252. SUNAK CALLS GENERAL ELECTION

Why has the PM called a general election for 4th July? Is Keir Starmer ready? Will the polls narrow or are we heading towards a landslide? Join Rory and Alastair for an emergency episode of The Rest Is Politics as they answer all these questions and more. TRIP US will be released as usual on Friday. Question Time will now be released on Saturday. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen 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

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• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  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/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 2:28Speaker 01

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics emergency podcast on the day that Rishi Sunak finally gets around to calling a general election with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:37Rory Stewart?

  And me Rory Stewart. And Alistair, we just spent most of the morning together. We were up in Leeds together last night.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  We were in Leeds and we were on a train.

• 2:46Rory Stewart?

  Getting into the details of local council arrangements and devolution and all the gritty business of devolved budgets and suddenly we got an election.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  Well, suddenly on the train Rory, if you remember, sitting next to a dentist called Jessica and her dad, who was going to see a play, going to see Forty Towers, I was able to pass on to them these rumours swirling around. And you said, I will bet anybody £50, he's not calling an election today. Why were you so confident?

• 3:14Rory Stewart?

  Because it is complete insanity. I mean, it makes zero sense. I mean, there's just no way that this makes any sense at all. I mean, it does make any sense. I mean, if he thinks that this is about the economy, then actually, if he gave it a few more months, there's a chance, decent chance actually, that the economy might strengthen a little bit. Inflation might come down a bit, interest rates might come down a bit. He might, although it's probably unlikely, be able to get some of his stuff done on his Rwandan flights. And who knows, when you're 20 points behind in the polls, there's absolutely no point going to an election straight away. You may as well wait and see, just in case by some miracle Keir Starmer or Rachel Reeves slipped over on a banana skin, however unlikely it

• 3:59Rory Stewart?

  was. But he's going to a certain defeat now in six weeks, whereas he could at least have gambled, held off a bit to see whether some miracle might have improved things slightly and had another few more months in office.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I, look, the last time there was these sort of rumours going around he was about to call an election, which at the time I said I thought was a gigantic betting scam by somebody. But I think we said at that time, the only thing he has left really is the element of surprise. So he but he has taken people by surprise now.

• 4:30Rory Stewart?

  I get the surprise. You said that to me.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I'll tell you.

• 4:33Rory Stewart?

  Explain it to me because I mean, surprise, I'm 20 pounds behind nine holes and I'm going to lose the election. Surprise.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  No, wait a minute. The surprise is that you have a moment at the start where you can kind of frame things. The problem is, I don't think he framed it very well just now. But if you're let's try and go. So I can remember various points at which we were deciding in opposition, you're panicking the whole time about when they're going to call the election. And John Major in 1907, he did go long and he waited and he sort of hoped something turned up. And then he went for a very long campaign, which is exactly what Rishi Sunak is doing. And then I think they're both. The other thing that Sunak is doing today, he, he really was putting up, putting up in lights, the sense of, you know, oh, I've got this amazing record and didn't I well do well during furlough

• 5:20Speaker 01

  and look at the economies picking up and trying to con people into thinking that because inflation is falling, it means prices are falling, the cost of living is falling when it's not. And then the other thing he did was really tried to sort of, you know, is essentially say, this is now a choice between me and Keir Starmer, the prime minister and going at Keir Starmer on character. And I'm just not sure that's going to work. So I think the framing is not good. I could have framed it better for him today, but I'm not going to say how.

• 5:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, we'll come come back to framing actually, because I think that is a good point. I mean, if if you were right, that this is about surprise, then you better have something pretty remarkable up your sleeve, rather than just standing up and saying everything that you've been saying for the last few weeks. And I'm very surprised at what he said. I think the other thing is that if we look at those polls, the great rest is politics polls that we've been doing exclusively every month, there was some quite interesting, very small changes, which seem to be softening a little bit in his direction, which, again, not guaranteed at all. But if he'd given it another few weeks and months, there's just about a chance, not that he'd win the election, I never believed he could win the election, but he could have slightly.

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  Minimize the damage. Um, I've, I've obviously, as you can imagine, have had a number of texts and WhatsApps from serving MPs. So I think I've heard from six of them. Some of them being cabinet ministers, some backbenchers, some.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  Will they, will they all stay?

• 6:44Rory Stewart?

  I think very few of them will stay, very few of them will stay, including some.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Seriously, they're all gonna throw the towel in?

• 6:49Rory Stewart?

  Yep, including some who haven't yet announced they're leaving will leave.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Well.

• 6:53Rory Stewart?

  And honestly, the response from most of them is total bewilderment.

• 6:59Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 7:00Rory Stewart?

  I mean, literally, they're writing back going, I'll, I'll, I'll give you a sort of sample, you know, one of them's like, I have literally no idea why he's doing it. Any more than I have any idea why he's standing in the rain with this musical background. Another one wrote saying.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  Can I just say for our listeners, in case they didn't hear, the musical background was a well-known anthem from nineteen ninety seven called Things Can Only Get Better. So there's Rishi Sunak standing in a very wet day and at the bottom of Downing Street, you can hear the anthem that led, that was part of Labour's victory in nineteen ninety seven. Um, now I've got to say as well, I got a message from somebody who used to be part of our team, Kate Garvey. Um, and she, she, she just said, bloody hell, at least we'd have sorted the weather. Um, I think that was the other thing. So, yeah, so your friends in the Tory party are basically, they, I'm trying to, I'm trying to be level headed.

• 7:54Rory Stewart?

  I'm talking, I'm talking to literally veteran MPs, you know, people who've been in fifteen, twenty years. And they're just writing back when I say, have you got any idea what he's doing this? And almost all of them are writing back saying, no, to be honest, I've got no idea. And then they try to speculate and I can give you the, the range, the full range of hypotheses, right? So there's the, there's, this is the best moment to go. So this is a very generous view, right? So the, this is a good moment. Inflation's down, interest rates cuts, and there are going to be Rwandan flights in June. So that's the story. This is a beautiful moment to go. That's really not very convincing. That's somebody just putting that out, trying his best. The next theory was things are definitely not going to improve.

• 8:36Rory Stewart?

  So the economy is not going to get any better and there's not going to be any more money for cuts. So you might as well go now.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 8:42Rory Stewart?

  The third theory was things are going to get much worse.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Between now and say November.

• 8:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. So we might as well go now. So that theory is Rwanda is going to go bottoms up.

• 8:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:52Rory Stewart?

  There's going to be more defections. Farage is going to make a comeback. The party conference is going to be an absolute catastrophe. And then there was a number of people who are just like, honestly, I suspect he just hates being PM and can't bear the idea of a winter campaign and just can't face the idea of waiting till a party conference and just.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  He could be in, he could be in California.

• 9:12Rory Stewart?

  And just can't, can't do it anymore. But, but.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  But you, you think, you think these are people who are going to announce presumably very, very soon, we'll have to tell their local parties if they're standing or not.

• 9:24Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  And then you're going to have a whole new batch of MP of candidates.

• 9:28Rory Stewart?

  One of them, one of them's confirmed to me that he's standing again, then they're all going, but, um, but a very remarkable number are leaving.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:35Rory Stewart?

  And, and, and they are all totally thrown off balance and astonished. So there, there is only one more theory that I want to share and then I'll shut up about it, which is that. Um, I did have somebody who's very much in the inner circle, who said that there've been a lot of MPs over the last few months going and seeing saying, please, can we have an election? We're so exhausted. We're so fed up. We don't want to be in parliament anymore. We want to leave. We want to go and do something else for our lives. So it may be that he's, that there's been a bit of pressure from MPs just saying this is just rubbish. We can't take it anymore. Let's just get out and let someone else have a go.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  You see, the other thing I, I think is odd, if, if that's the sort of mood, which is totally defeatist, you can't go into a campaign with a defeatist attitudes. You might as well go. He has to, he's going now, whether he likes it or not, into what will be six of the most exhausting weeks of his life. Campaigns, especially for the leaders, are truly horrible experiences. They are exhausting. You are under massive scrutiny. The pressures are relentless and, and at times unbearable. And I just think if, if that's the mood, why have such a long campaign? Why go long? And I just wonder whether there's anything that's thought through in this or whether he, you know, and I know you. Laughed when I said it, but in a way it is the only thing he had left was this, I'm going to take them all by surprise now.

• 10:57Rory Stewart?

  Can I just on that one? Because I think that's a really interesting one. I I do think that there's a risk in politics that leaders get into a mindset where they think that they are going to do something surprising to inverted commas, show strength. It's what I call that the Humza Yusuf move. They do these completely bewildering things because they think it somehow makes them look strong, because at least they're taking initiative. I mean, I suppose what they feel is I'm trapped, I'm trapped, I'm trapped. At least in this case, I'm taking a choice. I'm not being having something falso. But usually it's a bad sign. It was a bad sign with Humza Yusuf. And I'm afraid it's a bad sign with Rishi Sunak.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, we should. We should let people know where this event that we were at in Leeds today was very interesting because it was full of people from housing, the housing sector, from property, from local government, lots of economists and so forth. And we did our usual thing of asking them who they thought would be prime minister after the next election. Little did we know at the time that it would be in no time at all. And it was a hundred percent, one hundred percent said Keir Starmer will be the prime minister. But then they'd had Angela Rayner there yesterday and we asked them whether they felt that they could be part of the delivery of these new towns that she was talking about in this massive house building programme before the end of the next parliament.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  And they weren't, they weren't really buying it in a way. And I think that what what they, what the Tories will try to do now, and of course, they've got the help of newspapers that, sorry, that's my phone. They've got the help of newspapers that they're going to be absolutely vile about Labour from, you know, from tomorrow, even more vile than usual. They're going to try to to make this a scary choice about Labour. And I just think that's a very difficult thing to do because what that audience was saying, indicating to us today, yeah, well, we might not be totally clear about what Labour are going to do, but we don't mind it. You know, there's got to be a change. And I'll tell you something I thought was very interesting.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  When we were on the train, you were, you were busy tapping away at your laptop and I was, I was watching PMQs and then belatedly you were. I thought it was. Because let's be honest, Sunak obviously knew when he woke up today that he was going to do this today. I can't believe he just sort of thought it up. And that's when the rumors started.

• 13:07Rory Stewart?

  And remember, there was a question by Stephen Flynn, where Stephen Flynn said, are you going to call an election to, are you feared?

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Are you feared, aye. And, and but, but so he, he knew that was happening.

• 13:17Rory Stewart?

  And, and his response actually was surprisingly disingenuous, given while we know what he was about to do.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Well, he said.

• 13:23Rory Stewart?

  He said, well, he said, well, you know, there's going, there's going to be some time in the second half or end of this year that will be an election I can reveal to you.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. But what I thought was very smart about bearing in mind that they're going to try to make this about Labour being scary, I thought was very smart. Sunak, at the first possible opportunity, trotted out his economy. He got a planted question from a guy we talked about in the podcast, Elliot Colby, about the economy, about the inflation figures. And then he was setting himself up for a sort of a big fight with Keir Starmer on the economy, which Labour want to fight on, okay, but not today. And so what Keir Starmer did, which I thought was very, very effective and, and, and smart, he started with a very

• 14:09Speaker 01

  long and fulsome tribute to Craig McKinley, the Tory MP who's had this horrible illness and, and, and was back in the Commons today. He then, he then mentioned people in the gallery who were, had been involved in the Manchester Arena bombing. And then he went on to six questions about the infected blood scandal, which were very, very pointed and sharp and so forth. But what he was, I think deliberately doing was not allowing, in that context, Sunak, I think by then, Keir Starmer, the Labour Party did get a tip off that, that Sunak was going to be having what they called a lecton moment at five o'clock. So I think that's why the rumors all started. And, but, but Keir was not going to give him that moment

• 14:53Speaker 01

  there. Be interesting to see. I don't know whether it will happen while we're doing this.

• 14:56Rory Stewart?

  I think it's, I think there's also a real problem, which is the best. Case that the Conservatives can make going into the election to minimise damage is to say actually the economy is beginning to turn around and some of the people will know inflation down 2.5% it's coming down, interest rates will probably come down and growth is beginning to take off a bit. But if that's your message and you're saying stick with nurse for fear of something worse, then the logic is to run the election in November. The logic is to give it six months to prove that the economy is beginning to

• 15:40Rory Stewart?

  turn around and going in a slightly more positive direction. I mean, even if you're all you're trying to do is save the Conservative Party for posterity, because you're you want to be able to say that to the narrative to be we handed over to Labour an economy that was beginning to recover and you might have been able to achieve that if you delayed till November.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 15:58Rory Stewart?

  You can't go confidently into an election now saying actually we've turned the corner, the economy's recovering, stick the nurse for something worse, if you've only got one week's worth of data on which to make that kind of case. I mean, it makes it look as though you have no confidence at all that things are going to improve over the next five to six months, doesn't it?

• 16:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. What about, I don't suppose Jeremy Hunt's amongst one of the six that's texting you, is he? Because his position is going to be very, very interesting.

• 16:23Rory Stewart?

  No, he's not. It's not. It's not.

• 16:25Speaker 01

  Gerald Davidson says he loves it that Rory's on his phone getting messages from stounded Tory MPs, no doubt. I've just had a, I'm going to give an award here to the most opportunist, the fastest, most opportunist request coming in is from Talkal Crichton, who is a Labour candidate in the Western Isles. And he's basically saying game on, please come to the islands in the next couple of months. So I think that's brilliant, I think. But that's the other thing, for candidates today, they, this is like, you know, I think it's important to to emphasise to people, you know, general elections are, they're obviously huge moments in the life of the nation.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Um, you know, even people who don't follow politics that closely know that, you know, we know when general elections were in the past, we know the ones that were important. But this, this is, this is now you've got all over the country tonight, you've got candidates, you've got people who still want to be candidates, you've got organizers, you've got volunteers, you've got people cancelling holidays. And this is the other thing which I think will piss off a lot of your former friends, the indications they've all been given.

• 17:36Rory Stewart?

  My, my current friends, my former colleagues are friends.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  Your former colleagues, sorry, your current friends, yeah. But they've all been in the, the, the indications they've been given is that, you know, it's not going to be during the Euros, it's not going to be during the summer, off you go on holiday if you want to have a holiday. And now they're all going to have to be campaigning. There's also the issue of school times, you know, Scottish schools, Northern Ireland schools have different summer holiday dates to, to English schools. I think, can I put my first of many pitches in to remind people that this will be the first general election in which voter ID will be required. Uh, and I think that is really, really important that people remember that. I think this will be the first general election in which I suspect there will be a lot more tactical voting than usual, because I think despite what Sunak was trying to

• 18:22Speaker 01

  do today, I think the driving narrative of this election is time for a change. I think that's the big, I think people, you know, we felt that today, we felt that.

• 18:31Rory Stewart?

  No, we, we, we totally felt it, totally felt it today. And actually, the, the, the, the reason, of course, he's going to go a bit long, is he's hoping that by going a bit longer, he's going to be able to expose Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves to a bit more public scrutiny. So now, you'll disagree with this because obviously you, you're, you're very sympathetic towards Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, but the Tory position is that the Labour front bench isn't that exciting, isn't that impressive, and that actually, when the public look at them closely, they're not going to be that impressed. And that the public's basic view is they're fed up with the Tories, they want to try someone else. But the Tories are gambling that with a long campaign, they can make people look

• 19:15Rory Stewart?

  carefully at some of the key Labour figures and be like, oh, that's not, I'm not really convinced these people are going to be able to run that greater government. So that, that's what I think they're hoping.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, they are, but I think that, you know, so why don't we just let the listeners in on it? We did an interview this week with Rachel Reeves for Rest is Politic Leading, which we'll put out in the in the next period. And the point is, I don't, I just think that, you know, you and I both complain sometimes that Labour may be a bit too cautious. But if the, if the Tories are banking everything on Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves dropping the ball, I just don't think they're going to be satisfied in that way. There will be, by the way, this is the other thing people should remember about elections. There will be totally unexpected moments that nobody sees coming. There will be issues that suddenly flare up that you didn't expect to flare up.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  But I suspect because of the mood around the parties that they're just as likely to be involving the Tory party as any of the other parties.

• 20:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, just to remind people, remind listeners how that can happen during elections. And you maybe can just think about a couple of examples of ways in which your elections, suddenly horrible things happened in the run up to the elections in those five, six weeks, which you really thought, oh, my goodness, this is going to derail.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  John Prescott punched.

• 20:33Rory Stewart?

  John Prescott punched, there was the Gordon Brown moment, yeah, with the bigot. There was Theresa May, where basically, having been 20 points ahead on the polls, looking like she was going to crush Jeremy Corbyn, her manifesto went horribly wrong and her announcement on adult social care was branded as a death tax. And she found her, her support going to freefall three weeks before the, three weeks before the vote.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  And that's, and that's why that discipline that, that Rachel, I think somewhat to your irritation at times, with that sort of discipline that Rachel Reeves was showing in our interview.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I think will be so important, but there will be moments, there's no doubt there will be moments where, I can remember, you know, going way back to when there was the, the Tories produced, this is when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister, this, you know, Labour did a shadow budget and the Tories just managed to take it apart over through the campaign. You've got to have, ultimately, even though campaigns have changed a lot, I doubt that we're ever going to see the return of daily press conferences. I don't know how many TV debates there might be. I think a lot of it will be fought on social media and will be fought in sort of, you know, them trying to control the message the whole time. But I think that the, you know, I, I, I think that from Sunak's perspective.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  He has, he's got to go into this thinking he can win. I think, I think it would be, I can't think of a worse form of human existence of fighting a general election as the incumbent, when in your heart, you know, you're going to lose. He's got to tell himself he can win. The people around him have got to believe that. And, you know, so, so I think from Labour's perspective, there's got to be, they've, they've got to, sorry, my phone keeps going. That from, from Labour's perspective, they should also be fighting it like they can, like they can lose it.

• 22:19Rory Stewart?

  Now, this is Adam, Adam Barton question just come in. Will Labour now be able to give more details on their plans? So far, it's been very low on detail and focusing on not being Tories, presumably to protect manifesto. So Adam Barton's hope is that one of the reasons they've been holding things back is for fear that the Tories will nick their ideas. Do you think we're likely now to see a kind of bold and exciting manifesto or not?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  I think there will be, I think there will be more detail, but I think the contours are pretty clear now. I think a combination of the missions and the, the six pledges that Keir Starmer set out, what was it, last week now? I think that will form the basis of it. I hope there will be more. I hope there will be both more in terms of detail and in terms of what I call, you know, big, big picture. So for example, I mentioned earlier, we were talking about the new towns that Andrew Rayner talked about yesterday. They are going to have at some point to explain how that works, how the, how it ties in with the infrastructure that lots of people at that conference today were talking about. If you have a new town, how many new schools, how many, how many new GP surgeries? How does that all get fitted with the transport system? That sort of detail. I think

• 23:24Speaker 01

  some of the, and I actually think what, what Labour should take confidence in is they have got the building blocks. So if you take the GB energy thing, actually to have a day or several days during the campaign where they put out detail that people end up having a debate about, that is a good thing to do. Cause what Labour has to do now is give people the reasons that they say, it's not just that I want the Tories out, I'm voting for Labour because A, B, C, D, E, F, as far as you like. And that's what Labour has to use the campaign for.

• 23:54Rory Stewart?

  Just to remind people what the six first steps are. They are stick to tough spending rules in order to deliver economic stability.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:01Rory Stewart?

  So that's a sort of slightly, I mean,

• 24:03Speaker 01

  That's really, that's really important.

• 24:05Rory Stewart?

  But it's sort of slightly negative. It's like, we're not going to do anything that they're not doing on spending. Yep. Set up Great British Energy, which is some sort of publicly owned clean power energy company that kind of, I think that will confuse people a bit. Cut NHS waiting lists by providing 40,000 more appointments each week. Again, I don't know what the general public makes of that. I don't know how many appointments we think we have each week, whether 40,000 more appointments is a huge number.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Well, it's in the millions. It's in them. I think we, I think more than, over a million a day.

• 24:36Rory Stewart?

  I see. Okay. So, so may, may not make, yeah. Launch border security command to stop the gangs arranging small boat crossings.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Neutralizing the small boats attacks.

• 24:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Providing more neighbourhood police officers, but he just says more, doesn't give a number, to reduce antisocial behaviour and introduce new penalties for offenders.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 24:55Rory Stewart?

  And then finally, recruiting 6,500 teachers. So I guess the teachers thing is, is good, I guess, but it's not that exciting. And of course, a lot of this doesn't apply to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  That is, that is, but you know, one of the things we talked about at the conference today was that people have to get used to the fact that in devolution, you have these different, different dynamics going on. So several of those don't apply to, don't apply to Scotland. But I think that, you see, I think that if you go back to 1997 and the pledge, the pledge card that we had, it was, you know, they weren't massive. We weren't saying, change the world. We weren't saying everything's going to get better overnight. And I think what, what Labour have a judgment to make now through this campaign, which by the way is going to feel a lot longer than six weeks. It, it, it just will. That today's going to be a big day. There'll be lots of big days through it. The TV debates will be big. The manifesto launches will be big. But there's

• 25:52Speaker 01

  going to be so much airspace is going to be devoted to this election. And part of the battle during the campaign is who is in control of the national conversation. And that is also setting the mood and the morale of the people who are out knocking on doors and are out campaigning in, in the, in the towns and villages around the country. And, you know, I think Labour, this thus far, has so benefited from the sense of Tory chaos, of the leadership stuff. I'm assuming that none of these colleagues that are Messaging you are going to do what some of them were talking about earlier, which is to get in letters of no confidence in him if he's doing this because, you know, that's

• 26:32Speaker 01

  just chaos from the start. So he's there now, he's he's going to be there. And the battle for the narrative is going to be what frames the campaign. That's why, you know, I'd be very keen if and when Keir Starmer, I don't know if he's if he's done a statement yet, but that I think will be about, you see, the three things you've got to do in a campaign, your own record, your attack on your opponents and your plans for the future. Now, Keir Keir Starmer's record in terms of Labour, he's only been an MP for eight years, is that he's been a big rising star, he's become the leader and he's changed the Labour Party after Corbyn. That's a pretty good message for the country. His message on the Tories is that there's not a single thing in the country that's got better. They've

• 27:16Speaker 01

  been a terrible government, time for a change. And then the third bit is the thing that I think we need to hear an awful lot of, you know, not just the sort of the slogans, but actually the detail then of how they're going to make make those things work.

• 27:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and I think there's a there's a little pompous for a second. I think it's a democratic point too, isn't it, that people, when they vote, need to know what they're voting for. And it's a basic thing in a democracy. You can't actually just say, trust me, we'll be better than the last lot. People want something to see and vote on. Listen, I think you're doing yourselves down a bit though in ninety seven. I mean, we just interviewed David Blunkett and I'm really looking forward to people listening to that. And he reminded us that you went into that election with a pledge to get two hundred and fifty thousand people off benefits or back in the world.

• 28:03Speaker 01

  The new the new deal, yeah.

• 28:04Rory Stewart?

  And that was a big, big thing. And it was something that he got straight on with.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  But no, but no, but for example, I remember one of our pledges was just smaller class sizes.

• 28:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's right. Getting to under thirty, wasn't it?

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, take away this is the places game. I've just seen Keir has been out saying what he's planning to say. So if the Conservatives get another five years, they'll be entitled to carry on exactly as they are. Nothing will change. A vote for Labour is a vote for stability and a vote for a politics that treads more lightly and stops the chaos. It's time for change. So they're going for a message of, you know, stability, I guess. Let's let's get serious again. Stop the chaos, turn the page and we can start to rebuild Britain and change our country. So time for a change, time for a change.

• 28:48Rory Stewart?

  Can we have, guys, anyone listening, let's have some more questions flowing in, please. Gavin Strathern, it's a horrendous timing for the SNP, currently on 49 seats, I think they'd be happy to hold 20 right now, that's great, thank you Gavin, anyone else happy to come in?

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Well, I was.

• 29:06Rory Stewart?

  Lawrence Dudley, is this time to disrupt the triple election tour? Absolutely, yeah.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  That's a very good question, well, on that one, yeah, but have we actually said that our tour in the autumn is an election tour?

• 29:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, we have, yeah, yeah.

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Have we? Yeah, that's my. But it's just, it's just before the American election, isn't it?

• 29:24Rory Stewart?

  So exactly, it has to be a US election tour, it has to be a general jollity tour, the year of election tour.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly, so I, the.

• 29:31Rory Stewart?

  Just talk about Scotland for a second, yeah, go on then, so Scotland, look, the SNP, as people will know, are in absolute chaos, Humza Yousaf also made one of these surprising decisions, and I think they're very similar, you know, I've just, I've just had a cabinet minister just send me a message saying no idea why he's done this, and it was the same with Humza Yousaf, when I talk to senior people in the SNP, they're going to have no idea why he thought he'd done it, these are decisions made by tiny circles of people, by leaders trying to show that they're strong and surprising, but boy, I boy, the SNP going into an election in a catastrophic situation, you know, Nicola Sturgeon in trouble, her husband under police investigation, Humza Yousaf just stepped down, new leader just in, absolute chaos and dissension in the ranks, you agree?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Well, I do, I was in Inverness last week, and Kate Forbes, the new deputy first minister, who will be one of those people, those candidates now, I mean, she's not a candidate in this election, but the SNP machine will now have to be sort of gearing into action, but I had a chat with her and some of the other SNP and Labour and Lib Dem politicians who were there, and I did sense for the first time, not from Kate, who was obviously, you know, talking up their prospects, and yeah, it's been tough, but now we can sort of sort things out, John Swinney's going to be serious, etc, but I felt generally, within the room and talking to the people I talked to over the couple of days I was up there, that the same,

• 30:57Speaker 01

  it's a different sort of dynamic, but time for a change is very powerful in Scotland as well at the moment, and it'd be interesting to see how often Keir Starmer goes up to Scotland. Because it

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  He needs those seats.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  We've Absolutely, there's an awful

• 31:12Rory Stewart?

  Again and again, if he can get those seats, he needs a much smaller swing in England.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  Correct. So there are a lot of seats up there that are relatively small swings, not tiny, but compared to some of the England seats that he's going after, where it's really, really important he gets them. And it's also important that Scottish people believe that there can be a Labour government in Westminster. I've always felt that is a key to getting people who maybe would vote SNP again at a different election, a Holyrood election. So I think that sense of time for a change is important. There's a question there from Tim. Do what he stands as reforms presence in many seats impact on the potential extent of Tory losses? Well, it is

• 31:52Rory Stewart?

  It's a very

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Majorly.

• 31:54Rory Stewart?

  So you can look again at the recent polling that we did. The reform vote seems to be taking roughly equally from Labour and Tory votes. But, but, but, but it looks as though if you

• 32:08Speaker 01

  It's more Tory.

• 32:10Rory Stewart?

  Questions of turnout, yeah, questions of turnout, questions of voter demographic. It's going to have a big impact. And I guess the only thing is that reform presumably is not going to be able to bring Farage in. So, and again, the polling that we did suggested that Farage leading reform would add three or four points to their position.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  I'm not convinced of that.

• 32:28Rory Stewart?

  You think they could bring him in before the

• 32:30Speaker 01

  No, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I think, fun enough, we talked that when you had your headphones in and were tapping away on the train, I was talking to that guy next to me.

• 32:40Speaker 01

  I just sort of feel that the Farage thing is overblown. I could be wrong. He, by the way, has to, because we, you know, we keep hearing there are difficulties between him and Richard Tice. But this is the day where Farage has to say yes or no definitively. He's going to stand or not. There's no, absolutely no reason now to hang on. He's enjoyed the teasing game, but today's the day he's got to decide. By the way, I thought it was hysterically funny this morning. Bearing in mind that Ofcom keeps telling us that the reason why GB News is not sort of treated in the same way as the BBC and Sky is because it's not a news programme. Nigel Farage and GB News were asking people to vote for him

• 33:21Speaker 01

  in the news presenter of the year category in the media award. So he's either a news presenter or he's a politician. But, you know, I think if he doesn't sort of get off the fence and do it today, then, you know, I think his credibility takes a hit. George Wildman.

• 33:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and I think we're probably coming to the end, Alison, unless there's lots more questions coming in.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  I am enjoying this, Rory.

• 33:43Rory Stewart?

  Well, we need more people to come in with their questions.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Well, I think we're not seeing all the questions. We're just seeing the ones that our team have decided we should see.

• 33:49Rory Stewart?

  Team need to fire through more. George, what do you make on whether he thinks the distraction of the Euros could have an impact on the elections?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, George Wildman says, did he call the election when he did to have the distraction of the Euros and a positive atmosphere in the country? That always gets said around the time of a major tournament. It's often said because they basically said that Labour were helped by the World Cup. And in fact, the dates don't even stack up on that one. I do remember in 1996, in the Euros, we did get slightly worried at one point that if England won, that it might help John Major. But I think that stuff's overblown. So the Euros starting, I'm going to start the Euros. Well, I suppose we'll have to sort of look at all that stuff now, won't we? But that's going to be in June. So this is going to be in the middle of the Euros.

• 34:38Speaker 01

  I'm not quite sure where, I think England will be sort of into the qualifying stage, the sort of knockout stages by then, I guess, as will Scotland, of course. But I don't think that's a big deal. People will make lots of it because the other thing, I'm hoping some journalists will watch what we say. I really, really, really hope that within the thousands of hours that are going to get devoted to this election campaign in the next few weeks, that there is more discussion than there usually is about policy. Watching, it was when I got home, after we got back from Leeds, I got home, just listening

• 35:15Speaker 01

  to the endless babble of nothingness about, you know, who didn't return my calls because of this and all this sort of. And this is now the moment where both the main parties, I think, and the Lib Dems and the SNP and the Greens and the Reform have got to try to get the focus on policy. Because I think the desire will be for it to have all about the personality, all about the rubbish, all about the tactical stuff. But the media have got a big responsibility in that.

• 35:43Rory Stewart?

  So we just had a question from Ethan, who will be the next Tory leader? And I think that will be determined by Ethan Pearce, who will be the next Tory leader?

• 35:51Speaker 01

  The man on the train thought it should be you.

• 35:53Rory Stewart?

  That's not going to happen because I'm not running in selection. This will all come down to the question of when the Tories lose. Whether the right manages to say they lost because they went too far to the left, or whether the left of the party says they lost because they went too far to the right. And they'll both provide different kinds of evidence. So the right of the party will point to votes that were lost to Reform, and the left of the party will point to votes that were lost to Labour in the centre ground. The candidates likely to come out, there doesn't look like there's a strong candidate, sadly, on the centre left of the Conservative Party at the moment, who can naturally step

• 36:32Rory Stewart?

  up and fill that void. The people who are positioning themselves on Con Home and these kinds of things are people like Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, Suella Braverman still floating around. There are quite a lot of old timers who say pretty Patel shouldn't be underestimated. Now, that's quite a sort of grisly group of the Brexit.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Penny Mordaunt?

• 36:56Rory Stewart?

  Brexit wing. Penny Mordaunt will put her name forward.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  How many of those will win?

• 37:03Rory Stewart?

  So, well, I mean, only one of them. You mean, we'll keep their seats?

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's a question. Somebody asked what will be the Portillo moment to this campaign. On the current stats, at 20 points behind, there are going to be seats, very safe seats lost. The Tories could well end up with just over 100 seats. So.

• 37:23Speaker 01

  That's not going to happen. It's going to close at some point. Surely. I mean, if that's the case, then you're going to have lots of Portillo moments. You'll have Jacob Rees-Mogg, you'll have Michael Goob, you'll have.

• 37:33Rory Stewart?

  Dominic Raab.

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Dominic Raab, you'll have Braverman, you'll have, you know, lots of them. I think Rees-Mogg could be one. I can see the Lib Dems taking that. Yeah. Braverman would be great. That'd be fun. Well, Liz Truss, what about your friend, the independent, going against Liz Truss?

• 37:50Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's it. James Bag in Norfolk. Anybody who wants to feel like getting up to Norfolk campaigning, good time to fight for the. The old independent heart of the Conservative Party. I'd like to put in a bid though for the futurity leader for James Cleverly. I think he's, he did well as Foreign Secretary. He's good communicator. He's steady. He's not identified with one wing or other, particularly of the party. He's got a great backstory.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Have you moved, have you moved away from Gillian Keegan? I mean, you once tipped her for the top, Rory.

• 38:21Rory Stewart?

  I, I've, I still think Gillian Keegan is a star. I think she's a terrific, terrific woman, Gillian Keegan.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  What is James, what's James Cleverly's majority?

• 38:30Rory Stewart?

  I don't know.

• 38:31Speaker 01

  I'll look it up while you're talking. You carry on.

• 38:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, again. Anyway, the only question though is, has he got a machine? All these people now are going to be moving so fast and this will distract them from the election because they are assuming Rishi Sunak's going to lose. So they will be desperately trying to build their own election machine.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  And that will become, that will become part of a very negative narrative about, about Sunak as well. The awful. His majority is 24,673.

• 38:56Rory Stewart?

  That should be holdable.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  24,000. That's pretty big. And if you're losing that, then you're in real trouble.

• 39:01Rory Stewart?

  Do you think Israel Palestine will be a huge element of this election? Well, it, it, it, it is something that will affect some voters. I, I do think that we could, we saw with the George Galloway result, the big impact that Palestine has had on some voters. We saw it in the local elections where Labour performed badly in seats with over 20% Muslim voters. And I think we'll see it not in terms of people voting Tory, but in terms of people staying home. So it'll create low turnouts, but probably Labour will still safely take those seats.

• 39:39Rory Stewart?

  And I think the only thing that could change that is if over the next few weeks, some more horrendous things happened in the Middle East and either of the leaders responded in a particularly inappropriate way.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. I thought, I was reminded today, the fact that Rishi Sunak came out with the lecton in Downing Street. And the person on the television was saying, and these lecton moments only happen at moments of major national significance. And I was thinking the last time he did it was because George Galloway won a by-election.

• 40:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Yeah. We didn't really, I couldn't even remember, but it was very odd that one.

• 40:15Speaker 01

  I mean, it was.

• 40:16Rory Stewart?

  Coming up, I think, to the end with Charlie Richards. Personally, as a Lib Dem leaning voter, I'm disappointed with their current campaign. What's their campaign strategy on a national level? B, teeing up for you very quickly, just to explain the conundrum they have. They tend to calculate, and they're doing it again, that what they want to do is win is not really worried too much about the big national campaign. What they're worrying about is winning these individual seats, running these very, very local campaigns to increase the number of MPs they have in Parliament. But I think it's hugely disappointing. I would have liked to see them take a radical position, for example, on rejoining the European Union. Customs Union would be an obvious thing for them to go on. But Gun, tell us about Lib Dems.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you're right. I think they've got a... When we interviewed Ed Davey on leading, he basically has a list of the seats that he thinks he can win. That's where they're putting their resources in. I think they find it very, very frustrating that Reform just have to sort of, you know, put out a sort of dull press release and the media will cover it, whereas they don't get that. So they've sort of almost given up on that and they're going to focus their resources on a relatively small number of seats and then take the moments when they get into the national picture when they can. So, for example, if there are TV debates, Ed Davey would be part of that and that would be a big moment for him. But I think their strategy is lacking in clarity.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  And I think actually, you know, we've managed to get through almost 40 minutes now, Rory, without me even mentioning Brexit. But I think it is extraordinary that it is going to be the biggest elephant in the electoral room. Danny Finkelstein had a column in The Times today, essentially saying it is incredible when you think about it. It's one of the most consequential things that has happened in our country in recent years and none of the parties want to talk about it. It's quite mad.

• 42:11Rory Stewart?

  It's heartbreaking. And when you listen to Rachel...

• 42:13Speaker 01

  But it's nuts.

• 42:14Rory Stewart?

  When people listen to Rachel Reid's interview, you can hear us again and again just saying, "Why, why, why won't she talk about this?" And her just saying, "I don't think anyone wants to talk about it." And we're like, "Well, no, we do."

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Lots of people do. So, listen, I am determined. I will never... I've never predicted an election in my life. I won't put a number on it. I've been pretty close on most of them in recent years, the number that I have in my head. But give me your number of a majority.

• 42:42Speaker 01

  You clearly think Labour will get a majority.

• 42:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think Labour will get a sixty nine seat majority.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. That's below what some of your colleagues have been saying to you, isn't it?

• 42:53Rory Stewart?

  No, it is below what they've been saying.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:55Rory Stewart?

  Let's see, see what I'm right.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  It's an absolute, started the day with you in Leeds, ended it with you with that with we did not. When we started the day, we did not think we'd be talking about a general election by the end of the day.

• 43:05Rory Stewart?

  And, and, and as, as Rishi Sunak would like to say, surprise.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  No, no, no. What he wants to say, Rory, is the plan is working. And by the way, if there is a Labour government, sack whoever it was at the Treasury, who on the Treasury's official account, put out a tweet today about the inflation figure saying, stick with the plan, the plan is working.

• 43:30Rory Stewart?

  Gone, gone.

• 43:31Speaker 01

  Gone.

• 43:32Rory Stewart?

  Stick, stick with the plan, at least for another, stick with the plan. No, wait a second, I'm calling an election because I didn't really want to stick with the plan. That I have no confidence in sticking with a plan for another six months.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  I would have moved on and take my family to California.

• 43:44Rory Stewart?

  That's cool. All right, Rory. Anyway, thank you all so much for tuning in. The pod will be up in audio form too. And on YouTube for catch up. Question Time in Trip US will be released in due course as usual. Thank you all very much. See you soon.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  See you soon.

• 43:59Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 44:03Speaker 05

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