400. Question Time: Has the US underestimated China?

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• 0:00Rory Stewart?

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• 1:12Rory Stewart?

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• 1:14Alastair 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.

• 1:26Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve and of course the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 1:50Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think you're not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this, or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 1:57Rory Stewart?

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• 2:10Rory Stewart?

  Politics and the link is in the episode description.

• 2:13Speaker 02

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• 2:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:53Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 2:54Rory Stewart?

  First one for you, Alistair. Hannah, is Trump underestimating the ability of China to invest in new alliances at a time that the US seems intent on breaking theirs?

• 3:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, is the short answer. This is what's incredible. So I think they're underestimating China on so many levels. It really came home to me, that clip that JD Vance did, where he talked about, you know, we're, we're getting peasants in China to manufacture things and we're now buying from peasants. And I think there is that sort of mindset that thinks China's the China of old, rather than the child China that's, that's grown to the extent that it has. And there's no doubt that China, we saw this immediately after the whole tariff thing, when Xi Jinping went on that tour and to Vietnam, went to Cambodia, went to Malaysia. And, you know, we've got Alex Younger on leading on Monday, the former head of MI6. And he makes

• 3:49Alastair Campbell?

  the point, and this is a point, Kirk Campbell, who you remember, who was, you know, expert in China, and he was sort of, I think, part of responsible with the Obama pivot to Asia. And he is always making the point that America's strength has been built through its alliances. And, and I think there is this kind of hubris and arrogance that America is, can do everything on its own. So I think that's a very, very, very wise question.

• 4:14Rory Stewart?

  And I was talking yesterday to a senior Indonesian, so Indonesia, obviously, fourth largest population in the world, and mattering more and more as its economy grows. And I was saying, you know, how's this playing out for you? And he said, well, how do you think it's playing out? You know, you've got one potential partner who's sending you flowers. Telling you you're wonderful and another partner who's slapping tariffs on you abusing you insulting you. Do you think that Indonesia is going to look more to China, the US and then on your point on technology and this idea that they're peasants. He described going to visit Yangshang port. So he'd arrived, seen Shanghai and somebody said, forget about Shanghai, go and see this.

• 4:57Rory Stewart?

  It's an artificial island that China built forty kilometres into the sea. There's a bridge that they built in two and a half years going to it with wind turbines all running around. He arrives and he literally said, he only saw two people on the entire island. It's one of the biggest ports in the world. The person who opened the gate and sluted as he went in and the person who sluted on the way out.

• 5:22Alastair Campbell?

  And the rest was all robotics.

• 5:23Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 5:24Alastair Campbell?

  Wow. I've just looked, I've just Googled a thing that Kirk Campbell wrote recently. The greatest risk, this is to America, is not declinism, thinking everything's going to get worse, it's complacency. If anything, the United States, particularly in the era of Trump, risks overestimating unilateral power and underestimating China's ability to counter it. And a new approach to alliances is the only viable way the United States can build sufficient scale on its own. And if you think about the way he's handled his alliances so far, tariffs has damaged his relationship with pretty much every country in the world. Canada, even on the day of the election, he was doing his fifty first state nonsense and probably ever the conservative who's seen as the pro-Trump guy came out and literally

• 6:08Alastair Campbell?

  said, stay out of our election. Australia, UK, these traditional alliances, he's not seeking to strengthen them. And China, as you say, I mean, you go to Africa a lot, go to anywhere in Africa at the moment, you feel China's power.

• 6:22Rory Stewart?

  We've got two leading interviews, one just out with Atul Gawande, which is an extraordinary account for somebody who was right at the top of USAID.

• 6:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 6:33Rory Stewart?

  About the way that Trump's dismantling of development aid has dismantled all these deep relationships around the world. And a second one coming out next Monday was Alex Younger, which is an interview with the former head of MI6, which looks. At well, what Younger says is one of the big problems, which is, he said, Trump's gone so bad that people are almost seriously seeing China and the US as kind of equal.

• 7:01Alastair Campbell?

  And he does, and he does warn against that.

• 7:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, however bad Trump's US is, it's, it's not China. And we've got to be serious about where we're going. Um, quick question for me before we go, go to a documentary that we've got a good question from Sammy and James Keen on. Um, what did you think of Atul Ghande?

• 7:18Alastair Campbell?

  I think he's great. Yeah, really good. Um, very smart, very clever, very passionate. I, I found the, the, the most powerful part of the interview for me was where he was talking about USAID. Um, because it just, it's horrific when you see Trump, well, Trump doesn't even care anymore because it's the past, it's a previous episode of the reality TV show. But Elon Musk constantly saying, no lives are being lost. And there's a guy telling you, lives are going to be lost in their millions because of the cuts to USAID. Um, so no, really good. I hope people listen to that. And, and I think you're right. Alex Younger has just got such a great kind of strategic mind and, and a frame and all this stuff. So, so the documentary, um, I don't know if you've seen this yet, Roy, but I, I

• 8:02Alastair Campbell?

  love, Sam, we've got lots of questions on it. James Keen, great to hear your reflections on Louis Theroux's new BBC documentary about Israeli settlers in the West Bank. Sammy, Israeli settler ideology used to be relatively fringe. Now we even have an Israeli cabinet minister who is himself a settler. Um, and, and that's Ben Gavir, who's in this documentary. Have you seen this?

• 8:23Rory Stewart?

  No, I haven't. Tell us, tell us about it.

• 8:24Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's really, really, really worth you watching. I mean, the combination of the book that I read, I mentioned last week, this German book, um, War Without End, and this documentary, it's, I just think it's getting harder and harder to be in the position that you and I have tried to be in throughout, which is to kind of be fair and reasonable about both sides. What you see in Louis Thoreau's documentary is, and I saw the Daily Mail having a go saying he's only showing one side of the story, he's talking to the settlers.

• 8:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 8:58Alastair Campbell?

  He's deep in with these settlers and he gets in with these people who are really absolutely the heart of the settler movement. And, I mean, just to give you some example of some of the things that they say, there's an extraordinary scene where he goes to the border, they're looking at Gaza, you can see sort of smoke coming up, and there's a rabbi who basically says, you can never make peace with savages. And I think he calls them these camel riders. There's another guy who's from Texas, moved to Israel when he was 16, and who says, and Louis Thoreau uses the word Palestinian, and he said, I'm not comfortable with that word because they don't really exist.

• 9:40Rory Stewart?

  Let's, well.

• 9:41Alastair Campbell?

  They're clear, these people who, you know, represent a pretty strong, and they're surrounded, protected by Israeli soldiers, and they basically want to wipe Palestinians off the face of the earth.

• 9:54Rory Stewart?

  I shall watch it, let's have a discussion about it next week.

• 9:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 9:58Rory Stewart?

  But that does sound very, very worth looking at.

• 10:01Alastair Campbell?

  Here's one for you.

• 10:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:02Alastair Campbell?

  Adrian, what lessons can be learned from Poland's fight back against right wing populists since the Law and Justice Party took power in 2016? And maybe related to that, Akhil Kumar, how can Labour beat Reform's rapidly growing populist momentum? Well, certainly looking at Poland is not a bad thing to do.

• 10:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and so this is something that my great hero, Gerald Knouse from ESI.

• 10:23Alastair Campbell?

  He interviewed me last week for his book.

• 10:25Rory Stewart?

  And you liked him?

• 10:26Alastair Campbell?

  I did like him a lot, and he's writing a book with his daughter about enlargement.

• 10:30Rory Stewart?

  Well, he's a real, I mean, just to do a little plug for God, he is absolutely amazing. He has lived all over the world and with young children, put them in a government school in Turkey, so these young girls, I think five or six, learnt fluent Turkish, quite tough transition for them, and then moved them to France, then they had to learn French and Germany and British.

• 10:50Alastair Campbell?

  I've got to say to you, Rory, I did say to you at one point, presumably you hear Rory describing you and David Gork as his hero every single week, he said, no, I don't listen every week.

• 10:59Rory Stewart?

  We should be, you should listen to this because I'm, yes, I, his think tank's done a lot of very, very detailed work on Poland, did a great report on it. But basically, the story in Poland, to remind people, is that in 2015, this far-right populist party was elected. Law and Justice Party. Law and Justice Party, and in particular, under their Minister of Justice, tried to dismantle the judiciary. And they said about it firstly by taking on the Constitutional Courts, then taking on the prosecutors. And essentially tried to say that they would take over the appointments of judges and any judges who did not favour them, they would discipline, fire, get out of their jobs.

• 11:37Rory Stewart?

  And there was an amazing fight back. And the two bits of the fight back are Polish judges themselves, who were very, very courageous, about a dozen of them, who despite the fact they were being threatened, taxed and eviscerated in the media, losing their jobs, stood up. Said, we are not accepting these rulings from judges who've been appointed by the government and we're appealing to the European Court of Justice, even though we've been told not to. America, take note. And on the other hand, the European Union, which actually the European Court of Justice did quite a brave ruling. It said that interfering in the appointment of judges, putting in basically political apparatchiks as your judges, is undermining the European legal system. And Europe then withheld billions of euros of funding.

• 12:18Rory Stewart?

  And this story is really interesting because it's part of the story of how Donald Tusk came in, because it turned out that actually 80% of Poles are pro-EU. And the EU wasn't just a kind of judicial mechanism, it's an idea. It's an idea. And Poles, in the end, preferred the idea of Europe, many of them, to the idea of this far-right nationalism. The problem for Trump, of course, or the problem with Trump's America, is that you don't have that idea of Europe around it. You don't have a European Court of Justice, you've just got a Supreme Court. Yep. Few people. Yep. Stuffed now increasingly with people who are more sympathetic towards Trump. And it's very difficult to work out how even very brave American judges are going to be able to

• 13:03Rory Stewart?

  challenge his attempts to, well, talk about the kind of stuff Fance is talking about, not implementing their decisions, deliberately flouting them, impeaching them, undermining them.

• 13:13Alastair Campbell?

  One of the most alarming social media posts last week was this American judge who was arrested. And Cash Patel, the head of the FBI, published a photo of her with being taken away by FBI agents in handcuffs with the message, nobody's above the law. Could have added brackets, apart from the president. So that that it sort of feels, back to the point about feels very kind of nineteen thirty's Germany, that does. I I think what's really interesting about Poland, and it'd be great, Donald Tusk doesn't do many interviews and he doesn't do much foreign media, it'd be great to get him on the podcast. If there's anybody who works at Donald Tusk listening, please can we get him, because we we both think he's really inspiring.

• 13:55Alastair Campbell?

  And the other thing that's really important in that, because what what's happened in some of these populist countries, Hungary being a good example, is the parties coming to, the opposition parties coming together and thinking that if we all come together, we can defeat them. The trouble with that is, you've got people looking at them. One, the state-controlled media takes you apart, whereas Tusk handled that really, really well. But secondly, people are looking at you and think, well, hold on a minute, this coalition, you've got sort of weird kind of far-right people over there who just aren't aren't with the law and justice party, because there's some particular policy they don't like. And then you've got the sort of leftists and the environmentalists over here, and where's the kind of thread? What the polls did was they maintained the opposition parties.

• 14:39Alastair Campbell?

  But they all then, kind of the public sort of worked it out. And and I think they gave the Polish people a lot of kind of credibility in their understanding of what was going on. Added to which, they campaigned like hell. They really campaigned. Tusk, he had this bus that went thousands of miles. And they also, they had these big demonstrations, demonstrations for democracy. And they were getting towards the end, they were getting like, you know, into seven figures of people coming out on the streets. So they they mobilized. It's back to the point you were making about about Canada and Australia. When people think there's something really important happening.

• 15:16Alastair Campbell?

  And you said the same about Corbyn against Theresa May. When people think there's something really important in an election, people will turn out. But you've got to provide that mobilisation. So listen, there's lots of lessons in Poland. Now, we know we have a lot of MPs who listen, but it's very nice that some of them ask questions. Here's one from Clive Lewis, Labour MP. Hundred and fourteen thousand people, he says, have just signed a petition demanding public ownership of our water with eighty-two percent in favour. Meanwhile, private water companies have paid out seventy-eight billion in dividends since privatisation, even as they rack up debts of over sixty billion, debts which didn't exist before privatisation. When you add all this together, isn't it finally time for the government to bring water back into public ownership so it can be run in the public interest rather than for

• 15:59Alastair Campbell?

  private profit? So, thank you for that, Clive. Where are you on water renationalisation?

• 16:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, I guess here, rather strangely, I'm a little sympathetic with Rachel Reeves because the problem that Clive Lewis is kind of skirting around is that all those financial problems which those companies are facing would become the government's problems. So the government, if it took over these companies, is suddenly going to have to find tens of billions of pounds to cover their debt. And the investment in the public water network is hundreds of billions of pounds' worth of investment. And at the moment, the system that's been put in place is that that's financed through the private sector. And of course, these private water companies for a long time had a very good story. I mean, it's become really bad recently with Thames Water, but traditionally, the story was

• 16:53Rory Stewart?

  that they'd come in and it was costing about a pound for water and a pound for water out, and it was more reliable than it was when the government ran it. And they'd put all these billions of pounds into investment. It's now clear that the model is really broken. But ultimately, in a sense, it doesn't really matter whether it's the private sector or the public sector. Somebody's got to find a lot of money. And in the end, that's either going to come from your water bill or it's going to come from your taxes.

• 17:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I mean, I think of all the privatisations, water is the one that people, maybe railways as well, but people feel has gone the worst in terms of where we are now. And interestingly, I mentioned yesterday on the main podcast, the main episode, I mentioned this report from Persuasion UK. About so-called reform curious Labour voters. Interestingly, this issue of water and sewage in our waterways was right up there in terms of what they really, really, really care about. And again, that goes maybe against because what we think of when we look at reform is that they're sort of, you know, obsessed with net zero, climate change isn't real, all this sort of stuff.

• 18:02Alastair Campbell?

  Whereas actually, so these voters, this, this, so where I've got a lot of sympathy with Clive.

• 18:07Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 18:08Alastair Campbell?

  Is on the politics of this, Labour having rightly campaigned a lot on this in opposition, Fergal Sharkey, leading that sort of great water campaign, sewage campaign. I don't, I, I, I know Steve Reid is, is doing stuff in relation to water and, but it's one of those issues that is so complicated that out with the kind of sloganizing and the campaigning messages, very difficult to know what the government will actually do.

• 18:33Rory Stewart?

  And it's also a classic one where the Treasury and Rachel Reeves and the kind of technocratic solution is looking at a particular very narrow cost benefit model. Right. So I remember I was the Water Minister, so I used to do this stuff for a year. What would happen is you'd say, well, look, you know, eighty-five percent of our beaches that are an adequate standard, for which Reid fifteen percent have bits of poo floating around on them, right? Then the Treasury says, yes, but it will cost, you know, tens of billions of pounds to clean them up, right? And this number of people use those beaches a year and this particular beach you're pointing out, you know, according to our figures, only gets five hundred people going on it a year, right?

• 19:14Rory Stewart?

  So this is something that is very typical of a problem in modern government, which is that narrow economic calculus of the sort that Treasury does on cost benefit doesn't capture the fact that actually maybe the public would be prepared to pay quite a lot of money to not have poo floating around on their beaches. And an economist saying, well, yes, but if only four hundred people use the beach and the cost of cleaning up the beach is X million, then you're paying this amount, but is missing something really, really important about our values, about the kind of country we want to be. And, and, and of course, looking at Europe, where they seem to be able to do this stuff and Europeans seem to be prepared to pay and to manage it.

• 19:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I can remember back in the day when we were in government and Britain was in the European Union. That one of the things that we used to track on our famous grid of at a lower level of communication was regular updates about beach cleanliness. And it people really mattered. And I think if an economist says only 400 people use that beach and 30,000 use that beach, nobody cares. They want to know that our waterways are clean, our beaches are clean. And that should be, I talked yesterday about a national narrative, that should be part of it. So I think Clive may be wrong about the, you're saying he may be wrong

• 20:34Alastair Campbell?

  about the solution. But that, his analysis is spot on. And the politics of this are really, really powerful.

• 20:43Speaker 03

  Thank you, Clive Lewis. He's occasionally a controversial figure in the Labour Party, as some listeners will know.

• 20:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he's, I'd say he's on the left, as they say.

• 20:50Speaker 03

  He's on the left. But he can be an extraordinary charismatic speaker.

• 20:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he's very, very good. He's a very, very good communicator. Yeah.

• 20:56Speaker 03

  Um, let's take a quick break.

• 21:01Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back.

• 21:03Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview, the first pair of walking shoes for your one year old, the tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still ad. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

• 21:32Alastair Campbell?

  Pressed question time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 21:34Speaker 03

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 21:35Alastair Campbell?

  Right, Simon from The Clink, and we know The Clink, these are inside prisons, restaurants that are run by the prisoners. The question is this, how realistic is it to expect radical change following David Gork's sentencing review? That's your hero, former Justice Secretary who's doing a sentencing review for the government. The government has been admirably progressive, says Simon, in its approach to justice with the appointment of people like Lord Timson as prisons minister. But what would it take to create a justice system that focuses much on rehabilitation as much as punishment? And of course, Simon, what you won't know is that last night Rory and I were at an event and David Gork was sitting there. So was Nadeem Zahawi.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  We were.

• 22:16Alastair Campbell?

  And it was for the wonderful charity run by David Dean, ex of Arsenal of Fame. Called the training project, which clubs, football clubs, train prisoners to become coaches.

• 22:29Rory Stewart?

  And and groundskeepers and other things.

• 22:30Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. But they then, when they get out of prison, and there were four people who made these fabulous speeches last night. Um. About how their lives have been transformed by this project. So it was kind of, it was rehabilitation in action.

• 22:42Rory Stewart?

  It was, it was amazing. And they've done research with Oxford University and it's very, very clear that prisoners engaging with football clubs. Has a really positive impact on their optimism, their mental health, their confidence that their life's going to be better when they're out of prison. And the problem underlying this, that, you know, you've seen and I saw a lot when I was working at the prisons minister is that. Reoffending rates, uh, fifty percent, half of prisoners leave and reoffend. In certain categories, it's up to nearly sixty, seventy percent reoffending. And as they were pointing out, the cost of keeping somebody in prison is more than paying for an Ethan school fee. It's fifty thousand pounds a year.

• 23:27Rory Stewart?

  So it's good for society, above all, that's the most important thing, victims of crime. Right. You don't want people reoffending criminals coming out committing more crime. We've got to be sympathetic towards the public. But it's also true that we need to think about the interests of prisoners. And it's a difficult thing to talk about. But it's a form of shared suffering, suffering the victim. But it's also true that prisoners are often, as I think we said before. From very, very poor backgrounds, uh, you know, something like when I was the prisons minister, I think forty percent of prisoners. Had been in care compared to two percent of the general population. That tells you something like twenty times as many as the general population. Almost half of them have been in care as children, almost the same number have been excluded from school, nearly half had. Mental health issues and.

• 24:14Rory Stewart?

  There's something, again, you know, this relates a little bit to your conversation about Clive Lewis, about the way the government counts things. So one of the problems is there's very, very little government money to support charities working in prisons, because the Treasury does this calculation where they say, unless you can do a randomised control trial proving exactly how much money you're saving through stopping re-offending and compare it to alternative treatments, et cetera, we won't support it.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  It was interesting last night, there was the, there was people from Oxford University and Greenwich University who had tracked and monitored the rehabilitative effects of this scheme, and it was incredibly positive.

• 24:52Rory Stewart?

  It's incredibly positive, but the government won't fund it, and I I've seen this again and again.

• 24:55Speaker 03

  The clubs don't really fund it.

• 24:57Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's really good. Let me just finish on government, then to the clubs, because you'll understand the clubs. I mean, just on the government, I think they're missing something really important, which is actually providing environments in prison which are safe, decent, clean, non-violent, where prisoners can begin to sort themselves out and think about getting jobs and sort out their mental health. It's good for the prisons, good for the way that we run prisons, and it's good for society afterwards. And the bar which the government's holding, this very narrow numerical bar, is really foolish, and the government should, actually, even American prisons are much more imaginative and generous.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 25:36Rory Stewart?

  You know, they support in small ways, because the charities will put up a lot of the money themselves, but they'll support in small ways, you know, dogs coming to prisons for prisoners who spent time with dogs, training courses, et cetera. We're just not doing enough of this stuff. And that brings us to the question to you, which is, why on earth are the Premier League clubs not putting in the money?

• 25:55Speaker 03

  We do.

• 25:55Rory Stewart?

  To get this into a hundred clubs, a hundred prisons, all the prisons in the country, basically, would cost only seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year. That's nothing for these clubs.

• 26:03Speaker 03

  I know, I know. The reason we were at this event is because it was a fundraiser.

• 26:06Alastair Campbell?

  Why is a fundraiser? Because they need money. Why do they need money? Because they don't get money from the government. And I was genuinely sure. I've known about this scheme for ages and I've been involved in it at different places. And some of the clubs do fund it, some of them, some of the bigger clubs do fund it. And it's literally such a tiny part of their budget, but a lot of the clubs don't. So the reason the money was being raised is that it's clubs who are currently part of the scheme, it's so that the charity can pay the clubs to be involved. And I'm not, they're not paying to make a profit, but pay them for the coaches, for the kit and all this sort of stuff. And I just thought, God almighty. So but one of the kids, for example, one of the young men who who spoke, there's one guy from Lincoln who had really quite a long sentence and

• 26:52Alastair Campbell?

  he talks so movingly about how he had developed as a person through discovering that he could do something, be respected for it. And he's now a coach. There's another guy there who's now, he's now a coach, he's part of the coaching staff at Queens Park Rangers through their relationship with Wormwood Scrubs. So you just think, and and I know, and I said, you know, when we were doing our thing, you and I spoke and then Arsene Wenger and Ian Wright did a did a turn, Alistair McGowan, the impersonator. Be honest, Rory, how many of the football managers that he did, did you recognise?

• 27:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, very, very few, very few.

• 27:25Alastair Campbell?

  You got Klopp.

• 27:25Rory Stewart?

  This was actually a nightmare evening for me and a perfect evening for Alistair because we're there, like with Arsene Wenger and Ian Wright and all these kind of amazing celebrities like Henry Winter and all these people there. And I I'm sitting there with my book, which I think was on the peasants revolt.

• 27:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, you were sitting reading a book over dinner, Rory. I thought that was a bit bad.

• 27:44Rory Stewart?

  Just finish a sort of small tribute to David Dean. I mean, I I turned up because this man, David Dean, who set up Premier League, was absolutely central in Arsenal, has been a really good friend to me. He's the most incredibly charming, caring person, sends me WhatsApps, go out for dinner. But I suddenly realised I was in a room where three hundred and fifty people were a good friend of David Dean. He is an extraordinary charismatic individual.

• 28:09Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't realise, by the way, he said, um, when he did his speech, setting the evening up. That he got the idea from one of our rest is colleagues, Robert Peston, uh, who set up speakers for schools, which I'm also on because basically private schools don't struggle to get good speakers. Robert set up speakers for schools for people to go into state schools. And David Dean did loads and he said that he just got the bug and then thought maybe he could do this in prisons as well.

• 28:39Rory Stewart?

  As he was looking for a captive.

• 28:40Alastair Campbell?

  A captive audience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he he's been to every prison in the country.

• 28:44Rory Stewart?

  And some of them twice.

• 28:45Alastair Campbell?

  Every prison.

• 28:46Rory Stewart?

  Well over a hundred prisons.

• 28:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And he's so he's trying to get every prison linked to a football club. So is that some of the the prisoners, as they end that towards the end of their sentences, can train to be football coaches. And we saw last night, three guys, one woman, who are now leading completely different lives. And it was just really, really moving. So I think I think David's a great guy and uh, and my God, Wenger's in good shape.

• 29:11Rory Stewart?

  Looking good, isn't he? And we.

• 29:13Alastair Campbell?

  And the hair.

• 29:13Rory Stewart?

  We've got to, we've got to get him on the show.

• 29:15Alastair Campbell?

  We have got to get him on the show, yeah.

• 29:16Rory Stewart?

  Right. Paddy from Dublin. Could you discuss and compare what is currently happening in the US with Mao's Cultural Revolution in China? My mother actually asked me the same question. So my mother was, uh, and my father actually served in China during the Cultural Revolution. He was the, he was our man in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution. And my mother noticed this, it does feel a bit like that.

• 29:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 29:36Rory Stewart?

  It it it is, you know, when when they start talking about going after professors, going after the media, going after culture, going after words.

• 29:44Alastair Campbell?

  Judges.

• 29:44Rory Stewart?

  It's a sort of cultural revolution feeling, isn't it?

• 29:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, absolutely. And and also this idea that you can't really criticize. Um, I was talking to somebody the other day who has, and I don't know, you've been going backwards and forwards to the United States. I've not been since we were there for the the election. But I wonder if I would get in. You know, if you think about the things I say on the podcast about Trump, things I say on social media. So I was talking to somebody who says the next time they're going, they're taking a burner phone. Because they've heard too many stories of their colleagues who have been taken to one side and and the the border control people are going through their phones. To check whether they've said this, we said that. There was the story of these two German

• 30:26Alastair Campbell?

  girls who were, I think they were in custody for over a week. And it was because of stuff they had on their phone about Palestine.

• 30:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's extraordinary, isn't it? Because it's also a government that keeps, Trump's government keeps talking about free speech.

• 30:40Alastair Campbell?

  You cannot criticize Trump, but at the same time, you have to pretend that you're a great believer in free speech. We really must get on to do this Vance series because I, I'm, I do think he is a driver of more of this than we think. I think Trump is a vessel in some of this stuff and Vance is the driver. So should we line up a bit?

• 31:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go on then.

• 31:02Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know, Roy, this is our 400th, rest his, not even counting leading. We've now done 400. I didn't know that, but one of our eagle eyed listeners did. So Gemma, Trip Plus member, happy 400th episode, says Gemma. What are your highlights and lowlights from the last few years of doing the podcast? What have you learned? Favorite moments, challenges along the way?

• 31:25Rory Stewart?

  I was really, really naive when I came into this.

• 31:28Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 31:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Alastair Campbell?

  You naive, Roy, I can't believe it.

• 31:30Rory Stewart?

  So you, you contacted me very kindly in Jordan to ask me if I'd come on this podcast with you. I thought, you know, do a podcast, be fun. You know, we'll do five or six episodes. I didn't really have any idea at all what this thing was. I just thought it'd be funny to do what seemed to be like a few radio shows with you.

• 31:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 31:48Rory Stewart?

  And, and it's now become this enormous thing. And then final thing for me is I've been through a journey. I honestly got a bit sort of miserable, probably nine months ago. Cause I thought, well, in the end, can I really keep on sort of making minor grumbles about Keir Starmer's government, you know, and Alasdair's going to be a bit pro and I'm going to be a bit anti and I'll be like, you know, I'm a bit underwhelmed by Bridget Phillipson's new education policy every week. And since Trump's come in, it's a horrible thing to say, my motivation's gone up. I'm working much harder. I'm doing far more research.

• 32:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I've noticed you've worked a bit harder than you used to, yeah.

• 32:27Rory Stewart?

  No, it's true. I'm absolutely loving it. And, and the real privilege for me is that I, I literally get to spend two days calling the smartest people in the world and being educated about Ukraine or Poland or Taiwan or whatever it happens to be. I mean, admittedly, they're saints. And I don't know whether at some point they can tell me to bog off.

• 32:47Alastair Campbell?

  I started off exactly the same thing. I thought at the start we'd do see how it went. Had no plan, no real. Normally I like to strategize. I didn't really have a strategy at all. I liked when we stumbled upon disagree agreeably as a sort of motif. And I think Gemma, one of the things that surprised me is I think it has changed the way that I debate politics more generally. Um, I'm much less likely to fly off the handle than I used to be. Um, I mean, you know, I think if I'm in a studio with uh, there are certain politicians I can still, you know, flare up very, very quickly. But generally, I think that that has, that has been interesting. I've definitely changed and that may just be age. I don't know.

• 33:29Rory Stewart?

  I've also loved leading, really loved doing, doing those interviews and even some of the quite obscure people. This week we've got Ashul Ghandayat and you, you talked about, you know, in fact, he's interesting on USAID. I also thought he was an extraordinary soul. I mean, sometimes these people just are the most wonderful human beings. I love the way he talked about how you have to say yes to everything until you're forty and then no to everything after you're forty. I loved the, the way that he talked about his own mission in life, that, you know, his vision of helping bring longer, better lives to people, not just in the US, but throughout the world. And the way that everything he does, podcasts, documentaries, to teaching, so often those leading interviews,

• 34:12Rory Stewart?

  not all of them, but often I come away thinking, oh goodness, what an extraordinary person.

• 34:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you know, yesterday I was doing, uh, the comedian Catherine Ryan has a podcast about your real, I don't know, you have to do a blood test and then they tell you how, how, how old you really are inside your body. I'm not allowed to reveal my, my real age, um, until the podcast out. But so it was at Bauer Media. And on the way in, I was with somebody from the, from Random House and on the way in, a woman stopped me and said, oh, I've just been listening to your podcast. Oh, that's nice. Thank you very much. Ta da da. I then walked upstairs and the next person we met was literally listening to the podcast. And I know you find it difficult. One thing I have really noticed about you is you, you find it quite difficult when people confront you in public to say things about the podcast.

• 35:01Alastair Campbell?

  Having had quite a few years where most of my encounters in the street were quite unpleasant.

• 35:07Rory Stewart?

  It's quite nice.

• 35:08Alastair Campbell?

  I quite like it. Yeah, yeah. So people should feel free. Anyway, no, it's gone very, very well. So there we are.

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  Huge thank you to listeners and a huge thank you to to everybody. I mean, whether you're a member or whether you're not a member. Thank you, because obviously this only works because of you, because the questions that you've put in. And I'm going to finish with a final one from a Trip Plus member. Roger, very important but divisive question for Rian Alistair. Do you eat chocolate digestives with the chocolate facing up or down?

• 35:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, one of the most, one of the, I was going to say, one of the most irritating Rory Stewart habits. Is the fact that you are addicted to snacks and he's he's now holding up a, what is it? A Costa?

• 35:50Rory Stewart?

  Costa Millionaires Shortbread.

• 35:52Alastair Campbell?

  Millionaire Shortbread. I mean, it's.

• 35:54Rory Stewart?

  With salted caramel and white chocolate drizzle. It's only got about thirty ingredients, I'd say, on the back.

• 36:00Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. And how many of them have got the the the letter E?

• 36:03Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think since since we left the European Union, none of them.

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the reason, I think the reason for this question is the chocolate digestive, I read this the other day, is a hundred years old. That's pretty impressive. The chocolate digestive. And so I didn't even know this was a debate, but apparently it's a real debate. Some people eat their chocolate digestive with the chocolate up.

• 36:24Rory Stewart?

  Well, I obviously do it with the chocolate up.

• 36:26Alastair Campbell?

  Do you?

• 36:26Rory Stewart?

  What? Were you eating the chocolate down? You're crazy. You don't want to see the chocolate?

• 36:30Alastair Campbell?

  No, I, well, I dunk it in tea. I dunk it in tea and I just leave it long enough for the chocolate not to melt. And for the biscuit not to break. That's a skill that I've developed over the last sixty seven years.

• 36:43Rory Stewart?

  That's that that is a skill. No, no, I definitely want to. I mean, remember, I've been listening to Gulliver's Travels, which if people want an audiobook, I mean, it it's amazing eighteenth century prose. But of course, famously, the big fight in Lily Part is about which end of the egg you you break, which leads to basically thermonuclear war between these two kingdoms.

• 37:02Alastair Campbell?

  So we've gone, we had a trivial question about biscuits, which you have taken us into thermo nuclear war. My last question, also pretty light this one. Stephen Monroe, Trip Plus member, who I know he's the man on the Corom Ferry in the Highlands, but it's a very funny question. As a long time listener and Trip Plus member, I think it's interesting as the main parties move to the right, you guys seem to be moving further left. Let's deal with that one first, then we'll go into the second part of his question. Do you think you're moving to, I think I am moving to the left a bit.

• 37:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I, I am basically, if I could get over Ed Davies antics, I'm becoming more and more kind of Lib Dem in my thoughts. I look, I remain a Conservative in the sense I, you know, all the stuff we talk about, traditional, army, king, landscape, so, so. But I do think that fundamentally, the problem I increasingly see in terms of social justice, inequality, not really addressing poverty in our country, not really addressing the homeless, not really addressing prisoners. And I would have loved to see a Labour government come in that put those things central. It would have given me a sense of moral purpose and excitement. And one of the reasons I'm a little underwhelmed, to be honest, is that

• 38:11Rory Stewart?

  it does feel a little bit kind of austerity light, and not a million miles away from where Cameron's Conservatives were.

• 38:19Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Well, I think on that, I think when people, this is what I think is going to be the fallout of the local elections. As I said yesterday, I'm really worried that they're going to take the wrong message from the local elections. I think the Labour government's got to be more Labour, not more anything else, got to be more Labour.

• 38:36Rory Stewart?

  And more Labour doesn't, for my money, I mean, different, I mean, for me, that doesn't mean necessarily more trade union.

• 38:43Alastair Campbell?

  No, it means, but it means more social justice. It means more anti-poverty. It means more fairness. It means more education. It means more.

• 38:51Rory Stewart?

  More of a moral purpose.

• 38:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Rory Stewart?

  You were telling me off last night being too idealistic, but we need a bit of idealism, right?

• 38:57Alastair Campbell?

  I love idealism. I wasn't telling you off. I was asked a question. Um. What did it? What was the question? It was about.

• 39:04Rory Stewart?

  Whether you could ever make me Prime Minister?

• 39:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 39:06Rory Stewart?

  You're like, not a hope.

• 39:07Alastair Campbell?

  And I didn't say, no, I hope. I just said that I said that I sometimes worry that your idealism gets in the way of your political trajectory. That's what I said. And I think you'd have to say that's.

• 39:18Rory Stewart?

  That that may be true.

• 39:19Alastair Campbell?

  Not necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, the second half of the question to close on. Stephen Stephen's question is, is there any chance, because we've now allegedly moved to the left? Is there any chance of you both completing the centrist dad journey by campaigning for the Lib Dems at the next election? An absailing Alastair and a bungee jumping Rory would be box office.

• 39:38Rory Stewart?

  Well, we're definitely happy to absell and bungee jump, I think.

• 39:40Alastair Campbell?

  But not for the Lib Dems.

• 39:41Rory Stewart?

  Of course, I remain concerned about the association of the Lib Dem brand with.

• 39:46Alastair Campbell?

  Stunts.

• 39:47Rory Stewart?

  YMCA stunts with strange biscuits in his hands, which is what Ed Davey was doing last week.

• 39:52Alastair Campbell?

  What was he doing?

• 39:53Rory Stewart?

  He was sort of singing along to YMCA while pulling out strange British biscuits and cakes and singing about Trump's tariffs. And eating British. And I I just, I I still don't guess it. I mean, the answer from the Lib Dems is, again, you're being too idealistic. It really works. I am looking for a party that's going to appeal to my moral soul. And you're not going to get there by doing a YMCA digestive dance.

• 40:21Alastair Campbell?

  No, I I'm not really into that. I do get why he's doing it, though, because he's trying to get noticed. But he has set himself out as the the big anti-Trump voice of the party leaders, hasn't he? Uh. And that's the that is clearly a deliberate strategic decision.

• 40:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Alastair Campbell?

  Is that sensible?

• 40:38Rory Stewart?

  Very sensible, but the way to do it, I would argue now, is to tack to being anti-Trump by being serious.

• 40:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 40:45Rory Stewart?

  Which is what actually in the end is Carney's genius. We're talking in a day when Carney's just winning the Canadian election.

• 40:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 40:50Rory Stewart?

  Carney did not make anti-Trump into a winning strategy by doing the YMCA dances.

• 40:56Alastair Campbell?

  He was serious. So I I think, right, here's a bit of free advice to Ed Davey. I think a series of very serious heavyweight speeches about the history of the transatlantic relationship.

• 41:06Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Thank you.

• 41:07Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 41:08Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 41:16Speaker 05

  There we are getting a statement from Number Ten on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

• 41:25Speaker 06

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 41:32Speaker 07

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

• 41:38Speaker 08

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 41:40Speaker 09

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 41:43Speaker 06

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

• 41:57Speaker 05

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 41:59Speaker 06

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

• 42:07Speaker 08

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia.

• 42:12Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 42:14Speaker 08

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• 42:19Speaker 10

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• 42:32Speaker 10

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• 42:34Speaker 08

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