572. Trump’s Next Middle East Crisis and Reform’s £72m Megadonation

Is the Houthis' seizure of one of the world's most critical waterways the clearest proof yet that Trump's Iran war has become a catastrophe? With the very people building AI now calling for a pause, is real regulation finally coming, or will tech billionaires keep writing the rules themselves? And with Reform banking £72 million from two crypto billionaires, why is Britain one of the only democracies with no cap on political donations? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Sanna Marin, Former Prime Minister of Finland, by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. 🌏 Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! Get an exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee! __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Lead Video Editor: Josh Smith Video Editor: James Clayden, Adam Thorton, Oli Ortega Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

  In the past week, Donald Trump has backed to United Ireland whilst also publicly blaming President Zelensky for rising fuel prices. Now, there was a time when an American president doing this would have triggered two separate diplomatic earthquakes. But we're now so used to Donald Trump's verbal diarrhea that both passed almost as soon as they arrived. Meanwhile, the story that actually deserved his attention kept getting worse. The Houthis now have missiles that can reach Israel, and this week, they seized the narrow gap at the mouth of the Red Sea. So now, with Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz and their friends, the Houthis, in charge of this one, it is another huge setback to Trump's objectives and to the price of oil. Saudi Arabia asked Washington for military help. Trump said no.

• 0:45Alastair Campbell?

  Instead, the leader of the free world spent the weekend watching golf. So does anyone, Trump included, actually understand the significance of what's just happened?

• 0:56Rory Stewart?

  This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.

• 0:59Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:04Rory Stewart?

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• 1:11Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:21Rory Stewart?

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• 1:32Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:43Rory Stewart?

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• 2:07Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 2:09Alastair 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.

• 2:21Rory 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.

• 2:45Alastair Campbell?

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

• 2:52Rory 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/ressitspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/ressitspolitics, and the link is in the episode description.

• 3:16Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to Rests Politics. I'm Andy Campbell.

• 3:18Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 3:21Alastair Campbell?

  So Houthis in Yemen, AI, Nigel Farage getting loads and loads and loads of money. Let's start with the Houthis, because I think you said at the end of Question Time with their milliband, this has been underreported. It's like everything that's big news these days, it sort of gets talked about for half a day, and then it moves on. I think this is massive. And I also think it's a further indication of the catastrophe of the initial decision to go to war in Iran.

• 3:49Rory Stewart?

  It's a completely staggering story. So very quick reminder of what happened. So the Houthi started really in the 1990s as an obscure cult in the mountains of Yemen. And if you've been covering the story back in the 90s, you would have thought these were people in sandals with Kalashnikovs who don't really matter in world events. Fast forward to today, this is a group in Yemen with ballistic missiles which can strike Israel and Dubai, which have been accessing the latest AI models, the US companies are reporting on this, and which now have expanded forward and seized the key gap to the entrance to the Red Sea. And this really matters.

• 4:34Alastair Campbell?

  And the coastline down towards it.

• 4:36Rory Stewart?

  The whole coastline down. And this is a very narrow gap. If you were going at 20 knots, you could get across it in about half an hour. And what does that mean? Well, it suddenly means that Saudi Arabia and others who thought, well, we don't need to worry too much about the Strait of Hormuz, because we can still get 4 million barrels out through Yembo and out through the Red Sea, are now blocked at both ends. This is critical, existential for the Gulf states, and really dangerous for the global economy. And all this has been pulled off, not by the US or China, or even a big, relatively wealthy state like Iran, but by a group of people who, back even two months ago, many

• 5:18Rory Stewart?

  people in the officially recognized Yemeni government said the Houthis were an empty shell that were about to collapse, and they were going to be marching on Sina.

• 5:26Alastair Campbell?

  If you look at the map, so you've got the Strait of Hormuz, which we took for granted as a place that was always going to have oil flowing through and world trade going through it, and the Americans, every American president saying, let's not do this, because they'll shut down the Strait of Hormuz. And of course, Trump says, no, they won't. Well, they do. So the Saudis have this 1,200-kilometer pipeline that goes right across the country. And so they think, well, we can get around through that, we'll just put more through the pipeline, and then we'll get it out through the Red Sea. Another Iranian proxy inside Iraq is then starting to send drones in and to damage this pipeline, so the pipeline shuts down. And meanwhile, the oil that they wanted to compensate for the Strait of Hormuz by bringing

• 6:08Alastair Campbell?

  out through the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden, they're now having to go north, right round Africa, so right up through, across, past Spain, round the corner, and right down, adding about two to four weeks to an average tanker's journey. And what does that do? It puts up the price. So, and do you know what I find the most of the many revolting things that Trump said and did in Ireland? He blames Zelensky for the rising fuel prices. He said if Zelensky's, one thing Zelensky's got to do is stop hitting these diesel plants in Russia. Like, that was the thing driving up our fuel prices, because they don't want to admit that actually it's the Iran war and now with this on top.

• 6:51Alastair Campbell?

  And I'll tell you that one of the most fascinating stories I read this week, I don't know if it's true, but it was the New York Times, I'm guessing it was, was J.D. Vance, who as we know, from the regime change book and all the reporting at the time, was against this war in the first place, now is actually commissioning his own intelligence reports for what's going on in this war. So there you've got Trump, we've won, we're winning, Iran's desperate for a deal, Iran's desperate for that. And I'd love to know your view on this. When we talk about the Houthis, what is the exact relationship with Iran? I mean, they get the funding, they get the backing, but this isn't necessarily Iran. This is the Houthis, you know, they've got their own modus operandi.

• 7:31Rory Stewart?

  I spent a lot yesterday talking to people, some of whom I can talk about openly and praise, Peter Salisbury, who's a great expert on this, Nick Hopton, who was our ambassador in Yemen, and who hosted me actually when I was there.

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, when you were a minister.

• 7:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, we were looking, actually, one of the back bench when I first went there, we were looking at the Queen of Sheba's palace with the ambassador, at which point his security team suddenly said, the Houthis are coming. And this was one of the first signs that they were beginning to come anywhere near Sina. So who are the Houthis? They are a group of people up from the mountains, up in the north of Yemen, who are predominantly Zaidis. And the Zaidi branch of Islam is basically a Yemeni phenomenon. It's very difficult to find a kind of international comparison for it. They appear to have been maybe closer to Shia Islam, to the type of Islam that you have, which 60% of Iranians follow, than Sunni Islam.

• 8:30Rory Stewart?

  And they were traditionally very opposed to Saudi Sunni salafism. So they were very useful actually for many Western governments that saw them as a possible balance against al-Qaeda. Back in what one of my friends calls the glory days, when all we worried about in Yemen was al-Qaeda and democracy, right? Which is what I was seeing when I, you know, when I went there in 2012, for example, we were sitting around the national dialogue with the UN Ben Umar and the Gulf Cooperation Council, and there were women's groups and civil society, we were learning the lessons from Northern Ireland and all this kind of stuff, right?

• 9:03Rory Stewart?

  So the Houthis erupt south, and a lot of this is after the Arab Spring, and they grab hold of Sana'a. And then listeners will remember what follows on from that, which is that the Saudis and the Emiratis then respond, twenty sixteen onwards, in a massive air campaign. And then there are special forces on the ground, air operators, mercenaries, and a huge humanitarian crisis. You know, end up with a lot of people on the verge of starvation, massive amounts of refugees. Difid is piling in hundred million pounds a year. The Americans are coming in with a billion. And we are horrified by what Saudi and UAE seem to be doing. And twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen, when I was the minister, all the games to put pressure on them, not to seize the port of Hudaia

• 9:47Rory Stewart?

  and create more humanitarian crisis. Fast forward, Saudi and UAE eventually back off. A peace deal is put in place when I was in Jordan, twenty twenty two, and for about the last four and a half years, the front lines have remained pretty static. And so nobody's really concentrating on Yemen. There are no real foreign correspondents on the ground, except last year, Trump is convinced in the spring of last year that the Houthis are about to fall, and he launches a fifty-two day bombing campaign.

• 10:16Alastair Campbell?

  Operation Rough Rider.

• 10:18Rory Stewart?

  Operation Rough Rider, right, which we didn't actually report much of the time. We should have done more about it, but it was another one of Trump's wars.

• 10:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Rory Stewart?

  And the idea of the war, and this is why he may be getting a little bit of deja vu in Iran, is he was told that if he did the fifty-two days, the Houthis regime would collapse, the loyalist forces would come romping in, and the whole country would be captured. He's now heard it again with Iran. If I just do my bombing campaign, the regime will collapse, and all the democratic forces will come in and take over. So one of the problems now was the Houthis, who were about to crumble, we were told, now turn out not to be crumbling at all. And finally, sorry, I'm answering too many questions at once. But your final question, which I think is very important, is this question is what are their relationship to Iran? Now, certainly, our assessment back in the day is, yes, they got some support from Iran, but it was nothing compared to the amount of support

• 11:04Rory Stewart?

  that the other Yemenis were getting from Saudi, UAE, the US, and others. A couple of planes have come in recently with Iranians on them. There will be Iranian advisors on the ground. There's absolutely no doubt the Revolutionary Guard has given them some bits of kit and technology, but it's very, very cheap for the Iranians. It's probably costing the Iranians, I don't know, not the billions that Saudi or UAE put in, few tens of millions. And what do they buy for it? Well, what they buy is not really an Iranian proxy. What they buy is a very, very indigenous, mountain-based nationalist group of Yemenis, who have an ideological commitment to being the spear of the fight against the US and Israel and all this kind of stuff, right?

• 11:49Rory Stewart?

  Don't underestimate how ideologically driven they are, and who the Iranians, by providing a little bit of support to, but not much control over, have suddenly found themselves in a far more powerful position they were in two weeks ago. Because as you've just pointed out, Saudi's been sitting back for the last few months, saying, well, this is a disaster for Dubai, it's a disaster for Qatar.

• 12:11Alastair Campbell?

  It's not so bad for us.

• 12:12Rory Stewart?

  But it's not so bad for us, because in fact, the oil price has gone up, and actually Saudi revenue was going up.

• 12:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:16Rory Stewart?

  Now they're shut off at the other end.

• 12:17Alastair Campbell?

  And the other problem they've got, I think the, the, one of the biggest underreported issues out of these events is that Mohammed bin Salman, effective leader of Saudi Arabia, asked Trump for fresh military support on the back of this, and Trump said no. So that won't, that'll be going, making the thinking about this very, very different. And remember, a few weeks ago, we talked about this new Mecca Defence Pact, Saudi, Turkey, Pakistan. I don't know whether in the end they have to sort of go down that, because what happened here, this does seem to have been militarily extraordinary operation. They've taken huge chunk of ground, huge chunk

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  of coastline, an airport, these islands, which as you say, are about twelve kilometres from one side to the other. They've changed the, the landscape. And because Trump doesn't want to admit that his Iran war's not going very well, it's kind of gone away.

• 13:14Rory Stewart?

  Well, so one of the interesting things, when I talk to people who are, who I can't quote, but who are still inside the British, American, UN systems at the moment, they would say, said to me even three, four weeks ago, that the Houthis were on the back foot. And actually, these troops that they've been fighting were supposed to be the crack anti-Houthis forces, who'd been showing off about how good their drones were and showing you fancy pictures of bombs dropping. So it's even worse. What the Houthis have done is they have kicked out people who were supposed to be some of the elite fighting forces from south. Now, add another problem, which is we covered on the show, the fact that it was in Yemen that the relationship between Saudi

• 13:58Rory Stewart?

  Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, broke, because the UAE found themselves backing a bunch of southern separatists around Aden.

• 14:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:08Rory Stewart?

  Who advanced up north. The Saudis got really angry, pushed south, hit a UAE boat, I mean, actually blew up a UAE boat. UAE threw up its hand and said, forget this, we're out of here. Saudi took control. The Yemenis who were against the Houthis thought, well, this is wonderful. Now we have a unified control. We're not divided anymore. Now's our chance to go after the Houthis. The whole thing's collapsed. And Saudi, as you say, is now in a very difficult position, because it's completely unacceptable in any normal geopolitical terms. If I'd said to you, you know, or said to Ed Miliband, who we just interviewed twenty years ago, would you accept a position in which a anti-American, fanatical, Zadi group has suddenly taken control of the whole Red Sea?

• 14:50Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 14:50Rory Stewart?

  You'd say absolutely not. But US doesn't want to come in and help Saudi. Why not? Well, presumably because they feel that they were misled last year, and Trump was told that if he bombed them, the regime changed, it didn't work. UAE doesn't want to come in and help. In fact, because they're feeling a bit of schadenfreude and thinking, well, you kicked us out of Yemen, now it's your problem, you can get on with it. And the problem the Saudis are facing is how do they reassemble any kind of coalition? The Pakistanis, I think, are there, trying to help them. They've got Pakistani advisors on the ground. But to really make this work, they have to go back to a world which has disappeared. I mean, this is our, our point about, you know, rules-based order. You know, let, let's say this had happened when you and Tony Blair in Downing Street. So let's say this had happened in ninety-nine, two thousand. I presume what would

• 15:34Rory Stewart?

  happen is everybody would sit around, probably at the Security Council, and say, we cannot have the major waterway of the world. This is the gateway to the Suez Canal. This is, you know, this is the core, the gateway back into the Mediterranean.

• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  The Security Council did make.

• 15:49Rory Stewart?

  And you would imagine, presumably, that you would all sit together and we would say, unified Russia, China, France, US, UK, Gulf, sanctions, military operations, pressure tension, because this is an extraordinary combination of a terrorist group and a massive strategic waterway.

• 16:11Alastair Campbell?

  And instead, you have the leader of the free world watching golf in Ireland and blathering on about United Ireland. To this day, I can't work out whether that was deliberate or just him sort of.

• 16:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, he's said it again, hasn't he? He's, he's, he's doubled down.

• 16:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but does that, is he doubled down because he, sometimes I think he doubles down because he says something, and then people say, you shouldn't have said that. And he says, oh, well, I don't want people to know I shouldn't have said that, therefore said again.

• 16:33Rory Stewart?

  Let me try, try this on you. Isn't it, though, on the United Ireland, that he senses that actually, although it's not what you're supposed to say if you're a US president, it's very popular with a certain demographic of his voter, who love the idea, this is the guy, he speaks truth to power, we agree with him, there should be a united Ireland. I mean, there'll be a lot of Irish voters in the US who'll be like, hells to the yes. Why has no US president said that before?

• 16:55Alastair Campbell?

  And then when he was, when he was presenting the trophy to the Irish golf, who won the Irish Open, Shane Lowry, he then suddenly announced, while presenting the trophy, that he was lifting the tariffs on Irish whiskey, which also, so clearly wanted to, I was a bit disappointed with the Irish. I love Ireland, as you know, I love the Irish, but to be in front of a crowd of thousands of golf fans, and there was a wonderful photograph of four people who were on the course, and they shaped their body into four letters. They shaped their bodies into four letters. I can't say what the word was.

• 17:30Rory Stewart?

  Was it rude?

• 17:31Alastair Campbell?

  It was rude. It was, if, if you remember the time when.

• 17:34Rory Stewart?

  I don't know. How do you do an N? I can see how you can do a C and a T.

• 17:37Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, the guy, you do, use a very, very interesting use of your legs and arms. You could do it, because you were very sort of flexible. I couldn't do it. But generally, they gave him quite, quite a quiet time. But there he is. You've got Iran going on, you've got Ukraine going on, you've got all this stuff going on. And he, and honestly, the, the motorcade that was flown to Dublin for him to go to a tournament on his bloody golf course, shout out to the Irish president, though. That's been calling five minutes he got.

• 18:06Rory Stewart?

  But also, let me push it one stage further, because if the US can't get involved in Yemen, and suddenly countries like Saudi are finding out that middle powers are not quite as powerful as they thought they would be. And I'm sure if I was to challenge, you know, European states, they'd say, oh, no, we have made statements about it, and we've had a meeting at this, that, and the other. But you're not really getting the sense that the European powers are going to solve this. In fact, you get the sense that the EU is feeling, well, we're not putting so many ships through the Red Sea at the moment anyway, and we've got other things to worry about. And so I think this is the canary in the mine. I think this is what's happening here.

• 18:47Rory Stewart?

  Group that was a pretty marginalized impoverished terrorist group now controlling a major waterway with advanced weaponry is just the beginning. I mean, that what's going to be happening across that channel very quickly because it's just takes you half an hour to get across in a boat. I guess pretty soon you're going to have Somali fighters coming across. You're going to have arms and weapons going back and forth. You're going to have that war spilling quite quickly towards the Horn of Africa. And I think we are just at the beginning times of more and more global conflict in unexpected ways. I mean, nobody saw this three weeks ago. And my guess is, we could end up with another dozen conflicts that nobody saw three weeks ago.

• 19:25Alastair Campbell?

  The um, before we go to AI, a couple of couple of points to close off on this. First is that um, we talked a few weeks ago about the the shipping insurance industry being such a big player in this. So you've got the Houthis saying that they're only going to target Saudi vessels. I'm not sure the insurers are going to buy that. This thing could go any which way. And the second thing was reading a report by Chatham House, um, one of their experts on this. And he said that with the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al Mandab, you've now got something like thirty five percent of fuel and oil trade being under Iranian control. And this this guy Faria al Muslimi said, this is as much leverage as a nuclear bomb. And I'm sorry, this is what Trump has delivered to them by getting

• 20:08Alastair Campbell?

  them to retaliate in the way they did, not by, well, they are doing the weaponry as well, but the economic retaliation, which is going to hurt him in the midterms, it's going to push up fuel prices here, it's got massive consequences.

• 20:19Rory Stewart?

  And it feels as though China has probably negotiated access now through Hormuz and through the Red Sea Bab al Mandab, that Russia's not that bothered. So that actually the consequence is catastrophic for the Gulf states and American allies.

• 20:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:36Rory Stewart?

  But actually, weirdly, a lot of America's adversaries are not too troubled about this.

• 20:42Alastair Campbell?

  Very briefly, Rory, before we go to a break, artificial intelligence, this has been in the news a lot. I'm not, I am interested.

• 20:50Rory Stewart?

  Well, we did, we did a really good event. I mean, I thought I thought you were really, really good. It was one of the most interesting events we've done. Alison and I did a did an event talking about AI. And I think you made a really strong point. Generally, I go to these business things, and we all talk about the technology and what it might mean for a business in terms of productivity. And you were very blunt. You basically said, look, you're forgetting the politics of this. People hate the tech billionaires. Nobody wants Elon Musk. They can't see the benefits of this. They think these data centers are ugly, electricity consuming, water consuming. And people like me are trying to say to people, we are going to be in very, very vulnerable, dangerous position if we don't build these things because we're going to completely depend on US and Chinese models. But how

• 21:35Rory Stewart?

  on earth do you say to voters, I'm going to build a data center in your backyard, it's going to use your electricity, it's going to use your water, it's going to give money to Elon Musk. It might take your job away. Oh, and these people are saying it's a fifteen percent chance it could wipe out humanity. And you're telling me I have to build it because that's my insurance policy against the US and China.

• 21:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And you have and you have Donald Trump saying, we have to do it because we have to win against China. But people can't work out what the win is right now.

• 21:59Rory Stewart?

  We we've been spent a lot of time talking about AI back and forth. But this has been an amazing week for AI because firstly, as I found when I went to California, there's been a very rapid shift where the leaders of these labs who two years ago were mocking the idea of a pause and now themselves calling for a pause because they seem to be genuinely worried about what these agents are doing, particularly this hugging face attack, most dramatic example of breaking out of sandboxes, hacking in. But we've now had a letter from Demis Tsabis, Sir Demis Tsabis, great Nobel Prize winning lead at Google, their chief scientific officer. We've had Sam Altman now calling for a pause. And now we've had

• 22:39Rory Stewart?

  Dario Moda coming out and producing a letter, yeah. And all of them now coming behind, Dario talking about pacing the frontier, which is a polite word for saying, we really are going to have to think seriously before we go to the next generation of RSI recursive self-improvement. And the King this week, very topical, is holding a conference at Dumfries House where he's going to have a lot of these senior figures together to try to sign up to a principal following on from your friend, the Pope.

• 23:08Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. He loves Dumfries House, doesn't he?

• 23:11Rory Stewart?

  He does. But the question is, I mean, it's a very interesting this this world we've entered where, you know, it is oddly the Pope and the King who seem to be better positioned to try to get these guys together and get them signing up for principals and talking about this openly in a way that elected leaders, I think, are struggling.

• 23:28Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I think part of the issue is that this is what we said to this this event. Part of the issue is that the the chief best known spokespeople of this are just truly terrible at explaining anything. Now, you Dario, your friend Dario is, he's pretty good. But Musk underestimates how low he is in most of the world. He's got his fans, of course he has, because he, you know, he's a big figure, he controls Twitter and all that stuff. But he Zuckerberg, Bezos, Altman, they're despised by most people. And they don't see the benefit. So then when and and this is how cynical, I'm afraid I'm becoming about the whole thing. When I get this with this sudden wave of people saying, we've

• 24:11Alastair Campbell?

  got to get regulated because this thing could destroy humanity. And even if there's a ten percent chance we've got to, we've got to, you know, get on top of this. There's a part of me thinking, they, this is deeply cynical, that they're basically saying, we know we've got an anti regulatory American administration and a pro regulatory European Union that Donald Trump hates. So therefore, let's us be the ones calling for some sort of regulation so that the government says, well, we don't really understand it. You guys tell us how to regulate this. And they will then regulate it in a way that helps them. So I I think they completely, both the politicians who are pushing on this, and the businesses involved,

• 24:53Alastair Campbell?

  they completely underestimate the extent to which the public, especially in democracies, and of course, they get this, this gives China an advantage, in the democracies, they are just, they're not having this because they don't understand it and nobody's explaining it properly.

• 25:07Rory Stewart?

  Let let let me make it worse for you. So I think you're right, it's unbelievably unpopular. I think you're right that the US doesn't want to regulate and the EU may want to regulate. I think you're right, there's a lot of self interest to these companies. Unfortunately, it is also true, I think, that we can see that these models are genuinely dangerous, that that hugging face attack was about deceptive agents collaborating to hack into external websites that they were not supposed to do. And and the whole problem is that the business model is about making these things more and more autonomous. That's where the productivity comes from. The idea is you replace humans with the agent. But the more you take humans out of the loop and put agents in charge, the more risk you're

• 25:49Rory Stewart?

  running because the more risk you have that these things which are grown, not specified, is a kind of pompous way of saying they're not a series of bits of symbolic code, they're actually something that have evolved, that we've sort of set a trellis and it's grown like.

• 26:04Alastair Campbell?

  And what's this phrase they keep using about recursive, what is it?

• 26:06Rory Stewart?

  recursive self improvement.

• 26:07Alastair Campbell?

  And what so what is that?

• 26:08Rory Stewart?

  That means an agent training or managing an agent. In other words, instead of where we were in the past, which is you as the human, give the prompt to the coder, the agent gives, ultimately, the agent trains its next AI, the AI trains the AI which trains the AI which trains the AI. And and the benefit of that is supposed to be that you end up with the equivalent of a hundred million software engineers working twenty four seven. The downside of it obviously is that what we learnt through hugging face is that we find it very, very difficult to align these things to human interest, find it very difficult to make them understand what our real intent is. And they end up lying to us, deceiving

• 26:50Rory Stewart?

  us, and could ultimately kill us, right? They could get hold of bioweapons, they could mount these cyber attacks, or they could just, and this is what I was just talking to you about about on the mini series, they could just have a completely different conception of what they're about. And they start creating systems we simply don't understand, which are running banks which are making a lot of money, but we don't understand how they're making a lot of money. They're running weapons which are winning wars for us, but we don't really understand how they're making those decisions. Right? So, big danger, big danger, needs to be regulated. And this is what the King's about to try to do this week in Dumfries House with Demis Tsabis. This is what some of the leaders, I mean, I can't tell you how much it's changed in the last three, four weeks.

• 27:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:32Rory Stewart?

  These same AI leaders who two and a half years ago were calling me a Luddite for calling for a pause and now themselves calling for a pause. But we've got maybe six months, a year, a year and a half before these things are genuine dangers to humanity. And it doesn't feel as though anybody's politics is is moving to regulate.

• 27:49Alastair Campbell?

  No, and see, when we talked to Ed Miliband about, I didn't get into this because I knew you would just go around in circles. But when he was talking about, you know, the word, the use of the word genocide, and he said, well, you've got to leave it to the court. We'll we'll make that decision about based upon a court judgment.

• 28:04Alastair Campbell?

  And the processes now of politics, of technology, they're so fast. So one of the things, one of the things that struck me from this film, the doctors in the, in Gaza, was they were filming, they often filmed them, that what they were seeing as they went into Gaza. So a few years ago, you know, it looked quite a nice place to live and there were buildings and there were beaches. And, and then step by step, very, very quickly, they're suddenly going in, everything is rubble. Okay. So meanwhile, we're all waiting for a judgment as to whether that word should be applied in our political system.

• 28:44Alastair Campbell?

  And likewise with this, you say, I heard somebody on the, on the radio yesterday saying, you know, we're, we, we've got a very short window to decide whether and how to regulate or whether we have the capacity safely to regulate this thing. And, and yet the political process, as you say, it goes so slowly. And you then have Trump, who basically says, well, he's the guy to regulate because he's a high IQ president. One thing we know about Donald Trump, he may have a weird sort of EQ, but he's not the most intelligent man who's ever been in the White House. And meanwhile, these people who are very brilliant in their own way, you, you know, you, you, you read the, the book about

• 29:25Alastair Campbell?

  this guy's brilliant, the guys you talk to if you're serious, they're brilliant at what they do. But I don't think they're brilliant at thinking through effects on humanity. I don't think they're very, I don't think they're brilliant at, at working out how a democratic process works alongside these things.

• 29:42Rory Stewart?

  And, and we also don't know how to do the regulation and how to verify. So with the regulation, there's basically a question of whether you try to do a very subtle exquisite form of let's define what RSI is. Or do you say, pause.

• 29:55Alastair Campbell?

  RSI is this recursive.

• 29:56Rory Stewart?

  recursive self-improvement, I'm sorry. Do, are you trying to get into a very detailed discussion about policing exactly this jagged frontier?

• 30:03Alastair Campbell?

  It used to be repetitive strain injury, didn't it? Is that gone?

• 30:06Rory Stewart?

  It's gone, all gone. Nobody talks about that anymore. It's that old men like you who play tennis.

• 30:10Alastair Campbell?

  I have to play tennis.

• 30:11Rory Stewart?

  The next thing that we need to talk about might be much more blunt, right? So we might instead be saying, no, you cannot train the next generation of frontier model. We're stopping, you know, chat GPT seven is not happening.

• 30:26Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 30:27Rory Stewart?

  But if you do that, how do you verify they're not doing it? And if you were to get China to sign up to that, how on earth do you verify that China's not doing it?

• 30:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 30:34Rory Stewart?

  I would say at the moment, you could almost do it because it requires so much compute, so many data centers, so much chips. You could almost see from space, pretty difficult to run a covert program of training, a huge billion dollar run of a next generation large language model.

• 30:51Rory Stewart?

  But so many of the things we've done over the last year and a half turn out not to have been properly designed. One of them is that we thought that what we were doing in the UK is building a safety institute

• 31:00Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 31:01Rory Stewart?

  to train before release. It now turns out the most dangerous models aren't released at the moment. They're within these companies and they could end up causing complete chaos for the world without ever getting anywhere near a safety institute because they're not on their way to being released.

• 31:14Alastair Campbell?

  Right, happy days.

• 31:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, listen, just, just before we go to the break, I'm now trying to do a mini series to grapple with exactly these issues. I've called it Thinking the Unthinkable, How Civilizations Collapse, but it's basically a series on existential threats. It's the things that we don't normally talk about in domestic politics that are probably not the things that Andy Burnham will be thinking about day to day. They're exactly things like what happens when a terrorist group gets going in Yemen. In fact, we've actually done some detailed interviews, which I thought were wonderful with the man who wrote Mosul Eye, who was sitting in Mosul as the Islamic State took over. We've talked to the amazing Anand Gopal about what was happening up in Manbij up in northeast Syria.

• 31:56Rory Stewart?

  But we've also talked to Carlo Rovelli, the amazing physicist about nuclear weapons. He's reminding us that actually the nuclear proliferation threat is probably greater than it's ever been. And yet we talk about it less. I've talked to Yuval Noherari, that's going to be the first episode about AI and the kind of threats that pose to our civilization. So it's an attempt to try to lift our heads a bit and think what could be actually the things which in 50 years' time, we think, whoa, that was the real issue that defined an age. Uh, while we're still focused on the stuff that really is kind of retail domestic politics. The first half of my interview with Yuval Noherari is free to listen.

• 32:37Rory Stewart?

  But if you want to hear the whole series, please sign up, become a member at therestispolitics.com. And I think we've got to taste the series now, just before we go for the break. What if I told you that there is a one in six chance of human beings being wiped out in the next hundred years? One in six. We're facing a crunch point in human history. A handful of threats could end life as we know it. It might be nuclear war.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  There is high risk in a confrontation between Europe and Russia or between United States and China. There will be no food, ears without sunshine, but the catastrophe will be global.

• 33:12Rory Stewart?

  Or artificial intelligence.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  At the highest level, there are risks of AI takeover.

• 33:16Speaker 03

  Even Hitler had to sleep because he was an organic entity. AI doesn't sleep. This is the moment that we completely lose control.

• 33:23Rory Stewart?

  It could be engineered pandemics. If every five days I infect 10 and then 10 infect 10. It would take about 39 days to get to 70 million people, which is about the population of Britain. The jump from 70 million to eight billion is just another 10 days. Or is the greatest threat we face actually less tangible? Could it be economic warfare or the collapse of our political systems?

• 33:47Speaker 04

  You know, the choke point of all choke points in the global economy is the US dollar. All it takes is Donald Trump taking out his Sharpie in the Oval Office and signing a document. And that's it. You could send another country into a recession if you wanted to.

• 33:58Rory Stewart?

  Or perhaps are we the real existential threat? The strange ways in which humans convince themselves to do very, very awful things.

• 34:06Speaker 05

  Question is very simple. How do we continue to live together?

• 34:10Rory Stewart?

  To hear my new series on Thinking the Unthinkable, sign up at therestispolitics.com.

• 34:31Speaker 05

  The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 34:38Speaker 06

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

• 34:45Speaker 07

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.

• 34:47Speaker 08

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 34:50Speaker 05

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not?

• 34:56Speaker 09

  You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 35:03Speaker 10

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 35:05Speaker 05

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

• 35:14Speaker 07

  A frago that says to kill the president of Russia.

• 35:19Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 35:21Speaker 07

  New from Goldhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 35:25Speaker 09

  You're my soldier, are you Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy?

• 35:29Speaker 07

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 35:31Speaker 11

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 35:35Speaker 07

  Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. Where Britain plays its strongest hand.

• 35:42Speaker 09

  He's the best.

• 35:43Speaker 07

  Against its strongest foe.

• 35:48Speaker 07

  Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:06Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 36:09Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And we're going to talk about finances and politics and reform. So Nigel Farage, damaged in my view, not as much as he should have been, but damaged politically by this five million pound donation from Christopher Harborn, the Thai-based tech billionaire, as was apparently now back in the UK.

• 36:27Rory Stewart?

  And that was five million pounds personal, and then I think over 10 million to the party from Christopher Harborn.

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  And the five million, of course, was no strings attached, don't want anything for it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

• 36:35Rory Stewart?

  I can spend it on a Ferrari.

• 36:37Alastair Campbell?

  You could spend it on whatever you want, security, keeping me safe for the rest of my life, et cetera, et cetera.

• 36:43Rory Stewart?

  When, when I'm not taking security assistance from Posh George.

• 36:45Alastair Campbell?

  Correct. Yeah. So there's that one. And then we, then we had this extraordinary undercover film by Verbatim, which Channel Four showed part of, which you've now watched 3,418 times.

• 36:56Rory Stewart?

  And you and I had the privilege of speaking to, to the undercover reporter.

• 37:00Alastair Campbell?

  Reporter. You were impressed, weren't you?

• 37:02Rory Stewart?

  I thought it was great.

• 37:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 37:03Rory Stewart?

  I, I thought it was extreme, but I'm still stuck with this problem, which is I think that it's only when you see the gin and tonics and the showing off.

• 37:13Alastair Campbell?

  And the oysters, I want six, not four.

• 37:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Alastair Campbell?

  The manner of people, Nigel.

• 37:17Rory Stewart?

  And, and the sense that there's a lot more footage to come. And I, I, I just feel people need to really absorb themselves and if they're to actually get what the culture of this party is.

• 37:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I said that in relation to the Houthis, you know, this extraordinary development where they take the Red Sea coast. And then it's kind of gone in a day in terms of the news. And likewise, look, the, this film made a big impact. It obviously sort of, you know, disrupted the reform conference in Birmingham, but it's kind of gone away again. And sufficient for them to be able to come out and literally wipe out the news agenda with these two promises of two donations from two individuals, both crypto people, Bendello and Christopher Harborn, 36 million. Now, I've each.

• 38:00Rory Stewart?

  Each?

• 38:01Alastair Campbell?

  Each, 72 million. I mean, you could buy a pretty decent centre forward for that.

• 38:06Rory Stewart?

  And, and, and is the irony of it that one of them's been living in Thailand, the other one's living in Hong Kong? So to some extent, this is money that they have because they didn't have to pay full UK tax.

• 38:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And, and, and of course the law, the, I mean, I do think Labour's been a bit asleep at the wheel on this one. You the part of the art of politics and government is seeing what's coming down the track. The Americanisation, the Trumpification of our politics, that is what Reform are doing. They're doing it with post-truth, they're doing it with polarisation, and they're doing with money. I mean, there was a time, and look, we shouldn't be too pious about this, I can remember when Matthew Harding, who was a Chelsea director, very sadly got killed in a helicopter crash coming back from a match, but I think he was our first million pound donor. And I remember seeing that as, you know, this would be amazing because it'd be like, you know, business will realise that Labour's the party of business.

• 38:58Alastair Campbell?

  And that was a million pounds, and people thought that is an enormous sum of money. On one day, they got two people pledging thirty six million, and Labour, they have got this legislation going through, there's this debate about whether this kind of thing, because they said it depends on, you know, where you were living at a specific time. These guys claim that they've moved back to the UK, I don't know, take them at face value, I guess. But I'll tell you what I find utterly extraordinary is somebody like Farage, who polls say, I think polls, you can take them or leave them, but he is currently viewed as the sleaziest politician in Britain, okay? If you give people a list of politicians and you count them on a sleaze factor, he's seen as the sleaziest.

• 39:41Alastair Campbell?

  He's the guy who stands up there and says, these guys are promising this seventy two million pounds because they're patriotic British people, patriotic British people who until recently lived in Hong Kong and Thailand, and who want nothing from this, and who will never be given a peerage. Yeah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, enough people buy it because enough people will want to think, you know, that's great, they can really kick the other parties and we don't like them.

• 40:08Rory Stewart?

  One of the sad things is that the parties are being, as usual, so short sighted and self-interested. So I talked to someone who'd been interviewing a Labour Cabinet Minister, asked them whether they would take the money, and their only response was, well, of course, you know, we would do proper checks on whether they're eligible donors. Bullshit to that. Nobody should be taking thirty six million pounds from an individual donor, nobody should be taking a million pounds from an individual donor, nobody should be taking a hundred thousand pounds from an individual donor. It's totally inequitable, unjust, unfair.

• 40:42Alastair Campbell?

  But the only alternative is state funding.

• 40:46Rory Stewart?

  We should have a system. Well, I've actually been doing a little bit of research here, a bit of research here.

• 40:51Alastair Campbell?

  Right, here we go.

• 40:52Rory Stewart?

  So France, the cap is seven thousand five hundred euro per individual, and they have to be French national and fiscally resident in France, and even when they are, seven thousand five hundred. Spain, fifty thousand euros, Netherlands, hundred thousand euros. Now, I don't know whether the cap is going to be fifty thousand, seven thousand five hundred, it's not a million.

• 41:16Alastair Campbell?

  It's a hundred thousand.

• 41:17Rory Stewart?

  Great, let's make it a hundred thousand. And let's accept that the reason why we're doing that is we're trying to say that you shouldn't be in a position where citizens have an undue influence, and where parties are built on this dependency. I mean, it's a fundamental principle, equal citizenship, without, you know, pushing too hard on this, right? Citizens should have roughly equal ability to influence, and the big influence should be from your voters. And the problem with this stuff is that it gives, you don't really need to listen to your voters if you're getting seventy two million in. So the Electoral Commission's done some modelling, my final figures, on the three hundred and nineteen million pounds, which the parties got over a five-year period, the hundred thousand pound cap, which is the Alastair Campbell proposal, would have reduced the amount by fifty seven percent.

• 42:00Rory Stewart?

  The ten thousand pound cap, which is the Rory Stewart proposal, would have reduced by eighty six percent the amount of funding. Now, that tells you a hell of a lot. It tells you that fourteen percent of people are giving under ten thousand, and eight, sorry, fourteen percent of the money is people giving under ten thousand. Eighty six percent of the money funding all these parties is giving from people who can afford to give over ten thousand pounds.

• 42:26Alastair Campbell?

  Or organisations, because the argument that the Tories tend to make when Labour's talked about this is that, well, the trade unions are massive donors. Now, it's true, the trade unions are. I was talking to Michael Levy the other day, who's a, you know, famously was a Labour Party fundraiser under Tony Blair, and he was saying, he always sort of tried to persuade the unions that there ought to be a way of saying that this is like, you know, five point three pence per member, or it's, you know, you could, because that's what the unions are, they represent their members. But this is, this is of a scale, this is what I mean about the Americanisation, I mean, thirty six million to the Americans is not that much. But do we really want to go down this road? And let me tell you, having run a few election campaigns.

• 43:05Rory Stewart?

  Why, as far as I can see, still, all this debate in the House of Commons is going on about permissible donors, whether you're living abroad or being taxed abroad, why is it not getting it? Even in the US, individuals are capped at three thousand five hundred dollars per head. Now, there's this horrible Citizens United way around the side. But the reason why the US caps and France caps and the Netherlands caps and Spain caps is the same, why is Britain not capping donations?

• 43:31Alastair Campbell?

  And what those rules are all about is the principle that however well-intentioned people might be, there is always a risk that people are buying access, influence, et cetera. And I've got to tell you about this, this guy Harborn, but it's really strange, actually, because one of Fiona and my closest friends is weirdly a really old friend of his, I'm not going to drop them in it, but, and says, actually, he's quite a nice bloke, but, so he's given all this money, he gave a million pounds to the Office of Boris Johnson Limited, okay, which was one of the biggest donations ever made to an individual politician. Now, January twenty twenty three, he got an eighty million pound Ministry of Defence contract, okay, for Kinetic, one of his companies.

• 44:16Alastair Campbell?

  He went as an advisor to Boris Johnson, I don't know, I mean, I know he's an expert on Thailand, is he an expert on Ukraine? Because he went as an advisor to Boris Johnson on his trip to Kyiv in September twenty twenty three. There may be nothing wrong with this at all, okay? And I don't know, this Ben Dello guy.

• 44:35Rory Stewart?

  I can tell you a little bit about both these people, because I know people who know both them. And the weird thing about it is that they are, they're quite different, right? Christopher Harborn is, seems to be a sort of central casting, Oxbridge educated, quite kind of fluent guy who, if you read the article he's written in the Sunday Telegraph, is deciding to present himself to the world as David Cameron, right? Basically, the article is, I care about climate change, I care about funding public services properly.

• 45:05Alastair Campbell?

  So sorry, if he cares about climate change, why is he funding a party that thinks that climate change is a hoax?

• 45:10Rory Stewart?

  Christopher Harborn is literally presenting himself in the papers as the last socially liberal, fiscally conservative person in Britain, I mean, he literally has written an article that could have been written by David Gork.

• 45:21Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think, do you think he's confused Nigel Farage with David Cameron?

• 45:25Rory Stewart?

  It's really weird, he's written an whole article that says, you know, I want more pro-business, but I also want well-funded public services, I really care about climate change, this kind of stuff, and he's decided to fund Reform. Ben Dello is different. Ben Dello is somebody who openly would describe himself as being maybe slightly more, I don't know what the correct way to frame it is.

• 45:45Alastair Campbell?

  Right wing?

• 45:46Rory Stewart?

  No, I think it's more that he, no, he had struggled at school, he was expelled from schools, he's a maths genius. I mean, he's a guy who.

• 45:53Alastair Campbell?

  Neurodivergent.

• 45:54Rory Stewart?

  Neurodivergent, neurodivergent maths genius. But neither of them seems to be particularly obsessed with culture war stuff. Neither of them is particularly personally lavish. The problem, though, is that, I want to move the argument on to not so much who these guys are, as a principle that no party should ever be doing this, because it doesn't, I mean, you make this point about the could be conflicts of interest, there could be policy things, it's more fundamental. I mean, they will represent for Reform ninety five percent of all the money that Reform has. Reform will put out, you know, three hundred constituency managers, all their office space, all their rent.

• 46:38Alastair Campbell?

  They could buy virtually every billboard in the country.

• 46:40Rory Stewart?

  But also, if these guys turn around and say to Reform, in a year's time, oh, I don't really like what you're doing there, I'll take my support out, the whole thing collapses like a pack of cards.

• 46:50Alastair Campbell?

  Or if the, there is a Reform government, I don't think there will be, but let's say there were, and you've got the first budget coming up, are you seriously telling me, Nigel, Richard, Zia, Robert, et cetera, that when you get a phone call from Christopher Harborn, who's given you thirty six million and got help to put you in there, that you're not going to take that call ahead of CBI, ahead of some guy who's worked in this industry their whole life? And I think, again, back to our point about, you know, people not understanding AI, crypto, we don't know the half of what crypto in, you know, remember Trump said that this whole thing basically was a scam for organised crime? Well, I've never seen that much to say that it's not.

• 47:32Alastair Campbell?

  So, and by the way, I'm not saying Mr Dello and Mr Harborn are involved in organised crime, but Mr Dello, you know, I think anybody who has a Trump pardon on their record for offences related to money laundering should not be a permissible donor in the United Kingdom. I'm sorry, yes, you can have a pardon, but we know, there's a lobbying, there's a programme on Sixty Minutes this week, which we should advertise widely, where they've exposed these lawyers who are basically saying, for three hundred thousand dollars, I can get you a pardon. So this, and let me tell you the other thing about, tell me about it, look, you went to a public school, right? And this is my theory about Dello, because as you say, he's a maths geek, okay? And apparently he's an amazing.

• 48:13Rory Stewart?

  From a relatively modest background.

• 48:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and he's an amazing maths geek.

• 48:15Rory Stewart?

  And was picked up by an amazing tutor at Worcester College Oxford who spotted his talent.

• 48:20Alastair Campbell?

  Right, and he's now, he's now given a massive donation to them as well, so he's obviously, you know, made a lot of money, but, but I, don't you get the feeling that maybe Nigel Farage and Richard Tice are like the sort of school bullies who've picked on the neurodivergent maths geek? And this is his way of kind of getting in with them a bit?

• 48:40Rory Stewart?

  I don't know, I don't know.

• 48:41Alastair Campbell?

  That feels to me.

• 48:43Rory Stewart?

  Who would want to hang out with Farage?

• 48:45Alastair Campbell?

  And Tice, exactly, but maybe he does.

• 48:48Rory Stewart?

  Although there is a weird.

• 48:49Alastair Campbell?

  Ben, you can come on the podcast and refute all this.

• 48:51Rory Stewart?

  Weird little circle around this guy Dukes, who was part of the scandal, is one of this sort of coterie of young men who seem to adore Farage and be with him all the time and following him around all the time and think he's incredibly.

• 49:02Alastair Campbell?

  Post George as well.

• 49:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, funny and charismatic. And to come back to my beating my big drum, if one.

• 49:09Alastair Campbell?

  The film?

• 49:10Rory Stewart?

  No, if one, if one, if one had a cap on donations, actually, one wouldn't need to get into the micro details so much of whether somebody who's been pardoned in the US or, you know, fiscally, if you capped at ten thousand pounds, none of these people could have disproportionate influence. The great thing, because I did this when I was running for the Maryland, I really saw this when I was running to beat the leadership, right? What I realised is if you cap at ten thousand pounds.

• 49:36Rory Stewart?

  Any politician really can tell someone to F off.

• 49:39Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 49:40Rory Stewart?

  Okay, you take your £10,000, well, you have another £10,000, right? Even nicer would be though, if we followed Peter Malinowski, your hero who you introduced us to, I think is extraordinary. He's designed a whole system of public funding in Australia, which has tried to balance the fact, what's his, he says it's got to be fair, rational, reflective of community support and not impossible for new entrants.

• 49:59Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 49:59Rory Stewart?

  And it's a lovely set of things. Here's another idea that I have. You can match small donations. So let's say the government-

• 50:05Alastair Campbell?

  With the state?

• 50:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, let's say the government said for every pound you give, up to £250 will triple it.

• 50:11Alastair Campbell?

  For all parties?

• 50:12Rory Stewart?

  Any citizen that gives a pound up to £250, the government will triple it. Above £250, nothing. Give much more weight to the small donor and much less to the big donor.

• 50:23Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, right now, arguing is very hard to argue for state funding with all the other pressures on the public first, isn't it?

• 50:29Rory Stewart?

  All right, well then let's just stop the value funding. What do they need the money for anyway?

• 50:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they need the money-

• 50:33Rory Stewart?

  What are they doing with this stupid money?

• 50:34Alastair Campbell?

  They're doing a lot of things. Well, I mean, my big worry about 72 million, having been involved, that is a lot of money to buy a lot of advertising. And they won't care about whether they're on the edge of the law during a campaign. I'm sorry, they won't-

• 50:47Rory Stewart?

  All these parties, so let's follow my figures, £10,000 cap, reduced by 86%, come down from 319 million down to whatever, I don't know, 60 million? Fine. Parties can do what they like with 60 million. Give us less advertising.

• 51:02Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 51:03Rory Stewart?

  Get out there, do a bit of old fashioned leafletting, knock on the, knock on the few doors-

• 51:06Alastair Campbell?

  They'll hire, they'll hire-

• 51:07Rory Stewart?

  And they get-

• 51:08Alastair Campbell?

  Very well paid agents in every single constituency.

• 51:11Rory Stewart?

  Well, they shouldn't be allowed to, nor should Labour, nor should the Conservatives, nor should Lib Dems. They get free television, I mean, anyway. They didn't, it's not like the states, we have to pay for television. They get free television during the camps. What do they need the money for, these buggers?

• 51:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, okay.

• 51:24Rory Stewart?

  So Labour, Labour, Labour, show some principles. This is why things are worries me a little bit about this government.

• 51:29Alastair Campbell?

  You want more principle?

• 51:30Rory Stewart?

  I, I want Andy Burnham to come out and say, not, oh, I found a way to shaft reform, but actually this is a wake up call for all of us. None of us are going to take a donation-

• 51:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 51:40Rory Stewart?

  Over Alastair Campbell's £100,000 limit.

• 51:42Alastair Campbell?

  There was a point, you know, this is, this is, maybe this proves your point. There was a point where I was utterly stunned to be named as Labour's biggest donor. It was actually when Edwards leader, because I, I can't remember if it was, but it was like, it was about £10,000. And because at the time, nobody was funding the parties. And now Labour will be thinking, well, we've got to find, we've got to find ways to compete with this, I'm afraid. Because, you know, this stuff does work. It's why the Americans have got this arms race. And it's why, you're right about the principle, it's why we've got to stop it. Just on the, on the Louis-

• 52:16Rory Stewart?

  Dear public, France capped at 7,500, Spain capped at 50,000, Netherlands capped at 100,000, why is Britain not capped?

• 52:22Alastair Campbell?

  I think Rory should write a piece about party funding for the newsletter. There you are, that'll show you up.

• 52:28Alastair Campbell?

  Let just, just shout, Louis Wilson though, who was the undercover reporter. And, and where I agree with Rory, he said last week, you've got to see the whole thing. But the other thing is really, really interesting. And we made a proposition to Louis Wilson because they've got tonnes more, tonnes, so much more. And I don't know about you, I think Richard Tice, you should wind your neck in for a bit. Uh, that's all I'm saying. So they've got tonnes more of James Orr. He said he's got, they had six of those long meetings where he rambled on about himself endlessly. So they've got tonnes and tonnes more.

• 53:02Rory Stewart?

  Talking incidentally apparently on being on Bendello's yacht, when actually quite a lot of the pitch in the Sunday Telegraph is Bendello doesn't like yachts.

• 53:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, there you go. Yeah, there's a lot in there. So, and the point is, Channel Four, you had a big hit with this. Do another programme, do another one. There's lots in there. And, and what we said to Louis, if he can't, if, if all of our broadcasters lack the spine to take this on, then I think we would happily, we could even have a James Orr minute.

• 53:29Rory Stewart?

  We'd be-

• 53:30Alastair Campbell?

  Every day, every week for a year.

• 53:32Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely honoured to. Now, just as we finish, Alistair.

• 53:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yes.

• 53:36Rory Stewart?

  I'm looking forward very much to interviewing you on your new book.

• 53:38Alastair Campbell?

  Ah.

• 53:39Rory Stewart?

  Perseverance. So you're going to tell us a little bit about it?

• 53:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, what I'm going to, no, I'll do that in the interview. What I am going to do is to announce the winner.

• 53:46Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 53:46Alastair Campbell?

  Can you believe this? How clever are our listeners are Rory? So I said last week, guess the title of the book. Several thousand took part, said it was one word.

• 53:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 53:56Alastair Campbell?

  503 guessed correctly.

• 54:00Rory Stewart?

  503 guessed Perseverance?

• 54:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 54:02Rory Stewart?

  104 thought it was Maradona.

• 54:04Alastair Campbell?

  No, the funniest one, that one person thought it was Wutburger, which was that German word that you were so impressed by. So the winner, the guy who was first to guess it's called Graham Flint, he's going to get a whole bundle of prizes, he's going to get a signed book obs. He's going to get a mention in the paperback. We're going to allow him a question on question time. And he's going to get free tickets to the launch event, which will be an act of profound adultery Rory. You've had yours, I'm having mine. It's an event for the new world. It's me interviewed by Michelle Hussein, stop shaking your head, Adam. It's me interviewed by Michelle Hussein, or as we call in our house, the BBC's losses, Bloomberg's gain.

• 54:42Alastair Campbell?

  At the Caddogan Hall in London, uh, October 22nd. Um, and, and yeah, I think we'll probably give a few free tickets out to newsletter people as well, because we love the newsletter. Rest is Polish dot com forward slash newsletter. And to those, by the way, who don't like our plugging, well, it's our podcast.

• 54:58Rory Stewart?

  Just to finish, let's, let's, let's bring it all together. Let's, let's wrap it all together. Um. What I was thinking about this morning is that these themes, what's happened in Yemen, the closing of the Red Sea, AI reform funding, is all part of a bigger story that we've been talking about in this podcast for nearly four years, which is the collapse of the old rules. Splintering of political parties, populism, global conflict. Where we now need to move on to is how we redesign the world to cope with it, or more bluntly, what do we do about it? Because the evidence is now all around us.

• 55:36Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 55:36Rory Stewart?

  And the problem is that unless people start carny-ing their way around and coming up with a structure and a solution, or following Malinowski's domestically and carny internationally, right? And I quite like that. Maybe we should do a book on Malinowski's domestic, carny international. Um, we're going to find it's just going to get worse and worse and worse. People are really kidding themselves if they think it's okay, as the Foreign Office, I fear, sometimes seems to be saying, let's put our head in the sands, hope America's going to be our friends again in two years' time. This is just the beginning.

• 56:08Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 56:08Rory Stewart?

  I mean, literally every time we open the papers and we read 72 million pounds has gone into reform. For goodness sake, the Red Sea has been closed by the Houthi terrorist group. The US president is calling for a united Ireland. AI potentially has agents that could wipe out humanity and nobody's prepared to regulate this. Stuff which would have defined an entire generation are now happening every day.

• 56:31Alastair Campbell?

  Now, that's the point you made at the Festival Hall, it's true. It's, it's why it gets so, so annoying when people say, oh, politics, nothing ever changes anyway. It's like, I mean, I don't think there's ever been a time where things have changed so fast, so much. And politics has got to catch up with it. Processes have got to catch up with it.

• 56:48Rory Stewart?

  Morality, solutions, communication, morality, solutions, communication. So what we need-

• 56:52Alastair Campbell?

  MSC, Munich Security Conference, MSC, Ministry of Master-

• 56:55Rory Stewart?

  What we need, what we need is exactly this. We need Andy Burnham to have the solution. Case of reform could be cap on funding. We're not going to take more than £10,000 from any individual donor. Communication, the charm out there doing the Burnham stuff, but at the back, the morality. What are the values which are driving this? And that value needs to connect from Manchester to Manchuria.

• 57:21Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you Rory, that's absolutely brilliant. We should also say, I want to just say a little thing about Andy Burnham, because he did the Great North Run, his dad died.

• 57:28Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 57:29Alastair Campbell?

  That is so sad. I think, I, I, I think having, having these normal public events that we all have to deal with, having them when you're really, really high profile public figure, I think it's very, very hard. So, um, thoughts with Andy and his family?

• 57:44Rory Stewart?

  Thoughts with Andy and his family. Very good. All right. See you soon. Bye bye.