353. Question Time: Celeb politicians, Chinese spies, and Ireland vs. Israel

Why is Israel shutting its embassy in Ireland? Who is the alleged Chinese spy linked to Prince Andrew? Will the UK ever have a Donald Trump-style leader? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win a signed copy of Rory and Alastair's books with personalised messages. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley + Alice Horrell Video Editor: Josh Smith Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen + Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 1:58Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:01Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And your voice still sounds a bit ropey Rory, so I'll kick off with the first question. Mary Calhoun, do you think Putin will welcome Assad with open arms or will he be sidelined as he's perhaps no longer of any use to Putin?

• 2:13Rory Stewart?

  My guess is that he will, that Russia is still an old fashioned, big power player that needs to demonstrate that it can be loyal to its allies even when they're thrown out. And that when it's dealing, I mean, remember there have been coups in Mali, Niger, Chad, Guinea, Gabon. And in every case, basically French and American troops have been out and Russian Wagner mercenaries have come in. And with those kind of leaders, as with Assad, part of the deal with Russia is demonstrating that they're going to be loyal to these people when they're booted out. And we're much worse at this. If we look at Ashraf Ghani, who was the president in Afghanistan, who, you know, we welcomed with open arms to Britain.

• 2:53Rory Stewart?

  I went to see him as a minister. We praised. As soon as he was kicked out of Afghanistan, basically nobody's been prepared to give him a visa. He can't get to the UK, can't get to the US. He's currently, last time I heard, sitting in UAE. So I think the Russians, unlike the rest of us, don't really care about what the reputation of these people is. And feel that it's more important to demonstrate to other despots around the world that they'll have a home if something goes wrong.

• 3:15Alastair Campbell?

  I had a long exchange last night with our mutual friend Tom Fletcher, who was a former ambassador. He was a foreign policy advisor to Labour and Tory in the past and has now taken on this big job with the United Nations on humanitarian.

• 3:28Rory Stewart?

  Which was Martin Griffith's job, who we often talked about, about getting on and a job that I've often fantasized about having. I'm very jealous of him.

• 3:34Alastair Campbell?

  Ah, well, Tom has now got it. And he's, he yesterday met the man of the moment, Al-Ghulani, who is the guy who led the rebels and who is now effectively, with this sort of collection of people, would appear to be, to be running Syria. And so it was interesting to get his take on him. He doesn't speak that much English. I think he was all done in Arabic. But, you know, the, obviously from Tom's point of view, they were trying to get absolute commitment to protection of civilians, humanitarian workers in particular, and got. That sort of agreement. He said that Al Ghulani gave him a masterclass in the mess we inherited. Style communications, basically saying they were going to have to do quite a lot of difficult things to get the country

• 4:16Alastair Campbell?

  back on his feet, but said that he, you know, he, he, he found him impressive, very quiet. He said what he called a quiet charisma, very shrewd, as we've said before, very softly spoken. Said he was pretty exhausted, but at the same time, he had a sense that he was one of those people who's always thinking, thinking a few steps ahead. So we shall see, we shall see. We said last week that we imagined that even while this is a prescribed terrorist organisation. We imagine that the Brits and the Americans and others and the French were all over it and they are, as we're seeing. The British government civil servant met with, with him, he's now called Al Sharar rather than Al Ghulani, met with him yesterday. But I think Tom Fletcher's, um, I'm really pleased he's got that job. I think he'll, I think he'll be.

• 4:57Rory Stewart?

  He'll do it very well. It's a great, great appointment, a great appointment. And, and he was running in Oxford College. So it's a great, to see him back in the swing of things. And he was, of course, the British ambassador in Lebanon. So he knows, knows the region very well. The problem, I think, for Al Jalani is going to be what happens when things start kicking off inside Syria and how does he deal with it? So if you think about the Taliban, they took power quite easily, like him when we left. And the first problems began when there started being civilian demonstrations against the regime. And how do you deal with that? So you've got people now with face paint and some of these sort of slogans from the Arab Spring out in the streets of Damascus, calling for democracy and him saying, I don't think we're anywhere close, ready for elections.

• 5:42Rory Stewart?

  He's a, an Islamist, even if he is talking a very moderate game. And he will have to work out how he reconciles the views of his more extreme fighters who have been fighting tooth and nail and losing lives since 2011, partly for a vision of a gender apartheid world. I mean, remember, some of these people are genuinely, absolutely committed to very, very conservative visions on women's place in society. Very conservative visions of homosexuality, et cetera, because. Daesh is a brother offshoot from his movement. You know, he knew Baghdadi, he was sent out to be the Emir in Syria and broke with them. But they come from a very similar place, rooted in Al Qaeda.

• 6:26Rory Stewart?

  So what does he do if the hardliners in his organisation say, well, wait a second, we've been dying and fighting to get rid of this irreligious secular government. And now you've got, I don't know, men kissing in the street, women in many skirts, whatever it is. What do you do if there are large disruptive demonstrations, calling you a despot? How harsh do you crack down? What do you do with criminality? What do you do with gangs? So there are a lot of armed people, huge number of armed people, and they're not all his. Big armed Arab tribal gangs from the south. There's a Turkish backed armed groups. There are Kurdish armed groups coming in from the east. So I think the first big problem he's going to be is how does he restore order and security

• 7:08Rory Stewart?

  without generating all the predictable headlines of him being a despot clamping down on human rights?

• 7:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, part of the answer to that, as well as the practicalities, is that he will need political support and political cover from some of these people that are sitting down talking to him now. So I guess these first impressions that he makes upon people are pretty important. The issue in relation to Israel that we've got the most questions about this week, Rory, and I'll throw you a couple of these now. It was, I mean, Israel, which is continuing to bomb sites in Syria where they think that weapons programmes might fall into the wrong hands. But actually was their decision to close the Israeli embassy in Dublin. Claire Gunning, I greatly appreciate your views on Israel's decision. Shashi Rami, please can you discuss Israel's decision to close its embassy? And the Israeli Foreign Minister calling the Irish Prime Minister an anti Semite. What was your take on that?

• 7:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, fascinating, I mean, really fascinating. So this is, it seems to be from a distance, but maybe I'm getting this wrong. On a par with Israel's general policy of declaring the Secretary General of the United Nations persona non grata, rejecting the authority of the International Criminal Courts. And now closing its embassies in Dublin because of what it says is antisemitism. And in particular, I think they're enraged with Ireland's enthusiastic support for the International Criminal Court.

• 8:25Alastair Campbell?

  And also the recognition of Palestine.

• 8:27Rory Stewart?

  But a very, very big step to actually close an embassy with a mature European democracy. I can't really think of a precedent, but you've reminded us that there is history there, isn't there? I mean, Ireland. Has tended to have a quite a pro Palestinian history. President of Ireland appeared with a kaffir around his neck.

• 8:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Look, there's no doubt at all, you can see this in the public statements of successive successive Irish tea shakes, that they are broadly pro Palestinian. I think it is harsh to take that and say as a result of that, to have one foreign minister call the elected prime minister of another an anti Semite. And I think what this is part of is basically saying that if you criticize what we did, what we do as a government, that because you're criticizing the Israeli government at a time that it's been under attack, post the October 7th attacks on them, that somehow that's anti Semitic. And I've yet to see any evidence that Simon Harris is anti Semitic. And I've yet to see them present any evidence that he's said or done anything that you

• 9:28Alastair Campbell?

  could define as anti Semitic, as opposed to being an elected leader of a country which has a policy position, has a stance, takes a stand and is basically saying, and it's, you know, Bill Clinton made the point on leading that, you know, and so did Angela Merkel. Angela Merkel said in terms, Bibi Netanyahu and the current government is not Israel. You know, you can, you can be supportive of a country, that doesn't mean that you can't from time to time criticize that government's handling of really difficult events. And that it seems to me is that all that Ireland has done. We've got a very tough outspoken Israeli ambassador here in London. There's a woman ambassador also in Dublin, Dana Ehrlich. She's now presumably, you know, going back to Israel or to a different job somewhere else.

• 10:10Alastair Campbell?

  But I think it, it felt like a pretty impetuous and not very sensible thing to do because that really is a, you know, shutting down your embassy is a pretty big thing to do in any foreign relations. I mean, you know, we've got an embassy in Moscow, we've got an embassy, we've got an embassy in lots of different countries where we are not necessarily on the same wavelength. I think to do this is basically to say that, you know, Ireland is an enemy state of Israel. I think that's a very, very bad thing to say or do.

• 10:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I mean, it's, it is very interesting, isn't it? Because the Arab League traditionally and other Muslim states like Mali, Niger, Mauritania, I think, don't have. Have diplomatic relations with Israel. I mean, Saudi is still, doesn't recognise Israel. It's not just Iran that doesn't recognise Israel, but it's interesting decision. I mean, I would have thought a foolish decision because to isolate yourself from a European Union democratic member state seems to be a much bigger step than than people are understanding. And I can't see what Israel gains from doing it.

• 11:09Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Rory, I think we have to raise a member of the royal family this week.

• 11:12Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 11:13Alastair Campbell?

  I know you don't like talking about the royals too much. Emily, she says, Prince Andrew, what has led to him finding himself in the mire again? How should the king now deal with him? I read, I don't know anything about these things, but I read that the king has said that Prince Andrew should not join the family at Sandringham at Christmas. What's led to him finding himself in the mire again, Emily? Is this relationship with H six? A court order decided that we shouldn't know the name of H six, though that we now do. But somebody widely thought, although he denies it, to be working for Chinese intelligence services who got very, very, very, very close to Prince Andrew. So, yeah, he is in the mire again, isn't he?

• 11:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he is. And I mean, there was a, the Times, to be fair, quoted an American analyst who said, listen, you guys, as usual, are so obsessed with the royal family. What you're missing is the big picture, which is there's not just an H six, there's an H sixty, there's an H six hundred. And the real question is not who's got close to Prince Andrew. The question is who's got close to the people that really matter in British political decision making. And that's what we're underestimating. And the story basically is that the Chinese state uses a massive range of people, including private Chinese business people, to create these links. They do it through university funding. There's been a very, very good, actually, reports from parliamentary committees on this.

• 12:32Rory Stewart?

  They do it through university funding. In this, this case, the guy was funding a, a branch of Gordonstone, the Scottish boarding school internationally. They run friendship associations. They meet, in this case, you appear in photographs with David Cameron and Theresa May. And they're doing all they can, I think, to try to ensure that China has good relations with Europe. And the reason why that matters, if we step away from Prince Andrew, to go bigger picture, is the number one demand of Trump is going to be that Europe lines up with him in a new Cold War with China. And the problem that we will face and Europe faces is that our economy is in trouble. Fifty percent of the profits of European automobile manufacturers and luxury goods manufacturers are made in China.

• 13:16Rory Stewart?

  Keir Starmer is betting a great deal on China. He's going to do a visit to China next year, the first British premier to visit China in a very long time. And it's going to be very, very difficult for European countries to emerge from their current doldrums. Partly actually going to be difficult to meet our targets on electric vehicles. If we're not prepared to import Chinese electric vehicles, which are very, very cheap and very good.

• 13:39Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, it's probably impossible to know the accurate number, but if you, if you sort of, you know, look around all the various sort of think tanks and defence specialists and intelligence websites and the rest of it. You're talking about upwards of 600,000 people who work for Chinese intelligence. Now, you'd be very surprised if some of them weren't in Britain. And if you're, if you're a kind of intelligence minded sort of person, you know, in Britain, I think getting quite, getting sort of close to the royal family would be quite a sort of fun task.

• 14:05Rory Stewart?

  It's also interesting that the Chinese government is very, very odd because they also have very weird ideas about who matters. So Prince Andrew, you will see in the newspapers as photographed, having a full formal meeting with Xi Jinping. Very, very difficult to get a full formal meeting. I think it's in the Great Hall of the People with the President of China. The other person who could always get meetings with him before he died was Jacob Rothschild. Because the Chinese government had read these crazy conspiracy theories, which had convinced them that this Jewish banking family, the Rothschilds, ran the world. So whenever Jacob Rothschild turned up, he could have a meeting with Xi Jinping, but

• 14:40Alastair Campbell?

  These days it's Elon Musk.

• 14:41Rory Stewart?

  But no British Prime Minister, I think, managed to meet Xi Jinping from Theresa May onwards. I don't think that Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss in that brief period. So I think there's also another really interesting thing, which is part of them is really brilliant and really understand our societies. And another part of them is like, ah, yes, it's all about the royal family and the Rothschilds. As though they're stuck in the beginning of the 19th century.

• 15:04Alastair Campbell?

  As you raise the name of Xi Jinping, I think I should repeat my request via any of the 600,000 Chinese intelligence officers who are listening. We would love to have Xi Jinping on the podcast on leading. Nobody can say he's not a leader. And Rory, I should also tell you that via Tom Fletcher, I have put in a bid with Al Jolani. How's about that?

• 15:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's very good. And here we are. Here's a deal for you. I promise to travel immediately to Syria to interview him in person if you manage to secure that for us.

• 15:30Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent, excellent. We'll see.

• 15:32Rory Stewart?

  And he should definitely be talking to the UK's largest podcast. I mean, I'm sure you've managed to get us Angela Merkel and Bill Clinton.

• 15:38Alastair Campbell?

  We could then see, Rory, how good your Arabic is.

• 15:40Rory Stewart?

  Yes, well, you will see.

• 15:42Alastair Campbell?

  See if he's as good as my Deutsch.

• 15:43Rory Stewart?

  If you know, if you can get me an interview with Poseski, and I can do a little bit of Farsi.

• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay. Well, we'll have to talk to the team about whether we want that, won't we, Rory?

• 15:53Alastair Campbell?

  Right, your turn for a question.

• 15:54Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so here's a question I thought was rather good. Klavz Mariis Metis, can you talk about the success stories from the Eastern Bloc? You've mentioned the Baltics and Romania before. What did they manage to do that Ukraine and Georgia perhaps didn't? So, well, the story here is, of course, that Romania and Eastern Europe in 1989, their communist governments collapsed. And with the collapse, the Soviet Union in 1991, parts of the Soviet Union, like Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, came free. And they joined the European Union in this incredible moment in 2004. And it's a sort of miracle story. These countries, let's take Lithuania and Romania, their GDPs per capita, in other words, how rich the average person was compared to the UK in 1989, they were about a third as rich. In other words, the average person

• 16:39Rory Stewart?

  in Britain was three times wealthier. These were very poor countries, about $7,000 a year, and they were autocracies. The European Union came in, and the European Union provided pre-accession funding, but most importantly of all, huge enlargement investment in reform, sorting out their markets, sorting out their constitution, sorting out their governance to prepare them for European membership. Fast forward to the end of the story, the average person in Lithuania, 30 years later, is now richer than the average person in Britain. So they've gone from being three times poorer to being richer than us. And this is why I think we're massively underestimating the power of Europe. They can do stuff that America can't do. America and Iraq and Afghanistan couldn't offer equal membership of a union, couldn't offer a single market, couldn't offer all the stuff, that carrot that Europe

• 17:24Rory Stewart?

  can offer, which has completely transformed all these countries around the world.

• 17:28Alastair Campbell?

  I think that was another reason why, sorry, you take me back to June 23, 2016 again, Rory. I don't think we did enough to explain to British people that the success that was created, as you say, by European Union support for the countries that came in. Actually was a benefit to all of us. I don't think we ever kind of managed to make that link and it was a mistake.

• 17:53Rory Stewart?

  And that Britain wasn't the central driver for EU enlargement.

• 17:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Rory Stewart?

  You know, you and Tony Blair were really proud of it and it was an amazing achievement. It was one of the greatest achievements and Britain didn't take credit for it then and should have done. Why is it you didn't take credit for it? Why are you not shouting it from the rooftops?

• 18:10Alastair Campbell?

  I think it goes into that space of, you know, Europe is something that we sort of wanted to do. But back to the point of the debate we're having on the main podcast about Labour's current approach on immigration is that certain things you want to do them without necessarily shouting about them because you want people to focus on the things that you're constantly being told they care about, economy, jobs, health, housing, education, et cetera. But it's the same, you know, it's part of the same thing that when you're going around different parts of the European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, wherever, and you're constantly seeing the European flag on signposts and buildings explaining that the European Union, the European Commission was part of the building of this road, the building of that school, the building of this and the other. You see a little bit of that in the UK, you saw a little bit of that. But we were almost, we was embarrassed

• 18:55Alastair Campbell?

  to say this was done with help of the European, European Union, European Commission, which I agree, I think is a mistake.

• 19:01Rory Stewart?

  It's weird, isn't it? It's really weird because in fact, it is the big international success story of the 21st century. Weirdly more than the interventions we boasted of in the Balkans, this was the thing that really did bring democracy and did bring economic growth. 2004, Czechia, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia. Poland is an unbelievable success. I mean, it's on its way to being the defence and security superpower of Europe. And that would have been unimaginable, I guess, when you were growing up, right?

• 19:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay Rory, quick break then, back for more questions.

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• 21:28Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, as you know, we are sponsored by Fuse on the topic of energy. I saw you tweeted recently about how energy costs in the UK are two times what they are elsewhere in Europe, and business is suffering because of that. So is that right, two times?

• 21:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, there are different figures on this, but The Guardian ran an article showing that they were particularly focused- On small businesses, gave a lot of examples of people where the costs were twice as high as they'd been. It's partly because with households, governments are quite careful to put an energy cap in place, which doesn't apply to small businesses. So typically the bills had gone up five thousand pounds. So here was a little guy who was running Dreadnought tiles in the West Midlands. I I don't want to minimize it. It's a very good example of the problems. So obviously, in order to make roof tiles and bricks, you need high temperatures, which requires energy. And he reckons that his energy bills more than doubled, had to cut production, raise prices.

• 22:23Rory Stewart?

  Don't think we'll see energy costs return. So the reason this is important is that one of the many reasons driving deindustrialization. So not decarbonization, but literally businesses, industrial businesses closing in the UK is is the cost of energy that they're facing.

• 22:38Alastair Campbell?

  Do you mind if I if I raise a what you call a reader's concern about?

• 22:43Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes. Yes, very good.

• 22:44Alastair Campbell?

  About some of your previous comments on energy, Rory.

• 22:47Rory Stewart?

  Yes, yes.

• 22:47Alastair Campbell?

  So somebody I know who you may you may also know called Emma Pinchbeck, who runs the Climate Change Committee. She's the chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, which is the statutory advisory body that helps government work out how to meet the legal climate change targets. She's quite a big deal and she says she-

• 23:05Rory Stewart?

  There's much more what she's talking about than me.

• 23:07Alastair Campbell?

  Or me. She listens to the podcast. She says, please take this in good faith, but I sometimes get concerned that the podcast and Rory in particular, she says, can be a bit careless on energy transition or zero. And I think her point is that you tend to put rising energy costs all onto the cost of transition and that may not be the case.

• 23:28Rory Stewart?

  There's been a very interesting guy called Ed Conway, who's done some really great stuff and written a good book called The Material World that I'm plugging. But he's got an amazing graph that he's just put out with what's happened to the chemical industry in Britain. So if you look at what's happened since 2021, the total economy and services is up. Manufacturing is about 10% down, but chemicals, 37% smaller in just three years. And chemicals take a lot of energy.

• 23:53Alastair Campbell?

  So are you saying that those sectors are down by that number or that they're?

• 23:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. The the phrase is the chemical sector. Has contracted by more than a third over the past three years, one of the mainstays, the British economy.

• 24:05Alastair Campbell?

  What's that about?

• 24:06Rory Stewart?

  In his phrase, deindustrialisation is happening, accelerating even. So there are a number of reasons for that, and that's why I think it's good to be called up. Some of that is to do with wholesale prices. Some of that is to do with the way that we price things and the way that we tax energy. And actually, it would be great maybe to get her on.

• 24:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Rory Stewart?

  Because as you say, she's a huge expert and maybe we can get into that in more detail. But there is a big problem, and that's why Jonathan Reynolds, the Labour Business Secretary, has said, we are talking about decarbonisation, not deindustrialisation. People interested in, you know, one part of this argument can listen to the interview we did with Dieter Helm, where Dieter Helm basically explains how Britain and Europe have largely offshored their industrial production to China. Patted ourselves on the back because we're emitting less carbon, but then we're still consuming even more. We just manufacture it in China and importing it back, much as we drive sheep off the Cumbrian fell sites, pat ourselves on the back for not doing any damage to our, our grass and our fell sites. And then we just import it from New Zealand and allow the sheep damage New Zealand instead.

• 25:09Alastair Campbell?

  So with the knowledge that UK energy costs twice that of other countries, why not close the gap, switch to Fuse, who offer cheaper tariffs than all other major providers. So download the app today, use the referral code POLITICS after signing up, you have your chance to win a trip merch bundle. Visit getfuse.com/politics for terms and conditions and to learn more. Here's a great question, Roy. David Giffen, how sad that we live in times when Time Magazine considers Donald Trump to be Person of the Year. What does this say about the world we live in and how to influence it? What it says is that Donald Trump won, and like a lot of these businesses and media organisations, I mean, all these, lots of, Trump said himself when he opened the New York Stock Exchange the other day, you know, look at all these people, they hated me a year ago, now they all want to be my friend.

• 25:52Alastair Campbell?

  But I agree, I think it's a pretty lame choice. I was very proud of the new Europeans' choice of Person of the Year, Roy.

• 25:58Rory Stewart?

  Oh yes, who did they choose?

• 25:59Alastair Campbell?

  Giselle Perico, the lady in France who waived her anonymity so that she could reveal to the world this horrific rapes to which she'd been subjected. So she was our Person of the Year. I thought that was a far better choice of person. Who's your Person of the Year, Roy?

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  The King. The King is my Person of the Year.

• 26:19Alastair Campbell?

  Every year? Is that every year? Did it used to be the Queen?

• 26:23Rory Stewart?

  No, I'm actually, I'm, I'm going to make the case to the king. I think people were very anxious about what would happen when he would take over. The Queen had been in for a very long time and was very, very popular. People were very nervous and I think he's risen to it incredibly. I think he's doing things which haven't been done before. He's obviously really enjoying the job. He's had a horrible cancer diagnosis and chemotherapy, comes through it really strongly. And, you know, I think people underestimate how important it is and how proud we should be of him.

• 26:52Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Good. Okay. Case well made. Case well made.

• 26:54Rory Stewart?

  Thank you.

• 26:55Alastair Campbell?

  I'm Gizelle Pellicoe, you're the king and Time Magazine is Donald J. Trump.

• 27:01Rory Stewart?

  Question for you, Lucas Burke Beck. After seeing the success of Trump in the American election, could you see a British party putting forward a celebrity candidate? If so, do any candidates come on? Look, this isn't a stupid point because of course, what was Boris Johnson really? He was above all a celebrity. You know, he was the most famous person, certainly when I was in Parliament because of his time on TV. You know, he was the one guy who everybody knew his name and it does seem to really matter. That's presumably why Matt Hancock tried to go on Celebrity Jungle. What do you make of this question of celebrity in politics? Or are you still trying to resist it and think it doesn't matter?

• 27:35Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I probably am, but you know, you probably am pushing a sort of boulder up a hill. Could I imagine it here? I mean, I'd argue that Nigel Farage is in the Boris Johnson mould.

• 27:44Rory Stewart?

  He's a celebrity, isn't he?

• 27:45Alastair Campbell?

  He's effectively a celebrity.

• 27:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I sent you just to annoy you, round the corner from me, the local postcard shop. You can buy a birthday card for your beloved with a picture of Nigel Farage on the front of it.

• 27:55Alastair Campbell?

  I might give that one a miss.

• 27:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but it's a sign, isn't it?

• 27:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:59Rory Stewart?

  That the guy's becoming a sort of weird icon.

• 28:01Alastair Campbell?

  Look, he's, he's always had a following of sorts, but I, I think how I define as a celebrity is that in this, being a celebrity is not just being very, very famous. It's also that you get treated slightly differently to how other people in your walk of life would do. So for example, in football, David Beckham was a very good footballer, but he was also a celebrity. He was, he was something above football. So I guess who, who Lucas would be thinking about in terms of the UK context, I guess would be a Jeremy Clarkson. But, you know, I think Jeremy Clarkson. When he appeared on that farmers protest, he didn't stand up to a moderately tough interview very well.

• 28:38Rory Stewart?

  Or our employer and boss.

• 28:40Alastair Campbell?

  Gary Lineker.

• 28:41Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 28:42Alastair Campbell?

  Would Gary, yeah, but would Gary, I mean, you know, I can't see Gary going the whole hog.

• 28:46Rory Stewart?

  No, but he'd have that name recognition, wouldn't he? He'd have that appeal.

• 28:49Alastair Campbell?

  Hundred percent. You know, and also he's got a good brain, you know, which, as you know, a good brain in politics is required more than people think.

• 28:55Rory Stewart?

  But one of the things you also require, I'm continually reminded of looking at Netanyahu and looking at Farage is unbelievable never say die resilience. I mean, whatever you think of them, and I profoundly disagree with them, what's astonishing is they just never give up. I mean, Farage famously failed to be elected seven times. You know, he's entered the House of Commons on his eighth attempt. I mean, how many people would keep going seven times?

• 29:22Alastair Campbell?

  Also, you know, he, he, he's always had a platform, not least because the media finds him interesting. He's always had that platform, but there's no doubt in my mind that getting into parliament has added to his ability to use the platform that he already had. No, you've got to, you've, you've, you've got to say that you just keeping going is, is one of the most underrated strengths in any walk of life, but certainly in politics.

• 29:46Rory Stewart?

  Because all these people have had any number of times when people have written them off and said, it's finished, it's over. They're never coming back from that. That was so embarrassing. That was so awful.

• 29:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Rory Stewart?

  And somehow endurance longevity is just a secret skill in politics.

• 29:59Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. There is one for you, Ray. Mousa Ahmed, Trump said he will recognise Somaliland. I didn't know he had. Has he said that? What are your thoughts?

• 30:06Rory Stewart?

  Well, here we are. Firstly, I need to apologise to many of my friends who are linked to Somaliland, who felt that I was extremely disobliging in a question from Raggy Omar. So Raggy Omar pointed the fact that there'd been a very successful, clean election in Somaliland and a transfer of power. And I made a series of pompous comments about the fact that the UK government doesn't recognise Somaliland. And I talked about proxy wars in Somalia. And so I've been called up on this, people saying, when will you recognise that Somaliland has been an extraordinary, and it is extraordinary. I mean, Somalia has been in the most miserable situation. Of drought, starvation, civil war and chaos and Somaliland, which I visited, has been peaceful.

• 30:48Rory Stewart?

  It's had democratic elections. It has a very different political history. It had a relation to Britain when other places had a relation, Italy. And of course, it is possible that one day it could be independent. But of course, there's so many drivers in the world which leaders to resist countries becoming independent. But I guess Czechia and Slovakia split apart, the Balkans split apart, the Soviet Union collapsed. So, you know, maybe I'm being too foreign officey and stuck in the mud about Somaliland.

• 31:15Alastair Campbell?

  If I can take you back to your old job, Laurie. So Minister, are you saying you recognise them or you don't?

• 31:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's where you've taught me this wonderful technique from Trump, where I just talk to you about how difficult it is. Look, here's a serious Alistair question. Kavan Connell, wanted to ask if you've been keeping up to date with Sarah Wagenknecht's breakthrough in the recent German elections with a message of cultural conservatism and left wing economics. Is there something to this? So tell us a little bit about Sarah Wagenknecht. You have told us about her in the past, but she's a big figure. She's a name. She's managed to do something very unusual, which is break away from a party without losing herself.

• 31:51Alastair Campbell?

  I've got the feeling that the rise is sort of feels like it's stored a little bit. But there's no doubt she has been a big player. She's shaken up politics.

• 32:00Rory Stewart?

  Remind people who she is.

• 32:01Alastair Campbell?

  Well, she's a, she's a left wing politician. She broke away to form her own party called, it's basically called the the BSW and the S stands for Sarah, the W stands for Wagenknecht. So it is a party in her name. And she's, I mean, I haven't got the latest polls in front of me, but she's been, she's done okay. She's done pretty well in recent elections. And she's, she's what I'd call, she's a left wing populist is what she is. And the questioner is right, there's this sense of sort of little bit of social conservatism, economically pretty left wing.

• 32:34Rory Stewart?

  She's not quite Jeremy Corbyn, is she? So just to explain to listeners. She sounds like Corbyn because she talks openly about socialism and critiques free market economics and she's sympathetic to Russia and Ukraine, but she's also not interested in kind of woke stuff and she's very, very anti-immigration. So that, I guess, is the cultural conservative stuff. Is that right?

• 32:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and she's also somebody who, over her life, I suspect her economic views have shifted a fair bit. She's always adopted sort of pretty populist positions on immigration, refugees. She's been in parliament for, I think she was elected sort of around about 2010, 2009.

• 33:14Rory Stewart?

  So she's relatively new. She's not like Corbyn. She's not an old veteran.

• 33:17Alastair Campbell?

  No, she's not. She's not been there for decades. But well, 2009 is quite, you know, that's a reasonable old stint.

• 33:22Rory Stewart?

  Compared to old Farage and

• 33:24Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, no, not compared to Corbyn. She was part of DIE LINKE, which is the, you know, the party to the left of the social democrats. And she broke away to form this Bundnis, her own party, and she's doing okay. She's doing okay. Her party will be a player in German politics for some time to come.

• 33:44Rory Stewart?

  And is it important? I mean, I don't know whether it is or not, but of course, as a British person, I noticed that her father was Iranian and she's anti-immigration, which reminds me a little bit of the strange phenomenon of, well, not strange, maybe, maybe it's understandable, but pretty Patel and Suella Bravman.

• 33:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Rory Stewart?

  Is that something that's noted in Germany particularly or not? Or is she known particularly for her Iranian heritage?

• 34:05Alastair Campbell?

  No, I don't think so.

• 34:07Rory Stewart?

  No, people don't emphasise that much.

• 34:08Alastair Campbell?

  Where I think she'll come under attack is, as with Le Pen, there's a sort of, you know, constant echoing of Putin talking points, which, you know, I think ought to land her in more difficult than it does. She's been pretty outspoken on Gaza. She called, recently she called Gaza an open-air prison. And obviously, you know, within German politics, you will find the right of Israel to exist is constantly being defended. And she does that. She's now got a very large but, which basically says, but what they're doing now is completely unacceptable. So that has sort of set her apart in some way. So she's, she's an interesting person. I wouldn't put her in the same category of some of the other populist leaders. I think

• 34:48Alastair Campbell?

  There's more to her. But I it's interesting, the question as that as as though there'd been some sort of huge recent success. I'm not aware of that.

• 34:55Rory Stewart?

  Okay, very good. Well, final thing, and I think we should wrap up, is we've had an invitation to talk about our our favourite books at the moment. So here's a couple of sort of serious things from me, and maybe a more jolly one. Great book, if you want serious economics, by an economist called Jay Bradford de Long, called Slouching Towards Utopia, which is kind of one of these wonderful kind of attempts to summarise the last sort of hundred years of economic history.

• 35:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 35:20Rory Stewart?

  Adam Tooze, couple of books, one of them called Crashed, How a Decade of Financial Crisis Changed the World. But also, he's written a very, very good book on Woodrow Wilson and the end of the First World War. And a jollier book, The Wide, Wide Sea, by a guy called Hampton Sides, which is about the final, final adventure of Captain Cook. And then a little plug for Waiting for Godot, which is

• 35:41Alastair Campbell?

  Samuel Beckett?

• 35:42Rory Stewart?

  Samuel Beckett, yeah.

• 35:43Alastair Campbell?

  Or to read it as a book?

• 35:45Rory Stewart?

  No, it's on at the moment in the Theatre Royal Haymarket, and I was lucky enough to go and see it this week with Ben Whishaw, who's probably the most famous actor in it. But if you want to see, I mean, that bizarre, astonishing, surreal, absurd play by Samuel Beckett, first written in French, translated into English, in which you spend a lot of time waiting for Godot beside a tree, there has never been a better production of it.

• 36:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Rory, I'm a big devotee of Samuel Beckett, so I will try to get to see that. However, I've just looked it up and it's only on till Saturday, so not many nights left to go and see it. I'm gonna pick, funny enough, I was asked by somebody earlier today, pick a book of the year. I've gone for Patriot Navalny.

• 36:28Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 36:29Alastair Campbell?

  I think it really is worth reading. And it's it's hard to put your finger on why it's why I like it so much. It's I think it's the fact that he writes with such kind of optimism and almost like cheeriness. It's a really kind of extraordinary thing, especially you know, you know, we all know how the book, how his life ended, his life has ended. And I just love the idea of a book. Written and public, it's only, I think it's only February that he, that he was killed. So within a few months since his death, this book put together from stuff that he wrote in the past and notes that he was smuggling out of prison has been put together in the form of a book, which is now essentially part of, part of a political campaign. So that's the one, the one that I'm going for. And all the more fun stuff

• 37:12Alastair Campbell?

  and the novel stuff would be, I'd be talking to a very minority audience because yet again, this year, Rory, I've been reading far more German books than. You're very impressive. Than, than English. But yeah, no, the Navalny book really, really is worth reading. And also I am going to give a plug to Tom Baldwin's book on Keir Starmer. I still think that has been the best explanation of the character of Keir Starmer. And I think it's, if people really want to know Keir Starmer, I think it's worth getting Tom's book. Lovely. Well, thank you very much, Alice. It's been a real pleasure and look forward to speaking again soon. See you soon. I hope your voice gets better. Bye bye. Take care.

• 37:50Speaker 08

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