509. Labour's Polanski Problem and the Student Loans Scandal (Question Time)

Does the Gorton and Denton by-election result suggest Labour has been underestimating the threat of the Green Party? Is the UK's tuition fee system less like a loan and more like a punishing graduate tax? As America retreats from the world stage under Trump, could the UK seize the moment to reassert itself as a cultural superpower? Join Alastair and Rory as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Sign up ⁠⁠⁠⁠HERE⁠⁠⁠⁠ to the free TRIP newsletter. 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. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/politics. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠@restispolitics⁠⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠@restispolitics⁠⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠ __________ Social Producer: Emma Jackson Video Editor: James Clayden Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Senior Producer: Callum Hill General Manager: Tom Whiter 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.

• 0:08Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 0:12Alastair Campbell?

  And with me Alastair Campbell. And Rory, it seems a long, long, long time ago that we were talking about whether we shouldn't do a special episode on the Gorton and Denton by-election. Since we've done quite a lot of special episodes, none of them on the Gorton and Denton by-election. But we did nonetheless get a lot of questions. Graham, Trip Plus member from Vancouver. "Doesn't the Gorton and Denton results suggest that voters haven't shifted much, but the parties have? In this traditional Labour seat, most voters still favour progressive policies, yet Labour's move right has left space for the Greens to benefit. Meanwhile, with the Conservatives diminished, traditionally right-leaning voters appear to have turned to Reform as the party with momentum."

• 0:54Rory Stewart?

  Let's just remind people what happened. So this was very, very recently, as you pointed out, since the last main podcast, 26th February. This Labour seat, where traditionally Labour had well over 50% of the vote, came up. This was the one that listeners will remember. Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Manchester, was hoping to stand for that seat. This is his route back into Parliament and maybe his route to be Prime Minister. He was blocked by the Labour Party from standing. And the result was that the Green Party won with 40.9% of the vote. Somebody called Hannah Spencer Reform UK, Matt Goodwin, who my mother thinks is good-looking, 28.7%.

• 1:32Alastair Campbell?

  For God's sake Rory.

• 1:35Rory Stewart?

  Labour dropped.

• 1:36Alastair Campbell?

  He's hideous.

• 1:37Rory Stewart?

  From having won over 50% of the vote in 2024, dropped to third place, down to 24.9% of the vote. And the Tories, for only the second time since 1962, managed to lose their £500 deposit. They got so few, they didn't even clear 2% of the vote in this seat.

• 1:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, amazing.

• 1:57Rory Stewart?

  The combined Green and Reform vote, I mean, if you go back in the days when, you know, not very long ago, right, the combined Labour and Conservative vote would be well into three-quarters. In this election, the combined Green and Reform vote was 68%. Almost 70% of people in this constituency voted either for what we call the far-right and what I'd be tempted to call the far-left.

• 2:22Alastair Campbell?

  I know you you you have views about the Green Party, we'll maybe come on to that. But I think what going going back to Graham's question, though, if you add green plus Labour, you're talking about more than sixty five percent, so two thirds voting for what you would define as progressive voices.

• 2:39Rory Stewart?

  The left, yeah.

• 2:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I was at, do you remember where a couple of years ago, we did that Polycom, the the the event at Central Hall for two thousand politics A level students? I did it again.

• 2:49Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And and you you replaced me with Zach Polanski this time, is that right?

• 2:53Alastair Campbell?

  No, I didn't do it with Zach Polanski, I did it on my own and Zach Polanski was also there. Zach Polanski, I have to say, he got a huge, huge, it was like a kind of rock star stuff when he arrived, so he's very, very man of the moment. Um, I was able to put people a bit right later on, um, but he's, there's no doubt the Greens are, they're hitting a chord that is that is resonating with quite a lot of people. And I think Graham is right that it's because there is this sense that Labour haven't necessarily delivered all the change that they said they would, it's too slow, it's too kind of technocratic, and also a sense that they are, yeah, and I've said this many, many times on the podcast,

• 3:34Alastair Campbell?

  that I think that the strategy to sort of, you know, have a kind of imaginative, an imaginary reform voter who's going to come back to Labour has driven too much of the comms and actually too much of the policy. I hope that changes, I hope that changes.

• 3:47Rory Stewart?

  The the thing that makes me anxious um in the background is just a sense, obviously, partly the centre's completely collapsed here, and we we talk a lot about reform, and I, it horrifies me that nearly thirty percent of the vote here is going to reform and that reformers seem to be at, sitting at about thirty percent of the polls pretty consistently over the last year, and we can talk about what that means, it's got very disturbing views on many, many issues, very disturbing party. But it's something also about the modern world and social media and goodness knows what, that we've gone from a world in which Labour and Conservatives were getting, you know, even ninety percent of the vote a few decades ago, to now this kind of five party system. And this idea that the Greens in particular, I mean, you know, the Green Party, I think

• 4:31Rory Stewart?

  their previous best by-election performance barely reached double digits.

• 4:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:37Rory Stewart?

  Ten point two percent in Somerton and Frum twenty twenty three. This result was four times larger, four times larger.

• 4:45Alastair Campbell?

  This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.

• 4:48Rory Stewart?

  Most of us are buying energy in the dark, not knowing what it costs. You wouldn't do that with your weekly food shop, but with energy, you're often charged first and only find out the number later.

• 4:58Alastair Campbell?

  When you don't have that clarity, you usually end up paying more than you should, which is what Fuse Energy is working to change about how energy works.

• 5:05Rory Stewart?

  The average household switching to Fuse can save around £200 on their energy bills.

• 5:10Alastair Campbell?

  Fuse handles the practical side. The app shows what you're spending day by day and what that actually means for your bills.

• 5:17Rory Stewart?

  For listeners to the show, there's an added benefit. Use the code POLITICS when you switch and you'll receive a free trip plus subscription.

• 5:25Alastair Campbell?

  Switch to Fuse Energy and save around £200 on your energy bills. Use the code POLITICS for a free trip plus subscription. Fuseenergy.com/politics.

• 5:40Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 5:42Alastair 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.

• 5:55Rory 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 and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're 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.

• 6:18Alastair 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?

• 6:25Rory 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/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.

• 7:10Rory Stewart?

  And given, I mean, I don't want to re-fight this, but obviously there are some people like me who don't actually think that the Green Party's economic policies make sense. I think it's probably no secret to say, it's not just I don't think they make sense. I don't think even Rachel Reeves thinks they make sense, or she'd be doing something very, very different with her budgets, right? Broadly speaking, conventional people in the Conservative and Labour Party think the kind of stuff that Zach Polanski is talking about doesn't make sense. And, you know, as we found when we did the interview with him, even more troubling, I felt, he didn't seem very comfortable talking about some of the economic facts. I don't want to have this fight again with listeners.

• 7:52Rory Stewart?

  But anyway, I'm just worried because I think this is a Green Party that is, if I was being provocative, I would say is close to being pretty economically irresponsible. And there's another sectarian thing we can talk about as well going on in this, in this by-election, and they've just romped home. So what the hell does it tell us about our politics that so many people are voting for this party, which I think should be on the fringes, shouldn't be getting 40% of the vote?

• 8:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I think what it says is that people are pretty pissed off. I think I've changed my mind about the Andy Burnham thing. I said at the time that I thought, I totally understood why they were blocking him because I thought it just created another great soap opera. And it's not entirely clear that Andy Burnham would have won, but he might have done. And if he had, that would have been quite a big thing. I think then if Keir had said, right, he's a big beast, I'm going to put him straight in the cabinet, I want him to be in charge of devolution max, and we're going to do a big rollout of powers, that would have reset things. He could have lost, he could have gone back to be mayor of Manchester and probably won the mayoralty election. So there you go, Rory. You said I wouldn't criticise Keir Starmer, I think he got it wrong, and I got it wrong.

• 9:03Rory Stewart?

  Might go further, if he'd lost, you know, that would have been a bit of a win for Starmer.

• 9:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, never a win to lose a by-election.

• 9:09Rory Stewart?

  If he'd won, it would be a chance for Starmer to show what I think he's often struggling to show, which is, why didn't he bring in people like David Miliband, Andy Burnham into the front ranks of his politics? You know, where's that sense of confidence and generosity?

• 9:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Rory Stewart?

  Building that really strong, impressive top team? No, I think it's sad.

• 9:29Alastair Campbell?

  I also thought that Keir struck totally the wrong note and the wrong tone in his response.

• 9:37Alastair Campbell?

  He wrote letter MPs that really attacked the Greens and really attacked Hannah Spencer, the candidate, which I think was wrong. I think far better to say, yeah, we are going to have to learn lessons from this and we're going to do it.

• 9:47Rory Stewart?

  We had a bit of a discussion about this, didn't we? Because you you almost wanted to try a kind of draft version of the letter is that you weren't particularly following Keir in attacking Greens or complaining about their sectarian campaigning. You weren't saying, we lost, we screwed up. In a way, it's a little bit like your advice to Rishi Sunak, which is that you actually have to own the mistake and the failure and promise to do better. And that continuing to sort of defend the indefensible doesn't work.

• 10:14Alastair Campbell?

  I also her speech, by the way, Hannah Spencer, the plumber and plaster. When I was watching her speech when she won, she was saying the sort of things that a lot of Labour candidates said at the last election. Because what the Greens have done, they've sort of dumped the environment and all, you know, as as their main thing. It's all it's a kind of it's a left wing economic, social prospectus. Now, where Keir Starmer's right is that they don't have a programme for government, but they're they're basically they're like reform right now. They don't need to. They're just sort of they're the populists of the left. And so I think it should be a bit of a wake up call. And I but I go back to the point I've been saying, you know, ever since the election, it's about taking the country with you on a journey behind a clear, compelling narrative where you see things getting better. And that's the story that's not being told.

• 10:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the final one for me is is the sectarian stuff. So Gordon and Denton's quite interesting. It's got a, I think, a 30% minority ethnic population, which is predominantly British Pakistanis, I think, certainly British Asian Muslims. And quite a lot of the campaign was involved, the Green Party putting out leaflets in Urdu. There was quite a lot of reference to Palestine. And it produced this rather interesting unusual coalition, which is you've got a Green Party led by a gay Jewish guy who's very comfortable with progressive social policies, somehow scooping up the vote of quite conservative

• 11:41Rory Stewart?

  Muslim voters who seem to be motivated, people suggest, at least on the basis of leaflets, by questions of immigration and Palestine.

• 11:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 11:49Rory Stewart?

  And I'm a little worried about not not I'm not using this actually primarily to attack. The Greens, I'm equally worried by the way that the Tories in Harrow, Bob Blackburn, has courted a particular pro Modi Indian vote. In fact, he's got, you know, talking about Trump in the last podcast getting Congressional Medal of Honour, Bob Blackburn has managed to get the highest medal in India awarded to him by Modi for his unstinting championing of that particular populist nationalist government.

• 12:21Alastair Campbell?

  Wow.

• 12:21Rory Stewart?

  And which has created, I think, one of the very safest Conservative seats in the country.

• 12:25Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 12:26Rory Stewart?

  And there is a really interesting question, as we become a more diverse population, do we embrace what's almost taken for granted in the US, certainly was taken for granted with the Irish community and others, that in the end your foreign policy is partly shaped by relatively recent immigrants and their own connections back to the homeland. You know, Labour's also part of this, we talked about the fact that Anna Salwa's dad, Mohammed Salwa, left being an MP with me in the House of Commons and went back to be a senior minister in the Pakistani government. And we've also been talking about the fact that the niece of Sheikh Hasina, the former leader of Bangladesh, got caught up in Bangladeshi politics and had to resign as a minister from the Labour government, right?

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  So, as we become more diverse, there's a really interesting question of whether we say, as I'd like us to, absolutely not, we have a UK national interest that is completely distinct from this, and we're not going to get involved in what I saw again and again in Parliament, which is, depending on which constituency you represented, you're either championing the Indian side on Kashmir, or the Pakistani side on Kashmir, or you were championing the Israeli view on Gaza, or the Palestinian view on Gaza, or the Turkish view on Cyprus, or the Greek view on Cyprus. I want to say, forget all of that, right? This is not what we're about. In fact, we should be very suspicious of letting our foreign policy be guided by this, or you can take the other view, which is just the way the world is. And this is the direction which election's going. Anyway, over to you.

• 13:52Alastair Campbell?

  I fear it's the latter, although I don't, I think there's something really weird about the way that Reform, the Tories, Keir Starmer to some extent in the response, talking about this sort of in the Greens being sectarian, because they managed to attract the support in quite large numbers of a certain group of people. You know, if you go out to Scottish exiles. Let's say you go to Scottish exiles or you you go out to people who like a particular kind of cultural thing. Is that sectarian? What you do in an election is you target different sections and different groups. You have an overall big message that you're trying to get through. And then sometimes you go, you drill down. When I was a journalist,

• 14:37Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know if they still do, but people always used to talk about, you know, the Church of England is the Tory party at prayer. Right. Does that mean that if you're Church of England and you're voting, you're expected to vote Tories, that's sectarian politics? Because that's where I see sectarianism is in religion and politics.

• 14:53Rory Stewart?

  The bits I glimpsed of this a little bit was my friend Frank Roy showing me around Motherwell. And, you know, this was his great statement that Monday to Friday, his body was with the trade union movement. Saturday, his heart was with Celtic football club. Sunday, it was with the Catholic Church. And he very much spoke for the Catholic community in Glasgow.

• 15:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:13Rory Stewart?

  And was very funny and interesting about the orange lodges and the Protestant community and which pub was with who and who was voting for who. And he was sitting in the front row of the Catholic cathedral and the cardinal was pointing at him during the sermon. When I was running to be mayor of London as an independent, I was encouraged to go to Sillet in Bangladesh to campaign. Because key voter groups in London are Bangladeshis from Sillet.

• 15:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:42Rory Stewart?

  George Galloway famously, I think, spends about two, three weeks campaigning in Sillet whenever he's he's running. I mean, you must also, on the other side, also see why people might be a little bit anxious about that.

• 15:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, of course. Yeah.

• 15:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Yeah, I do. I do. But I think it's just a fact of life. It's a fact of the way our our politics has changed, but and our demographics have changed. But I just didn't, I just don't like the way they will have this label of sectarian. I think it's all driven by the same sort of racism that we then saw at the end of the violation, when Farage and Goodwin, or Bad Loss, as we now call him. The day after the bombing of Iran, front page of the Mail on Sunday was Farage bleating that he won amongst British born voters. Right? You weren't born in Britain.

• 16:29Rory Stewart?

  No, I wasn't. No, I was born in Hong Kong.

• 16:32Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. But Farage is basically saying, unless you were born in Britain, you can't really have a vote. It's just a sort of, it's another racist trope. And what I really enjoyed about the by-election was seeing that Matthew Goodwin being sort of sent out of Manchester, probably never to see the place again. I mean, Farage, they're not spoilt for choice for good candidates if he thought that was his best candidate for that constituency. That said to me, Farage is making quite big mistakes at the moment. That was a big mistake. Goodwin's, have you ever seen him on television? The guy's got the charm of this water bottle. I mean, he just, he just, I can't believe, your brother, your mother may fancy him, Rory, but this is very weird. But, you know, he, he's got, he's got no charm.

• 17:16Alastair Campbell?

  There's a, we'll put in the newsletter, this video of him campaigning on the top of a bus. Okay. Keir Starmer's a robot. Labour are terrible. Vote, vote reform. It's the most pathetic piece of campaigning. And I thought, I, I wonder whether this was Farage cutting him down to size. I don't know. Because he, there's no reason, you know, I agree with you, it's bad. A third of people thought this guy could be their MP. He's terrible. And then he, then he did this bleating about it was stolen by the Islamists and the woke progressives. And by the way, that's a pattern for Farage. This is taken out of the Trump playbook. They always try to claim that somehow they were cheated of a, a victory. I thought the, the Green candidate, what I saw, I thought she was a very, very effective campaigner. I think you've got to say that.

• 18:00Alastair Campbell?

  And I think Labour should actually say, yeah, what happened is that a lot of people who are not happy, they decided the groom was a perfectly sensible person to vote for, and that's what they did. And Labour's got to think that through. And it is not done by playing this, let's pretend that we're reform stuff, because it doesn't, it just doesn't work.

• 18:19Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Now, Alistair, here's one for you, which I think you've been thinking about a lot, from James. Hi, Alistair and Rory. I went to university 2012 to 2016 to study civil engineering at UCL.

• 18:31Rory Stewart?

  I was unfortunately in the first cohort being charged nine thousand pounds per year in fees and I'm from a low income background. I was required to also take the maximum maintenance loan. As a result, I needed to borrow sixty one thousand pounds to complete my degree. I've worked full time since graduating and amongst the top five percent earners my age. Therefore, since graduating, I've repaid fifteen thousand pounds. However, during that same period, I've accrued thirty nine thousand pounds in interest, meaning my resulting balance is eighty five thousand nine hundred twenty one. So he borrows sixty one thousand, he repays fifteen thousand, which, you know, inflation aside will make you think it's down to forty five thousand, but actually it's up to eighty five thousand.

• 19:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 19:15Rory Stewart?

  The result of this nine percent working class student tax trap is it widens the gap between classes and destroys social modality in the UK. My peers who earn similar to me but whose parents paid for their education are now taking home over five hundred pounds more a month than I am, so six thousand pounds a year. They're buying houses sooner, investing in their future sooner. So what to do? This issue needs radical reform. The feeling of intergenerational injustice amongst my peers towards the government is palpable right now, tracing back to Brexit, the Tory Lib Dem coalition in twenty twelve.

• 19:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 19:46Rory Stewart?

  But presumably what James has said, but hasn't really been addressed by the new government that's come in. Over to you.

• 19:50Alastair Campbell?

  And this has made it worse. And I mentioned this thing I was at yesterday with two thousand A level students. This came up quite a lot, not in the, in the event, but when I was doing a book signing later. And by the way, Rory, we should be very, very, very proud about how many school kids listen to our podcast. Hundreds of them, hundreds of them. They were quoting their favourite bits. It was all, it was all very, very nice. Anyway, so I was very pleased with that. This is something, we should apologise actually, because we've had a lot of people asking us to talk about this for some time. But, you know, we've been so focused on international, what have you, but it's a, I think this is a massive issue and I think the Labour government needs to get its head around this pretty quickly. They've got some massive issues they're dealing with. We talked about SEND recently, the schools wide paper, but I think this is another one.

• 20:35Alastair Campbell?

  And when you match it, put it alongside the survivability of, of the university sector, I think this is a really, really, really big issue. So thank you to everybody, to many, many, many people who sent in their stories. The basic issue is something called the plan to loans. And the plan to loans, the way that they're working is it's less like a loan than it's more like a a graduate tax. What's happening is that those people who are lucky enough to be able to say to their kids, right, here's the fees. Let's just pay them off. Let's get rid of it now. Then they're already well off and they're going to be even better off because they're not going to get trapped into this sort of, you know, never ending

• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  rising interest rate. So what the way that it works is that you pay interest rates at RPI plus three percent. Okay. And what James is saying is it means you never quite manage to get things down. And what happened, the reason why there's particular anger at the moment is in the budget, the last budget, Rachel Reeves froze the repayment threshold at just under thirty thousand until twenty thirty. The original plan was it would go up with average earnings. But instead it's been frozen. So you're actually going to end up having to pay the interest on the loan for longer, even as you pay it off. And that is leading to very, very high marginal tax rates is adding to a sense of greater inequality.

• 21:58Alastair Campbell?

  And and the other thing I think is worth bearing in mind, Rory, a lot of the MPs who came in last time. I mean, they're quite young and some of them have got this specific problem themselves. So they they know about it. And of course, if you wind the whole thing back, we, Tony Blair's government, started this whole tuition fees ball rolling. But I would argue that was a kind of a genuine loans system. And because it was three thousand pounds, it was, you know, versus almost ten thousand today, the interest was relatively modest. There were grants that you'd get alongside it. So you could at least see that what you were owe, what you were owing, once you graduate, you could see it coming down quite quickly. What people in the workforce are saying now is that what they're owing

• 22:43Alastair Campbell?

  never seems to come down, even though they are paying according to the system that they have been given. Look, stuff like this is always very, very technically very complicated. There's one piece we should put in the newsletters. Martin Lewis wrote this really, really good, long, detailed, you know, Q and A type piece about this system. And he's absolutely clear, this has got to change. And by the way, we put together lots of the complaints that student loan paying people have been have been making to us. There's a lot of them. And they're all essentially saying the same thing, that this feels like they are being punished for having decided to do what everybody says we should do, which is do really well at school,

• 23:28Alastair Campbell?

  go to university and then try and build a career. And of course, alongside it, there's another piece I'd like to put in newsletter this week. My friend Peter Hyman wrote a brilliant Substack about the Neets and he's out now. Remember he was talking to young people before the election. He's now talking to Neets.

• 23:42Rory Stewart?

  Which is the other end of the extreme, right? And the Neets are not people who are paying student tuition fees. They're people who aren't in education.

• 23:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly. And there's another thing I want to plug. The new world, there's a young writer called Lucy Reed, and she's written a long read this week about the same issue. I think we've been a bit slow on this because I think it's a very, this is a really big, deep political issue. You've been interested in this, Roy. The number of starter jobs has fallen by nearly a third since 2022, coincidentally, the same year ChatGPT was launched. And why, people say, why don't the boomers just retire and free up the job change so we can get on the ladder? And I'm inclined to agree, except there isn't a chicken and egg. The longer under thirty stay unemployed or on the minimum wage or no wage internships, the longer the bank and mum and dad has to stay open.

• 24:33Alastair Campbell?

  The longer that stays open, the longer parents who may have planned to retire at sixty five have to keep going to cover their kids' ever rocketing rents. The figures are quite terrifying on this.

• 24:44Rory Stewart?

  Well, completely terrifying. Well, let's, let's just, you know, look at this. There are approximately 1.2 million recent graduates competing for about 20,000 top tier structured graduate roles.

• 24:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 24:58Rory Stewart?

  Six hundred thousand applicants were interviewed for those roles. So there's a ratio of between thirty five, if you take the number of people who applied or the total graduate population, looking nearly seventy applicants per vacancy. We're doing for members, and just before we go to the break, a little plug for the AI mini series. We're doing another episode this week where we're taking listeners' questions. One of the things we're definitely going to dig into is is one of the reasons why you're seeing this massive fall in graduate intake, that simply that a lot of these graduate employers are no longer hiring because they can use large language models. To do the stuff that previously young graduates did. And what does that mean for educating the next generation of children? What does that mean for me as the father of

• 25:43Rory Stewart?

  an eight and 11 year old? What are my children supposed to be studying?

• 25:48Rory Stewart?

  What kind of jobs they're going to get? Ivo currently is saying that he wants to be somebody who, he wants to be a road builder. He wants to be the person who smashes rocks. But he's insisting he wants to do it with a pickaxe, not with a pneumatic drill.

• 26:02Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay, okay.

• 26:04Rory Stewart?

  Maybe that's a, maybe that's a better job path than some of the others. Maybe it's something AI will be slower to take on.

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but the, when you, that, that stat you just read out is pretty terrifying. And so when I look at all those young people yesterday, who honestly, there was such an energy in the room and they were nice and they were smart and they were clever and they were funny and all this sort of stuff. And if that stat that you've just read out, they are going to maybe go to university, a lot of them. Some of them were telling me they got their, you know, they were going to this university, that university. And then they go and have this sort of soul destroying attempt to find a job. And Lucy Reid's piece, it sort of describes what it's like when you're just going from one application that doesn't get a reply to the next, one interview where you make a sort of minor mistake. Somebody

• 26:54Alastair Campbell?

  said they didn't, they were told they didn't get the job because they forgot to bring their own pen. You have this kind of, they're, they're in a, they're trapped in this sense of, you know, everybody says we're snowflakes. Everybody says we don't do this, we don't do that. But actually, we're really, really trying hard to, to work. And so I, I, I think what Alan Milburn is doing with this review of the Neets, in which I hope Peter Hyman's studies will help him as well. That is a really big bad issue. But I think this is one that is not getting the traction in the, in the debate that it should. I do think, I know she's got a lot on her plate. And as we speak, she's doing the spring statement today. But I do think this is something the government is going to have to take a really,

• 27:36Alastair Campbell?

  really careful look at. And also it does, it does also highlight, we've got to sort of start valuing vocational education a lot more than we've done historically. And we've got to fight back against these tech boys, Rory. I hope you say that on the, on the Q and A on the air, I think, tomorrow.

• 27:51Rory Stewart?

  I hope you enjoy the episode when it comes. Let's take a quick break and then back for some more.

• 27:54Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks. Made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clog. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog. A coastal-inspired style. A style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crocs.com or a store near you now.

• 28:50Speaker 04

  Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life.

• 28:57Speaker 05

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

• 29:08Speaker 06

  Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 29:44Speaker 04

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 29:56Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 30:00Alastair Campbell?

  And with me Alastair Campbell. Now Rory, somebody here called Donald and it then said Donald TR and I thought, oh no, please tell me he's not now sending you questions, but it's Donald Trip Plus member from Buckingham. I get triggered by seeing Donald because my dad was called Donald, my brother was called Donald and I hate the fact that every time I hear the word Donald, it's about Donald Trump. It really upsets me. Anyway, this is a really nice question about cultural soft power in the UK of which we do not make nearly enough. Listening to Rory's interview with John Chusser, ex BBC legend, I was reminded, listening to one man's career, about the vast array of cultural institutions and soft power assets that Britain possesses.

• 30:45Alastair Campbell?

  At a time when the Labour Government is disappointingly continuing the Tories' legacy of cutting the World Service, could reversing course on this be a real opportunity for Star Mark? Championing and properly funding Britain's cultural institutions seems like an area where you could differentiate yourself on the world stage, especially as American soft power has become so unreliable under Trump. So Rory, tell us about this interview with John Chusser, who I read is your godfather.

• 31:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. So he's just turned 90, right? And get this, aged 90, Johnny has now launched his own podcast.

• 31:18Alastair Campbell?

  Oh.

• 31:18Rory Stewart?

  Called The Best Is Yet To Come.

• 31:20Alastair Campbell?

  Should we be promoting this rival podcast Rory? Should we really?

• 31:24Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's a very, it's a very particular idea. His idea is that he's going to interview people aged over 90. He's, he's 90, so he'll be interviewing everybody now, Michael Haslam and others. And I guess his point is that amongst the many other bits of bizarre discrimination we have in our society, one of the strongest is actually we tend to stop taking any interest in anyone who's over 90. And he's very much there to correct that. And of course, he's a legend, as you say, he's a guy who was the Director General of the BBC World Service for a long time. He was then set up Newsnight, one of the big Newsnight presenters.

• 31:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Rory Stewart?

  Ran the Barbican Centre and all this kind of stuff. And A brilliant example to encourage us to keep going with our podcast of somebody who is firing on all cylinders at night and has views about the entire world. It's a lovely interview if you have a chance to listen or listen to the podcast. I think it's a great idea to be harnessing all these people nobody's talked to.

• 32:17Alastair Campbell?

  So you interviewed him?

• 32:19Rory Stewart?

  I interviewed him, but but hereafter he's going to be just interviewing other people aged over ninety. And his story is lovely, but I think you'd love it because he was born in the Czech Republic. His family basically fled Hitler, moved to Essex where they set up a branch, the Barter Shoe Factory, which was a Czech shoe factory in Britain. And Johnny, who looks very Czech, grew up speaking Czech, became in love with Britain. And he managed to get the National Service Commission of the British Army, very unusual because in fact people worried about security and checks and things. And he remains to this day a kind of really interesting icon of so many things.

• 33:04Rory Stewart?

  He's pretty liberal. He like like Jon Snow, there's some pretty strange coloured ties going on. There's a huge amount of interest in he loves music, he loves culture, you'd like the fact he loves football, but he's also really interesting on this question around soft power. So let me throw the soft power thing back to you because BBC World Service is one example, many other examples. I think Difid was another example. And one of the sad things is just as America's cut its budget for international aid and we talked about all the people dying of AIDS and malaria as a result all around the world and people in extreme poverty and trouble. Britain and Germany have done the same thing. And you would have thought this was exactly the moment, you know, to return to one of my old chestnuts, where Britain and Germany, as America leaves the world, should be stepping

• 33:48Rory Stewart?

  up to fill some of the space rather than following them into retreat.

• 33:52Alastair Campbell?

  Sticking with the over nineties theme just for one second before I come to soft power, Fiona's mum, Audrey, who's now one hundred and one. Uh, and she's a very good pianist and she stopped playing for a bit and she she revisited it the other day, just and she always plays by ear. She just, she doesn't read, well, she can read music, but she basically just sort of sits there twinking away. And it's amazing to watch somebody a hundred and one just sort of, you know, and if you shut your eyes, you know, it's uh eighty years ago, fifty years ago, whatever. Um. So maybe we should get, we should get Audrey to do the theme tune for your, your godfather's, your godfather's podcast. Look, I'm, I think soft power is so important. I'm really looking forward to this year's soft power index. The UK and the US nearly always come one and two, very

• 34:37Alastair Campbell?

  rarely, if ever out of the top three. Very hard to imagine the US aren't going to be somewhere down with, you know, Chad and uh, it's like, you know, their soft power is, is, yeah, I think so. I think, I mean, Azerbaijan. Um, but I think we, I think we totally underestimate our soft power powers. The BBC, absolutely a big part of it, and that's why I don't like it when I draw, but get drawed into slagging off the BBC, but I do, but I still think it's an amazing thing. I think the English language, whether we like it or not, maybe because the Americans speak it, but the English language is an incredibly important part of our soft power. I felt that when I was in Ukraine with all these European, there was all these European diplomats and leaders. So there's the European Union gets, you know, basically

• 35:21Alastair Campbell?

  started by the French and the Germans and we kind of pitch in a bit later. It's now totally accepted that English is the language of the European Union. That's a very important part of our, of our soft power. I think culturally and music, uh, I think the fact that Shakespeare is probably recognized as the greatest writer who ever lived. I think the Beatles, the fact that Rubio, that awful speech he made in, in Munich, who did he mention? He mentioned Shakespeare, he mentioned the Beatles, you know, et cetera. Amazing theatre, amazing cinema, amazing sport, the Premier League. I mean, I hate it at the moment because of VAR, but it's still one of the most amazing leagues in the world. And we've just got so much going for us. And that's why I think that the media, our media, which should be part of our soft power.

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  I find it quite weird that it spends most of its time telling its readers just how shit the country is, when there's actually quite a lot of stuff here that's very, very good.

• 36:14Rory Stewart?

  The government could do a bit more.

• 36:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, they could.

• 36:17Rory Stewart?

  Uh, it, um, we've often talked about, you know, how they could use this Trump world to reset and take death Britain in different directions. And, you know, whether it's around what they do on tax or what they do on defence, or, um, I would have loved to see a really interesting reset, where at some point, Starmer says, not just we're getting closer to Europe, but we're going to have a, a vision of the world. And soft power is going to be a really important part of that. And some international development and some media and some sport and some music and the whole thing. We're going to talk about Britain in a different way. I don't want to sound too cool Britannia about this whole thing.

• 36:59Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 37:00Rory Stewart?

  But that would be something quite interesting at a moment where everyone's in a defensive crouch.

• 37:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 37:05Rory Stewart?

  To say, actually, this needn't all be about hard power.

• 37:08Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 37:08Rory Stewart?

  This actually is an extraordinary opportunity, particularly when America is, uh, evacuating the values space for Britain, Europe, Canada, to be more about values in a gentle, thoughtful way. I mean, what, what is Scandinavia about in the end? Everybody actually still, at some level, has sympathy admiration around the world for Norway, Sweden, Denmark. I'm always struck by this, uh, you know, dealing with China, dealing with the Middle East, even when the Scandinavians are lecturing them on human rights, you, you sort of get the sense, sometimes at least, that these countries like, okay, we get that.

• 37:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 37:44Rory Stewart?

  That's where the Scandinavians are coming from. That's their deal.

• 37:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And then, then I was mentioned, I was talking to, to Stub from Finland. I mean, the happiest nation in the world. Um, you know, it's bloody cold.

• 37:53Rory Stewart?

  Pretty cold.

• 37:53Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. But the happiest nation in the world. He's off in India at the moment, which apparently is the most optimistic nation, uh, in the world.

• 38:00Rory Stewart?

  Final one for me. Iran, consistently the most paranoid version of, uh, nation of the world. Fifteen percent of Iranians, uh, are open to trusting other people in, in repeated polls. It's one of the reasons why one needs to be a bit concerned about the direction in which Iranian politics goes. It's not a society which in the polls necessarily tends towards liberal democracy, because the other country with a slightly paranoid style of politics is of course Russia.

• 38:26Alastair Campbell?

  North Korea might be a little bit, just a tad.

• 38:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's a lovely, have you ever, have you ever listened to, there's a great Iranian thing called Uncle Napoleon in the 1970s, which is basically about a batty old Iranian grandfather who's obsessed with British plots. The shaitane Kucher, the small Satan who's, who, that Khomeini refers to, come again. Um, but yeah, anyway, so I, I like that. I like that. Happy nations, optimistic nations, paranoid nations.

• 38:53Alastair Campbell?

  So what would we be? What's our identity?

• 38:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, come on then, go on then, tell us.

• 38:57Alastair Campbell?

  I've said before, I think it should be as a cultural superpower. We're the cultural, we're a cultured, cultural nation. And that means that's, that's in schools and that's in the arts and it's through the whole, right across our society.

• 39:09Rory Stewart?

  Comedy, comedy. We don't talk enough about comedy. We're pretty funny, or we think we're pretty funny anyway.

• 39:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, my daughter's very funny. Makes a living out of it. So, right Rory, here's one. Liv. Rory, what is a subject, class or skill that private schools teach that you think all state schools should teach too? I think it's memorizing really random pieces of um historical literature, being able to spout them on a podcast like you did last week. I can't do that.

• 39:36Rory Stewart?

  I think memorizing, I don't see why memorizing poetry shouldn't be a good thing. Um, no, I'm afraid it's, it's awful, but it's something to do with um confidence. I mean, it's exactly the kind of thing that winds you up when you're being angry about private schools, because in the wrong hands, it's the Boris Johnson phenomenon.

• 39:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 39:57Rory Stewart?

  But in the right hands, it's of course really going to be really important in the world of AI. Because a lot of the world is not sadly just going to be about how good you are technically or how, how high your IQ is, but how you interrelate with other people. I mean, you, you talk about resilience. Um, there's a resilience bit too. I mean, I, I wouldn't underestimate, you know, I was sent off to boarding school at the age of eight. That doesn't help you in every way, but it did mean that when I was sent to Iraq and I was stuck in a military base for a few months, I, it didn't feel very different to being a boarding school. So

• 40:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 40:34Rory Stewart?

  That there's, there's some, some of that stuff, because of course these schools were slightly designed for that.

• 40:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I'm totally with you on the confidence thing. I, I, if I, if I go into a school in a really tough, challenging area as opposed to a school in a, you know, more affluent area. That's the thing I notice most is the the gap in confidence, the the gap in people feeling that they have a voice, that people care what they think, that there's any point to really working hard and learning. So I I don't disagree with you. I also do wish, honestly, I remember once when my son Rory was doing a lot of cross-country running, we went to Stowe, Stowe College, which I think is about number five in the list. I don't know where it fits in the Eden Harrow list.

• 41:20Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's good. Quickly on that one. I don't want to get, but they have a lovely line. The first headmaster of Stowe said he wanted boys who were competent at a dance and invaluable in a shipwreck.

• 41:32Alastair Campbell?

  How do you know that? How do you know what a headmaster of Stowe College was? Anyway, Rory was running, it was the National Cross Country Championships and they're at Stowe College. And honestly, you come off the road, you go past the golf course, you then go past the shooting range, you then got the archery courts over here. It's just unbelievable. I think, God, if every kid in the country had access to this sort of sports facilities, we'd be a much better country with loads of soft power.

• 42:01Rory Stewart?

  Good. Well, good thing to close on. Alastair, thank you. Lovely chat today. Quite domestic, thoughtful stuff, and look forward to engaging again soon. Bye bye.

• 42:09Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon. Bye bye.

• 42:30Speaker 07

  The Great Game, the strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 42:37Speaker 08

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

• 42:43Speaker 06

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.

• 42:45Speaker 09

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 42:49Speaker 07

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

• 42:55Speaker 05

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

• 43:02Speaker 10

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 43:04Speaker 07

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

• 43:13Alastair Campbell?

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 43:17Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 43:19Speaker 11

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

• 43:24Speaker 12

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

• 43:28Speaker 11

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 43:30Speaker 12

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 43:34Speaker 11

  Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller.

• 43:37Speaker 12

  We have two types friendly KIA.

• 43:39Speaker 11

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