pull the rug out from under you almost whenever they want. Or rather, they can together if they decide to do it together. So I guess he's trying again, but I can't really see why you would be more optimistic about this than you would be about Barnier, who only managed to last a few weeks.

• 44:02Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, no, it's, uh, the, the, this is what happens with, with, with elections and maybe particularly snap elections is that the, the way the numbers fall, that's what the politicians then have to pick up. And the numbers just don't work. The difference with Caïba Tassion was, was having a president of like, I remember with Chirac and Jospe, a president of one party, a government headed by the other. What Macron seems to be doing is trying to get prime ministers that essentially he wants them to be pretty much in his political space. Barnier to the right, Bérou in the centre, but maybe leaning a little bit more towards the en même temps category of, of politics.

• 44:44Alastair Campbell?

  But France is, is going to be so interesting this year because Macron certainly doesn't strike me as the sort of guy who's going to throw in the towel early. He's got the whole of this year and fair bit of the next before he has to go to, you know, leave office. So can you keep having sort of changes of prime minister? Does it become a bit like, you know, Italy used to be a laughing stock, changing its prime minister the whole time? We were a laughing stock, changing the prime minister the whole time.

• 45:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but, but, but people point out that actually the problem is that it's more of a problem in France because France is so heavily centralised on Paris.

• 45:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 45:20Rory Stewart?

  Belgium, you pointed out, I think in the podcast, has had a lot of prime ministers and frequent moments where it doesn't have government. But I then got called by a Belgian friend who said, yes, but in Belgium, there's a much, much stronger decentralised, devolved state system going on. It matters much less, whereas France, everything is drawn into the centre. Everything's drawn into Paris. And if they can't get a functioning relationship between prime minister, parliament and the president, France is in much more trouble than these other countries. And, and of course, the French president matters much more for Europe. Than the Italian Prime Minister or the Belgian Prime Minister.

• 45:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Have you heard of Patrice de Macman, who sounds like he ought to be a Scot, Macman, but in fact, his family going way back descended from a former High King of Ireland. But Patrice de Macman was President of France and in 1879, he resigned after a similarly ill-advised decision to have a snap election, although ironically, he was doing it because he wanted Parliament to have more power than they then had vis a vis the powers of the President.

• 46:27Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good.

• 46:28Alastair Campbell?

  Pretty amazing.

• 46:29Rory Stewart?

  You know, we're responsible for the whole thing because it was actually John Law, who was a Scot, who managed to bankrupt the ancien régime and basically set the seeds of the revolution with his amazingly cunning financial speculation.

• 46:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Patrice de Macman, he was President, he resigned after losing support, but we'll see whether, we'll see whether my friend Emmanuel Macron will do, will do the same. So Rory, I think this time last year, or was it this time two years ago, but you were sort of pretty sure that China Taiwan was going to kick off.

• 47:04Rory Stewart?

  I think what I've said is, I think consistently, but people can call me up, is that there is a very big chance of it kicking off. So I keep trying to say thirty, forty percent, which is a way of saying, I'm not saying it's certain that it's going to do. In fact, it's probably less than fifty percent, but people are underestimating the risk that as the Chinese economy struggles, as Xi Jinping looks to try to regain popularity with his working class base, nationalism becomes quite appealing. And a lot of that, I think, will depend on his calculation of whether the Chinese military is ready and his view on how the world is going to respond. And if he thinks the world is in a relatively

• 47:46Rory Stewart?

  soft place where people aren't going to want to get into a cycle of sanctions and counter sanctions with China, then there's no doubt in my mind that he sees part of his legacy being reincorporating Taiwan to China, although he'd prefer to do it non-militarily.

• 48:01Alastair Campbell?

  And do, do we think that Trump's arrival makes China more or less likely to think that going after Taiwan is feasible?

• 48:11Rory Stewart?

  I think.

• 48:14Rory Stewart?

  You're getting into this very strange question of mindset of very isolated leaders. So Xi Jinping's now in for life, already part of a Politburo. And he will be guessing on the basis of pretty uncertain intelligence, how Trump will respond. I mean, after all, you and I don't really know how Trump would respond because he's got two competing instincts in his mind. He hates being humiliated, which might mean that he wants to show strength. But he's got another very, very strong isolationist view, which is this is none of our business. And let me put it in really blunt terms. The only way of deterring China from going into Taiwan is with the US, and that means US aircraft carriers.

• 48:57Rory Stewart?

  A US aircraft carrier turns up, it's sunk by Chinese drone attacks. Three thousand eight hundred US servicemen die instantly. Is Trump, the Trump that saw the Iraq and Afghan wars as terrible wastes of time and energy, going to want to explain to the American people why he's just lost nearly four thousand lives defending an island that will feel a very long way away from the United States? So I tend to the view that Trump will bark, but in the end, he's not going to want to deploy America militarily against China.

• 49:31Alastair Campbell?

  Middle East, more or less optimistic than 2024 New Year about the possibility ever of a peaceful two-state solution.

• 49:45Rory Stewart?

  I think very unlikely to see sadly immediately a two-state solution. Might happen, but it would be a miracle because Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gavir have no interest in a two-state solution. Trump's new ambassador Huckabee has no interest in a two-state solution. I don't understand why Israel is continuing to bomb Gaza. I can't see what the strategic importance of that is, apart from some strange internal negotiation with the right wing of Netanyahu's government. I think Trump will want the violence to cease and he'll try to put together some kind of version of his Abraham Accords. But I think it's very unlikely that Saudi Arabia is going to play ball because

• 50:26Rory Stewart?

  the vast majority of the Saudi population is unbelievably angry and alienated by what they've seen in Gaza. And I think they're very unlikely to feel that they want to make peace with Israel at this moment. So. I can't see a two-state solution coming, but let me throw something else back. I mean, one of the problems is these sort of crazy unknown unknowns. We've just seen in Syria.

• 50:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 50:49Rory Stewart?

  How a situation that seemed static for seven years changed in a week. It's perfectly conceivable that we could see stuff that nobody's talking about. We could see the Iranian regime collapse and the Iranian regime could collapse in two directions. Could collapse in a positive direction. It could collapse in a negative direction. It's also perfectly possible that we could see things spreading. The sort of movement that we're seeing in Syria could spill over towards Iraq or Lebanon.

• 51:20Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 51:21Rory Stewart?

  We could see Turkey reemerge as a player. I mean, this is in some ways a Turkish success. So a Trump world where America withdraws more could be a world next year of middle powers. Saudi, UAE, Qatar, Turkey, playing not just in the Middle East, but in the Sahel, in the Horn of Africa. Yeah, anyway, over to you.

• 51:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think another unknown unknown, it sort of feels very bubbly, this kind of American economy vibe at the moment. I wonder whether that's going to hold and I don't understand that. I can't pretend to be a great understand of the whole crypto world, but it feels very, very fragile to me. So I wonder whether there won't be quite a, something of a crash in the, in the US this year. Now let's finally, Roy, on Ukraine. Will Ukraine be the same Ukraine territorially at the end of 2025 that it is now?

• 52:15Rory Stewart?

  I think that depends on whether you think Europe or bits of Europe are going to step up. So a lot depends on whether Poland, Nordic, Baltic countries and the UK step up.

• 52:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, signs on that are pretty good, I'd say.

• 52:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but interesting, I mean, is it significant that Kyrzama hasn't visited Ukraine when Johnson and Rishi Sunak were perpetually going there?

• 52:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, John Healy, the Defence Secretary, was there shortly before Christmas and announcing a whole new package of support. Um, I think Poland is really interesting in this regard. I think Poland has really stepped up in terms of his commitment. The, the whole sort of talk is that Trump will offer some kind of, you know. Bit of land, bit of non NATO commitment, whatever it might be, but I'm not convinced. I think I think there's a chance that that provided Europe does hold firm, there's a chance that that Ukraine will will be the same.

• 53:06Rory Stewart?

  There's a very interesting thing at the centre of the Labour Government that we don't talk about very much, which is that John Healy, as you say, has been a great Defence Secretary and we've got a leading interview coming up with Ben Wallace, who pays tribute to him. But one of the appointments that maybe people who aren't being geeky haven't focused on very much is Alistair Khan's, who's a junior Defence Minister. And Alistair Khan's is extraordinary. I mean, he's a very, very unusual politician. You know, he is a amazing fighting Royal Marine. I mean, he's a real operations guy who played a very, very central role in what the United

• 53:47Rory Stewart?

  Kingdom was doing in Ukraine, which he doesn't talk about. But he's probably the most serious operational fighting soldier that's been in the British Parliament almost since the Second World War. And he's right there in the MOD. Now, he's not been given a big operational role. He's been given a veterans role, which is a bit eccentric for somebody who's like an absolute kind of warrior. But that's a very interesting addition to the team and maybe a sign that, I don't know, maybe reading too much into it, that Britain may lean in more operationally into Ukraine.

• 54:20Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, final, final, final, final thing for 2025, reasons to be cheerful.

• 54:27Rory Stewart?

  Okay, okay, let me just before I go cheerful, I'm going to go really gloomy and then I'm going to go cheerful. So really gloomy, sometime we should talk about the significant risk of a dirty nuclear bomb going off in one of our cities and we should talk about North Korea flinging nukes around. But reasons to be optimistic. I think if Europe sees Trump's retreat as a reason to step up and it begins to actually take more responsibility for defence and security and the new German Chancellor comes in with a bit of momentum behind him, it's likely to be him. And forms a good alliance with Kier Starmer. You've got two big European economies that could begin to frame something not within

• 55:12Rory Stewart?

  European Union, but maybe with Poland, with Donald Tusk. And we've got the presidential election coming in in Poland next year. Things could begin to come together where actually this could be the beginning of Europe standing up a little bit more, doing a bit more in the world. And that probably would be a good thing.

• 55:29Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Okay. Well, my reason to be cheerful is really that things can only get better.

• 55:37Rory Stewart?

  Great.

• 55:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, have a lovely new year. I'll no doubt be seeing lots and lots of you through the year. Thank you to everybody who listened and watched last year and will listen and watch this year.

• 55:47Rory Stewart?

  Have a very happy new year, everybody. Bye bye.

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