41. Question Time: Classified documents, Eddie Jones, and A-levels

Just how easy is it to waltz out of office with classified government documents? In the latest episode of TRIP QT, Alastair and Rory take your questions on Trump's FBI raid, Gordon Brown and Gillian Duffy, scuffles, Eddie Jones, A-levels, and more. Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Blackpool tickets - Saturday 8th October: wintergardensblackpool.co.uk/events/the-rest-is-politics-live/ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  Hello, everybody again. Welcome to another edition of the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:51Alastair Campbell?

  And we've got quite a lot of questions, Rory, about Trump and the FBI. James Dixon wants to know whether it would be possible to waltz out of a UK government building with classified documents. And of course, the answer is yes.

• 2:06Rory Stewart?

  Very usually, yeah, very usually.

• 2:08Alastair Campbell?

  And, you know, often...

• 2:11Alastair Campbell?

  People take a lot of work home. Very good. You probably remember Angus Lapsley at the Foreign Office.

• 2:16Rory Stewart?

  I do, I do.

• 2:17Alastair Campbell?

  He was a terrific, terrific civil servant with Tony Blair's government in Number 10. And, and he got into all sorts of trouble recently because he left some, I think it was in a bus stop. We've had other people leaving him on trains.

• 2:32Rory Stewart?

  And you remember Oliver Letwin got in trouble because he had put them in the bin in St James's Park. He was in the habit of walking around St James's Park, looking at them.

• 2:40Alastair Campbell?

  But the thing about ministers though, ministers don't really get trained in the management of papers. There's an assumption that they know what to do.

• 2:46Rory Stewart?

  No, so ministers don't get trained. And as you say, even civil servants who are highly trained can make mistakes. So just to explain to people, what happens is you get an enormous amount of documents on your desk of different sorts. Some marked restricted, which is not a very secret, right the way up to top secret. The very top secret stuff, it's pretty difficult to walk out with because usually you have to read that in a special room with a registry clerk watching you unless you're the Prime Minister. I mean, maybe you and Tony Blair are in a different situation, but as the Secretary of State, I sat in a controlled room with a registry clerk who watched me reading the top secret documents and would then remove them from, and every one of them is numbered and they're removed from you before you walk out of the room.

• 3:26Alastair Campbell?

  That is right. And because the, the top secret stuff is usually related to military, diplomatic, quite a lot of economic now.

• 3:35Alastair Campbell?

  But you know, in 2014, Roy, they, they actually got rid of restricted. When in my, in our time, it was unclassified, restricted, confidential, secret and top secret.

• 3:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 3:44Alastair Campbell?

  And it now is only three categories, official.

• 3:47Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 3:48Alastair Campbell?

  Which is about 90% of all papers, secret and top secret. And top secret, you're right, that the, essentially the, you should sign your name on the front cover after you have read it. And I hope I don't get arrested and locked up for this. And I hope Tony Blair doesn't get arrested and locked up for this. But occasionally that didn't necessarily happen in quite the rigor that it should. But I think you have to be very, very careful. And there's this phrase that, that does the rounds about the reason for secrecy. Is because you're trying to guard against what are called threat actors, which are basically people who would do damage to the government, to the state, if they had the information.

• 4:32Rory Stewart?

  Well, in a very straightforward way, one of the main reasons we have it, and it's incredibly important, is to protect agents in the field. So if you are producing agent reports in the old days on Russia, the last thing you want is that report coming up, because the report could be used by the Russians to try to work out where it came from and kill them.

• 4:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:55Rory Stewart?

  You literally end up with people getting killed. The other type of documents, though, it is relatively easy to walk out with, and you have to be very careful in offices when you're a civil servant. When I was a civil servant, we were trained on a clear desk policy. We had to put everything in a particular safe. It had a combination that had to be locked. You would be reprimanded. It would be marked on your file if somebody came into your room and found that you'd left documents unattended, or you hadn't cleaned your desk properly. That was a big mark against you in the office. But I think let's just accelerate to the Trump thing for a second. I mean, what do you really think he was doing? Why do you think he took these documents home?

• 5:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, apparently when he was in the White House, he was terrible at paper management, constantly, and people say he didn't really read the briefs anyway. There are persistent reports of if there were things that he didn't like, or things that he thought might be difficult for him, that he would flush them down the toilet. And then he took all this stuff. There's quite a lot of interest here in France about it, because one of them apparently is a sensitive file related to Emmanuel Macron, French president.

• 6:06Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I guess it's possible that he thought there's incriminating stuff, maybe interesting stuff, maybe he thought he was going to write books. But the thing is, if you're the president, you can get access to the archive. It's not as if you don't have access to it. But I suspect with him, it will be, it will be to avoid incrimination. But he's in, I think he could be in real trouble.

• 6:25Rory Stewart?

  I think there are two theories. The one that I find more difficult to believe, but the Washington Post and others putting out is that he was hoping to actually sell these documents to make money, that he's short of cash, that he's

• 6:35Alastair Campbell?

  What, to the Chinese or the Russians?

• 6:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So the Washington Post wrote an op-ed suggesting he took them because he's hoping to sell them to the Saudis, the Chinese, Russians. I think it's more likely, I mean, what the hell do I know? But I think it's more likely that it's just massive vanity. A lot of these documents, for example, the letter from the North Korean leader, a map of a particular hurricane where he's marked it up in black Sharpie pen. These things sound like souvenirs for him to show off about what he did as president.

• 7:03Alastair Campbell?

  Or to auction.

• 7:04Rory Stewart?

  Or to auction.

• 7:05Alastair Campbell?

  But you know Sandy Berger, who was Bill Clinton's National Security Advisor, really big cheese and

• 7:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:13Alastair Campbell?

  And we obviously knew him really, really well, particularly during the Kosovo period and Northern Ireland. He was, he left office and in 2005, he actually got two years of probation and community service for the unauthorized removal of classified material. And he was a practicing lawyer who had to give up his law practice. So, so, and that's because the, the National Archive really takes seriously its commitment, if you like, to history.

• 7:43Rory Stewart?

  But it's also been traditionally something used very aggressively politically on both sides of the island, the US. You remember Hillary Clinton got in real trouble for not using her official email address and using her Gmail instead. And they tried to get her, the Republicans tried to get her on breaking national security and leaking secrets on the basis of using the wrong email. And of course, it really, I think it does sadly help Trump this raid because a lot of his crazy base. Are real believers in the idea that there's a deep state conspiracy, that the FBI are somehow, you know, in line with conspiratorial forces at the centre. So I'm afraid it's happening at a really unfortunate time.

• 8:27Rory Stewart?

  Today is the day, so 16th August, that Liz Cheney is probably going to lose the primary, almost certainly going to lose her primary, the end of that dynasty. Liz Cheney, remember, the Republican who was prepared to stand up against Trump, had everything going for her in her home state, where her dad was the congressman, where they're basically royalty there. And the fact is, her and all her dad's friends, who are the senators and congressmen, just confirming that they as Republicans would never be able to win a state in Wyoming today. That the Trump party is taking over and the moderate Republicans are finished.

• 9:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, and but that's why, you know, fair play to Liz Cheney and to those others who have fought back, because if they don't fight back, then, you know, you've got to fear of the future of America. And I mean, the fact that the FBI, this goes back to this thing that we've talked about a lot, where people like Trump, I put Johnson in pretty much the same category, Bolsonaro, there's a lot of talk about Bolsonaro, thinks he's going to lose the election, but he's not going to accept the result. You know, I think we are looking at the deliberate undermining of institutions, which generally, by and large, have been respected within their own countries. We're seeing a little bit of that happening to our courts, to our police, but certainly in America, you know, the FBI was physically attacked.

• 9:47Alastair Campbell?

  The headquarters was physically attacked by some of these Trump supporters.

• 9:51Rory Stewart?

  It's very dangerous, very, very dangerous. To move you on, Alastair, on to one of your special subjects that I know you care a lot about. A couple of questions. No, no, no, this isn't, this is one that actually works for you. It's not me being mean. This is Daily Wilson and Jim Oliver. So Daily Wilson asks, Alastair, England rugby head coach Eddie Jones, recently been rebutted by the RFU regarding his comments on privately educated players lacking resolve.

• 10:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well.

• 10:16Rory Stewart?

  With your work with the British and Irish Lions, so there's two questions and then you'll get on to it. With your work with the British and Irish Lions in 2005, did you have any similar observations that privately educated players lacked resolve? And were there any stark differences between the different nations on how players conducted themselves compared to their education? Maybe do that one and then I'll give you Jim Oliver from Hoyt.

• 10:35Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'll tell you about that. First of all, that's really interesting, that question, because I've actually, I've actually written about this in my new European column this week, defending Eddie Jones. Now, first of all, to tell you, declare an interest, I know Eddie Jones, I like Eddie Jones.

• 10:50Rory Stewart?

  And you really don't like private education?

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  And I really don't like private education, as you don't worry. But I do like, for example, Maro Itoji, big England rugby star, good friend of mine, and he went to Harrow.

• 11:05Rory Stewart?

  Oh, gosh. And you don't think it doesn't affect his resolve? You think he's still a decent rugby player?

• 11:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't know, because I'm not his coach. But what I would say is, I think Eddie Jones was making a broader point about the whole of private schools on English rugby. And the point I've made in my column is, what on earth is the RFU doing, rebuking Eddie Jones for pointing out a weakness, because it is a weakness, the fact that it's so overwhelmingly dominated by private schools. And the reason for that is something the RFU should be getting into.

• 11:38Rory Stewart?

  Just to have an answer, look, we know your views on private schools, which they're responsible for all the ills of our nation.

• 11:43Alastair Campbell?

  No, not all of them, not all of them, most of them.

• 11:45Rory Stewart?

  But Eddie Jones's claim is more sort of interesting and specific. He somehow thinks the way they've been educated makes them less tough as rugby players.

• 11:52Alastair Campbell?

  Well, what I would say to that is, look, I saw on the Lions tour, four nations brought together, guys who've been, you know, battering each other through the season, suddenly trying to be built together as a team, up against probably the greatest rugby team in the world at that time, New Zealand, although they're struggling at the moment. And I think I would say that maybe the Welsh guys were perhaps, you know, I certainly got on with the Welsh guys really, really well. And the Irish guys have got on well. I think there is something that maybe they're a bit pampered. I think that's the point he's making. I think he's also making the point. That if you go and look at rugby league, as you know, I love rugby league and unlike

• 12:35Alastair Campbell?

  you and Nadine Dorries, I really understand rugby league as well. But I, I think if you go and see rugby league players, I think there is something a bit tougher there. Put it this way, he was making a point that a coach is entitled to make and he should not be rebuked for it.

• 12:51Rory Stewart?

  But presumably if he thinks particular players are lacking resolve, regardless of where they're educated, he can just drop them from the team, can't he?

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, he can, he can. But then he doesn't have that, that bigger pool. I'll tell you the other thing that's really interesting about the, the event, I did an event with Eddie Jones with the military.

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:08Alastair Campbell?

  We went and did a talk together with some military and really interesting because they, I could tell when he was talking, they were looking at somebody who doesn't bullshit. He just sort of says things as he sees them. And I think rugby players do like that. And I just thought there was something a bit pathetic about the RFU thinking, oh no God, the independent schools are going to be pissed off with Eddie Jones and what he's said. So they, you know, they literally, they put out a statement saying he'd been rebuked. I mean, you know, bugger off.

• 13:38Rory Stewart?

  Okay, here we are. So we probably, we don't want to stay on this for too long because this is not the rest is rugby.

• 13:44Alastair Campbell?

  But, you know, I'm sure that would do quite well, Roy, just not with us presenting it.

• 13:48Rory Stewart?

  Let's just put, so I'll just get the Jim Oliver thing, but not as a question, but it's a nice observation. And then I'm going to move on to a question from Chris Ray for you about the Gillian Duffy incident with Dornbrun. So Jim Oliver just says that he's from Hoyk, great town on Scottish Borders, working class mill town, 15,000 people, managed to produce 58 Scotland internationals to date with three present Scottish regulars in the team, including the captain Stuart Hogg. And that, I mean, and actually it's a real reminder how your population size doesn't really determine things. Remember, you know, ancient Athens, which probably had a free population about that size, produced all these incredible Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and the rest of them. And of course, New Zealand, as you were saying, produced an incredible number of rugby players despite

• 14:32Rory Stewart?

  being quite a small country. Now here's a Chris Ray question. You were talking about a blunder that Liz Truss made on her campaign a couple of weeks ago, and it got me thinking, how would you have changed the PR response following the Gillian Duffy incident with Gordon Brown? Can't recall whether Alistair was working with Gordon at the time, but I just wonder in hindsight, what she would have done differently following the incident. For younger listeners, Gordon Brown forgot to take off, turn off his recording device, and he walked away from an encounter with a lady during the 2010 campaign, and he muttered that she was just a bigot. And it actually did a huge amount of damage to him in the campaign, didn't it? How would you have dealt with that?

• 15:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, funny enough, I was with Gordon Brown at the time. I was in, I was in a restaurant in Manchester, having lunch with my, one of my sons, Callum, who was at university there, and also with a friend of mine from Manchester United Football Club. And Gordon had gone on this visit to Rochdale, and I was in Manchester because I was waiting for him to come back, because we were doing debate preparation for his next head-to-head debate. And my role in the debates was, I was David Cameron. So I was waiting to see Gordon. And I was looking, my phone kept going, and it was, and I just, I couldn't be bothered. I wasn't answering my phone unless it was somebody I knew. There was just lots of numbers,

• 15:56Alastair Campbell?

  you know, number withheld. So I just ignored it. But then I thought, something is going on. And then, do you know who Jamie Redknapp is?

• 16:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I do know who Jamie Redknapp is.

• 16:06Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent, excellent. Well, so the next, the next thing was Jamie Redknapp's number came up.

• 16:11Rory Stewart?

  And of course, you'd always pick up for Jamie Redknapp. You might not pick up for the BBC, but Jamie Redknapp's a different situation.

• 16:16Alastair Campbell?

  And I thought, why? So I answered it. And Jamie Redknapp said these words, he says, come on, Edel, how are you gonna spin his way out of this one? And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, oh, you've not been watching the telly. So, and that was the first I heard of it. The next thing I noticed was-

• 16:33Rory Stewart?

  Wait, wait, wait, before you give the, what's the answer, Jamie Redknapp's question? How are you gonna spin your way out of that one?

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm going to tell you. So then the next thing I saw was Gordon's convoy going past the restaurant. And I thought, what the hell's going? He's back early. So I finished my lunch, went back to the hotel, and there was Gordon. And he was in a bad way. He was, he was really upset about what had happened. And when, what, so when you say, what would I have done differently? And I remember it was like getting the old team back together again, because Peter Mandelson and I were on a phone call with Gordon and a couple of other people. And it was obvious to me that Gordon felt, deep down, he had to go back and see her. I remember lots of people were saying, oh, that was a stupid thing to do, it just kept the story going.

• 17:20Alastair Campbell?

  But do you know what happened later that day? People might not remember this, but Gordon made us, I think, that night and the next night, made the best two speeches of the campaign. And I think what happened was he knew, because it wasn't him, he wasn't, he was, he was angry. Because something had happened, which he knew, because of the way our media works, that was going to wipe out everything that he'd done that day.

• 17:46Alastair Campbell?

  He was angry because actually we'd been stitched up, to be fair, because what you have, you, I don't even know this, Rory, when, when you're out campaigning and stuff and, and you, the party leaders. There's a sort of unspoken agreement with the broadcasters, they, well, that we get the, the leaders mic'd up, you mic them up. And there's a pool sound. And that's to stop, you know, when you see French elections and there's hundreds of cameras running, everybody's knocking each other over and the, right, this is so that people can get clean pictures and they can get relatively clean sound. So Gordon, and the general rule is that once you're off camera, you're also off sound. Okay. Now, somebody should have taken the microphone off and that's a sort of, you know, that's a mistake.

• 18:29Rory Stewart?

  So he was angry, he was stitched up. Now, let's go.

• 18:31Alastair Campbell?

  He was angry and he was also angry at what he said, because, you know, he didn't think she was a bigot.

• 18:38Rory Stewart?

  And we shouldn't stay too long on this question, but I, I can totally relate to that because. I, when I was very, very early in my time as an MP, I'd given an interview to the Scottish Sun, where a Scottish Sun journalist had said to me that. He didn't think that there was any poverty in Cumbria and I was in this very wealthy area. And I said to him, no, no, no, no, um, the, this is a, if you get up to the north of my constituency, you'll find there are some, and I said, some pretty primitive areas, you'll find old boys up there holding their trousers up with twine.

• 19:10Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm, I remember that, I remember that.

• 19:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and this then came out, uh, I think nearly six weeks later, I'd sort of forgotten this conversation. I realised that I was repeating a phrase actually from a farmer. I'd be, it, it, a farmer earlier in the day had said to me, you'll see people up north holding their trousers up with twine. And I felt so awful, I mean, I've never in my life, I think, felt more ashamed, guilty, horrified, because I think a bit like Gordon Baugh may have felt. You feel that you've completely betrayed people who trust you, you're supposed to be on their side, and it sounds like

• 19:48Alastair Campbell?

  You're against them.

• 19:48Rory Stewart?

  You're against them and sniggering about it.

• 19:50Alastair Campbell?

  I, I remember he also said, uh, I can remember he said, you know, I've just shipped a whole load of votes out. I feel totally responsible. And we were trying to say to him, look, it's bad, there's no point pretending this was what we wanted to happen. But at the same time, you know, people can remember apologies as a human beings and Gordon, I remember Rachel Kinnock, Neil's daughter, was on, was on our, our team at the time. And she, she went to see Mrs Duffy and she and a colleague went to see Mrs Duffy and said, look, Gordon wants, Gordon actually wants to come back and see you and talk this over and apologise. He doesn't think you're a bigot and, and he just, he had to do that at the human level. And when he came back, he was, he was fine again. So, yeah, so that, so there's a question, how would I have handled it if I'd be there?

• 20:35Alastair Campbell?

  I was there and that's how we handled it.

• 20:37Rory Stewart?

  And did you think it cost them the election?

• 20:40Alastair Campbell?

  No, I don't, and don't forget, we won in Rochdale. We actually, we won that seat. Look, it didn't help, it didn't help, but no, I, I don't, I don't, I don't think it did.

• 20:50Rory Stewart?

  All right, so let's, I think, take a quick break.

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• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  And coming back, Alison, what's next?

• 22:57Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one, you're going to like this one, Rory. John Church, I'm in Dubai, I'm watching France 24 on television. Their international coverage puts the UK media to shame. He goes on to say that we do talk a lot about this stuff. But why has foreign affairs become so sort of downgraded within our media culture? What's your take on that?

• 23:20Rory Stewart?

  It's very weird, isn't it? I'm in the US at the moment and I had to take a little boy to the doctor. Then on the way back, I turn on the radio and it was the BBC World Service Radio, which a lot of people listen to here in the States. And it's fantastic stuff, really good details on all the stuff that we're interested in. Huge shout out, though, if people are in Britain and they want something good to watch. This is going to be controversial, obviously, with my friends in the Middle East. But Al Jazeera, fantastic reporting and much, much more detailed reporting on subjects that we often miss. I would recommend if people are looking for a bit of a news update, worth looking occasionally at Al Jazeera.

• 24:01Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody, Katie Arnold, who I think is a journalist, the name rings a bell. She says, we haven't talked much about Myanmar. 20,000 people have been killed there since the coup. These are war crimes as bad as Putin is doing.

• 24:14Rory Stewart?

  So Myanmar is an example, a little bit like Afghanistan, of great moments of optimism and then returning back to where we started. So Myanmar was seen by David Cameron as one of the only real foreign policy successes of his time in office. You remember Aung San Suu Kyi had been, the lady, Dossu, had been under house arrest for decades. She was eventually released. Democratic elections were held. The military junta that had run Burma on and off since the late 1950s were marginalized.

• 24:50Rory Stewart?

  Then she got pulled into the horrors of the Burmese military essentially conducting a form of genocide with the Rohingya population, Rakhine, in western Myanmar. And then she herself was toppled and she's now under incredibly bizarre stupid charges about possessing a radio telephone.

• 25:09Alastair Campbell?

  They've just extended, they've just extended the sentence, haven't they?

• 25:12Rory Stewart?

  It's absolutely awful and of course, the international sympathy for is much less because she didn't condemn the attacks on the Rohingya population. And now the junta is back and they are really crazy people. They seem almost entirely indifferent to economic sanctions. They are a very, very odd combination of military hard men connected with really bizarre forms of smuggling and all kinds of activities up in the border with very strong Buddhist superstitious beliefs. I remember going to visit the white elephant owned by one of these Burmese generals. Instantly, a white elephant isn't actually white. It turns out very disappointingly, it's a kind of pale grey. But they go to an enormous amount of trouble to try to acquire white elephants.

• 25:56Alastair Campbell?

  But I thought the point about white elephants is that they don't exist.

• 26:00Rory Stewart?

  No, well, they basically don't exist. But, but the Burmese generals do their best to procure from all over the world anything that they think looks like a fainty white elephant. So this thing had come in at a cost of goodness knows what from India and was being cared for in a very, very particular sort of temple environment. But as, as you say, it definitely was not white. Right, okay.

• 26:21Alastair Campbell?

  We're obviously getting some very, very distinguished listeners.

• 26:25Rory Stewart?

  I'm glad you're getting that, getting into that word. Yeah, it's good.

• 26:28Alastair Campbell?

  George Peretz QC.

• 26:31Rory Stewart?

  Oh, gosh.

• 26:32Alastair Campbell?

  Wants to know about our experience of working with attorney generals. How important is the role within government? Do you think the attorney general should be an MP or like Goldsmith, who was attorney general and attorney general at the time of Iraq, a good lawyer who is elevated to the House of Lords? So what was your experience of attorney general? Mine actually was Peter Goldsmith and, and I, as I'm glad to say, as emerged at the Hutton inquiry, I had very little to do with him. Thank God.

• 27:00Rory Stewart?

  So Dominic Grieve, who was my first Attorney General.

• 27:04Alastair Campbell?

  Fine man.

• 27:05Rory Stewart?

  Very fine man, very distinct, I mean, you know.

• 27:08Alastair Campbell?

  He is genuinely, I'm going to give you distinguished for him.

• 27:11Rory Stewart?

  You will get, we can do distinguished for him, can't we? Old fashioned, thoughtful, very high minded principal man who David Cameron, I'm afraid, got rid of because he found it uncomfortable having an Attorney General of quite such kind of extreme rectitude, sort of unbending rectitude.

• 27:28Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, can we agree that Suella Braverman is just truly, truly awful?

• 27:31Rory Stewart?

  I'm afraid she does seem that way, yeah.

• 27:33Alastair Campbell?

  To be the Attorney General and defend the breaking of law, domestic and international by the Prime Minister is incredible.

• 27:41Rory Stewart?

  I mean, Attorney Generals can be pretty odd in every system. You remember in the US too, being an Attorney General was, was often a position that was meant to be taken quite seriously. And then Donald Trump appointed Senator Sessions as Attorney General, who nobody really took very seriously as a legal brain.

• 28:01Alastair Campbell?

  But then he appointed William Barr, who plays the bagpipes, Rory.

• 28:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, then, then things improved, obviously, obviously.

• 28:10Alastair Campbell?

  So the answer to George Pratt's QC is that Attorney Generals should play the bagpipes, probably. Now, we've got a very, we've got a question about A levels, Rory. Stephen Clark, A levels are out on Thursday. What advice do you give to students, but also asking us what A levels we did?

• 28:27Rory Stewart?

  Gah, blimey.

• 28:28Alastair Campbell?

  I did French, German and English.

• 28:30Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful. I did history, English, politics and theatre studies.

• 28:36Alastair Campbell?

  Of course you do theatre studies because at Eton, you have two properly equipped theatres and you have an international filmmaker in residence.

• 28:44Rory Stewart?

  Not in my day, I did not have an international filmmaker in it.

• 28:47Alastair Campbell?

  Peter Bates, Peter Bates, which political reporter? Did you come closest to punching? Well, of course, I did punch a political reporter. I punched Mike White once.

• 28:56Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my lord.

• 28:57Alastair Campbell?

  Famously.

• 28:58Rory Stewart?

  No, really?

• 29:00Alastair Campbell?

  And I really like Mike White. I've always liked Mike White. It was an aberration. It was a total, total aberration. Yeah. What about you? Have you, have you, have you ever punched anybody?

• 29:08Rory Stewart?

  Uh, I have, yeah, I have, I have, but I don't admire myself for doing it.

• 29:13Alastair Campbell?

  Who was it? Who was it?

• 29:14Rory Stewart?

  So I was at a neighbour's wedding in Scotland and a very-

• 29:17Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I like this. I love, I love wedding punch ups.

• 29:20Rory Stewart?

  A very, very drunken man started dirty dancing with my girlfriend and I, I, I knocked him down and I, I really, I, I discovered two things very quickly. Firstly, obviously the, the girl whose wedding it was, was not impressed. But my girlfriend was also not at all impressed. She wasn't remotely grateful.

• 29:38Alastair Campbell?

  Why? Was she enjoying the dirty dancing or what?

• 29:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't know. It's just, I just think, I just think quite understandably, people don't like their partners suddenly knocking down another person, whatever they think they're excuse.

• 29:49Alastair Campbell?

  Even if, even if, even if.

• 29:53Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Rory, you've gone way up in my estimation.

• 29:55Rory Stewart?

  No, it's not, this is, this is not, not good at all. Right now.

• 29:58Alastair Campbell?

  No, I, I, I'm, I'm, I, I actually got an email the other day, funny enough, about the podcast.

• 30:04Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 30:05Alastair Campbell?

  From somebody who actually started it, Dear Dirty Northern Bastard. And the reason was he'd met me at a football match, also at a wedding, where there was a match between the two sides during the day, where I apparently was incredibly dirty. Just on a serious point, it was a guy who works with Gus O'Donnell.

• 30:25Rory Stewart?

  Yes, yeah.

• 30:26Alastair Campbell?

  And was, was telling us that we weren't giving enough credit to David Cameron for the wellbeing agenda. Because actually it is now a very big part of government policy, even if you don't notice it with this lot.

• 30:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but there's a problem with it. There's a problem with it. I was thinking about it because I was thinking about this since the last podcast. So to remind people, it's about the treasury measuring much more than simply, uh, traditional treasury accounts. You look at full wellbeing and actually they've also done a lot of work on natural capital, which is trying to take into account environmental considerations in financial policy. But I discovered that there are real limits to it. So when I was environment minister, the first thing that happened when I came into office is the civil servants came to see me and they said that almost 60,000 people a year were dying prematurely in Britain. 60,000 people dying prematurely a year because of air pollution. And I thought, goodness gracious me, right? This is something I can sort out.

• 31:22Rory Stewart?

  It's going to be my mission as the Environment Minister. Put together a plan, which was going to cost about £350 million to try to radically reduce air pollution. And we had all these figures based on this wellbeing analysis, the natural capital analysis, showing that it would save billions of pounds a year for the exchequer. And I thought, this is such a sort of no brainer. Spend £300 million one time and save billions of pounds every year then onwards on all the savings from people not dying of air pollution. But of course, I got nowhere because what the Treasury turned around and pointed out is that the £300 million was real money, that I was going to have to take them. And they didn't believe in the billions of pounds which had been calculated through

• 32:04Rory Stewart?

  the wellbeing agenda, that that was actually going to come into their tax receipts, because the billions of pounds were the value that people put on their wellbeing, the value that people put on their life. So it's all very well putting these things into the government system, but in my experience, nobody actually acts on them.

• 32:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, this gentleman, this gentleman called Will, who called me a dirty bastard. He said, for example, the park run is 20 times more cost effective than the National Health Service. And he says that he thinks the problem with the wellbeing agenda is actually a problem of comms, which is why he thinks I should be more supportive of it. I am supportive of it as an idea.

• 32:42Rory Stewart?

  But wait, can I interrupt for a second? I mean, what does he mean, the park run is 20 times more effective than the National Health Service? Because the problem with that-

• 32:49Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, more cost effective. In other words, you get more benefit to the health of the nation.

• 32:53Rory Stewart?

  But so-

• 32:53Alastair Campbell?

  He's basically saying we need to have a preventive health service, which we agree with.

• 32:57Rory Stewart?

  I get it, but if you go to the sector state for health, doesn't matter whether it's a Labour sector state or Conservative sector state, and say, thank you very much, I'd like to take money from your budget, from the NHS budget, and spend it on park runs, because we've got this calculation that it's 20 times more cost effective, you're not going to get the money, because nobody believes in these calculations. That's the problem.

• 33:19Alastair Campbell?

  No, but if you went to, if you went to a radical progressive health secretary and said, look, you know, we're spending so much money on health, we've got to look through a different, the other end of the telescope and turn it into a preventive system, you then might have all sorts of ideas like that, which you think are worth that investment.

• 33:35Rory Stewart?

  Except what the, I, I kept trying to do this. I tried to do it on air pollution. I said to them, look, you're, you're

• 33:40Alastair Campbell?

  You're determined to disagree with me here, aren't you?

• 33:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I, I am. Yeah, yeah. I really want to disagree because, because no, well, because it, it really is where the rubber hit the road. I was saying, look, all these people are going to hospital with horrible lung conditions from nitrogen dioxide pollution. We could save you billions on the NHS. Give me 300 million pounds so that I can change buses and transport systems to clean air. And we can put in a new tax system to get people off diesel vehicles and I'll save you money on the back end in the NHS. And their answer was, Rory, you don't understand. Everybody is coming to us with these arguments all the time.

• 34:14Alastair Campbell?

  Sure.

• 34:15Rory Stewart?

  Literally every, every minister is trying to get money out of us, but saying that it's preventative, that it'll save us money in the long run.

• 34:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, why do they listen then?

• 34:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's the big question, I guess. If we really want to fix this, we've got to understand why the Treasury and the NHS doesn't want to listen. And it must be at some level that they find it difficult to believe this stuff.

• 34:34Alastair Campbell?

  Now, listen, we've got a critical question here from Mary Ann.

• 34:37Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 34:37Alastair Campbell?

  She said, the only women you ever mentioned on your podcast are Mrs. Thatcher and Liz Truss. I'm beginning to think that this podcast is a bit of a boys' club, which I think is wholly unfair. Now, we're both, we can't, we can't.

• 34:49Rory Stewart?

  We talk a lot about Angela Merkel, don't we? We talk a lot about Angela Merkel.

• 34:52Alastair Campbell?

  I, I, we've talked a lot in the past about Jacinda Ardern.

• 34:55Rory Stewart?

  Grace Campbell, we talk a lot about Grace Campbell.

• 34:57Alastair Campbell?

  Grace Campbell, gilded balloon.

• 34:58Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 34:59Alastair Campbell?

  And Edinburgh Fringe. I would love, if I had a dream list of interviewees.

• 35:05Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 35:05Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I'd like Hillary Clinton, Julia Gillard, Jacinda Ardern. So I think that's a bit harsh, that question.

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  Let me add on. Ellen Johnson-Surleif, amazing ex-president to Liberia, would be a wonderful person to get.

• 35:18Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Love her too. She's very, very, very close to my old boss.

• 35:21Rory Stewart?

  Oh, well, fantastic. That's our route. I was about to say, if any listener knew how to get to her.

• 35:25Alastair Campbell?

  Well, my, my, I've actually had conversations with her through my old boss, so that's, that's not difficult. But also I would love to interview Liz Truss. I'd love to interview Suella Bravma. I'd love to interview Nadine Doris.

• 35:38Rory Stewart?

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait, wait, hold a second.

• 35:40Alastair Campbell?

  On my own, on my own, not with you, Rory. So Pete lies to them. Now, listen, I've got one here where, because, because we do get accused of being a bit too, I don't know, fond of ourselves. Will Worf.

• 35:52Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 35:53Alastair Campbell?

  He said that he went away from our interview with William Hague, thinking that maybe what he said about the Lisbon Treaty, he had a point. And again, sorry to keep plugging the new European. I wrote about this last week. I actually, I don't know if you read my European column, Rory, but I actually confess that William Hay kept me awake that night.

• 36:14Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 36:15Alastair Campbell?

  Because I, I thought about that quite deeply.

• 36:17Rory Stewart?

  Just remind people what he said. So what he said is that he felt that one of the things that stored up the pressure for Brexit was the refusal to have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and that if there had been a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, the chances are that Britain would still be in the European Union because they would have been able to keep a looser association with Europe.

• 36:36Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. And the reason why I found it worrying is, I mean, of course, you can't, none of us know, it's a, it's a judgment and it's a view. I, you know, I would argue that as we, that's where the discussion started when I said, I didn't think David Cameron had to have that referendum. He should have had a strategy for Europe. But the, but the questioner pointed out that the Irish did have a vote on it and it did help to settle the debate in Ireland. Ireland has historically been much more pro-European. So I guess I'm thinking, I guess I'm thinking maybe he did have a point. Cause I do, I am quite self reflective about this whole Brexit thing and whether, you know, whether we actually, you know, I think you agree, you think this, that whether the people's vote campaign was

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  part of the polarization, all that stuff.

• 37:24Rory Stewart?

  Good, good, good, good. I think we're coming to the end because this is probably the longest question time ever. But let me just finish with a question from Jennifer Blackie.

• 37:32Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:32Rory Stewart?

  Who, who's nearly 80. She's one of our older listeners, I guess. She says, when I was about 15 or 16, so I guess that's, whatever, that's

• 37:43Alastair Campbell?

  65 years ago.

• 37:44Rory Stewart?

  Years ago. Very good. Yeah. My grandfather McNorton was down from Scotland, staying with us in London. At breakfast one morning, my mother asked an innocent question. Who was at the party night? I mentioned an old family friend who had a new girlfriend called Kirsty Campbell. My grandfather rose from the table, told me in no uncertain terms that I was never to share a table with a Campbell. To this day, I've met many Campbells, but there's always a very slight hesitation in my initial greeting. Well, luckily, this prejudice died out with a lovely old man with too long a memory. I'm now nearly eighty.

• 38:18Alastair Campbell?

  If you go to Glencoe, there is a pub there where it says on the wall, it says on the door, no Hawkers or Campbells allowed. And we were up there on holiday and walked in thinking it was a joke and got to the bar and the guy recognised me, he says, can you not read? If you're gonna do history, no, wait a minute, Rory, you're not going away. Yeah. If you're gonna do history, uh, do you know who Martin Rosen is?

• 38:43Rory Stewart?

  Cool. Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah, the cartoonist. Yeah.

• 38:47Alastair Campbell?

  He's a cartoonist. Right. He has, he, he got in touch with this email. Catching up with your latest podcast. I'm amazed by your collective ignorance of history. Canning, which the Prime Minister, you claimed to know all about last week, was incredibly important to try to create a kind of early caring conservatism, no such thing, by the way, after decades of Tory repression under Lord Liverpool. He was also rumored, I wonder if William Hague knows this, to be Pitt the Younger's lover. And in the 1790s coerced my great forebear, James Gilray, into putting him, Canning, into Gilray's satirical prince. Now, here's the bit for you, Rory.

• 39:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Alastair Campbell?

  As to Rory's thirty-second cousin, Lord Castle Ray, summed up in Shelley's The Mask of Anarchy.

• 39:36Rory Stewart?

  I know this quote. I'm something like, I met masked murder on the way. It had the face of Castle Ray, something like that?

• 39:42Alastair Campbell?

  Not bad. Very good, Rory. I met murder on the way. He had a mask like Castle Ray. After he killed himself, Byron wrote, oh, so he's cut his throat. He who cut the country's throat long ago, clearly much beloved. And Martin Rosen, he, he wrote, how do I know this? I just know it, he says, and now you do too. Um, final plug, final plug for James Thomas, the man who invented, rest his qualities, bingo. He has added two more pages, Rory, and they are very, very funny. Check them out on social media.

• 40:17Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Goodbye, guys.

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