92. Prince Harry, Brazil's failed coup, and Myanmar’s criminal junta

Join Rory and Alastair as they record in person from Soho, discussing the fallout from Prince Harry's new book, the failed coup against Lula in Brazil, how the NHS could look to the Netherlands for reform, ghost writers, the Czech Republic, Myanmar, and much, much more. Show notes: Amanda Marcotte - The Conversation - 'Call it the Conspiracy Theory Congress: Things are about to get dangerously weird on Capitol Hill' TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, join the TRIP Plus Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. The New European: www.theneweuropean.co.uk/TRIP Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen 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/rustaspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to a very unusual live recording of The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:49Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Azte Camel.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  And for those listeners who, you know, would like to imagine where we are, we're sitting in a jazz studio in Soho. And we're being looked at by the very remarkable Gary Lineker. So we're all feeling rather kind of glamorous, really. So I'm feeling quite glamorous. You feeling glamorous?

• 2:03Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 2:03Rory Stewart?

  No, not feeling glamorous.

• 2:04Alastair Campbell?

  Gary Lineker doesn't make me feel glamorous. Last time, I've been here before because this is where we interviewed Helen Clark.

• 2:09Rory Stewart?

  That's it.

• 2:10Alastair Campbell?

  Where you were down the line.

• 2:10Rory Stewart?

  Coming down the line, yeah.

• 2:12Alastair Campbell?

  But it's quite cool.

• 2:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, I don't know how we're going to keep you off the drum set. That's the only thing I'm a bit worried about. Yeah.

• 2:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I didn't bring my bagpipes. You're in luck.

• 2:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 2:20Alastair Campbell?

  Um, now, I guess I reckon some of our listeners will be thinking, God, I hope they don't do the Harry stuff. Of course, there's been so much of it, but I think we should maybe briefly.

• 2:31Rory Stewart?

  What's your sense of what's going on with all that?

• 2:33Alastair Campbell?

  I am sick to death of hearing it. Uh, I thought it was very interesting that Happy Valley on the BBC beat ITV hands down in the ratings. I think a lot of people are getting sick of it. I said a few weeks ago that I've, I've actually generally been very sympathetic to Harry and to Meghan. I think they are. I think she has been the victim of racism and misogyny. I think he is a very troubled guy, and I think the trouble does go back to his mother's death. And I think the, the media are vile. A lot of the media are vile about them. But I think you do lose a lot of public sympathy and support when you're making hundred million quid

• 3:14Alastair Campbell?

  to make books and films that basically seem to be focused on trashing your own family. I think it's very, very difficult.

• 3:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it is very difficult, isn't it? And it all seems from the outside much more calculated. I mean, it's very clearly a very, very serious PR campaign, the launch of that book, the different language editions, the interviews that he's giving, the way. There's a real sense that this is somebody trying to make a big story. Yeah.

• 3:37Alastair Campbell?

  On a mission. Would you read it?

• 3:39Rory Stewart?

  No, I, I won't.

• 3:40Alastair Campbell?

  Because?

• 3:41Rory Stewart?

  Um, well, I find the whole thing pretty tragic. I mean, I'm, I guess, honestly, if I'm on the spade, I'm more on the side of the king and the Prince of Wales. I, I find this very uncomfortable. I've got a lot of sympathy for Prince Harry, but basically I, I think this is very, very disturbing and sad. And yeah, I don't, I don't want to see any more of this.

• 4:01Alastair Campbell?

  But the other thing that I've noticed, sort of checking on media around the world, I mean, it is global. I looked, I looked on French, German, Italian news sites yesterday, and it was huge. This story is huge around the world. Um. Now, I guess the one thing that I think comes out of that is, is that I think post the Queen's death and coming up to Charles's coronation, I think there's a lot of reflection going on about the royal family. And this now is where that debate is taking place. And I think that is quite a risk to the monarchy. I don't overstate that. I think they've survived worse. But I think if this is the basis on which the monarchy is being discussed, then it's doesn't really bode well.

• 4:42Rory Stewart?

  It's deeply uncomfortable. And it for somebody like me who thinks the monarchy is one of the things that actually functions well and has a good part in British society and actually helped us through, uh, somebody last night, I was having dinner with them, they said, they said, conservative parties played their joker and played their wild card, which I thought was a good way of describing Boris Johnson, Liz Truss. But anyway, the monarchy seemed to, monarchy seemed to see us through that.

• 5:07Alastair Campbell?

  What is, what is Sunak?

• 5:08Rory Stewart?

  What is Sunak?

• 5:09Alastair Campbell?

  Two of clubs.

• 5:10Rory Stewart?

  Two of clubs.

• 5:11Alastair Campbell?

  Is that a cheap shot?

• 5:12Rory Stewart?

  That's quite, well, it's not that cheap. I've done cheaper.

• 5:14Alastair Campbell?

  I've done cheaper.

• 5:15Rory Stewart?

  Definitely done, definitely done cheaper. So a lot of the news is around Princess Diana and the funeral. Um, and that's something you were famously deeply involved in. I mean, any thoughts and any memories of that? Anything that you've reconsidered about that period in your life?

• 5:28Alastair Campbell?

  I do remember everybody sort of saying, I'm talking about everybody within the establishment, as it were, within the royal establishment, everybody saying things like, oh, it must be so terrible for the boys. Oh, God, the boys, right? And saying that. So then when you square that against Harry, for example, saying that his father told him, sitting on the bed, but didn't hug him. Okay. Which I think to a lot of people sounds pretty unfathomable. Uh, your mum's just been killed in a horrible car crash. It's going to be absolutely horrific. It's going to be life changing in so many ways. So I sort of had a sense of, there was a narrative around the boys at that time. I certainly do remember the pressures that they came under to walk

• 6:10Alastair Campbell?

  behind the coffin. That again, seems to be something that has sort of settled in him. The, the one bit I read, I can't remember if it was in the book or in a newspaper or in an interview where he said that when they went, came down from Balmoral to that walkabout. When these people were touching, we noticed how they're wet, their hands were always wet, and it was because they'd been crying and he wasn't crying because he felt he couldn't cry because he wasn't meant to cry.

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  But that must have been bizarre to have everybody else crying when they didn't actually know his mother.

• 6:34Alastair Campbell?

  And shouting things about them. So I think, I get why he's finds this thing really, really difficult. I also think the other thing I've reflected on, somebody sent me this thing about, I listened to, when we were driving back from Scotland, I listened to Nicky Campbell phone in, this line emerged that he said he'd killed 25 members of the Taliban. And it was just soldier after soldier basically saying, this is terrible, you don't do this, it's just not good form, et cetera, et cetera. And people saying he'd done so well with his military record, Invictus Games, all the stuff he did with mental health, and that was all sort of gone for the birds. And so I was sort of listening to this and then I tweeted something about it. I'd completely forgotten that the story about him killing the Taliban had been out before.

• 7:15Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 7:16Alastair Campbell?

  And the headlines in these same papers that are now absolutely trying to destroy him.

• 7:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Alastair Campbell?

  Were all about hero Harry.

• 7:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:24Alastair Campbell?

  Hero Harry killed Taliban.

• 7:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:26Alastair Campbell?

  He's out there on the front line and he's really doing a man's job.

• 7:27Rory Stewart?

  And so that often happens, doesn't it, in, in politics and public affairs, which is that you say something 10 years ago, you say it again and people treat it as it's news and you can, I mean, I found this in my own life, I could get scandals out of something that I'd said five, 10 years ago and nobody had noticed and suddenly it's all over the newspaper.

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  But it's about the newspapers changing the prism. Back then, Harry was good, now he's bad. And therefore, the same fact or the same line can be used in a totally negative way.

• 7:54Rory Stewart?

  It's also about ghostwriters, isn't it? I, I believe the person who did this is also the person who did the amazing Andre Agassi autobiography, which I thought was incredible.

• 8:01Alastair Campbell?

  And has written an extraordinary memoir himself as well.

• 8:03Rory Stewart?

  And which begins with Agassi doing these punishing sessions in this three-quarter length court in Las Vegas with his crazy Persian father who can't afford a long enough yard, forcing the tiny Agassi to hit a thousand balls a day and all this kind of stuff. But I guess a lot of this will be shaped by the ghostwriter's sense of how these books work and what he does when he comes out of those interviews. So it's not surprising that the Agassi book is about a traumatized childhood and this book is also about a traumatized childhood because it's how the ghostwriter structures a book.

• 8:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, one of the questions we got this week was actually to both of us, whether we, whether, if we'd been offered the job as ghostwriter, whether we'd have.

• 8:39Rory Stewart?

  Have you ever ghost written a book?

• 8:40Alastair Campbell?

  I haven't. I came very close once with Dave Brailsford and I was also once approached by Roy Keane's then agent. For various reasons, neither of them, neither of them happened. I don't think I'd be a very good ghostwriter. You've hit the nail on the head of why it becomes difficult to be a ghostwriter because I don't know the guys. I could be doing a disservice. But you want to make this book as interesting as it possibly can be. Obviously, the raw material is going to be good, but Harry has talked about a lot of this stuff. And I wonder if some of these, the stuff that he's really being attacked from, attacked for now, whether it's stuff that maybe the publisher has been pushing for, the ghostwriter pushed for. And once you've sort of crossed that line into saying you've given somebody else permission to define the parameters of your life.

• 9:24Alastair Campbell?

  I think that becomes in its own way, a difficult relationship to manage.

• 9:27Rory Stewart?

  It is very weird, isn't it? And then you get this sort of serialisation and media stuff. I wonder how many people will read the book because they'll feel they've read all about it in the media. I mean, I'm actually worried about this. Like you, I've got a book coming out this year. And I'm very reluctant to let it go out to serialisation because I'm worried that what I hope is a book that people are going to read and enjoy will be picked up in a few newspaper headlines. There'll be a few sort of, I don't know, they'll pick out me being rude about Boris Johnson or rude about Liz Truss and that'll be the story. And then everyone will think, well, I don't need to read the book. I get it.

• 9:58Alastair Campbell?

  That's, that's an age old discussion that goes on. I think it goes a lot less with publishers now because the newspapers are paying a lot less for serialisation, which makes it easier to say no, I think. But the other thought I had through the whole week, listening to Harry and watching him do what he was doing, was I think I've said to you before that if ever there is a choice between money and reputation, always go for reputation. And I think that if it is, if they're really getting a hundred million quid, I think that's, I think they've made the wrong choice. I think they've made the wrong choice.

• 10:30Rory Stewart?

  It's a, it must be a weird temptation. No. Domestic stuff, reform the NHS, you've been thinking a bit about Holland and the Dutch health service.

• 10:39Alastair Campbell?

  Before we get on to Holland, Rory, I mean, as you know, I love it when distinguished people get in touch with our podcast and say interesting things that allow us to sort of take the debate forward.

• 10:51Rory Stewart?

  This is Michael Jordan talking about the NHS.

• 10:53Alastair Campbell?

  So Ian Kennedy, Professor Ian Kennedy, who I mentioned.

• 10:58Rory Stewart?

  Who you quoted last week, yeah.

• 10:59Alastair Campbell?

  Right. And he's the guy who, he was the first head of NICE, the Institute of NICE, and by the way, he says you were very bad about Frank Dobson because Frank Dobson brought in NICE, which was a major reform of the health service.

• 11:09Rory Stewart?

  And he gave a nice job to Sir Ian Kennedy.

• 11:11Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, that is such a Tory thing to say, isn't it?

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  That's right.

• 11:15Alastair Campbell?

  Such a Tory thing to say. It'll, anyway, it's good because it means it'll come back again. Rory clearly believes restructuring the NHS, which is usually code for introducing insurance based model, is the answer. It would be worth asking him, I'm going to ask you, what is it about an insurance based model that necessarily inherently leads to better health and more healthcare? It may work in Holland, but it certainly doesn't in the United States. What's wrong with making a wholehearted commitment financially and politically to our current model? And how is restructuring the NHS going to produce more healthcare professionals, repair buildings, provide equipment, let alone address the H in NHS and rescue the social care system?

• 11:55Rory Stewart?

  This is from Sir Ian Kennedy?

• 11:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Rory Stewart?

  Gosh, how interesting. Okay. Well, I mean, obviously the US system is not a universal healthcare system. So US is a very weird analogy. US is basically driven primarily as a private healthcare system. But France, which has an insurance based system, Holland, which has an insurance based system, many other European countries, what it does is it gets away from the big monolith of governments running everything. And obviously this is maybe, without sounding too much like Michael Heseltine, where my more conservative side comes in, that universal insurance with the government helping to support that, pay for that, allows variety of providers, allows people a bit more choice, allows a bit more competition. These were things that Alan Milburn believed in.

• 12:38Alastair Campbell?

  He got in touch as well last week, by the way.

• 12:40Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yeah. What did he make of it all?

• 12:42Alastair Campbell?

  He said he thought you were talking a lot of sense about him.

• 12:45Alastair Campbell?

  He said how marvelous he was.

• 12:47Rory Stewart?

  But these are not things that would be unfamiliar to you back in your days in New Labour. The idea that it's possible to have good universal provision, but to do it with a bit more choice and opportunity.

• 12:56Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I did have a look at the Dutch system. And it is interesting because it's funny, you mentioned that Gary Lineker is in the room. Do you know what the name of the Department for Health in Holland is called? It's called the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. Now, that is something I used to bang on about all the time, that I felt sport should either be in health and/or education.

• 13:18Rory Stewart?

  Not in culture.

• 13:19Alastair Campbell?

  No, not in culture. It's like we treat sport as a kind of luxury. I went and looked at the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. I looked at their website.

• 13:26Rory Stewart?

  We're reading this in Dutch.

• 13:28Alastair Campbell?

  I wish I could say I was reading in Dutch. I speak one sentence of Dutch.

• 13:30Rory Stewart?

  Go on then.

• 13:31Alastair Campbell?

  It kept the fail off my dawdles, I could spelt.

• 13:33Rory Stewart?

  That's very impressive.

• 13:33Alastair Campbell?

  Which means I've played my back part too much. Okay, but it's the only Dutch I know. It is apparently my Dutch people say my accent is absolutely brilliant, but that's the only sentence I know. But listen, listen to this. This is the this is the website of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. It says, "The ministry is committed to improving the health and safety of life of all people in the Netherlands. The ministry aims for good quality, affordable and sustainable healthcare and support. It promotes prevention and healthy nutrition and ensures first-rate sports facilities for all, from recreational athletes to professionals. The ministry pursues these goals together with its partners and of course with everyone in the Netherlands, because we all want to be healthy, fit and resilient." It then goes through the three bits in short paragraphs, public health, welfare, sport.

• 14:19Alastair Campbell?

  And it's sort of, you read it and you think, that is a health strategy. So even before you get to the funding, that approach with the focus on prevention and the focus on looking after our health, what we don't do.

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  And I believe the Dutch had a real crisis a few years ago, which is very, very similar to some of the challenges we had around the NHS and then had to redesign their system to go for more of an insurance based system.

• 14:43Alastair Campbell?

  Two thousand and six. So nineteen forty one to two thousand and six, they had this. If you were kind of not well off, a third of people who are well off had to take out private insurance.

• 14:53Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 14:54Alastair Campbell?

  And the others had public health insurance.

• 14:56Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 14:57Alastair Campbell?

  And then they brought this thing in 2006 on what they call this equalization of risk.

• 15:01Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  And the deal is, everybody has to have, there's mandatory insurance, which you have to have.

• 15:06Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 15:06Alastair Campbell?

  But the insurers, which are mainly not for profits.

• 15:08Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 15:09Alastair Campbell?

  They have to take you on, on the same basis, regardless of whether you've got some sort of terrible underlying condition.

• 15:16Rory Stewart?

  Got you, got you, got you.

• 15:16Alastair Campbell?

  And it does seem to work because-

• 15:18Rory Stewart?

  Which is a big problem with the US. I mean, that's the horrifying thing, the US, you've got an underlying condition, you can't get insured.

• 15:23Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. But what's really interesting is that Holland has never been out of the top three healthcare systems in Europe since 2006. The one that beats it currently is?

• 15:34Rory Stewart?

  God blimey, I don't know.

• 15:36Alastair Campbell?

  Switzerland.

• 15:37Rory Stewart?

  Switzerland, okay.

• 15:38Alastair Campbell?

  You mentioned the Alan Milburn thing, because one of the things I read about, they talk about, the Dutch talk about competition within a regulated framework, that's between the not-for-profits. And the other big difference with us, politicians are far removed from operative decisions on delivery of healthcare.

• 15:54Rory Stewart?

  Which is true with the Swedish prison service, which I'm a great admirer of. When I was trying to persuade the head of the Swedish prison service to become head of the British prison service, one of the things he pointed out to me is that Swedish politicians cannot get involved at all in operational decisions in Swedish prisons. That is left to him, he gets on with it. And that was his requirement. And I thought that was great, bring him on, give him that power. But the British system really balked at that. And you can see why, because our voters want us to have operational control. My voters in Cumbria would not be satisfied if the Cumberland Infirmary was killing people with me saying, hey, I don't have any operational control about that. That's all dealt with by the chief executive of NHS England.

• 16:34Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think that's why the public aren't quite buying the government every time they go out and say this is an independent pay review body?

• 16:39Rory Stewart?

  Right, right. Well, I think the, I think in Britain, we expect our elected politicians to be able to influence operation. It was the same with, actually, had this over flooding and at prisons. So, Michael Howard, when he was running, was Home Secretary, very much set up a system where the head of the prison service was supposed to go on radio and television and defend a riot. Same with flooding, I think the scandal that Chris Smith got into with flooding was about him trying to say, the government trying to say flooding is a decision for the Environment Agency, not a decision for the Minister. But definitely when I was a minister, I did the reverse. I always felt I had to be in the operational detail because in the end I was accountable.

• 17:16Alastair Campbell?

  And you're the guys to stand up in Parliament and answer questions from

• 17:19Rory Stewart?

  And it's not good enough really saying to someone they're flooded, not my problem, this is dealt with by somebody else.

• 17:24Alastair Campbell?

  So anyway, that's what did you make of the, did you have time to read or see the two speeches by the main party leaders? We talked a little bit last week about their New Year's messages. The speeches were a bit more detailed.

• 17:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 17:37Alastair Campbell?

  Did you follow them much?

• 17:38Rory Stewart?

  Did not. No, Tusk, Tusk gives your unbiased view of Keir Starmer's performance.

• 17:42Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, well, I'll start with Sunak. Sunak delivered these five pledges, which rang a bell.

• 17:48Rory Stewart?

  Just to remind people, so that he's gonna, he's gonna halve inflation.

• 17:52Alastair Campbell?

  Which is the Bank of England forecast.

• 17:53Rory Stewart?

  Generate growth, which is gonna reduce debt, it's gonna cut NHS waiting lists and he's gonna stop small boats. Were those the five?

• 18:00Alastair Campbell?

  They were the five, although actually, when you read the small print, Rory, he said he's going to pass laws to stop the boats.

• 18:06Rory Stewart?

  Do you think that will be enough to get him out of trouble?

• 18:07Alastair Campbell?

  No, I don't. I actually don't think it met the scale of the challenge that the country's facing. I thought Keir Starmer actually made a good speech, which he, for me, spoilt by this rather gimmicky line about having, what do you call the take back control bill? I'm all in favour of devolving more power to cities.

• 18:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, let's just give this, this is the guy that voted Remain. And then when I was in the House of Commons, I was trying to push a customs union, thought the customs union was too hard to Brexit and wanted to go full single market floating second referendum. And now he's on take back control.

• 18:37Alastair Campbell?

  He's on take back control in a completely different context. And therein, for me, lies the problem. As Ronald Reagan used to say, if you're explaining, you're losing. He had to, so, so, and actually, what I think was a, was a, one of his better speeches, without that line.

• 18:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Alastair Campbell?

  But that line then became what people focused on in the media.

• 18:56Rory Stewart?

  Because that was the line that won the Brexit campaign in 2016, for listeners who may have forgotten the horrible thing.

• 19:00Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think they've forgotten that, Rory. I think, I think we don't need to loop back on that one too often. But I, I do think that it was a more rounded argument these may before, the whole thing about devolution of power was good. But I think to, to use a slogan for what was a very tactical political reason, and a slogan to my mind that is becoming more discredited the longer we go on.

• 19:23Rory Stewart?

  Obviously, we're in London and I've been seeing some of my colleagues, including some senior serving politicians. And I've got quite an interesting, sympathetic insight into Rishi Sunak from them. They find him obviously much, much better than Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. The civil servants seem to like him more. And for all his flaws, I think the positive spin on him at the moment is that he works incredibly hard, does his homework, reads his briefs, gets up early in the morning, cares deeply, obviously doesn't need to do the job financially. He's doing it because he's fascinated by these issues. And they also say he's quite good at delegating, quite good at trusting his ministers. So there we are, we are from knocking Rishi Sunak.

• 20:07Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, as you were saying that, there was something Bill Clinton once said that popped into my head when Tony was going through a very bad time and Clinton was over. Clinton was out of office by now and Tony sent me down to the Ritz, I think it was. And we had this chat and I was saying, Tony's, you know, we've got this problem, got that problem, da, da, da, da, da, went through it all and he sometimes was not understood and getting the record out, et cetera, et cetera. And Clinton said, I sometimes think that Tony thinks that you should get a blue ribbon for the job. The job is the blue ribbon. That's what he said. So what you've just said about Sunak is the absolute minimum that you have to do to be committed, to do the job, to focus on the detail, to delegate. That is the basic.

• 20:51Alastair Campbell?

  And what I think he's struggling to do is do anything much beyond that. And I accept where I will give him some sympathy. He's got a very difficult set of circumstances economically, socially, politically. But I don't think if that's the best his friends are giving you when you're on over for a brief visit to London or I'm not too worried.

• 21:10Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's, let's take a little break on this and, and come back after the break.

• 21:51Alastair Campbell?

  This episode of The Rest Is Politics is sponsored by The New European. And if you want to do something positive about the state of our wretched media, you can subscribe to this award-winning newspaper, of which, by the way, declaration of interest, I am editor-at-large. It is a great antidote to corrosive nationalism and the perfect way to keep you feeling connected to what's going on in continental Europe.

• 22:11Rory Stewart?

  And it is indeed, Asa, but as I often say, when we're promoting The New European, it's also got a lovely, lovely culture section and does these great profiles. I think it took that's preference of Sevi Balisteros in the past.

• 22:21Alastair Campbell?

  And if you're listening recently, you remember I offered a free book of The New European's fabulous covers to all new subscribers before Christmas. Glad to say, Rory, such is our reach, it was their best ever month for new subscribers, and they've decided to extend the offer for a limited period.

• 22:37Rory Stewart?

  And we had a look at it, didn't we, in the Royal Albert Hall? There you were chuckling away at the covers, almost late on the stage at the Royal Albert Hall.

• 22:42Alastair Campbell?

  Almost, almost late. Anyway, you can subscribe for just £1 a week, or if you prefer to get the actual newspaper delivered to your door, £2 a week, and they'll send you a copy of their bloody idiots book, that's the title, by the way, I think it might have something to do with the Tories, worth £15 for nothing. These are the best prices you'll get anywhere for a New European subscription, so do something positive about the media. Sign up today, www neweuropean.co.uk/trip.

• 23:12Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 23:15Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Anister Campbell.

• 23:17Rory Stewart?

  So, Brazil.

• 23:18Alastair Campbell?

  Brazil.

• 23:19Rory Stewart?

  Incredible, right? Mindlessness, essentially storming of three of the major institutions in Brazil by enraged supporters of Bolsonaro, military and police standing back and not really doing much to prevent them. Bolsonaro at the time in Florida, Lula, I think, was out of the country.

• 23:37Alastair Campbell?

  He was at Sao Paulo.

• 23:39Rory Stewart?

  So it's terrifying, I think, what almost happened there and seemed to be taken straight from the January 6th playbook. And a reminder of the fact, although we often talk in the pod about how the fight against populism seems mildly to be going in a positive direction with Joe Biden's election and Boris Johnson's defenestration, we can see populism fighting back all over the world and nowhere more starkly than in Brazil.

• 24:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you've plugged into the book that you're writing, in the book that I'm writing, I have the line that it is perhaps easier to defeat a populist than it is to defeat populism. And I think what you've seen with Bolsonaro is, I, I, I think it's been quite surprising that Bolsonaro, I mean, okay, he hasn't conceded defeat, he didn't attend the handover of power, but he hasn't been openly stirring in the way that I think people thought that he would. Now, whether there's been a lot going on under the radar, I don't know. But I think it is, I think it is genuinely terrifying because I think what you're seeing is, this is the consequence of populism, because part of the appeal of populism is to attack the institutions of power. And Bolsonaro, what was interesting about January the sixth, the Trump insurrection,

• 24:50Alastair Campbell?

  that was about one part of government, that was about the Capitol, it's Congress. Here, they were attacking all three simultaneously, the parliament, the law, and the presidential headquarters, if you like, so that all three bits of the power structure were, were under siege. And a lot of it, again, we're back to the thing about fake news, disinformation. A lot of it based on myths, lies, disinformation circulating on private and sometimes public networks. And we talked, when we talked about the Brazilian elections, if you remember, the week before, we talked about the fact that CIA had been down there trying to say to Bolsonaro's people, you must concede straight away because we're worried. And then I think there's people taking their eye off the ball a bit because it didn't happen immediately.

• 25:35Alastair Campbell?

  And for this suddenly to happen almost to the day on the anniversary of the, the American riot at the Capitol, I think just reminds you that this, this could spread, this could spread.

• 25:45Rory Stewart?

  It's also a reminder, isn't it, that once you get an extremist movement going, you can create a vicious circle. And I think this was something we saw in a very small way over Brexit, which is that as the different camps dug in, second referendum against hard Brexiteers, things intensified, divide, polarized more. And all the way through Latin America, whether it's on the left or the right, you get this sense of incredibly divided societies, that the, the right tend to perceive the left-wing governments as though that they're crazy communist Stalinist governments, and the left perceives the right-wing governments as though they're neo-fascist dictatorships. And there is not a center ground, or there doesn't feel like there's a center ground.

• 26:26Alastair Campbell?

  It's been interesting, though, how I think almost without exception, the main leaders of all the other Latin American countries have come out basically on the side of democracy and on the side of Lula.

• 26:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:37Alastair Campbell?

  Even those who disagree with him profoundly on his political views. But I, look, I think that it signals that, as you say, we ended the year quite optimistic because Bolsonaro had lost, because Macron had won, because Schultz was there, because Johnson had gone, because Trump had gone, et cetera. But, you know, if you look at what happened in Congress with the, you mentioned last week about the speakership, and I bet even when you were talking about that, you didn't imagine it was going to take him 15 votes.

• 27:06Rory Stewart?

  It's unbelievable.

• 27:06Alastair Campbell?

  And the sort of concessions he's had to make to crazy people who have now got real power. I read a wonderful piece yesterday on that Salon, the American site, I can't remember the name of the woman who wrote it, but it was basically saying, this is as good as it's going to get, it's now going to get worse because these people have been given a taste of real power and they're now going to abuse it. And I, you know, I fear for the worst on that.

• 27:29Rory Stewart?

  And then you wanted to bring us to Czech Republic.

• 27:31Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think the Czech Republic is really interesting because there's an election this weekend and Babas, who was prime minister, and he's one of the, I think there are nine candidates.

• 27:41Rory Stewart?

  And was narrowly defeated, it was like 23% to 23%, but they got rid of him, billionaire, friend of Trump, populist, booted out very unusually because all the opposition parties cobbled together and knocked him out of parliament and being prime minister, but now running to be president.

• 27:55Alastair Campbell?

  And there's three of them, there's him, I scribbled their names down, there's him who's the kind of populist Trump Erdogan type figure, Peter Pavel, ex-army, and a woman who's in her 40s, Denuzina Rodova, who's the kind of young, fresh face. But essentially, it's a populist against two kind of seemingly quite reasonable people, but they're all in the 20s and 30s.

• 28:17Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 28:18Alastair Campbell?

  And the electoral system is almost identical to the French.

• 28:21Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 28:21Alastair Campbell?

  You have to get 50%, and so it is almost inevitably going to lead to a runoff. If Babas wins, then Putin's happy.

• 28:29Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 28:29Alastair Campbell?

  This guy is very close to.

• 28:31Rory Stewart?

  Viktor Orban and Hungary.

• 28:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. It's also going to be, he's somebody who I think, if he comes back, having been through that process you've described, and then they, he had this case against him for corruption, which he's now won, nice timing, has to be said.

• 28:47Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 28:48Alastair Campbell?

  So if he comes back, I think that is yet another really quite difficult moment for the European Union.

• 28:53Rory Stewart?

  And final thing before we close, I want to remind people of, because it hasn't been much in the media, is Myanmar. So you remember in February of last year, Aung San Suu Kyi's government was toppled by the Burmese military. She won credible victory in the parliamentary elections. She got nearly 80% of the seats. And the military responded, because they were at their very, very weakest, by basically a coup d'etat and initially going after on the grounds that she'd owned a walkie talkie, that this was an imprisonable offense.

• 29:25Alastair Campbell?

  And they've just slapped another sentence on her this week.

• 29:27Rory Stewart?

  The sentence has 27 years on her and she's 77 years old. So if that held, she's never, never coming out of jail. But Myanmar is now in the most horrifying situation. 1.4 million people displaced. Half the country now in the hands of rebel groups. People printing weapons, using 3D printing to print weapons to attack the military. Every university in the country closed. The economy collapsing. And this has been going on now for almost two years.

• 29:55Alastair Campbell?

  We pride ourselves on talking about things that aren't necessarily getting that much attention in the media. If you defined what the hunter had done in the last couple of years and just set out the facts of who's been killed, who's been detained, the sham elections that are coming, and you set it against Putin, you know, they're in the same ballpark.

• 30:14Rory Stewart?

  100%.

• 30:15Alastair Campbell?

  And yet, nobody's really talking about it at all.

• 30:18Rory Stewart?

  It's extraordinary. 2,500 people killed, 16,000 people detained. Horrifying, absolutely horrifying. And I think, because this is the Rest is Politics podcast, we talk a lot about leadership. It casts a question around Aung San Suu Kyi, who I knew, and I'd go to visit her in Myanmar. And I remember sitting with her, trying to get her to come out and condemn what the Burmese military were doing to the Rohingya.

• 30:41Alastair Campbell?

  She couldn't do it.

• 30:42Rory Stewart?

  Which she wouldn't do. And what she said to me was, "My position is much more fragile than you realize. You have to be much more careful criticizing the military than you realize." And at the time, I thought this was disingenuous, that actually she should be taking more risks, she should be challenging the military. Of course, she will feel in the sense that she was vindicated and that we didn't understand.

• 31:01Alastair Campbell?

  No, but also, she, the reason that she made the progress that she did. Was because she was able to build this network of international support. But there's very little sign of it at the moment. And you had the UN rapporteur, Tom Andrews, last week. He said, we're now witnessing systematic gross human rights violations, which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity daily against the people of Myanmar. It's not even on the news.

• 31:27Rory Stewart?

  And the Chinese and Russians are, of course, vetoing any action in the Security Council.

• 31:32Alastair Campbell?

  They didn't veto, they abstained, which I thought was interesting. But it means that the UN can do something. I thought it was actually surprising they didn't use the veto.

• 31:38Rory Stewart?

  They didn't do the full veto, yeah.

• 31:39Alastair Campbell?

  The general, I don't know how you pronounce him, Min Ahn Klang, he listed the countries that were on his side this week. China, Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh. Bangladesh has got a million Rohingya refugees.

• 31:53Rory Stewart?

  And the other countries are sending back refugees. He was a man who controls two huge business conglomerates, as well as being the head of the military. And when he was in officer training school, he was known by his friends as Cat Feces. And Cat Pooh is apparently not a polite name if you're Burmese.

• 32:11Alastair Campbell?

  I think even if you're British, I think Cat Feces is probably, it's not very nice.

• 32:16Rory Stewart?

  Not a good thing.

• 32:17Alastair Campbell?

  No, no.

• 32:18Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you very much, Alistair, and look forward to speaking soon.

• 32:21Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.