19. Question Time: Ukraine, Tony Blair, and foreign languages

Join Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart for the third edition of 'The Rest is Politics: Question Time', where they answer your questions on the situation in Ukraine, the role of former world leaders in politics, and their multilingual capabilities. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Editor: James Hodgson Producer: Dom Johnson 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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• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  So, welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:48Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:50Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, we're getting close to into the four figures of questions every week. Where do you want to start?

• 1:56Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so there was a good question, I thought, which I haven't got right in front of me, but it was a question about Macron and Ukraine, which I think caught your attention. And I think the question was, as far as I can understand, are we being too soft? On Macron, obviously you're a fan of Macron, but there's an argument that actually he has misplayed it and that his policy towards Putin has been naive.

• 2:17Alastair Campbell?

  I saw that, it was from a guy called Ned Lamb and it did catch my eye. Am I too soft on Macron? Possibly. Macron didn't have a great week with the elections, not yet sure whether he's going to get a parliamentary majority. He won the elections in one level, he's going to get the most seats, but whether he gets a majority. And I do think on the whole Jupiter thing, I think when the war started Macron possibly thought that he could bring his charm and his intellectual firepower to bear with Putin, he could maybe push him more than he has. If you remember, he got quite a lot of grief for constantly having these very long phone calls and so forth. And then he said these things which really annoyed the Ukrainians. He said that Putin must be humiliated, must be, find him a good way out.

• 3:00Alastair Campbell?

  He then said it should be at least 20 years before the Ukrainians are allowed into the EU, we shouldn't bend the rules, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. They did say this week that they want the Ukrainians to win the war and he's going there, I don't think it's any secret, he's going there this week with Schultz and Mario Draghi. But yeah, I think Putin is definitely trying to play a divide and rule game within the European leadership and maybe to some extent he's been successful. Also, it's very interesting during these legislative elections, both Mélenchon, the populist leftist, and Le Pen, the populist rightist, they both have kind of hardened up in their support for Putin. It's really been a bit weird to watch. So whether he's reflecting something of that, I just don't know.

• 3:44Rory Stewart?

  It's also, I wonder whether it's actually not a mistake for him to say publicly that Putin needs to emerge with his kind of face or honour intact, that you don't want to humiliate him, that that's probably something that you might want to talk about internally. It's an important thing to think about when you're negotiating with someone, but it's probably not something you want to say publicly, that he's almost revealing too much of his thinking and strategy, more than he needs to.

• 4:10Alastair Campbell?

  There was a great question on Ukraine from Alexander K. We hear a lot about Putin's endgame, but what's the endgame for the West? Are there really any political or only military solutions? And how do we avoid Russia becoming a nuclear ISIS? That's pretty scary.

• 4:26Rory Stewart?

  Pretty scary. And we're in a pretty scary situation, as you know, in Ukraine at the moment. So the Russians are now closing in on a Severodonetsk. And they're also closing in on a place called Lusychansk. And in both cases, this is a place about 100,000 people. In both cases, that would make the end really for the Ukrainian presence in the Donbass. And the Ukrainian troops are increasingly surrounded. They're running out of ammunition and supplies. And you're really beginning to feel the force of the Russians. I think this is something we've discussed previously, that Russia, for the first 100 days, was such a disaster. There's a temptation to completely underestimate them now. But of course, they do learn lessons. They've had a lot of generals killed.

• 5:10Rory Stewart?

  They've had a lot of people killed. They're a very, very big country. And they've got a huge amount of resources behind them. And I'm afraid that that's part of the problem here. What is the answer to this? Well, it's going to be very, very difficult to dislodge Russia from those areas once they've taken them.

• 5:27Alastair Campbell?

  I thought Putin's latest public pronouncements, he's looked unbelievably smug. He's got that sort of smugness back. He did an event with some young people the other day. And it was the anniversary of Peter the Great's death. And I think we've discussed before that he sees himself in the line of Peter the Great, Stalin, Ivan the Terrible. These are the only leaders that he sort of respects. And he was boasting about that his historic role was to take back the lands we lost. And he just looked incredibly smug. He's got that sort of leaning back in the chair, sort of mixing smugness and menacing. It's a deeply unpleasant mix.

• 6:04Rory Stewart?

  And it was a very weird speech, wasn't it? Because he actually even talked about invading Sweden, or at least Peter the Great invading Sweden.

• 6:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's very, I think he's very troubled by this, the movement in Finland and Sweden on NATO membership and on some of the noises that have come out of there. Although his friend Erdogan is trying to help push them back.

• 6:24Rory Stewart?

  And then there's the problem of the United States trying to get, and Europe trying to get onside, still failing to get onside, Gulf States, India, Israel, in really lining up to isolate Putin. And that's a...

• 6:40Rory Stewart?

  You know, that's worrying, particularly Israel and the Gulf. I mean, the fact that the United States influenced the Middle East seems to wane so much that they can't really get those countries who they've provided so much support for for so many years to ally with them on this issue.

• 6:55Alastair Campbell?

  There was another question, actually. I can't remember who it was from. It was, was the whole thing about stopping Ukraine join the European Union, which, you know, I wonder whether that is what has pushed Macron to say it'll be 20 years before they get in kind of thing.

• 7:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, it definitely was, wasn't it? I mean, I think the answer to that question is that what worried Putin much more than NATO, he was actually bluffing when he said that he was worried about the NATO thing. He didn't think NATO was a threat to Russia. The threat is that if Ukraine joined the European Union, there would be an example right on the Russian border of a prosperous, more democratic, more European state. And that's really what triggered him in 2014.

• 7:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. Do you want to pick another question?

• 7:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, here we are. So, Johnny Dearden, how can the government balance the benefits of rewilding and conservation with those of keeping land and communities alive with work and affordable housing?

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  Definitely one for you.

• 7:45Rory Stewart?

  Well, let me, let me try that one. So people will have followed that actually the government's turned back on the commitment that Boris Johnson made to the conservative environmental movement and indeed to his wife Carrie, which is that he was going to go for a lot of subsidies for more rewilding in Britain. And that has been shelved. And I think one of the reasons for that is something we've talked about in the past, which is that people are beginning to really worry about food security. It's amazing in Britain. We went from, I think, 12 million acres under production down to 9 million acres under production, taking land out for environmental schemes. And the government's drive was to do ever more of that. And I think this question around food security, the fact that we're

• 8:29Rory Stewart?

  not beginning to produce enough food to eat, you know, we hover around 50% of the food we eat is actually produced in the United Kingdom is, is making them rethink.

• 8:38Alastair Campbell?

  We had a little dispute yesterday over Ireland, Northern Ireland. And there's a question here.

• 8:46Rory Stewart?

  Tiny dispute, yeah.

• 8:48Alastair Campbell?

  Tiny. We had a little, a little, I mean, were we, were we a couple wrong?

• 8:52Rory Stewart?

  I think there's nothing that listeners like more than two middle aged men shouting at each other. That's one of the things.

• 8:58Alastair Campbell?

  I wasn't shouting. Were you shouting at me? I wasn't shouting.

• 9:01Rory Stewart?

  Instead of me arguing with you, why don't you, why don't you inform me about something?

• 9:04Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I thought that was just a very agreeable, robust exchange of views rooted in our, in our factual assessments and our passions.

• 9:13Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 9:13Alastair Campbell?

  It's okay. Don't be upset Rory, don't be upset, please. I don't want to think that I've upset you, that would really, really ruin my day.

• 9:21Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 9:21Alastair Campbell?

  It would, honestly, honestly. Now, when you were, when you were in government, did you have anything to do with something called the Treasury Devil?

• 9:27Rory Stewart?

  Yes. Yeah, yeah. Tell us about it.

• 9:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the Treasury, so the Treasury Devil has got to be the weirdest job title on the planet. And it's the name for a senior outside lawyer who is brought in to advise the government on really, really, really tricky stuff. And at the moment, it's a guy called Sir James Eadie, E D, E A D I E.

• 9:46Rory Stewart?

  Who I, who I know a little bit. I remember him advising us, actually. Yeah, yeah. He'd come in as an advisor. I sat in meetings where he advised us on stuff back in the day.

• 9:52Alastair Campbell?

  Right. So he's the guy who, if the Protocol Row, not our Protocol Row, but the Protocol Row, if it ended up in court, he's the guy who would represent the government. Okay? Now, if you wind back, you may remember when this all first became an issue for the government, they said they may have to break international law quotes in a limited and specific, specific and limited way. And that led to some pretty senior resignations, Advocate General, the Treasury Solicitor. And the lesson the government took was that if you're going to break the law, as they're now doing, don't be so stupid as to say that you're doing it. Okay? So the basic plan is unchanged. They're breaking the law. But they went out and said, we must find the lawyer who's telling us that we're not actually breaking the law. And they found the lawyer. Do you know who it is?

• 10:33Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 10:34Alastair Campbell?

  Suella Braverman, the Attorney General. Okay? The one who thinks that Boris Johnson's wonderful. And she invented something called primordial significance, which rests on the idea, rests on the idea that the Good Friday Agreement's more than important than the Protocol, and, and the UK single market is more important than European single market. And this apparently has the nickname BBS in government legal circles, which stands for Braverman bullshit. Okay? It only stands a chance if it's understood there is no official advice to the contrary. So they decided not to ask Sir James Eadie.

• 11:10Alastair Campbell?

  But then they were told, I'm afraid you're going to have to ask Sir James Eadie because he's been involved in this the whole way through. So they asked him, but they asked him to, quote, assume that the policy is lawful. Okay, that was the instruction he got. So he thought, okay, I assume the policy is lawful. But he wrote his response in such a way that anybody who reads it is absolutely clear that he thinks their approach lacks credibility, isn't lawful, and is not legally solid. So having got the advice they wanted from the utterly political Suola Braverman, they now know there is a paper lying around which would almost certainly get raised in court. And there you would have acting for

• 11:51Alastair Campbell?

  the government, the man who is absolutely clear that what the government is doing is not lawful, which is a total, total mess.

• 11:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's amazing.

• 12:00Alastair Campbell?

  And when, when James Cleverly, the ill-named James Cleverly, was summoned to the House of Commons to explain this, he hid behind the whole, we never talk about legal advice to the government. But of course, that would be true in a normal, functional government, where legal advice doesn't leak. But this lot leak like sieves. So it's now out there all around the government and legal circles within government that James Eadie basically thinks this thing is absolute nonsense.

• 12:26Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing. And it's all, I, I, I saw the leak and it's all couched in this weird civil service language. But he says, he finds it more convincing reading the argument that it's breaking international law.

• 12:37Alastair Campbell?

  We know what that, if you're a journalist getting hold of that, I think you know what it means, don't you?

• 12:44Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful.

• 12:45Alastair Campbell?

  Which, this is Una McGarvey, which former politician has gone on to do most good in the world. Now, I would argue that both Tony and Gordon have actually done lots of good stuff on, not least through the work they do through policy development stuff. But I think I'm going to pick out Jimmy Carter on that. I think Jimmy Carter has been an extraordinary post-presidential president.

• 13:05Alastair Campbell?

  And he still sort of keeps going.

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  Amazing, amazing. And I think to some extent Mandela was probably the most dramatic example, wasn't he? I mean, he's somebody that you admire a lot and we've talked about a lot.

• 13:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he's dead though.

• 13:18Rory Stewart?

  He is certainly dead. We're talking about living politicians.

• 13:20Alastair Campbell?

  Al Gore, Al Gore, I think, has done some amazing stuff on the environment, power.

• 13:25Rory Stewart?

  Yep. And it's interesting how they do it in different ways. Gordon Brown, I think, has done it very, very quietly, very responsibly, very, very seriously. And there's been much less the kind of razzmatazz that surrounds, you know, Al Gore or some of the bigger celebrity politicians.

• 13:42Alastair Campbell?

  You don't, I'm detecting a not really liking Tony in you these days, Rory. I'm sort of just detecting something here.

• 13:50Rory Stewart?

  I'm fascinated by Tony Blair. I'm really fascinated by him. And I'm fascinated by the extent to which he remains so deeply, deeply involved in British politics and the way in which he has a, still retains an uncanny ability to seize headlines, seize debates, the way in which he'll suddenly take positions that are very, very timely or make a speech.

• 14:13Alastair Campbell?

  That's because he's strategic. They're both strategic.

• 14:15Rory Stewart?

  And it is, it is, it is fascinating. But I do sometimes, I've never, I tell you what I've never really forgiven him for. I tell you, let's get to the depth of my resentment. I've never really forgiven him for the fact that when Theresa May announced the withdrawal agreement, he was straight out there on that morning and he said, I'm forming an unholy alliance with Boris Johnson to kill this. We both agree that this is the worst of all worlds. Now, he thought that by destroying it, what he'd do is he'd have a second referendum and we could remain in the European Union. But what he actually did is destroy any chance of beating the ERG and Boris. And I thought that was really, really ill considered. And I thought it was catastrophic.

• 14:54Alastair Campbell?

  Would you, do you add me to the, to the unforgiven list? Because I'd.

• 14:57Rory Stewart?

  No, I forgive you because I, because I like and love you and I know you.

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  Now, talking of former leaders, Chris Murgatroyd, who was your most feared opponent in terms of quick wit? And I'm going to go there for William Hague. Of all the leaders that Tony faced, William Hague was the one who, in Parliament, in PMQs, got closest to even beginning to unsettle Tony. And he did it through his extraordinary wit. And the thing is, though, I think I may have told you this before, we disarmed him by developing a line about William Hague, that he was all jokes and no judgment. And as a result of that, he stopped doing the jokes and he stopped being witty, and therefore he was weakened. But he was, for me, the most quick-witted opponent. What about you?

• 15:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's very good, that's very good. I think being funny is really important. I mean, look, he's not a kind of necessarily big name, but I thought, for example, Chris Bryant was very good at being funny at the right moments.

• 15:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Rory Stewart?

  I think humour in Parliament is hugely important. I mean, it was one of the things that sadly went wrong for Keir Sarr and his PMQs. You remember, he said, as part of his intervention, "Oh dear." And the Tory backbench has suddenly caught on that and started saying, "Oh dear, oh dear," all the way through his speech. It's incredible how people got unsettled. Hey, here's a question for John Brown, same subject. Is there any value in PMQs? Questions are rarely answered, and it seems like it's more about theatrical performance.

• 16:23Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I think if we start saying there's no value in Prime Minister's Questions, we might as well give up on democracy. I think it has become very showbiz. What I used to like about PMQs when I was working with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, I used to see it as a strategic anvil. This is where strategies get hammered out. It's where you really find out whether you've got a strong argument or a line of attack or not. And I'll tell you the other thing it does. I don't think with this government, because I don't think this is a functional government, and I don't think Johnson functions as a functional Prime Minister. But Tony used Prime Minister's Questions as a way of driving the government machine. We would demand things from... I think quite a lot of government departments were terrified of us on Tuesdays and Wednesday

• 17:05Alastair Campbell?

  mornings, because we were demanding facts and detail and data and information and explanations. And we'd be going back saying, "This isn't good enough." And so I think that using Prime Minister's Questions, not just for the kind of half hour event that it is, but actually as a strategic anvil and a driver of government, that's where I think it was very important.

• 17:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And actually, it was the lesson that it took me a long time to learn as a minister. I'd probably been in seven, eight years before I realised that the most powerful thing that you have is using Parliament, using your public statements to take that mandate and use that with government and civil service, rather than trying to argue every point privately, point by point, inside your office, using those public moments to drive it through.

• 17:47Alastair Campbell?

  No, I was gonna say that the other thing I would say about that is that Prime Minister's Questions is, this is the other reason why I think Johnson's sort of lack of contact with the truth is a real problem, because one of the other things that a Prime Minister and a minister can say is, I cannot say that if it's not true. So go and get me the facts. And Tony was absolutely, he was, he would shout every Wednesday morning, I just want the facts. And you get the facts and then you can start to make the political argument.

• 18:13Rory Stewart?

  Okay, let's go for a break.

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• 20:05Rory Stewart?

  Coming straight back in from the break here, I think a lovely point that you made there about pushing for the facts. I think one of the things that I noticed sometimes with civil servants is that people, I'd ask them a question, they'd say, well, I don't think you really want to say that, minister. So they wouldn't give me the information and I'd have to push back and say, look, give me the facts and then I'll decide what to say. You can trust me not to say things, but I need to understand what the truth is behind this. I'm not going out there with you having concealed from me the bad news for fear that I might admit it when I'm on the public stage.

• 20:37Alastair Campbell?

  There's a great question here from Steve Miles. You know, we talked recently about how we were slightly downplayed Wales.

• 20:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 20:44Alastair Campbell?

  Steve Miles question, Netflix did an advert for a documentary about the mine, a film about the miners' strike, which they said took place in Wales, England. What impressions do you guys get of how Wales and the rest of the UK are seen around the world? Of course, it's not just, you know, I talk to people in Great Britain, British people who think that Northern Ireland is part of Great Britain, not the United Kingdom. I'll tell you the other thing, even the French, the French are the worst at this, they still talk about l'Angleterre, la reine d'Angleterre, le gouvernement d'Angleterre, as though Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't exist. It really, really gets my goat.

• 21:19Rory Stewart?

  Well, we're a complete model, aren't we, as a country? And I noticed that sometimes some of my colleagues use the word England when they mean Great Britain or when they mean the United Kingdom. It's, we are in a complete model. Right, here's a question for you. Lisa, I'm curious, as a languages teacher in a land of English speakers, what languages do you both speak and how and why did you learn them? Alistair, you're the language man.

• 21:41Alastair Campbell?

  I speak fluent French. I used to speak fluent German and I'm trying to get it back. I speak a tiny bit of Dutch and I speak a tiny bit of Gaelic. I learnt Gaelic as a child because my dad taught me, even though we were growing up in Yorkshire.

• 21:57Alastair Campbell?

  I speak French and German because I loved it at school and I went on to do it at university and I love speaking French and German. I wish I spoke Chinese and I wish I spoke Arabic, but I don't.

• 22:06Rory Stewart?

  And are you gonna, are you gonna? Are you going to try to pick up another language? You're going to deepen your Gaelic or try to pick up a new one?

• 22:12Alastair Campbell?

  Well, funny enough, I offered, I suggested this idea as a documentary. I'm doing a big TV project at the moment, which I'm not allowed to talk about. But I did suggest this idea a while ago of trying to do a thing where I would go up. I thought BB Scotland might have jumped at it, where I would learn, try and sort of speed learn Gaelic and see whether I could get up to a reasonable level because it's such a different language to English. It really is very, very different.

• 22:37Alastair Campbell?

  But I'd love to learn Arabic, but I don't know whether I'm a bit too old now. What about, what language do you speak?

• 22:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, I speak a lot of languages very, very, very badly and they're getting worse all the time. It's not like you, I didn't study them properly. I have studied at different times, I think 11 different languages.

• 22:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Rory Stewart?

  And in some of them I can kind of get by and some of them I'm like, somebody said it's like talking to an Uber driver who's been living in Britain for about six months.

• 23:00Alastair Campbell?

  What do you speak, which one do you speak best?

• 23:03Rory Stewart?

  I probably, I think my best language was probably Indonesian when I was really concentrating on it.

• 23:09Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 23:10Rory Stewart?

  And then probably French. Oh, Dary, I was fine chatting. I mean, I think my real strength, people like Shashana, my wife, get really annoyed with me because she is much, much better at the grammar, but she says I'm much better at understanding people. I can understand almost everything that anybody's saying to me.

• 23:27Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know the other day, I was watching, on the, on the day of the French parliamentary elections, I was, I was watching France, France 24, the English language version. And they had two French presenters and four French politicians who were all speaking utterly flawless English. And I thought, I can't imagine if we were doing, if there was a French version of the BBC, that we would be able to get four politicians who could speak fluent French like that.

• 23:58Rory Stewart?

  Am I right that Tony Blair spoke very good French, did he? Is that right?

• 24:01Alastair Campbell?

  Pretty good. He did a speech, one of the scare, the times I saw Tony Blair absolutely terrified was when he did a speech in French at the National Assembly. I think Tony would accept his French is not quite as good as mine, but it's better than most.

• 24:13Rory Stewart?

  Okay, here's a question from Sharon Metz. How can a green agenda sit next to the rising cost of living?

• 24:18Alastair Campbell?

  Go on.

• 24:19Rory Stewart?

  God blimey, thanks. I think it's a really, it's a really good challenge. Listen, the, the, the, the answer is that many of these agendas were not happening at a time when there were these kinds of economic pressures. So we have one example, which we talked about in yesterday's show, which is the, um, the, the challenge of trying to weigh up land use, you know, how do you balance rewilding against, um, productive agriculture? I think there are real questions, uh, faced in Germany for the moment, whether you use coal to generate power more cheaply when people are facing rising fuel prices.

• 24:53Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 24:54Rory Stewart?

  And I think sadly, it is going to put a lot of pressure on many of the expenditures we need to make on climate because there's always a tension between the short term and the long term. And that becomes much more intense when people are facing inflation at 10%.

• 25:09Alastair Campbell?

  The government has clearly diluted to the point of not irrelevance, but substantially diluted the Dimbleby food review. He sounded very dispirited when he was talking about it on the, on the radio the other day.

• 25:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. Okay. Jeff Spink, how will Putin's hunger strategy unfold? Are we going to have to ensure safe passage through the Black Sea with a naval presence and mind clearing capability? Goodness gracious me.

• 25:34Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, this is why I think the, we, we, we should be really focused on a longer term thinking about, about the whole immigration issue. I mean, I've come to the conclusion, this is all deliberate. And part of the consequence that he wants is to create famine and to create, um, even greater refugee, um, streams coming our way, coming to the, to the Western Europe. And I really don't think, we talked, we talked about food security in the context of the UK. Um, what is the global food security strategy? What are the UN doing? What are the, what's the World Food Organization doing there? And I'm not saying that as a critical way. I'm just asking that as a question.

• 26:12Rory Stewart?

  No, it's heartbreaking. You've probably been following that Somalia is now in its fourth year of drought and famine. And I remember, I suppose it was four years ago, being in hospitals in Somalia and seeing women bringing in babies who were dying, and women who'd lost a child crossing the desert on their way in. And if you're looking for an argument for international development and a reason why I backed the 0.7% and didn't want if it merged, you really feel it there. And you're going to feel it in Kenya. And very sadly, it's quite possible there's going to be rain, no rain this, the end of this year either in Somalia. And it's barely funded, as you say.

• 26:53Alastair Campbell?

  But it's quite, it's quite horrible to think that, I mean, even though we've had some really bad people in history and there's some bad people in the world today, but you've got a guy sitting there now who's thought, right, well, I've, you know, I was on the back foot for quite a long time, but I've got away with it. I'm still here. The sanctions aren't really destroying the economy in the way that they thought they might. The world is starting to get a bit bored with Ukraine. I'm fracturing the European alliance. The Americans are still sort of pumping all the weapons, but you know, I can sit that out. Meanwhile, if I start, you know, messing around with the grain, the flow of grain around the world from Russia and Ukraine, I can both, on the, from the Russian side, I can keep the economy going maybe, because you know, they're, they're also selling a

• 27:35Alastair Campbell?

  lot of stolen grain. They're selling stolen Ukrainian grain as well. But equally, I can, you know, starve a few people and they'll all, you know, they're going to have to start crossing borders and there'll be more chaos. I mean, it is pretty horrible to think that's what he's actually strategic, that's part of his plan now. It's awful.

• 27:51Rory Stewart?

  And I think, you know, maybe it's a way to conclude, but I mean, I think it's a reminder of how very fragile, vulnerable the world system is in ways that we maybe didn't acknowledge 10, 20 years ago, how interdependent we are, and how everything from feeding starving people in Somalia, through to keeping our semiconductor chips going, depended on a peaceful, relatively peaceful, open global trading system.

• 28:16Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I think we should, I think we shouldn't finish with that. It's a bit down. But can we finish with this one from Paul Heaney? When you two are working overseas, what is your actual job?

• 28:27Alastair Campbell?

  What kind of organisation is employing you? Well, I can say I'm absolutely self-employed. I travel around the world advising, speaking. I do a lot of my mental health stuff overseas. I'm actually off to Dublin tomorrow for a mixture of speaking and politics. So I'm self-employed, unemployed, call it what you want. What about you, Rory?

• 28:49Rory Stewart?

  So I've actually been mostly working abroad unpaid. I've been very, very lucky, which is that I was receiving a salary from Yale University to teach, and I make some money from this wonderful podcast. And that's allowed me to be able to volunteer for the last couple of years, working with a charity recently in Jordan with Syrian refugees and working with charities in Africa. At some point, if I, if I start, yeah, if I start doing more of it, I may start being paid.

• 29:14Alastair Campbell?

  Good. Well, that would be very well deserved as you continue to spread ode cologne, English ode cologne around the world.

• 29:23Rory Stewart?

  Thank you, Anister, and much love, and sorry about our argument yesterday.

• 29:26Alastair Campbell?

  Never apologise, Rory. It was part, do I have, look, do I have to keep teaching you to toughen up? You didn't need to apologise. You, you stood your ground, you expressed your opinion forcibly. You were wrong, but that's your prerogative.

• 29:44Rory Stewart?

  Thank you very much and goodbye.

• 29:46Alastair Campbell?

  See you next week.

• 29:47Rory Stewart?

  See you next week. Bye bye.

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