44. Freezing bills, mental health in politics, and Rory's new job

Are windfall taxes and freezing energy bills the best ways to deal with the cost of living crisis? Join Rory and Alastair as they discuss the skyrocketing energy prices, the negative effect that politics can have on your mental health, the floods in Pakistan, Biden's quietly impressive summer, leaders ducking out of tough interviews, and Rory's exciting new job. Blackpool live show tickets: Saturday 8th October: wintergardensblackpool.co.uk/events/the-rest-is-politics-live/ Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor 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/rustaspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:48Rory Stewart?

  We've got a lot to be getting through today. But first, I wanted to get a sense, Alistair, of how you are, where you are. Where are we speaking to you?

• 1:56Alastair Campbell?

  I am in one of your favourite cities on the planet, which is Edinburgh.

• 2:02Alastair Campbell?

  How am I is a very complicated question. I think I'm in what is sometimes termed the middle and possibly the height of a...

• 2:12Alastair Campbell?

  Depressive episode. Um, so I might as well get that out there because people who know me will spot it straight away because my voice tends to be a bit thinner and my energy levels are not quite as high as they normally are. Um, and I feel now that now that you've described us as close friends in your Guardian article, Rory, I feel that I can be as open and frank with you about that as about everything else. So I'm not very well is the truth. I'm, I'm, I'm in a bit of a, a bit of a despond, which as you know, I get from time to time. And, um, uh, and funny enough, I do, it's been building for a while and I know that it's building. But what is interesting is I, I do think the podcast in its own sort

• 2:55Alastair Campbell?

  of way was the tipping point. Don't take that badly, uh, because I'll, I'll tell you why. I did an event at the weekend, a, a festival that you've been to, Beyond Borders, at Tracair House in the Borders. And I was bizarrely, or surreally, you might say, being interviewed by Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's former chief of staff. And, and actually, it was a really, really, I think, a really good conversation. But in the Q and A, I got this question from a young guy, I can't remember his name, but he was a young guy, he was talking about our podcast. And there were actually a lot of people talking about the podcast. And he said, it's so obvious what has to happen. You and Rory Stewart, he said, the reason your podcast is doing so well is because you're speaking about

• 3:38Alastair Campbell?

  politics and two people are interested in politics in a way that nobody else is. And what it means is you have a responsibility and a duty now to take it to the next step and, and start a movement and, and just completely change politics for good kind of thing. And there was quite a lot of applause in the hall and Jonathan Powell, who obviously knows me very, very well. He said, there you are, you've got your marching orders, get on and do it. And I said, and it is, even as he was saying it, I felt this kind of, I felt myself just plunging down. And I think it's because I feel this constant conflict between responsibility to do more. Uh, but sometimes just feel I, I, I don't

• 4:23Alastair Campbell?

  know how. And I want, this is what I said to the guy, I want a younger generation to come along. Now, you've had mental health challenges, I know, and lots of people have, but it's never one thing that tips me over. But that was the kind of, that felt to me when I, when I thought back afterwards, when I was sort of lying awake at night, sort of just catastrophizing, I think that was a tipping point. So anyway, that's a long-winded way of saying, I'm in Edinburgh.

• 4:48Rory Stewart?

  I'm so, very, very sorry to hear you're in a, in a, in a bad state. I mean, I, I think there's something, I would just, just to broaden this out to the theme of the podcast for a second, I, I think there is something here which is maybe more common in politics than people acknowledge, which is the weight of expectation that is put on you. What, one of the reasons I think that my colleagues manifest a lot of pretty eccentric signs, I mean, sometimes, you know, very, very serious mental health issues, you know, I've had colleagues that have had breakdowns in Parliament, colleagues who've tried to kill themselves. And I think one of the reasons is there is an odd thing with Members of Parliament particularly, but

• 5:31Rory Stewart?

  I think you're touching on this too, of the gap between the expectation that the public puts on you, maybe the expectation of your role and the reality of who you are and what you can actually achieve. So for, I mean, if I, I bring it sort of off the general to the personal, one of the things that I didn't like about going back to London from Jordan shortly after the podcast launched was the number of people coming up to me in the streets, very kindly, you know, very, very positively, but saying, Rory, you've got to come back and save us, you know, you've got to become Prime Minister. And often these were people who I would feel a lot of respect for. I was stopped by a, an older Nigerian man who was a deputy head teacher, stopped me in Heathrow Airport and said, you need

• 6:16Rory Stewart?

  to come back and be Prime Minister. And then a, a priest on the Gloucester Road, I was walking down the Gloucester Road, he listens to the program, so he'll probably know who he is, came clattering up on his bicycle behind me in a dog collar and said, so I turned around astonished and said, you need to, and he said to me, you need to come back and save the country. And instead of this making me feel happy, of course, what it did, I think a little bit like what you're describing, or maybe you're describing something different, I'd be interested, but with me at least. It made me feel very, very bad because I thought, goodness gracious, they're setting me up as some great savior and actually I'm not really up to this weight of expectation. And I don't, I don't want to do this. I found politics extremely unpleasant and I wanted

• 7:01Rory Stewart?

  to get to the stage of being able to say cheerfully, why don't you do it if it's such a great idea? But does that resonate with you?

• 7:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, totally. Because, you know, when I'm, when I'm feeling good, when I'm feeling kind of energetic and buzzy and I've, and creative and people go up to me and say those kinds of things and it motivates me. It makes me think, yeah, keep going, keep doing stuff, keep calling them out, keep trying to persuade Labour to do this, that and the other, keep calling out Johnson, Truss, et cetera. Keep fighting for, you know, Britain's position in Europe, keep believing the things that you believe. But when it then translates, when I'm not feeling great, into that sense of only you can do this, when I know that is not necessarily true. And the thing is, of course, if you've got, we, you know, we've both done stuff and we've both probably got quite big egos in different sorts of ways. I don't mean that in a bad way. We've got sort of self-confidence and belief. When you've

• 7:53Alastair Campbell?

  got that belief, you really do think you can change the world. And when I'm, when I'm positive and up, I really do feel I can change the world for the better. When I'm not, and somebody says something like that in front of an audience which clearly believes it as well. And, and of course, they see things very simple. That guy comes up to you and says, you should come back and be Prime Minister. David Miliband gets the same, by the way. Every time he comes back to London, I've been with him, people come back and say, oh, you should have been leader of the Labour Party, you should be come back and be Prime Minister. And then the question then is, well, how? How does Rory Stewart become Prime Minister? How does David Miliband become Prime Minister? How do I set up a new political movement and sweep away the Tories and Labour and all the rest of it, even if I wanted to do that?

• 8:34Alastair Campbell?

  And the how is what becomes then overwhelming. So I find myself saying to this, this is what I said to this audience in Scotland. I said, look, the reason I'm writing this book. Urging more young people to get involved in politics is because I think our generation's got to move on and we've got to get a new generation. That may be a cop out. That may be me copping out because I, but you and I, we, when we, when I was up at your house in, in five, we talked, we did an interview, if you remember, for Men's Health and you talked about the, I think the word you used was sort of brutalizing and dehumanizing effect that you thought politics had had on you. Well, I also know that politics and my contribution and role within it came very close to destroying me, my family, all

• 9:18Alastair Campbell?

  the things I believe in. So it's very hard then to say, oh, let's go and give it another go and try again. So, but now I feel that, I think in a way, both of us are doing a bit of a cop out at the moment, you know, where we're doing this and it's nice that people say they like it. You've got this great new job that I know we're going to talk about. We can write books, we can make films, but we both know that deep down, if you're really, really, really, really going to change the world, politics has got to be involved at some stage.

• 9:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And I think we're both sort of working around this in different ways. You kindly sent me a draft of, of your book and I sent you a draft of my book and we're coming at it from different directions, aren't we? I'm coming at it from trying to talk about exactly why politics is so painful and why it's so difficult to get things done, why it's so frustrating working in a parliamentary system, how the civil service can act as a real check and block, even though there are some very good civil servants, but a way in which the whole system can paralyze and stop things, the way in which the incentives of politics are not aligned with governing a country well. And you've been coming at it from a book, trying to encourage younger people to get more involved in politics. But

• 10:33Rory Stewart?

  in a way, those two things need to come together because I think. Before one encourages young people to get involved, one has to imagine changes to the system, otherwise one's just kind of driving idealists into a pretty painful life.

• 10:48Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think that's true. I mean, it's interesting because I read your draft after just finishing mine. And my book is basically saying, why you must at all costs go into politics. And your book is basically saying, why you should never ever even think about going to politics, because it will destroy you. But I do think, I do think that, you know, it was really interesting at this event. Nicola Sturgeon was there as well, and I had a little chat with her. And there was, you know, and Ming Campbell was there, David Steele was there. So there was quite a few kind of political figures around. And I do think there's a sense in the country at the moment, with this whole kind of list trust thing happening, there is a real sense that our politics is absolutely broken. If this

• 11:30Alastair Campbell?

  is the best that the Conservative Party, this great party of government so called, can produce at this time with these challenges that we're facing, then we really, really are in a bad way. And also, I have to, I don't know whether this affects you, but I do find the outside political, external circumstances does affect my mood very, very badly. I'm waking up every morning and having to hear the words, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and now the words, Prime Minister Liz Truss. It's not good for your head.

• 11:57Rory Stewart?

  No, that's not good for your head.

• 11:59Alastair Campbell?

  So listen, shall we talk about your job?

• 12:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 12:02Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, first of all, just reassure, I did, when it was announced, I did have a young guy stopped me, literally, he was coming down the stairs in the hotel where I'm speaking to you now, saying that he'd been listening to the podcast that morning, he was 18, and he'd heard about your new job, and he said, you're not going to have to stop the podcast because of Rory's job, are you? So put them out of their misery first, Rory.

• 12:22Rory Stewart?

  So podcast will continue. Very kindly, my new employers have said they're very happy for me to continue doing the podcast. But let me tell you a bit about the job. And so I'm taking over as the president of GiveDirectly. And GiveDirectly is a very, actually, in many ways, very new, very fast growing charity, nonprofit, started by, in the US, by an amazing guy called Michael Fay, who was a Harvard economist, and by his colleague, Paul, who was an economist, I think, at MIT. And the two of them got very interested in the use of cash, unrestricted cash transfers as a way of doing international development. And a decade ago,

• 13:06Rory Stewart?

  It was a theory that you could do it, but it had been barely studied. Ten years later, they grew a tiny organisation which started with their own savings. So I think they were putting in sort of forty thousand dollars that they'd cobbled together from family and friends ten years ago into an organisation that last year gave out nearly three hundred million dollars in cash. And during this period, there have been nearly two hundred and sixty seven academic studies on the use of cash, almost all of which are overwhelmingly positive. And what they've really discovered is, as it were, a secret hiding in plain sight, which is that cash, which is, you know, something obviously all of us use every day and our whole economy is based on, was never traditionally seen as an important part of ending extreme

• 13:52Rory Stewart?

  poverty globally or doing international development. Still today, it's only about one or two percent of all international development spent is in cash, ninety nine percent is non-cash. And yet, the rate of return on cash is extraordinary. And maybe the best way of illustrating that is to try to talk a little bit about, I think we discussed it a bit on the podcast when I'd just come back, but I'm on my way to Uganda. So next time we talk, I'll be in Uganda. But some of my experiences in Africa on the impact that it has on individual lives.

• 14:25Alastair Campbell?

  Two questions really. First is, when I read from your current former, you're now his boss or he's your partner, whatever, I read something he said where when you were at DIFID, you were very sceptical about this. And actually, one of the questions we got was for you to describe your journey from sceptic to absolute passionate believer in this. But the second thing is, when you're talking about giving presumably quite relative small sums of money to people, how do you then track or can you track and can you monitor and put into sort of usable data the effectiveness? How do you actually measure that once you've started to give the money out?

• 15:03Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so, thank you. So, two questions. Journey, which was a question from a guy called Sinan. So Rory, what was your journey on unconditional cash transfers from a skeptic as minister to signing up as president? And the other, this question, tracking. So, Journey, yes, frankly, when I was the Secretary of State for International Development, and people, and before that, the minister for a couple of years, when people pitched cash at me, I thought it was crazy. I really did slightly think that it made no sense at all. At the time, I would say to people, I thought international development was all about, don't give a person a fish, teach them to fish. And this seems to be the most extreme version of giving somebody a fish.

• 15:44Rory Stewart?

  And I also thought, what's the point of all of us if it's all about just giving cash to people and letting them make their own decisions? Why have we got thousands of civil servants sitting around in these buildings? Why are we all doing master's degrees in international relations or doctorates? Sending all these teams out to the field. If the answer is we just give cash to people and let them get on with it, what's the point of the whole aid industry? Because we've spent eighty years coming up with more and more complicated theories about what we need to do. So, the sort of things we were doing in DIFID would be, for example, working on trying to eliminate corruption in Nigeria, or sort out the Kenyan Ministry of Finance, or trying to support political parties in Bangladesh, or trying to work out how to transform education in Malawi.

• 16:29Rory Stewart?

  These are traditional things. And suddenly you're saying what you need to do is hand it out as cash. And I also worried as a minister about the democratic aspects of this, because of course, international development spend is tax money. So, we are forcibly taking money in taxes from people. And I've said to my civil servants, are you seriously suggesting that I should be taking twenty pounds a month from a lady in Wolverhampton and just putting twenty pounds a month in the pocket of somebody in Kenya? So, all of that really troubled me. And I think what changed it was getting out on the ground. And the first big thing is, of course, that that whole twenty pound, twenty pound thing

• 17:14Rory Stewart?

  doesn't make much sense when you get to the ground, because what you realise on the ground is that... A pound for somebody in very, very extreme poverty in Africa is worth 100 times what it is even to people on low incomes in Britain. We were visiting people who were living on $3 a month. And that's $3 a month adjusted for purchasing power parity. So that means that these are people who are looking after, in the case of one lady, looking after three grandchildren on that money. Everybody in the house is very close to starvation. The children are stunted, suffering from malnutrition.

• 17:54Rory Stewart?

  They're incredibly vulnerable to any change of climate or natural disaster. People are very likely to die from disease. They can't afford to wash themselves, let alone get into school. There's nothing in their house. So this lady had no mattress to sleep on, had a single cooking pot. And the only other thing I could see in her house was a cut-off water bottle with, which she uses, plastic water bottle, which she uses, I think, for measuring and probably as a cup. And the impact of what we were doing, which was to give, in that case, $700 in cash to

• 18:35Rory Stewart?

  her, is completely transformative because for her and for the other households in that village, things change very, very quickly in their lives. They can put that money to much, much better use than I feel an international NGO coming in could ever do, and at much lower cost. So she can, because she's using her relatives and cousins to do it, she can fix up her home, her whole house, she can connect electricity, she can dig a latrine, she'll get things that she feels she needs in the house, like a bar of soap for the kids or a mattress to sleep on. She'll get a cow, which will provide calcium and milk for the children, the children will get back in school. Now, all of this stuff is happening for $700.

• 19:16Rory Stewart?

  And it's difficult to put a number on it, but a traditional nonprofit brought into a village and asked to do all those things from her, I'm afraid the cost would be 10, 15 times as much by the time you've had engineers surveying the houses, people doing needs assessments, and probably still, they wouldn't be providing exactly what she wanted. So the cash is... It's about dignity and it's about giving her the freedom to make the choices that she wants. But there's a sort of, well, I'd like to get on to the more exciting story, which is how this could actually end extreme poverty globally. But you then asked about testing and sort of tracing the money. And there the answer is we have these big independent audit teams that go into the villages after the money's been received

• 20:00Rory Stewart?

  and very carefully interview people, check the money arrived, check there's no domestic abuse, check there's no corruption, follow up, monitor what they spent the money on. And that again feeds into these academic studies which get in rates of returns.

• 20:15Alastair Campbell?

  But you were talking about some money there that, as you say, for a family could be life changing. But if you look at the 10 poorest countries in the world, so Burundi, which is the poorest, I think is the poorest country in the world, where the average sort of per capita income, we're talking in the hundreds of dollars, 270. When you're dealing with that level of poverty amongst so many millions of people, and then you go through Somalia, Mozambique, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, Eritrea, these are the top 10, Central African Republic, Liberia and Niger. I mean, we talked in an earlier discussion about sometimes feeling overwhelmed

• 20:55Alastair Campbell?

  by the scale of challenge. Does that not feel overwhelming or do you just feel that you have to kind of make the difference where you can? And by giving money directly to people, you're actually saying, we're not going to change the country. Other than bit by bit, we are going to transform the lives of individuals and their families and their communities.

• 21:13Rory Stewart?

  So I'm hoping we can be much more ambitious than that. There are 400 million people approximately living in extreme poverty in Africa. And to give a thousand dollars to every household, so let's say we quartered the number, would get us to about 100 billion dollars. Now, that sounds like an enormous amount of money, but actually it's less than the world currently spends on international development. And so what I would hope Is that we could raise enough money, let's say three or four billion dollars to do an entire country. See if we could raise an entire country out of extreme poverty through these cash grants.

• 21:52Rory Stewart?

  And if we could do it, we could prove a model, which we could then take back to my successor at DIFID. And so at DIFID, I had a twenty billion dollar a year budget. And if somebody had come to me and said, look, for four billion dollars, you could lift an entire country out of extreme poverty. So you could do five a year for the budget that you've got. That's something extraordinary. And I think it would give us the possibility of lifting the whole world out of extreme poverty in our lifetime. And the sums of money we're talking about, even if it's not a hundred billion, even if it's two hundred or three hundred billion, is a tiny percentage of global GDP. Have you settled on a country to be the first country? No, still, still trying to work, work our way to that.

• 22:37Rory Stewart?

  We're looking at Rwanda, looking at Liberia, looking at Malawi, and be visiting all of them. And we're also doing some very, very interesting modeling on what would be involved in trying to lift an entire country out of poverty. So what would be the inflationary impact? So you'd probably want to stage the money over four, five years, as you brought it in, so you didn't create inflation by doing so. You'd want to think about what the multiplier effects are. So one of the very interesting things, if you do this at scale, is that as more cash enters the economy, there's going to be more consumption, more production. You can see it even on a tiny village scale. When you go into a village, everybody buys a cow, and the first thing that happens is someone opens a shop for veterinary medicine, selling medicines for cows.

• 23:22Rory Stewart?

  Another person is opening a shop with mobile phone charges because people are getting the money on their mobile phones. Builders in neighboring villages are beginning to benefit because the money is being spent on dealing, doing up the houses. So the return on a pound spent is about two pounds forty is what the current, current modeling suggests. So I think we're on to something which is also very scalable and very replicable. A lot of other things in international development require heroic effort targeted at a particular place. So you can run a very, very good clinic in Nigeria if you have forty very dedicated people, an enormous amount of resources and a lot of focus. But it's very difficult to replicate that across the country.

• 24:06Rory Stewart?

  So you can have exceptional projects at a micro level, but one of the problems in international development is getting scale. And cash, I think, is one of the few things that can get scale. And I, you know, I was thinking about this in, in, in any of our terms. I mean, these are very difficult moral, ethical calculations, but the truth is that a pound for somebody in extreme poverty makes a hundred times more difference than it would for you or I, perhaps even 500 times more difference. So for the cost of an expensive meal in London, you can really help to transform somebody's life. That, that, that's part of the insight here. And I think, I, I, I feel this because I, I give, I've been giving money to GiveDirectly

• 24:46Rory Stewart?

  over the last few months and it's good, I feel, to have a nonprofit where I'm confident what's happening to the money. I mean, many other nonprofits will say, buy a goat for Christmas, but of course, you're not really buying a goat. It's buying the equivalent of a goat. You don't really know what happens to money. Here, here the technology actually links you to an individual. So there's a lady in Kenya who the field teams talk to every month, and I'm getting an update every month on how the money's being spent. So it's a much more direct sense of where the money's going.

• 25:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, good luck with that. And it probably means that we'll be doing the podcast from even more exotic locations than those from which we've already done it. And hopefully, when you're in all these African capitals, the internet will hold up better than it is here at the capital of Scotland, where it's been plaguing us for the last hour, but hopefully we're making sense. Just while we're talking about money, Rory, there was one bit of your very interesting interview profile in The Guardian which leapt out, leapt out at me. Stuart has defended his voting record by pointing out that MPs have to vote with their parties to retain the whip, which can sometimes mean voting in support of measures they do not agree with. And we've talked about that before. Are there any votes he particularly regrets? He pauses for a long time, then a characteristic grimace. I think we got austerity

• 26:02Alastair Campbell?

  wrong, he says finally. I realised in the departments I went to, most dramatically in prisons, that these cuts were close to insane. They had removed so many prison officers while allowing the prison population to go up that violence tripled in five years. All the windows were broken in Liverpool Prison and couldn't be fixed. So finally, we have found common ground here, Rory. Austerity has failed. Yeah?

• 26:27Rory Stewart?

  100% on prisons. I think, I still believe that that was definitely an argument for fiscal restraint. But I think the problem in the argument between Labour and Conservatives again and again, is that it's very difficult for governments to ever do anything with precision. And you generally end up being either overly generous or overly damaging. And one of the problems in economic management is, how do you cut costs in the right places? Because we definitely need it to cut our expenditure. But in the case of prisons, boy, did we get it wrong. And I think this is going to be a challenge for Liz Truss, because she's going and talking about 30 billion pounds worth of tax cuts, which is going to have a huge impact on public expenditure. And the challenge again will be raised, you

• 27:11Rory Stewart?

  know, where do those cuts fall? How are they judged?

• 27:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, why don't we, shall we take a little break and then come back and talk a bit more about the soon to be, I can hardly believe I'm saying the words, not helping my mental health, the soon to be Prime Minister, Mary Elizabeth Truss. Let's do it.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  There is so much NFL on ESPN right now. Monday Night Football, plus pregame and postgame. NFL Live, NFL Primetime. Everything you need to stay on top of every game every week.

• 28:44Speaker 03

  And now NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on all season long on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

• 28:59Alastair Campbell?

  How about a latte?

• 29:00Speaker 04

  Maybe dark roast?

• 29:01Alastair Campbell?

  Vanilla?

• 29:01Speaker 04

  Caramel?

• 29:02Alastair Campbell?

  Blueberry?

• 29:03Speaker 04

  You could get them to agree on one flavor or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over 500 K-Cup pod varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  No effort, no grind, no settling.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 29:33Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And after my story last week about wandering around Blackpool to find a McDonald's with Bill Clinton and Rory's highly interesting anecdote about Kevin Spacey, or which will draw the veil, people have been buying loads and loads of tickets to our upcoming live show in Blackpool at the Winter Gardens, Saturday, 8th of October. I checked this morning, I think the downstairs bit is just about full and we're now plowing through the bit at the back. And then we're, you know, because we're very, very keen to get as many people there as possible. So if you do want to get involved, just search Rest Is Politics Blackpool. It'll be a wonderful evening at a fabulous venue, so do come along. And Rory, I must share with you some criticism

• 30:17Alastair Campbell?

  from Stephen Monroe from the Corrern Ferry, who took you to task for describing Blackpool as the North. He says Blackpool is nearer to Land's End than it is to Joddroe. So you mean the north of England, okay? When, and back to the question of being overwhelmed, when you see the pictures of the flooding in Pakistan and you see the news that a third of the country is now essentially, I mean, how do you even begin to react to that? And secondly, is it just me that has felt there's been precious little coverage really, when you consider the scale of what's happening? It's almost now as if we have started to see distant parts as parts of the world that don't really matter to us anymore.

• 31:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's true. And one of the interesting things, I was doing a number of interviews on Monday around GiveDirectly, Today programme and others. And every interview, Today, BBC, Television, Sky, one of their first questions was always, yes, but we've now got a lot of problems at home with the cost of living crisis. How can we expect people to continue to support charities abroad? So I think there is a sense, as things become more difficult at home in Britain, people's appetite for hearing about disasters elsewhere diminishes. And I think there's also something a bit overwhelming about it. As you say, on the one hand, I really believe we can and we will end extreme poverty in our lifetimes. That's something that we can do.

• 31:42Alastair Campbell?

  Got to say there Rory, Rory, you sounded just like Gordon Brown there, in terms of the passion and the intonation, not the accent, but you know, that's good, we can and we will.

• 31:52Rory Stewart?

  Very good. However, you're right, it's very overwhelming because of climate change, we're likely to end up with more poor people, not fewer, right? And that will mean that, for example, the World Bank is predicting there will be 130 million more people in poverty because of climate change. And Pakistan is an example of how this is happening. Something like 220,000 homes at least, maybe even 400,000 homes in Baluchistan and Sindh have been wiped out by this flooding in Pakistan. So people who were very, very poor, Baluchistan, which is, much of it is desert, right there, nestled between Afghanistan and Iran, right out on the west of Pakistan, is a very poor part of the country. And when very poor people

• 32:37Rory Stewart?

  lose everything, as you can imagine, they are in an incredibly difficult state. You lose all your possessions, you lose your house. How on earth do you stand to start again? One of the things that's happened is they estimate 1 million cows were lost in this. And as we were explaining just before the break, livestock is completely central. Livestock is what gives you manure for your fields, milk for your children. And without livestock, it's very difficult to survive. So as you say, it's um, there is a sense sometimes that we are, we sort of take two steps forward and one step back.

• 33:11Alastair Campbell?

  I thought it was interesting, for example, that as the Pakistan government, we're talking about the the the level of damage being in the, you know, ten billion plus. And I think I'm right in saying the UK government announced one point five million in flood relief, which you must know from your time at DEFRA is, you're talking next to nothing. And I just, you know, maybe we should sort of pivot here to the whole Tory leadership. I do think there's been something incredibly depressing about the extent to which it's been so inward looking, next to nothing on foreign policy, next to nothing on how does Britain genuinely become a leading player in the world post Brexit, next to nothing realistic about how we actually fix the problems that Brexit has created, not least

• 33:56Alastair Campbell?

  Northern Ireland. And yet, all these kind of, honestly, from both of them, really, sort of largely populist slogans and messages. And I think very interesting today, we're talking on Tuesday morning, where I see that Liz Truss has pulled out of being interviewed by by Nick Robinson. Now, I am one of those people who thinks that the media talks too much about the media, but I do think this is quite important because it's basically indicating that Liz Truss is going to carry on communicating as Boris Johnson did, which is basically to avoid as much scrutiny as possible, to to to use taxpayers' money to make their own content, have official photographers, official

• 34:36Alastair Campbell?

  videographers, avoid the really difficult interviews, the ones that ask proper questions and really know what they're talking about. And I think the media really has, the media to me was a big part of why Johnson survived longer than he should have done, because they they treated an abnormal rogue prime minister as though he was utterly normal. And I think if Liz Truss is going to play the same games, then the media has got to stop playing their game, stop using the pulled footage, stop using the official photography and say, unless you're going to put yourself up for proper scrutiny, we're not going to play that game anymore.

• 35:09Rory Stewart?

  On that, is it true that with you and Tony Blair that you never ducked interviews, that you always did tough stuff? Or were you sometimes tempted to say, no, come on, we don't need to do Andrew Neil, we don't want to be abused by Jeremy Paxton, why don't we just duck that one?

• 35:23Alastair Campbell?

  No, I, we, one of the, we had, we actually in the run up to the Iraq war, for example, we had something called the masochism strategy. We, we basically said our strategy was going to be to put Tony Blair in front of people who we knew disagreed with him, including the public. So I could, I could, we once trooped over to the Foreign Office where, I think it was Trevor McDonald of ITV, and we'd, we'd gone to, I'd gone to ITV and said, look, you know, get a load of people together, if not, no, let's narrow it down. Get women, women who are completely opposed to the Iraq war, and build, get them, build an audience and we'll bring Tony Blair in and they can take, he'll take any question, he'll take them until he's sort of, you know, they're all exhausted. And of course, we

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  did this, I'll never forget, we, as we walked out, Tony just turned to me and said, are you sure this masochism strategy is very wise? Because of course, it was brutal, you know. But I think, I think the, the, the good politicians and the strong politicians, I think they welcome scrutiny and, and, and argument. And I think the minute that, I think one of the reasons people are turning off politics, there are lots of reasons at the moment, I think one of them is that they don't see them being tested in the way that they want to see them being tested. So they turn away from what they, they, they recognise is almost like PR guff. I'd be very interested to know, for example, what the ratings have been for the live coverage of these, these hustings. I bet you they've gone down and down and down and down. I could be wrong about that.

• 36:50Rory Stewart?

  No, no, they must, must have done. And of course, it, even for political geeks like you and I, I'm not sure that we made it through every single hustings.

• 36:58Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, no, I gave up after the first two, because when, once you start, the other thing that I find really irritating about the way these, look, I'm, I'm the message discipline guy, I think you've got to be very disciplined about message. But that doesn't mean literally saying the same, telling the same story with the same words in the same way, and in Liz Truss's case, with the same new hand gestures. It means communicating to the public in a way that you sound like a human being. And I read a very interesting piece by one of the journalists who's, the poor guy has actually apparently been to every single hustings. And apparently now stands at the back of the room sort of buttering the words as Truss and Sunak are saying them because he knows what the stories are.

• 37:40Rory Stewart?

  And yet again, this has been lifted from American politics, hasn't it? I mean, this has been true of US politics since the 30s. There's some fantastically funny reporting of American political campaigns in the 40s and 50s, watching Adlai Stevenson step off yet another train, giving the same speech he's given 10 times that day, again and again. Yeah.

• 37:58Alastair Campbell?

  I find it, I find it, when I'm doing, if I'm doing the rounds, you know, like if you've got a book out or something like that, and you're doing lots and lots of events and lots of interviews and so forth, I find it quite hard, literally to say the same thing again and again and again, because in my head, I'm going, you are no longer speaking like a human being, you're speaking like a machine.

• 38:16Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's very worrying, but, but, but actually, I, I used to hate it. So I was always very, very proud of the fact that every time I gave a speech, it was different. But then I was called out by Michael Fay, who's the founder of GiveDirectly, the, the new charity I'm working with, who said, I can't believe every time I take you in to see a donor, you seem to be able to tell the same story with, as though it's the first time you're telling it. How do you do that?

• 38:39Alastair Campbell?

  That is vital. That is absolutely vital. Absolutely vital. It is. That is the, that is the single most important rule of communication. Say the same thing, but saying the same thing doesn't mean using the same words every time. It means saying the same thing, making the same, the same big point. Listen, talking of saying things, I think one of Truss's many weaknesses, which I think will lead to, unless she changes pretty rapidly, will lead to being found out in all sorts of ways, is the ease with which people seem to lead her into saying things. So for example, one of the hustings, when she was asked, President Macron, friend or foe? I mean, and she said, the jury's out. I mean, and she got a nice little round of applause from the, from the golf club boards. But honestly, Rory,

• 39:24Alastair Campbell?

  That, how can you be, she's the Foreign Secretary. We are going to have to have decent relations with France. And I don't know if you saw Macron's put down, it was apps. I did a little tweet on it, just said, trust, meet class. Because he just was so kind of effortlessly.

• 39:41Rory Stewart?

  Remind us what he said, what was the.

• 39:43Alastair Campbell?

  He, well, the tone of it was a kind of, he did a little sigh, a little shrug of the shoulder. And then he said, look, Britain is a great country and France is going to be a good partner of Britain. Sometimes because of their leaders and sometimes despite them. And I just thought that was a wonderful kind of put down. But, you know, that is, can you imagine what the, the, the guys in the Foreign Office were, were thinking and, and saying to each other when she said that Macron, friend and foe of the jury.

• 40:08Rory Stewart?

  Although the French, I mean, I agree, I agree. That was an outrageous thing to say and it's the wrong thing to say. But the French can be quite cheeky, can't they? I mean, there've been a number of times when the French Foreign Minister has said some pretty disobliging things about Britain and has got pretty cross with us.

• 40:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but you're talking here about somebody who's about to become the Prime Minister, basically insulting the French President. And of course, I mentioned bumping into Nicola Sturgeon the other day. We were talking about, you know, trust did the same to her. What's your strategy going to be for Nicola Sturgeon? I'm going to ignore her. You can't ignore the elected First Minister of Scotland. That, that person becomes an important partnership. If you are serious about being the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. And I think that this habit she's going to get into, this is probably why she's avoiding these interviews. Because her people know that, you know, Nick Robinson's quite a clever interviewer. He would work out she'll fall into that one and we'll, hey, here we go. We're, you know, trending top of the news again.

• 41:04Rory Stewart?

  And of course, it's, it's, it was the same with Boris Johnson, wasn't it? It's the sense that they're, that you can see their media handlers saying, there's only downside here. She's currently leading by such a huge margin in the polls. They'll be saying to her, why take the risk? And we'll take a little bit of damage of, you know, Rory and Alistair grumbling that you didn't do the interview. But that's not, that's not, that's not going to cost, that's not going to cost you the premiership.

• 41:29Alastair Campbell?

  I think in the remaining days of this contest, we should renew our invitation to Lishi Trunak to come on. At any point, we'd be very happy to have them on.

• 41:38Rory Stewart?

  I think she, I think she should jump at it. It would definitely be a safe, friendly environment in which she can guarantee nothing could possibly go wrong. Now, on the cost of living crisis. So first thing, I think people are obviously talking about this all the time, but some of the figures are incredibly stark. The, this will be the worst fall in living standards for 60 years. The energy cap going up to 3,549 pounds for the average bill this, this autumn, and potentially 5,000 pounds in January. And I think you would, you've been talking to head teachers and people about the impact. Tell us a bit about the conversations you had about what the impacts could be on schools.

• 42:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think you're right about the scale of this. And I thought it was extraordinary that on the day that the energy cap, the new energy cap, which is pretty eye watering, was announced, that neither Truss, nor Sunak, nor indeed any representative of the government, put themselves up for questioning about it. Absolutely extraordinary. So you've got millions of families and who are genuinely worried. And of course, I understand why the media, much, most of the focus has been on families and the fact that so many children are going to be plunged into poverty by this and people are really, really going to struggle. But we shouldn't underestimate the impact of this on right across the public and private sector. You're going to have businesses that are going to go to the wall. It's already starting because they can't afford to essentially pay their energy bills. And, you know, we

• 43:01Alastair Campbell?

  were talking to a head teacher who was saying they are now already having to make calculations about other things that may need to be cut, including even cutting into the, the school week, on account of the fact that their energy bills are going to soar and they're going to have to come out of the same budgets they've already got, which are already very, very, very tight. So we're talking about schools, about hospitals, about the armed forces, right across the public sector. And that is going to require a response of real depth and breadth and creativity and imagination. I mean, I don't overstate it, but it does kind of make me feel that just to, you know, if we, we talked about the way that sometimes about the way that Gordon Brown responded in the global financial crisis 2008, nine. At some stage, as this is happening all around the world, although I would point

• 43:46Alastair Campbell?

  out, we are the only country now of the major economies with double-digit inflation. We're right out there on the inflationary spiral. So it's going to require something way, way bigger than Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak have even remotely spelled out. This idea, they keep trotting, you know, 5% cutting VAT. We're talking about something happening now to millions and millions of families, many of whom are genuinely scared about what's going to be coming through the winter. And I just, I mean, this is why the leadership election has been so depressing, because there's been nothing to match the scale of the challenge that's happening right now.

• 44:25Rory Stewart?

  And if we think about it, so let's imagine that the average household is going to have to get 1,000, even 2,000 pounds' worth of support per household. We're talking about an enormous amount of money that the exchequer is going to have to find to match that. At the same time, we've got Liz Truss announcing 30 billion pounds' worth of tax cuts, including cuts to corporation tax, which seems a very, very foolish time to be cutting corporation tax. Now, the reason why, of course, she's tempted to do it is that business investment has been very poor since 2016. And of course, you know, we know, we know why you would.

• 45:04Alastair Campbell?

  What happened in 2016, I'm trying to remember. Was there anything on June the 23rd that happened in 2016? I can't remember.

• 45:10Rory Stewart?

  So as you say, clearly Brexit is part of the answer on it. But it's also clear that one of the paradoxes is that windfall taxes, I think, are almost inevitable now on the energy companies. But at the same time, of course, in the long run, all the governments will want to argue that you need a predictable taxation regime in order to encourage people to invest. So you've got to find a way of reassuring the markets in general that this is because of very, very exceptional circumstances and the government isn't going to get into the habit of windfall taxes. Labour's proposed what seems to be a freeze on energy bills, which I think is a simple, will be very comprehensible to people, but there is, there are a couple of problems with it. One of them is that...

• 45:55Rory Stewart?

  It's unlikely to be very well targeted, so you could end up in a situation in which wealthier people are also getting a lot of help with their energy bills. And if you're an environmentalist, you would also potentially be concerned that particularly for wealthier people, it's not encouraging them to reduce demand, because I think the big picture question here is what is this crisis on energy bills suggesting about the future of our energy policy? So essentially, the most smart economists trying to think about how we do a transition on energy, so how do we get away from gas and coal and oil towards renewables, have tried to emphasise the importance of getting carbon pricing right.

• 46:39Rory Stewart?

  And carbon pricing, I'm afraid, is just a polite way of saying, they're arguing that you need people to start paying more for their gas and coal and oil in order to make renewables seem more affordable by comparison, encourage people to insulate their homes, invest in tech like green hydrogen. And what we're actually looking at is a kind of massive accelerated version of what those kind of carbon taxes are like. Adair Turner says that this tax is equivalent to $600 to $950 per tonne carbon tax. So a very good article, again, Camilla Cavendish, Financial Times on this, but I think it is

• 47:23Rory Stewart?

  making people think more seriously about how you protect poor households from the cost of energy transition if we're going to do it through increase in energy prices.

• 47:34Alastair Campbell?

  I know that in the Rest of Politics bingo, there is one of the favourite ones is Alastair mentions the New European. There was a very, very good piece of the New European by Paul Mason. I hadn't quite realised the extent to which both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have, in their tour of the Tory Party hustings, have just been Almost expressing almost like a loathing for solar power. And Liz Truss actually saying, you know, I want fuels to be used for growing crops and livestock, not for ugly solar panels. And Paul pointed out that you could transform our renewable source by having as basically taking less than the equivalent of how much of our landscape is covered by golf courses.

• 48:16Alastair Campbell?

  And you could invest in solar panels in a way that would, you know, could help to transform our energy consumption. And it's back to this thing we talked about in relation to America and about in relation to this debate in the UK. The politicization of the climate change debate has been grisly in the extreme. And it's really, I think it has really infected the Tory party in a way that I never thought it would. I thought they would have more sense and more reason. I was actually pleased to see that solar, the investment in solar and the buying of solar panels has been actually a bit of a boom. And long may that continue. But that has been despite, rather than because of, any political leadership.

• 48:55Rory Stewart?

  We're also suffering in the UK through our very, very high reliance on gas at the moment. We did a dash for gas and there were good reasons for that. Gas is much better than coal in terms of its emission. It's much cleaner than coal in terms of its emission. But we're nearly forty percent, I think, of our energy comes from gas at the moment. So we're more exposed than most European countries. Much more of our heating comes from, from gas. And gas is now at ten times the level it was for the, of its average level for the last decade. And a lot, I think, is now going to depend on winter temperatures. Lots going to depend on Chinese demand. I mean, we're being helped a little bit at the moment that Chinese economy is, is in trouble. So there hasn't been the demand on energy from China that there normally is year on

• 49:39Rory Stewart?

  year and that you get when China's growing at eight percent a year.

• 49:42Alastair Campbell?

  I think, I think, I think the, the downsides, however, of the, of a shrinking Chinese economy are also quite.

• 49:47Rory Stewart?

  Pretty dramatic too.

• 49:48Alastair Campbell?

  Just while we're on the environment, Rory, one of the things I really like about this podcast is that we sort of, we stumble into talking about things and then people who know what they're on about sort of get in touch afterwards. So last week when we were talking about the environment of the water shortages and I was talking about the Scottish Water's attempt to get plastic in all wet wipes banned. And I was contacted by Fleur Anderson, who's the MP for Putney, I wasn't aware of this, I now am, that she's got a private Members' Bill going through where she actually, which would legislate to ban wet wipes that contain plastic. And she was saying, she was comparing your horrible experience in the septic tank.

• 50:32Alastair Campbell?

  She says that in the Thames at the moment, there is a, there is a kind of a wet wipe, I don't even know how to describe it, like, you know, one of those sort of mega, huge, great sort of bombs that is just sitting there, horrible, great.

• 50:43Rory Stewart?

  A sort of island or whale or yeah.

• 50:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, no, big, it's huge apparently. And it's all because of people sticking their wet wipes. So, and she says, can we have a little plea, or even a big plea, that our listeners get in touch with their MPs to ask them to support Fleur Anderson's private Members' Bill on banning plastic in wet wipes.

• 51:04Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good. Well, we should return to private Members' Bill in a future, future podcast. It's something I know a little bit about, but let's maybe just do our final transition, which is to the, to the US. I mean, one of the, I've just come back from the United States and one of the reasons I'm particularly bewildered at the moment is I've just done a seven hour time difference change. I'm speaking to you from Amman in Jordan. But in the US, it's very striking how different the debate is. So European gas prices now at about $60 a thermal unit in the UK and Europe. And in the US, it's about $9 a thermal unit. And the headlines for the New York Times when I was leaving was all about oil prices coming down. Crude oils come down from $130 a barrel down to

• 51:45Rory Stewart?

  $90 a barrel. So in the US, a very different story and a story that actually is playing out quite well for Biden, who's had a quietly good summer. Again, when I was, we were talking about this a few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the midterms were going to be an absolute bloodbath. Now, we don't want to be overly optimistic, but with some luck. The midterms may be less of a bloodbath, may still lose the house, but it may well be that they don't get as many crazy make America great again people coming in, they don't lose as many seats as they might, and that's for a whole series of things coming together. That's January the sixth and Mar-a-Lago now beginning to have a real impact on Trump's popularity, even though some of his base continue to frantically defend him.

• 52:30Alastair Campbell?

  Just if we move on from that, how do you square that with Liz Cheney's defenestration in Wyoming?

• 52:36Rory Stewart?

  I think that was shocking, but it was predictable, and I think probably in Republican states, it is still true that they are far more Trumpian than they were 10 years ago. But I think talking about the midterms, we're talking about marginal shifts, and the marginal shift is moving away from Trump. It feels less plausible that Trump is going to be able to have a serious run at it next time, just for the moment. I mean, there's a lot of luck involved. I think also Dobbs, the ruling on abortion will mobilize the Democrat base much more when you come to the midterms. People are really, really angry about that, and I think a lot of people are going to come out to vote and organize voting that might and otherwise.

• 53:20Rory Stewart?

  And he's seen as inflation is down in the US at the moment, again, whether that will continue, but that's a good, good thing for him. And of course, we talked about his big climate bill, which has been quite well received. So, and he's seen as done well on Ukraine. So generally speaking, Biden's in a slightly better position than he was in a few weeks ago, which is encouraging for all of us, I guess.

• 53:43Alastair Campbell?

  No, there's no doubt about that. And we started out at the Beyond Borders Festival. There was a guy there from the New York Times who came up to me and said, I just want to, I want to thank you and Rory because you keep promoting the New York Times as a great newspaper.

• 54:01Alastair Campbell?

  So and they had but they had a piece. I think we mentioned it. They had a piece recently, which was essentially, I think it said something like you said, is, you know, whisper it quietly, but Joe Biden is actually doing rather well. And I think sometimes with these very, very, very high profile politicians, of course, people focus on the the miscommunications and and what have you. But for a guy of his age, he's still got extraordinary energy. And he's kind of out there pumping.

• 54:27Rory Stewart?

  But I think if he's listening to the program, we must do all we can to deter him, deter him. Please, President Biden, if you're listening, Mr. President, do not try to run again. This is catastrophic. This is not going to be not going to be good for the Democratic Party.

• 54:41Alastair Campbell?

  But make sure you find somebody very, very, very good and help them.

• 54:49Rory Stewart?

  Good. Okay, I think on on that great bit of advice, which I'm sure he's going to take, I think we're ready for a wrap. And we look forward very much to talking tomorrow on the Rest is Politics question time.

• 54:59Alastair Campbell?

  Lovely to talk to you, Zaveri.

• 55:00Rory Stewart?

  Thank you. Bye bye.

• 55:04Speaker 05

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 55:14Speaker 06

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 55:20Speaker 07

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there. That's what.

• 55:25Speaker 06

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 55:28Speaker 07

  I'm not the first then.

• 55:29Speaker 06

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 55:34Speaker 08

  Espolón Tequila. It arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead. Espolón Tequila. Balanced. Delicious. Perfect for nights out, nights in, and people who like to drink tequila. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth. Then hold on tight. 100% agave, 0% ego. Espolón Tequila. For a real margarita. Ride the rooster.

• 55:58Speaker 06

  Espolón Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026. Compaia America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.