3. Zelenskyy's humanity, Lebvedev's parties, and Eton

Who is winning the communications landscape in Ukraine? Alastair and Rory discuss the importance of soft power, the sacrifices needed to free European dependency on Russian oil, the most intimidating politicians, and whether private schools like Eton have a healthy impact on British society. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Goalhanger Podcasts 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/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  Well, hello and welcome back to episode three of The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:50Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think there's any getting away from the fact we've got to start with Ukraine.

• 1:54Rory Stewart?

  Alistair, a couple of things on that. One is, could you give us a bit of sense what you're up to today? Because I believe you were at something related to Ukraine, or maybe indirectly related to Ukraine this morning.

• 2:04Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it was very indirectly in a way, because it was the grandly titled Soft Power Global Summit at the Queen Elizabeth Centre in London. And actually, I saw somebody on Twitter took a picture of the huge banners outside and said, "Satire is dead. How can they be talking about soft power?" All this hard power is going on in Ukraine. But actually, it was very, very interesting to get a sense of, you know, the audience was mainly, I think, diplomats and media and think tanks and so forth. There were quite a few ex-prime ministers there. But what was interesting to me, America came out top, as it often does, but it actually fell down the soft power rankings during the Trump period. It was back up from number six to number one. We and Germany were second and third.

• 2:48Alastair Campbell?

  But what I found really interesting was that China had jumped from eighth to fourth, and it had passed in the process, France, Japan and Canada. And Russia had made the top 10 for the first time. It had gone from 13 to nine. Now, bear in mind, the work on this is over 100,000 interviews around the world. Okay. It was done before Ukraine. Ukraine, by the way, is 51st. I suspect if you did it today, it would be right up there. So, but what was interesting to me is something we talked about last week is that, you know, the dictatorships have been, they have been exploiting and using soft power very, very well.

• 3:29Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing, isn't it? I mean, I think it's extraordinary how much has changed just in the last couple of months and how much more confident now countries like Britain, the US, Europe are feeling in foreign policy. But if you took it two months back, you could really argue that the last almost 20 years had been about the rise of populism, authoritarianism. Many of the countries I worked with in Africa turning away from democracy, looking towards countries like Dubai, even Saudi Arabia for inspiration. It's really striking, but there are deep resiliences. I mean, I'm feeling more optimistic now, actually, about the West than I would have done two months ago. I mean, I think this is also why Putin got it wrong. His analysis, which he was getting from his intelligence people two months ago,

• 4:13Rory Stewart?

  would have sounded pretty plausible. They would have said to him, look. The truth of the matter is, NATO is weak and has no real interest in getting involved. Biden has just had this humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan. He's running a very isolationist government. The US doesn't want to be a world policeman. He would have said that the European Union was divided. He would have heard that Germany was too dependent on Russian gas to do anything and was never going to spend money on its military. And he would have heard, and he did see this, of course, in the opinion polls he was given, that run by his own intelligence agents, that Zelensky was unpopular in Ukraine and the Ukrainian people wanted to get rid of him. So he would have received, and he

• 4:54Rory Stewart?

  also would have been told that Russia had this amazing cyber capacity, incredible information warfare, special forces stuff, and that China would bail him out. That was the impression that he got when he came out of the Winter Olympics. So it's really an interesting example of how leaders can screw things up, because those were all very plausible hypotheses two months ago. And what we've got to think about is, how did he get it so wrong?

• 5:15Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there are also hypotheses that he wanted to believe, and he's surrounded himself with people who will tell him what he wants to believe. I still think, if you read between the lines of what the Americans have been saying in the last few days, they clearly think that the Chinese have given that commitment in some shape or form. And I think that does take us into a completely different place, a quite a worrying one.

• 5:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, we don't quite know about China, do we? Because one of the mysteries about what's going on with China is around the question of, does the Chinese regime want to get involved? And there was an amazing op-ed that's just been published in the American newspapers, apparently backed by the Chinese, which seems to be arguing against Putin. At the same time, you get bits of Chinese state media putting out very, very extreme nationalistic messages. So how we make sense of these two different strands? And I guess it shows that somewhere within the Chinese state, they're not quite sure whether to see this as an amazing humiliation for the West, or whether to see it as a potential opportunity for China. Because probably the only country in the world that could now

• 6:21Rory Stewart?

  pose as a mediator in Ukraine is not Israel, it's not South Africa, as South Africa's been pretending, but it's China.

• 6:30Alastair Campbell?

  Turkey?

• 6:32Rory Stewart?

  Turkey, well, they tried, didn't they? But I think Erdogan's slightly been given the cold shoulder by Putin.

• 6:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I find it extraordinary. We're almost into the third week now. It is a bit alarming how it's just becoming a little bit normalized to wake up and see a new block of flats being demolished, a new residential area on fire. And, you know, the one thing I've worried about the whole way through is that Putin does kind of, he is somebody who will play the long game. And, you know, I just have a little concern that people will will tire of it, want to move on to something else, and the agenda suddenly slips into a different place.

• 7:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and also that we are really struggling to understand what's going on here. I remember, I was just looking back at the parliamentary debate in 2014 and remembering that Lavrov had promised the then Foreign Secretary that he wasn't going to invade Crimea three days before he did. And how even then we had very, very little good intelligence on Crimea, Ukraine. And how our conclusions, even after that, were that Russia had entered a new world, that it wasn't going to be about tanks and heavy fighting, that Russia was now in a universe of hybrid warfare, cyber, information warfare, little green men, special ops.

• 7:51Rory Stewart?

  And now we're looking at something that feels like, you know, the Second World War. It's kind of grinding urban tank battles.

• 7:58Alastair Campbell?

  But that was, that was, the stuff that you mentioned there, that was the warm-up act. That was part of the hybrid war. That was him, in a sense, seeing how much you could get away with. And, you know, Boris Johnson had an article in The Telegraph this week, his favoured choice of propagandist bullshit. And the headline was something like, you know, Johnson says we made a terrible error over Putin. And talked specifically about how we kind of let him get away with Crimea. Well, yeah, we did. And, you know, why was anybody who said that maybe that was the time to start taking action against Putin, that was the time to start sanctioning some of these people that he had rampaging around London life? Only now is he doing it.

• 8:39Rory Stewart?

  It was, well, it was amazing. I mean, I remember that very well because I was, I remember being called into National Security Council around Crimea. And the

• 8:47Rory Stewart?

  Very strong sense, being led by the US administration and Obama, that they were being very, very strong. They believed that they were imposing all these sanctions and that Putin had done something unbelievable. He'd broken European borders for the first time since the Second World War. And all these economic models suggesting in six months he'd been bankrupt and brought to his knees, and the United States refusing to recognise what he'd done. It was amazing how weak our response now looks compared to what we've done. And that's something that's worth talking about, because actually, sanctions have changed. If you'd asked me about sanctions, I almost would have said the last time they worked was South Africa. And that actually, they've been a real failure with Crimea, they're a failure with Syria,

• 9:29Rory Stewart?

  they were a failure with Myanmar, with Burma. But this new style of sanctions is really interesting. This getting into the swift mechanisms, going after the payment systems, going after the technology, and the way in which the United States is able to use Silicon Valley to totally take to pieces the Russian economy. It's something we haven't seen before, and I think will mean that these types of sanctions are going to be used much more in the future. And other authoritarian regimes are going to respond in one of two ways. If you're really big, like China, you will try to build a whole system which is protected from that. But if you are, for example, an authoritarian ruler in, I don't know, Sub-Saharan Africa or Latin America, you're not going to be able to afford to do that, and you will be feeling very, very worried indeed.

• 10:12Alastair Campbell?

  I think we could have done without Elon Musk's challenge to Vladimir Putin for a duel. I'm not sure that necessarily took us that further forward in relation to the take. No, I agree with you about sanctions. I think the West was pretty slow to get going, but now it will be having an effect. Even that, though, I wonder how divorced and how distant Putin is from it, whether he's really getting the pictures of what's happening.

• 10:36Rory Stewart?

  Well, I've been getting into the details of what would happen with oil and gas sanctions, because this is something that's been puzzling me for two, three weeks. Is it or is it not possible to get Europe off Russian oil and gas, to stop paying Putin what is now a billion euro a day, getting a billion euro a day from us for oil and gas? And the answer is, there's a global undersupply, right? So nearly 2% global undersupply. So prices were already skyrocketing, and Putin knew this. One of the reasons he timed these invasions, this was true of Crimea for this, was that he knew we were already in trouble on energy. It would be very, very difficult to completely take us off gas. I mean, have a huge impact on industry, impact on heating. But what we could do is get off Russian oil.

• 11:22Rory Stewart?

  And if we did it, it wouldn't be like going back to the Second World War. It'd be more like a Covid response. If you, for example, made all the cars in Europe meet a speed limit of fifty five miles an hour. Or if you even went back more radically to what we did in the early seventies with the oil shortage, which is make cars with even number plates drive on one day and odd numbers on the other day and the rest of the time carpool. You could reduce your consumption by enough to remove about half a billion dollars a day from Putin's revenue. But the question is, are we up for it? I mean, we're all happy talking about no-fly zones. We're happy, you know, making grand statements. But are we really prepared to make those kinds of sacrifices to bring this to an end?

• 11:58Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting you say that because when we first, when we did the first episode, I think you were very much in the position of, you know, we've got to cut all the oil and gas now. And I was a little bit worried about that, not least because I just heard Scholz's speech about why that would have been, in his view, catastrophic for the German economy. I don't think the, our leaders, Biden, the European leaders, I don't think they've even begun to prepare public opinion for some of those choices. I think they're still in that kind of, you know, we're war leaders, we're standing by plucky Ukraine mode. But you're absolutely right. This cost of living stuff is going to be, and the impact on industry is going to be huge. And again, will we still be quite as robust in our mentality and our thinking about this

• 12:43Alastair Campbell?

  when we start to realise that, you know, this really is having an impact on our own standard of living?

• 12:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but there are things we can do. I mean, I was also, I'm really down at the moment on the British glass industry, which has been selling this nonsense for years that you basically can't reuse glass containers. It's absolutely extraordinary and they hire senior politicians to go around trying to convince the Treasury that it's much more efficient to just make new ones. You could save nearly two percent of our industrial energy use if you started reusing containers properly. And actually, the technology's there for these things to be reused a hundred times. It happens a lot in Europe, as you know. In fact, actually, many of us used to reuse glass containers when we were younger. So there are things we can do to cut. And I think there is an amazing opportunity here to be smarter about our use of energy. And I also think that

• 13:29Rory Stewart?

  What Covid has shown is that governments can do much more radical things than than we've been used to believing.

• 13:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 13:35Rory Stewart?

  But if they really asked us to do it, we could do it.

• 13:37Alastair Campbell?

  So you would you were you still in Parliament? Would you be joining those MPs who have criticised Boris Johnson for going off to talk to the Saudis about getting them to help with energy supply?

• 13:47Rory Stewart?

  No, I'm afraid the only way that we'll make it through is by increasing our energy supply from other countries.

• 13:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 13:53Rory Stewart?

  The only way that we'll be able to cut off Russian oil is if we can increase production from North America and from OPEC.

• 14:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I kind of agree with that. Your turn.

• 14:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, I here, let me try, let me try one more thing. One more thing to come in on you. I'd like to know what you think about the communication strategy. I know it's a bit boring for you because you're always being asked about communications. But give us a sense of, as somebody who has thought about this probably more than any other person on the planet, what do you think about the way in which Putin's played it, Zelensky's played it, and Biden, I guess, has played it?

• 14:30Alastair Campbell?

  Wow. Look, I think Putin's communications has always been about using every means at his disposal, including his body, including his face, including his hands, including his body language, including his military, including his media, including his judiciary, is to emanate a sense of strength and power. Now, he does that very, very effectively. Obviously, it's not easier when you've got complete control of your media, but he does it. He wants to scare people, and he does scare people. One of my favourite stories, well, favourite, one of my most revealing stories about Putin. You know the story about when he brought the dog into the meeting with Angela Merkel?

• 15:12Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 15:13Alastair Campbell?

  He was briefed in advance that Angela Merkel was bitten as a child by a dog, and she's terrified of dogs. And if you Google pictures Putin Merkel dog, it will come up, and you'll see there is terror in her eyes. And he has got this self-satisfied smirk on his face. So I would have to say, purely looking at it from communications standpoint, Putin is kind of on message with his own brand. Where it becomes impossible to defend on any level is the extent to which he now lies about everything that is happening. Zelensky, I think, has just been a revelation on so many levels, and I think actually his communications has been phenomenally good. I think he

• 15:58Alastair Campbell?

  He looks, given the stress that he must be under, he still looks strong and he looks like a leader. He's got amazing empathy. I don't know if you saw that visit he did when he was pinning medals on some of the wounded soldiers in the hospital.

• 16:12Rory Stewart?

  In the hospital. I thought it was really wonderful, wasn't it? And one of the moments that struck me most was that there's a moment of silence. He's just looking at the guy in the bed and the guy's looking at him. And I thought, very, I don't know any British politician who would have the, the sort of confidence and humanity to just have that moment of silence.

• 16:29Alastair Campbell?

  I had exactly the same reaction. I thought that that is the point at which Boris Johnson on the, on the hospital visit puts on the yellow jacket and the hard hat and does the double-handed thumbs up, you know. And I think that, I do think that the contrast in, in styles between somebody like Johnson who sees leadership almost as a game and something that he's acting out, I, I get the sense of, in Zelensky, a real kind of, not just a courage, but an authenticity about his character, which comes through. I think that does come through with Biden. I think that Biden, I think, you know, Biden does have a kind of core and an authenticity that comes through. But I do, I do worry that just how often he does seem to kind of slightly lose the, lose track of what he's saying and lose the

• 17:14Alastair Campbell?

  words. And so, yeah, he's, he's, he's, and he's not been communicating with quite the regularity and consistency that I think he should.

• 17:23Rory Stewart?

  One of the things that, that is interesting about figures like Zelensky is the way in which the world can suddenly fall in love with them. And, and the danger that we don't know everything about the kind of politician he's going to be in the future.

• 17:37Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, for sure, for sure.

• 17:38Rory Stewart?

  As, as we did, of course, with Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar.

• 17:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:41Rory Stewart?

  And indeed, you know, the tendency to give a Nobel Prize to the president of Ethiopia shortly before he launches.

• 17:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'll, I'll, I'll give, I'll give you another one next door. When I was a journalist, this was back in the eighties now, I went with Glenn Iskinak for War on Want. We went to Eritrea. And they at the time were fighting for independence and Isaias Afewerki was this kind of amazing charismatic Che Guevara type rebel leader. And honestly, I wrote stuff about him that you would have, you know, any PR would have died to get the sort of coverage that we gave this guy. And he is now, he's kind of on a par with Lukashenko, how long he's been there, his brutality and so forth. So I'm not, we have nothing

• 18:30Alastair Campbell?

  to suggest that Zelensky is like that. But you are absolutely right that sometimes you can see the leader, you're so desperate for them to succeed as we were with the Eritreans. And the guy now has just become a complete and total monster.

• 18:43Rory Stewart?

  And of course, in some ways, often when a leader is emerging in a very difficult environment, the middle of a war, with real kind of nationalist sentiment going and ethnic tensions emerging, religious tensions emerging, and they're fighting corruption and they're fighting violence, they're put in an environment where, particularly over time, power does corrupt.

• 19:04Alastair Campbell?

  For sure, for sure. I've got to say, the thing, on the communications side, the thing that I really liked in the last few days, and it was actually started by my friends in Albania. I think I've told you before, I do quite a lot of work within the Balkans with the Albanians and the Kosovans. And the Alban, the mayor of Tirana, Eriyane Velijev, has renamed the street on which both the Ukrainian embassy and the Russian embassy and the Serb embassy and the Kosovo embassy, they're all on this street, which has now been renamed Free Ukraine Street. And, and, and the Lithuanians have now followed suit. And they've got the Russian embassy now on a Ukrainian Military Heroes Boulevard or something. So I was in Ireland the other day trying to persuade the Irish that they

• 19:49Alastair Campbell?

  need to do that.

• 19:50Rory Stewart?

  To do the same. Tell us about Dmitry Peskov, who's Putin's spokesman, and your sense of, of him and how he operates.

• 19:59Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's a very big part of the the whole Putin story. I think he's been with Putin pretty much from the beginning. Um, he, I guess he would be the person doing the job that I sort of used to do for Tony Blair. Um, my my strongest memory of him was at a a press conference in the Kremlin, where I can't remember what the issue was, but I said to Peskov that it wasn't really going in the way that we wanted it to. And I basically said, do you think there'd be any chance of getting a question asked on the lines of, because I knew what Tony wanted to kind of put out there. Peskov just sort of, he didn't even leave my side. He just nodded at this journalist that was in the pack.

• 20:41Alastair Campbell?

  And it was like he'd obviously lined them up with different questions that he might want them to ask at a certain point. And he sort of just nodded at this guy and then he got him called and then he asked the question and and Tony was able to sort of do his thing. He's also somebody who, I mean, if you look up, if you Google his kind of wealth, um, he had an extraordinary wedding and, you know, vast opulence. Uh, he was one of the ones, I think, by the way, that his daughter, a bit like Abramovich's daughter, his daughter tweeted criticism of the of the of the invasion and and that didn't stay up for very, very long. Um, but he's he's, look, he's very, very plugged in. He's been a big part of the whole thing of sort of trying to make a theatrical display of Putin's power. He's

• 21:24Alastair Campbell?

  very clever at that stuff. Um, but he'll be, I guess, I think he'll be worried now. I think he'll be a little bit worried that this this is, and I suspect he is in that position. I don't think I ever lost the ability to be able to speak truth to power with Tony Blair, even though I'd been with him for, you know, over a decade. But I I'd be very surprised if Peskov is is up to staring into Putin's eyes and saying, listen, boss, this is not going well.

• 21:49Rory Stewart?

  Give us, give us an example of of of what it felt like speaking truth to power to Tony Blair. Is it, was there a moment that you can remember where you felt this is going to be difficult, but I'm going to have to go in and do it? What what was, what was an example of that?

• 22:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I have to say on Iraq, and by the way, I'm reading your book at the moment about Iraq, which I'm thoroughly enjoying. Well, enjoying is the wrong word, is bringing back some pretty bad memories, to be absolutely frank. And it's also underlining to me, I remember that you once, this is going to sound a little bit incestuous, but when you interviewed me on your the previous podcast that you did, Rory, and I can remember you asked me a question about whether, when we were sitting in Number 10, did we really have a sense and a proper understanding of what was actually happening in the country post-invasion when you were there. And as I read your book, I can't remember what I said to you at the time, but as I read

• 22:45Alastair Campbell?

  your book, I think the honest answer has to be no. But anyway, on Iraq, I do remember, look, it made absolutely no difference to the decision, but I do remember once, sitting down with Tony, and I wasn't saying it from a critical standpoint, I was just kind of saying, can we please stress test this? And I actually, I remember saying to him, look, if, when push comes to shove, at the end of this, this doesn't go well, and it's the only thing that you were ever remembered for, is it really worth doing? I remember saying that. And Tony's saying, it's always worth doing the right thing if you think it's the right thing to do. And then I think on other things, on policy, I was always pretty much in broad agreement with what Tony, where

• 23:30Alastair Campbell?

  we sometimes disagreed was a lot of personality stuff, you know, when he was keen for somebody to be brought in, moved up, moved out. It was a lot of that stuff that sometimes we would maybe have a stronger argument. But on policy, I was broadly in agreement with that. But I saw myself as doing that kind of stress testing, and Jonathan Powell did the same, and Sally Morgan, Angie Hunter, we all did this kind of constant stress testing of what he was so sure about.

• 23:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's, I mean, that's very interesting. I mean, I'm thinking about this because, obviously, as a minister, I had special advisers who were doing comms and who were doing policy advice. But whether we ever got into that full Stress testing on policy, I'm not sure, because often people were very, very busy trying or felt, and maybe this is, this was wrong, but felt very busy trying to manage the media, manage number ten, get the stories out, and probably didn't really feel they had the time to get into the depths, the kind of policy stuff.

• 24:30Alastair Campbell?

  But that's interesting, so there we were with the guy at the top, I think we did more of that than we did the former.

• 24:37Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 24:37Alastair Campbell?

  And I think that made, I think that made the media management much easier.

• 24:41Rory Stewart?

  Much easier because you've been through all the arguments yourself.

• 24:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Rory Stewart?

  My, my, my memory was that I would sit and I'd try to explain, for example, that I was trying to get rid of short sentences in prison. I wanted to make sure, that's something, sorry, David Gork had been leading in the department, but between us, we very much believed that sending somebody who had shoplifted and was a heroin addict to jail again and again, I met somebody in Bedford who'd been in something extraordinary, like nine times in a year, was doing no good for them, no good for the prison, no good for anybody. But, and, and actually, the team did a really good job defending us and preparing number ten. And when the Daily Mail went after me and said Minister gives green light to criminals on the front page, everybody was ready and it didn't, didn't throw us off course. But

• 25:26Rory Stewart?

  what didn't happen, I guess, is them trying to get into very detailed conversations about how we were going to make this work. Those conversations were, were happening with the civil service. And I guess they just had to trust David Gork or trust me to have done that homework and really knew what we were doing. But we weren't really having those conversations with the people who were directing communications.

• 25:46Alastair Campbell?

  I've got to say, by the way, I was on a long flight yesterday and I read in one sitting, cover to cover, a book that somebody sent me last week, um, called Criminal. And it's written by a woman who worked for a decade in social care work inside prisons. And it is the most devastating indictment of our prison system. It's utterly horrific. And I completely agree with you. As you know, I go into prisons and, I mean, the, most of the people in there just should not be in there. And they get, we send them in, we send them out. It's the biggest, and she, this woman, she actually got a fellowship. Um, I'm actually going to suggest to the New European that they serialize the book. I think it's absolutely brilliant.

• 26:31Alastair Campbell?

  She got a fellowship to go and look at prison systems around the world. And she describes these prisons in Norway where they, their absolute focus is rehabilitation. And twenty percent, the, the, the reoffending rate is twenty percent.

• 26:45Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's horrifying. It's completely horrifying. And uh, it, it's, it's the most disgraceful thing in British life. I mean, much worse than anything that you ever see in a hospital or a school. Our prisons, which is shocking. And I remember uh, going on to the, the wings at Pentonville and I, there were, it was unlocked, so there were three hundred guys on four landings unlocked at the same time. Credible noise, whole place very crowded. And I was trying to talk to the governor, I was then the prisons minister, and coming towards me was this very big guy shouting, fuck, fuck, fuck, like this. And he came up to us and he stuck his head right next to the governor and he went, fuck the governor.

• 27:27Rory Stewart?

  And the governor kept trying to talk to me, right? And he said, did you not hear me? I said, fuck the governor, like this. And then he wandered off. And the governor said to me, um, that's Johnny, he's had a bad day at the GPs this morning, you know, it's a different. And I just remember thinking, this is insane. I mean, there are three hundred people watching this and they feel very, very unsafe. This is not a place that is remotely in control.

• 27:50Alastair Campbell?

  And by, and by the way, a lot of them, they would have been remand prisoners, they wouldn't even have been convicted.

• 27:56Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely, not even convicted. That's another thing, right? You can be in prison for a very, very long time, waiting for trial without having proof guilty.

• 28:03Alastair Campbell?

  The government lengthened it during Covid.

• 28:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, absolutely. And then you could actually be found innocent and it could have turned out those months, yeah.

• 28:09Alastair Campbell?

  Lots of them are.

• 28:10Rory Stewart?

  Um, but, but it made me think, like, Tessa Jal, I remember saying that, and I, maybe this is a common thing amongst politicians, but she said it very well. She said when she went into a hospital, the first question she asked herself is, would she put her mother in that hospital? And I felt imprisoned, God, I would not want to put my brother in that prison. I would not want to be in that place myself.

• 28:32Alastair Campbell?

  No, I mean, you wouldn't want, nobody would want to be imprisoned. And these guys in Norway, Norway, that I wish I could remember this name, it's Allison. Uh, I'll, I'll, I'll put it in the notes. But the the thing about the Norwegian guys, they didn't want to be in prison. But at least they knew when they went to those prisons, even though the Norwegian equivalents of Daily Mail, actually, they don't, they're lucky enough not to have one. But the Norwegian papers would talk about, you know, holiday camps and all the stuff that we do, we do here. But the point is, the state was saving money in the long term by turning these guys into citizens who could go out and do stuff. We, we have, you see them coming out of Pentonville. They've got forty-odd quid, whatever it is in their pocket. They've got nowhere to live. They've got no job to go to.

• 29:14Alastair Campbell?

  They've got a probation service that is absolutely on its knees because of a decade of austerity. And we're expected to believe that prison works? It's utter nonsense.

• 29:23Speaker 02

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• 30:36Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the second part of The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell, and Rory Stewart. And, look, we said right at the start of this, Rory, that we were going to agree about things but disagree agreeably. We haven't actually disagreed about much. So I want to enter into the arena, something about which I feel 100% confident we will disagree. And that is the subject of private education, and in particular, the disastrous role of Eton College, of which you are a former pupil in our national life. I think your old school has done as much damage to this country as frankly I can take, discuss.

• 31:21Rory Stewart?

  So, I'm very interested in this. So this is something that, and I've been following this, that you're really, really wound up about it. And I'd love to sort of get into what it is that gets up your nose so much. I was looking at the opinion polls, something like 65% of the British public, if you ask them at the moment, are yougov, reckon they want to have the option of being able to send their children to private schools.

• 31:42Alastair Campbell?

  That's because about 100% of national newspaper editors went to private schools, used private schools, and therefore say that private schools are the panacea for our education, and thereby justify, through their government, whose cabinet is, by the way, 64% privately educated, justify the fact that they don't put in the investment into the state system that we need.

• 32:01Rory Stewart?

  Yep. No, there's a lot of that going on. But it's also true that a lot of the public think that they would like to have the option, if they could, of sending kids to private school. It's also interesting, I was reading an article, actually written by your partner, about this, where she pointed out that more children go to private school as a percentage of population in France and Germany than do in Britain, which interests me. I wasn't expecting to find that.

• 32:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think that's because their religious schools tend to be private, don't they? I think that's the main thing. But here, I think it's, the thing that gets up my nose about it, to use your phrase, is that, look, people, the article that Fiona's written, which is this week's New European, which is the front cover with an absolutely blistering headline that I'm very, very fond of. Is that people dress it up as I'm giving my child the best chance they can get, et cetera. But what it's always been about is buying, is is those who have privilege, those who have wealth, those who have power, buying an assurance that they're going to get more. And I just think that is fundamentally the cause, one of the biggest causes of inequality in British society.

• 33:04Rory Stewart?

  Would you, would you abolish them?

• 33:06Alastair Campbell?

  I would in an ideal world, but I think politically it's impossible, not least because of the supporters, you say, and also because of the way that they've, that they've developed. I would certainly, this idea that they're charities, I mean, please do me a favour.

• 33:18Rory Stewart?

  And would, did Tony Blair think about getting rid of them? Why did he not push ahead?

• 33:21Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, Tony would not. Tony thought that Fiona and I were just sort of, on education, Tony thought Fiona and I were old tankies. Um, but I just, I really believe that. I really think if I look at, you know, the coun- the one country that is effectively in Europe that has essentially outlawed private education, made it virtually impossible, is Finland, which ha- which is regularly at or close to or often at the top of the PISA rankings. Once you have everybody invested in the state system, you get the education that you're talking about. What you don't get, what you don't get are the fifty tennis courts and the nineteen cricket pitches and the thirty rugby pitches that you had at Eton.

• 33:59Rory Stewart?

  But, but one of the problems about looking at these Scandinavian analogies, and we were just talking about it with prisons, weren't we? I, I got very excited as the prisons minister by what was happening in Scandinavian countries, Sweden, Denmark with prisons. And then I found that they had a ratio of one prison officer to every prisoner.

• 34:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 34:17Rory Stewart?

  And prison officers had to have a master's degree.

• 34:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 34:19Rory Stewart?

  And they were paid about fifty thousand pounds a year.

• 34:21Alastair Campbell?

  Same in Norway, it was a three-year course.

• 34:23Rory Stewart?

  Um, and so to do this properly, the real key, I think, is funding these things properly. I mean, the real key is that people spend far, far more per prisoner in those systems on prisons and far, far more on state education.

• 34:37Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Rory, if I can bring you back to Eton. Right, so your your fees as a boarder at Eton were greater than the average salary of the British of a British person.

• 34:48Rory Stewart?

  And actually, interestingly, the only thing that was greater than it is the amount of money we spend per prisoner per year. It sends more, costs more to send send a prisoner to Pentonville.

• 34:56Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I'm noticing, I'm noticing, it's either a psychological tick that the minute I mention Eton, you think of prisons, is that what it was like? Or is that you just don't want to talk about it because deep down, you agree with me.

• 35:10Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's let's try to think about the different things. I mean, I think one thing is that it is a phenomenal school and it produces some horrible people, right? Obviously, I think Boris Johnson is a terrible human being, terrible prime minister, and he went to the school. But it's also something that produces, obviously, Nobel Prize winning scientists, very distinguished mathematicians, actors, sportsmen, because, of course, the truth is that you put that much energy in, you can have phenomenal teaching.

• 35:39Alastair Campbell?

  Correct.

• 35:40Rory Stewart?

  The real, the real challenge is, how do we improve teaching across the board? Now, Fiona may be right, that part of that, your partner may be right, that part of that is parents putting pressure on schools. That's one of the arguments that was made around getting rid of private schools. Although the number of, partly, and this is something I think Fiona also says in that article, is that the number of British kids going to private schools is actually relatively low compared to other countries. So it's still the case that, and and partly because these schools are increasingly international, they're increasingly full of people from abroad.

• 36:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I I do think that one of the reasons why state schools are underfunded, why the political class doesn't care enough about them, is because particularly when we have a conservative government, they are vested in in having arguments to justify the private sector, not least for themselves, but also having this argument, you know, as you've just done, we say this is how you develop excellence, you have these excellent schools. But I would, I I think if if all are, if we were investing in all of our schools, we'd be getting Nobel Prize winners out of state schools.

• 36:44Rory Stewart?

  Well, we were, we were actually, unfortunately, I mean, this is going to annoy you even more, but the truth is, we were getting more out of grammar schools.

• 36:51Rory Stewart?

  So grammar schools were producing an extraordinary meritocratic explosion. If you look at the number of professors, Nobel Prize winners, distinguished civil servants. My father was in the civil service the early seventies and every permanent secretary in the civil service at that stage had been to a grammar school, not to a private school, not to a...

• 37:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, as Fiona says...

• 37:11Rory Stewart?

  And fast forward to the nineties, there are many, many of them are privately school educated.

• 37:15Alastair Campbell?

  But it's very, it really is interesting that when you think about it, that, you know, we're meant to be sort of more meritocratic than we were. And we have, I think, probably the most useless cabinet we've ever had in our history. Sixty-four percent of them privately educated. I saw a wonderful tweet from Ricky Gervais the other day, talking about Johnson and Cameron. And he said, "When is this country ever going to understand that the words 'went to Eton' should not qualify as an endorsement?" Now Rory, I would accept that you're a thoroughly good bloke. I would accept that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a thoroughly good bloke. I'd expect that James Landale is a nice guy, the BBC guy. But our public life is absolutely littered disproportionately with people who went to this school. Three times more prime ministers from Eton than the entire history of the Labour Party. Madness.

• 38:00Alastair Campbell?

  It's not that good a school.

• 38:02Rory Stewart?

  No, it's not that good a school, but remember those fifty-four prime ministers are going back to the early seventeen hundreds, when there weren't that many schools around.

• 38:09Alastair Campbell?

  Now, let me ask, let me ask you this question then, because this is the thing for me. I don't, I, I do have a thing about, I don't go and, I don't do talks in private schools. I've done some, you know, just because of maybe special circumstances, a friend or something like that. But the reason is because private schools never struggle to get really good speakers to go and speak to them. State schools do, so I go and speak to state schools, so does Fiona. But, and I don't criticise the kids because it's the parents that are making the choice for them, okay? So here's one for you Rory, you've got young kids, where are you going to educate them?

• 38:42Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's a hell of a question and I have to think about it. At the moment, we're, we're living in Jordan and we're paying for their education here in Jordan and I had to make a difficult decision on that. I fantasized about putting them in a local Arabic school up in Umkayis in the north of the country. And frankly, the standard of education in Jordan is terrible. And I would be really worried about my kids going to that school.

• 39:04Alastair Campbell?

  What about if you were here? What about if you were in the UK?

• 39:07Rory Stewart?

  I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. I think the, because if you think about, let me think about, I was thinking about this when you were talking. I don't have private health insurance. I use the NHS like most people do. Because the NHS is really, really good, right? One of the questions is what's happened in the British education system? And a lot of this is to do with investment. What's the difference between the NHS and the education system? Why is it that somebody like me would never consider getting private health insurance? But might consider if I could afford it, and I probably couldn't, I don't think I could afford it. But I might be very, very tempted if I could afford it to put my kid in a private school.

• 39:43Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's probably that it's about your kids and people feel very, very emotional about their kids. I actually feel with our three children, all of whom went to.

• 39:52Rory Stewart?

  Do you have private health insurance, incidentally?

• 39:54Alastair Campbell?

  No, I have private health insurance through travel. That's the only thing, if I travel, but not, not, no, I don't know. In fact, when I had my breakdown in the eighties, I think there's a massive hospital bill still unpaid because I was the only member of staff who refused to have private health insurance. I ended up in this incredibly expensive private psychiatric clinic. I don't know who paid, but I didn't. But I think with, with education, I actually feel my kids got a better education by going to state schools in North London. With, you know, my daughter's best friend was from Kosovo and, you know, I just think that gives you a more rounded education. I think the middle, the middle class parental angst of, you know, they've got to get through this grade, that grade. I mean, my, our eldest boy went to Baelior.

• 40:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Alastair Campbell?

  Through the, through the state sector. So I think, I just think you get a better education and I hate the way that our parts of our political class and much of our media class projects this picture of state schools as kind of hellholes, where if you walk in, you're likely to get stabbed. I'm not saying you are, but I'm saying that's the picture.

• 40:56Rory Stewart?

  That, that's insane. But of course, it's also true that it does depend which parts of the country you're in. And there are huge advantages if you are Alastair and Fiona's son and you're living in North London. Going to a state school is not quite the same as if you're living in Eastington Colliery. So the whole thing is, I mean, it's, it's a.

• 41:12Alastair Campbell?

  I agree. I agree. But I think that all of those schools and, you know, I did, Fiona and I did a talk with the head, some group of head teachers the other day and. I think they feel, I think they do feel, it's the same in the prison system. People feel in the public sector at the end of their tether. Because the government talks the talk about the investment they're putting in and we're world leading on everything. And these guys who are having to deliver it, they're on their knees.

• 41:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 41:37Alastair Campbell?

  Whereas the teachers, the teachers at Eton are not on their knees.

• 41:40Rory Stewart?

  No, no, that's totally true. The education system is such, it's so bizarre because it would seem from the outside to be a total no brainer. I mean, the number one obvious thing to invest in for productivity.

• 41:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Rory Stewart?

  For the economy and just because it's a good thing to do.

• 41:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 41:57Rory Stewart?

  Um, and it's shocking. It's absolutely shocking. And I, I, I

• 42:03Rory Stewart?

  and I remember thinking this, um. Also because it's just so tough, it's so brutal being a teacher.

• 42:09Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 42:10Rory Stewart?

  I was talking to a, a teacher here in Jordan who teaches in my, my son's school here. And she's come over from Portsmouth with her partners to teach in Jordan in this little, little English speaking private school in, in Oman. And she's just so relieved to be teaching again because she just felt so pressured by the paperwork, by the bureaucracy, by the crap. She really was losing her love of the profession. I mean, it's and that, that I think is the thing that I felt most strongly as a constituency MP.

• 42:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 42:42Rory Stewart?

  Is whatever your debates about budshits and private schools. I just kept meeting her teachers who almost seemed on the edge of breakdowns. I'd never seen.

• 42:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I, I listen, I, I know, I know head teachers have had breakdowns. Uh, in fact, when, when our son Callum was in, um, was in trouble with alcohol, I remember the first place he went to, there was a head teacher in there who actually I bumped into on the bus a few weeks ago. She's now fine and she's back teaching. But she had, she had a complete psychotic breakdown. And honestly, these head teachers, I think they are on the edge. And I think we expect them, I think parents expect them to deliver miracles, the government expects them to deliver miracles. Their staff expects them to deliver miracles. And I just do not think they're getting the support. And I think because we've now had Cameron Johnson. Who've had the experience of the education that you've had, I don't think they have

• 43:31Alastair Campbell?

  any understanding of what it's like running a tough state school in the inner cities.

• 43:36Rory Stewart?

  No, it's miserable. And I think you just have to work backwards from if you've got people as important as teachers feeling that stressed and miserable.

• 43:46Alastair Campbell?

  And the fact is, you say that, you know, you've got a teacher there from Portsmouth, who feels that at least going to Jordan, she can kind of express herself.

• 43:53Rory Stewart?

  She can teach.

• 43:54Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, on a more positive note, the best thing I saw on the social media this week, I don't know if you saw it, it was a film of two young Ukrainian children being taken into school in Italy.

• 44:07Rory Stewart?

  I missed that.

• 44:07Alastair Campbell?

  It was unbelievable. They were, they looked incredibly nervous. They were walking up with two adults who were, I think one must have been a teacher. And inside, the doors opened and the entire school was inside waving Ukrainian flags and playing Ukrainian music. And it was just the most incredible moving thing.

• 44:27Rory Stewart?

  Now, Alissa.

• 44:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, go on.

• 44:29Rory Stewart?

  Go on, I'm going to be mean, but I've, I noticed there are lots of these questions coming on Twitter and we promised to do some questions.

• 44:33Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, we have.

• 44:34Rory Stewart?

  There's a guy called Yes It's a Tank. That's an amazing Twitter handle.

• 44:38Alastair Campbell?

  It might be his real name, you just don't know.

• 44:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, with a name like that, he's asking, obviously, who's the most intimidating British politician you have met? I tell you, the most intimidating Twitter handle I've ever met is Yes It's a Tank. Who was the most intimidating British politician you've met?

• 44:53Alastair Campbell?

  When I was a journalist, I did find Margaret Thatcher quite intimidating. There's actually, you could find it somewhere on YouTube, there's a, there's a press conference that somebody posted where I asked her this question about a story that was in the Financial Times. And her answer was just basically, it was sort of, I've got better things to do with my time than read the newspapers just on the off chance that you might ask me a question about it. I did find her quite intimidating. I think, I don't know, it's quite weird, this thing about intimidation, because when we did the Steve Wright Show on Radio Two, you said that you found me quite kind of intimidating. And I don't feel I'm intimidating, but I know a lot of people say that I am. But I'll tell you who I saw. I never felt intimidated by him, but I saw people genuinely

• 45:38Alastair Campbell?

  being, feeling intimidating in the presence of, in the presence of John Prescott.

• 45:43Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 45:43Alastair Campbell?

  John, John definitely used to intimidate people.

• 45:45Rory Stewart?

  That, that wasn't just because of the sense that this was a man who could land a blow with his fist.

• 45:50Alastair Campbell?

  This was even before he landed a blow with his left jab in Wales, the only thing that anybody remembers about the 2001 election campaign at all. I'll give you a million pounds, Rory, if you can remember what our winning slogan was for the 2001.

• 46:03Rory Stewart?

  No, no, all we remember is, all we remember is that.

• 46:06Alastair Campbell?

  It was schools and hospitals first, the most forgettable election slogan ever.

• 46:12Rory Stewart?

  Just missed a million pounds, could have paid for all that kid's education. My, my sense is that none of, just to answer, yes, it's a tank, that none of the people I knew in politics were actually intimidating at all. They seemed, compared to the politicians that I was used to in Afghanistan or Africa, seemed very, very kind of weak. I mean, I remember thinking that any headman in an Afghan village carries themselves almost like a king with such kind of dignity and kind of gravitas. And that, I remember when I first met David Cameron, thinking, goodness, you know, you just don't even carry yourself in the way that someone running a village would carry themselves in the developing world. And boy, oh, boy, do I remember with African leaders, you know, often you'd go into these meetings and you'd be told that, I don't know, the,

• 46:58Rory Stewart?

  I, I remember going to see Kabila in DRC and being told, this is just a guy who spends his time playing video games, or Kenyatta, where he's just drunk and, you know, just the son of his father. But the presence of these guys when he walked in, and they're not the best, right? They're not the most famous of the African leaders. They're, they're not, you know, Museveni in Uganda, for example, is a kind of legend, or, but they just, you got a sense of a very old fashioned type of power, of people who are really understand how to carry themselves. And celebrities on a level that you can't imagine. I mean, they, they, you know, if you want someone to open a little shopping mall in Africa, you, you bring a politician and there will be 20,000 people in the street.

• 47:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. I, I, I think the, you're absolutely right about the, the, the whole thing about the, the presence that people are able to, to carry. I do think that also intellect can be intimidating sometimes. I actually found, I, I did find sometimes Bill Clinton, intimidating is the wrong word, but you sometimes sort of thought. I'm really enjoying watching that brain work in the way that it's working and that's got a political power as well. To be fair, I'm afraid Putin's got it as well. I think Putin has a Putin is very Putin can be very intimidating.

• 48:15Rory Stewart?

  He's got the sort of it's this strange sort of dead eyes. I remember I got into Tripoli the day that Gaddafi had fallen. And one of the things that people remembered most about Gaddafi is that when he spoke to you, he trained himself to focus his eyes three inches behind your head.

• 48:31Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 48:32Rory Stewart?

  So he gave the impression he was kind of boring into your soul. I was very I tried it when I got home, but my wife didn't think it was very amusing.

• 48:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, no, I don't want to go there. I'm not going to go to where you your wife go with your body language. I think that, no, the thing about I said last week and I wrote a thing in New European about all the different sort of meetings with Putin. And there's one where he was, he was taking the Mickey out of Igor Ivanov, who was the foreign minister at the time before Lavrov. And I remember Lavrov Ivanov was trying to make a serious point and Putin absolutely cut him dead. And I said in my diary that Ivanov had these extraordinary dark hangdog eyes, whereas Putin's were piercing killers blue.

• 49:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 49:20Alastair Campbell?

  And he did have very, very, very he had killers eyes.

• 49:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 49:24Alastair Campbell?

  So that was, you know, 15, 20 years ago, I was recording that as what his eyes were like. And I think people are people are seeing that now. Listen, there's one here from Paul on Twitter. Lots of politicians seem like robots, talking like they're reading off a script or dodging hard questions because they're terrified their words will be picked apart. They come across as inauthentic. What's the solution?

• 49:43Rory Stewart?

  Well, part of the blame, of course, is often put on your shoulders, because

• 49:47Alastair Campbell?

  Wrongly, of course.

• 49:48Rory Stewart?

  But what they're doing is they are being trained in message discipline.

• 49:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 49:54Rory Stewart?

  Stick to the message. And they're told, I remember Lynton Crosby, the great kind of Australian pugilist, who can be quite an intimidating man, saying, you're not here to be a commentator, right? You're here to get the message across, repeat, repeat, repeat, right? Which is why, you know, obviously, the public will get. And he says, it's just at the moment when you are actually completely bored of what you're saying, you're feeling sick with saying it, that you're actually beginning to get the message across.

• 50:20Alastair Campbell?

  That is rule one.

• 50:21Rory Stewart?

  That is rule one, right? And it's your rule, isn't it? Right? So not surprising if the politicians come across sounding a bit robotic. If they've been sent out there, and of course they're being promoted, right? Alastair Campbell or Alastair Campbell's equivalent is sitting there in number 10, watching their performance on Question Time or Newsnight or whatever it is, and are giving them ticks for landing, whatever the line is.

• 50:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but hold on Rory, this is where this is where it's all kind of misunderstood. Landing the same message repeatedly is not the same thing as saying the same thing. I'll tell you who my favourite communicators were when we were in, when we were in government. In terms of landing a message, the three that I'm going to mention, we had lots of good communicators, but the three I'm going to mention are John Reid, Jack Cunningham and Margaret Beckett. And the reason for that is you could phone Margaret Beckett or John Reid or Jack Cunningham in the car on their way to the studio to do an interview about a subject that they hadn't until then properly been briefed on. And you would tell them the facts, you would tell them the message that you were trying

• 51:23Alastair Campbell?

  to land, and they would arrive in the studio and they would have assimilated it and they would then communicate it in their own way. And they would speak like human beings with perfectly rounded sentences. The ones that I can't stand, and we see lots of them with the, you know, these Tories at the moment, you know, say that we're world leading on the vaccines, say that we're world leading on refugees, so, and they just go on and say we're world leading, right? And they look utterly idiotic because we know they're not.

• 51:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's completely, it's completely bizarre, but the way it emerges is people are perpetually focus grouping messages. So I remember George Osborne saying, he'd come up with this phrase, the long term economic plan is working, and everybody was sent out to say the long term economic plan is working. And they wanted it word for word because they believed that there would come this time, just at the end of the election, where a BBC camera person would say, you know, why are you voting Conservative? And some lady would say, some normal member of the public would say, because the long term economic plan is working, right? So they wanted to try to.

• 52:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, or, or, or he's getting Brexit done.

• 52:22Rory Stewart?

  Right, or he's getting Brexit done. You get the slogan and you wrap it up. I, I think it's, it's horrifying because I think what it does is it contributes to the inability to think. Critical thinking actually involves you really stopping to wonder what you actually think about the issue. But it is pretty fatal in politics to be seen to be thinking on your feet, because the risks are very, very high.

• 52:45Alastair Campbell?

  I don't agree with that. I really don't agree with that. I, I, I think that the politi-, like, for example, I, I watched Question Time last week. Heller, Thorne and Schmidt, Danish, ex- Danish Prime Minister was on. Nadeem Zahar, he was on, coming out with all the usual bullshit about we're world-leading, we're doing a great job and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I actually think in a programme like that, the politician who conveys a sense of thinking about questions, conveys a sense of actually authenticity about their thought processes, they don't have to go against the government message, but speak like a human being.

• 53:16Rory Stewart?

  But, but it's not, not quite that easy. I remember being on Question Time and somebody saying, from the audience, audience question, just found out that in order to call the Universal Credit helpline, it costs you fifty pence a minute to make the call. Do you think that's acceptable? And my immediate response was, no, I think that sounds wrong. We're going to have to look into that and sort that out. But I very much got the sense when I got back that nobody is amused by that in the party. Nobody likes the sense of somebody being up on a, on television and freewheeling in that way and saying that a bit of government policy is wrong.

• 53:53Alastair Campbell?

  I think they're wrong. I think they're wrong. And I think those who think that our system was all about control freakery, the reason that Tony Blair was a great communicator, and the reason that in his own way, John Prescott was a great communicator, was because they spoke as they spoke. They, they had very different styles, but they could, you know, they could, they, they, they spoke like human beings. And I, and I think the trouble, when I see Rab, Cleverly, Alex Sharma, when he was the sort of flavour of the month, they just speak like robots. They literally, the, the question is right, Paul's right, they, they speak like robots.

• 54:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 54:26Alastair Campbell?

  And, you know, the public just, I think, just turn off and that's the problem. That's why somebody like a Farage comes along. And can command support because he's a right wing guy who's kind of always speaking my language.

• 54:38Rory Stewart?

  Or, or in fact Boris Johnson, who never stuck to a message really in his life, or Donald Trump, or any of these people. Um, but let's get on to another question. Raymond Dalcras, a month ago, looked like. Prime Minister Johnson's days were numbered with letters and no confidence going in. Has the Ukraine crisis saved him? What do you reckon?

• 54:54Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, well, the truth is that the only people who can. Uh, kick him out are the Tory MPs. So I guess the, the question is, have the Tory MPs changed their view of him as a result of Ukraine happening? I think they might have done. Uh, but I think they also, see, I, I think the Lebvedev story is interesting in this regard. Because I've always felt with Johnson, if he does survive party gate. For whatever reason, even though he's broken his own laws and he's lied to parliament, I mean, both grounds, he should be out. There's no doubt about that. And I, I really think he, he should have been gone by now. But if he does survive that. The one thing I'm absolutely sure about is he will very quickly be into another situation. It might be Lebvedev. I've, he, he's, I'm sure he's lied about Lebvedev.

• 55:36Rory Stewart?

  The, the Lebvedev thing is absolutely bizarre. I remember just after I was appointed as the Foreign Minister, Minister of State and Foreign Office. Deputy to Boris Johnson, somebody came up to me at party conference and said. Would you like to come and spend the weekend with Lebvedev? Lovely mansion, I think on Lake Cuomo. There are going to be girls. It's going to be great. We've flown over.

• 55:56Alastair Campbell?

  What sort of girls?

• 55:57Rory Stewart?

  And I said, I, I, I believe the girl at the moment was, I can't remember, it was, it was, I think it was a model. Um, anyway, I said, you've got to be kidding me, right? I've just become the Foreign Minister, right? There's no way I can possibly go. The guy's father's a KGB agent. I never met the man in his life. I don't want me flown off to some veteran site. At which point the person said, oh, no, no, don't worry. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary's coming. So I I've been sort of puzzled and bemused by this whole thing for years now. And I think

• 56:27Alastair Campbell?

  Was that the famous one where he disappeared without

• 56:31Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think I didn't exactly. And I I didn't go, but I think it's the one which Jemima Goldsmith describes, where one of the guests takes her top off at the table. The but the idea that the Foreign Secretary would think that this was a kind of respectable thing to do with his weekend is just kind of kind of staggering, right? And it's like, remember the Profumo affair? The guy

• 56:55Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, I was just about to say.

• 56:56Rory Stewart?

  Lost his job for much, much less than that.

• 56:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he had a relationship with a woman who was also having a relationship with a KGB guy. But Boris Johnson, it strikes me, is more in bed with Evgeny Levodov than Profumo was with what would have been a casual relationship at the time.

• 57:18Rory Stewart?

  But it's very, but the other thing is, I mean, sorry, I realise what I'm saying. And maybe this is is making it too complicated and too weird for people. But I began to realise the pressures that push people towards this when I was running for the London Merrill thing, because Levodov, of course, owned the Evening Standard. And he invited me to come and meet him. And in the end, the meeting didn't take place, but not not through my fault. He cancelled the meeting. And I still feel there but for the grace of God go I, because you can absolutely understand how people think if they're running for office, be very useful to get the owner of the Evening Standard on side.

• 57:54Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. But why, what is he doing owning the Evening Standard? How is that allowed to happen?

• 57:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Alastair Campbell?

  You know, and now and all this thing at the moment about about, I did a wonderful event with Delia Smith the other day. She's got a new book about about the meaning of life called You Matter. And we were talking about Abramovich. And she was, she was saying, why has it taken a world war? For people to wake up and think it might not be a great idea that this guy who's a mate of Putin's owns one of the biggest football clubs in the country. You know, so I find the Lebvedev thing extraordinary. I think if, just imagine, just imagine if that was a Labour Prime Minister and had that relationship with a Russian son of a former KGB guy. And Lebvedev himself, I think, and it's Putin who says, you know, once you're in the KGB, you're never out of the KGB.

• 58:39Rory Stewart?

  But also imagine almost any other Prime Minister, Labour or Conservative, right? I mean, I still think that I was absolutely right in saying there's no way I'm going on holiday with Lebvedev.

• 58:50Alastair Campbell?

  Now, listen, George Osborne wasn't the first of a few. And Michael Gove has a nice little cosy relationship with Chelsea Football Club when he needs tickets and all the rest of it. Did you see his tantrum in the Commons yesterday, by the way?

• 59:02Rory Stewart?

  No, I missed that. No, let's wrap on that. Go on, tell us what happened there.

• 59:05Alastair Campbell?

  He had a right old tantrum about, you know, I'm sick to death of being told that, you know, we were responsible for the hostile environment. It was all Labour's fault. Twelve years they've been in. Apparently it was Labour that's, you know.

• 59:17Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's just finish on that. But that is probably, I can absolutely see from your point of view, the most irritating thing. And from my point of view, the most peculiar thing I've ever seen, which is the ability of Boris Johnson to somehow pretend that he's only just got into power and that everything that happened for the last 11 years is just sort of nothing. I mean, really, really weird. Really, really weird. Okay, now, as for this being terrific, I'm off to, actually, I probably shouldn't tell you where I'm going this week because of security issues. But I'll tell you when I'm back next week.

• 59:48Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, you're going to [bleep]. Great.

• 59:50Rory Stewart?

  No, thanks, Alison. Just gonna go. I'm getting blown up. Thank you very much.

• 59:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, you won't get blown up. You'll be fine. And you've survived trickier situations. I'm thoroughly enjoying your book on Iraq. We should talk about it in more detail another time. I'll tell you the bit that really had me laughing out loud was when you were having a meeting with somebody who was telling you not to trust anybody from a particular region. And you said, but you're from that region, this is who you mustn't trust me.

• 1:00:16Rory Stewart?

  That's good. That's very good.

• 1:00:19Alastair Campbell?

  That was great. All right, Rory.

• 1:00:22Rory Stewart?

  Thank you. Have a great day.

• 1:00:23Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.

• 1:00:24Rory Stewart?

  Bye.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:00:34Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze again, that's what.

• 1:00:51Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:00:55Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only if it is October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.