301. Question Time: Iran’s retaliation, Labour "press bias" and an Olympic hangover

Is the press softer on Labour? How left-wing would a Harris/Walz government be? Was MI5 aware of crimes committed by a British agent? And how should France cash in on the Olympic hype? TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Producer: Nicole Maslen & Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter 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/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:12Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:16Alastair Campbell?

  And with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:18Rory Stewart?

  And I think in honour of keeping us honest, because I think we generally are pretty sympathetic to the Labour government that came in, but we've got to keep questioning. And here is a good question from Vincent Manicore. Alistair often complains about press bias against Labour. But following the case of Ian Caulfield being given a top civil service job after donating £20,000 to Rachel Reeves, I can't help but think that if this had happened under a Tory government, the press would have been far less forgiving. What are your thoughts on this? So just a background, Ian Caulfield is a banker who's donated more than £20,000 to Labour Party in the last nine years. And he, after the election, has been made a Director in the UK Treasury. So working under Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

• 2:01Rory Stewart?

  Directors, as you know, are pretty senior, just under a Director General. And it's very unusual because normally that's a role that would go to an internal appointment in the civil service or an external appointment. So I suppose if I had been playing the Alistair role from a few months ago, I'd be jumping up and down, saying, if this had happened under a Tory government, there would have been a huge amount of press reporting. But because it's happened under a Labour government, people have barely reported it. What do you say about that?

• 2:25Alastair Campbell?

  I think there's been a reasonable amount of reporting about it in the places where you'd expect it, Daily Mail, Etal. I generally want Labour to be a really clean, open, transparent government.

• 2:37Rory Stewart?

  Good.

• 2:38Alastair Campbell?

  First thing to say, £20,000 in nine years for a Tory, that doesn't even get you a cup of tea with a Julia PPS, but we'll park that for now. What I think this is, I could be wrong, but I think what Ian Corfield, who comes from a financial services background, I think this is a short-term job where he's going to be in charge of one of these investment summits that the Labour government is trying to put together. Now, I've not read that, but that is what I've been told by somebody who is, as it were, close to Ian Corfield. But in general, there are systems for hiring. You and I have both agreed in the past that maybe these systems need to be shaken up a bit so you can go outside, you can pay people

• 3:22Alastair Campbell?

  more, you can get people in from the private sector for short-term contracts that aren't necessarily on the same level of pay as civil servants. But I think on things like this, particularly in this early stage of the Labour government, anything which allows people to say, you're just as bad as the Tories, is to be avoided.

• 3:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and it's unfortunate because, you know, he would feel it's unfair that just because he donated to Labour government, he couldn't get a job that he was qualified to take. We should talk a little bit at some point or so about some of the early appointments. I mean, one of the interesting things that's happened, which makes me a bit jealous of my friends and your friend Hamish Faulkner, is he's come straight in as a backbench MP and has got immediately, before he's served, you know, a week on the back benches, has been made the Minister for the Middle East, a job that I was just about in the running for eight years into my time. It was unheard of for David Cameron ever to put a new MP straight in as a minister. You know, even his very favourites, the Matt Hancock's and the Liz Truss has had to serve at least two years on the back benches before they were ministers.

• 4:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it's not exactly an easy job. And I mean, look, I think Hamish is a very clever guy. He's got a good track record in terms of his previous career, although I think we'd all accept that being an MP and being a minister is a big step up from anything he may have done before. For George Gaal is another one who's gone straight in as a minister. I can't remember, I don't think Tony Blair ever did it either. I think he's with Cameron on that.

• 4:43Rory Stewart?

  No, I don't think you did because I remember chatting to Peter Mandelson about this, about him being frustrated. And I think the Miliband's too, that they had to serve their times as backbenchers. And, and this was, you know, this was relevant because people like Matt Hancock, who came in with me, had been chief of staff to George Osborne and very much part of the inner circle of the Cameron Osborne setup, really hoping that they would be able to become ministers. But the conventional wisdom was you had to serve a couple of years on the back benches, learn your ropes before you became minister. Now, of course, at the same time, I'm sort of quite well disposed towards it because I felt so frustrated that I was left on the back benches for five years. Nobody was tapping my experience. Nobody was using any of the energy I could have had. I would have loved to be a minister early on. So it's largely jealousy that makes me grumble about it.

• 5:27Alastair Campbell?

  You must be even more jealous of David Lammy, who seems to be absolutely loving his new job as Foreign Secretary. And he's certainly travelling a lot. Now, here's Rory, so we're talking foreign policy, Rory. We talked a couple of times about, about the, the recent elections in Thailand. Here's a question from Jake. In Thailand, we recently witnessed the decision to dissolve the Move Forward Party, MFP, over its controversial campaign to amend the law that protects the monarchy from criticism. Despite winning the election, its leader, Pita, was never able to form a government due to the legislative barriers, subsequently barred from politics for the next decade, which is kind of what we said might happen. This isn't new, happened previously in 2020, when a predecessor party, Future Forward, was dissolved over a campaign funding violation.

• 6:08Alastair Campbell?

  This undemocratic ruling seems to fly under the radar of so many in the global community. I wondered if you had an opinion on this and the future of Thai democracy.

• 6:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, this is something that we did discuss in some detail a year ago when the election was happening. So.

• 6:22Alastair Campbell?

  Was it a year ago?

• 6:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. Very distinctive in terms of basically the story of a lot of Southeast Asia. So Thailand moved towards democracy pretty much in lockstep with other countries. You remember South Korea became democratic, Taiwan became democratic, Indonesia eventually became democratic when I was a diplomat there in the, the late 90s. But Thailand held on to a very strong military and a very strong monarchy. We've talked a little bit about the monarchy and the, to put it mildly, eccentricities, the Thai king, who's largely to be found living in Germany, managed to release on social media pictures of his wife topless and made his poodle, I think it's a poodle, into an air chief marshal, called Air Chief Marshal Foo Foo.

• 7:07Alastair Campbell?

  Do you feel at all guilty or ashamed that if you were a Thai citizen, you'd just committed an offence that would see you spend 15 years in jail?

• 7:18Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think that is a bit worrying, isn't it? It really is a bit worrying. One of the things that goes wrong in media is that you raise an issue and then you don't follow up. So the poor audience is left there on tenterhooks. You know, there's been an election on South Africa, what actually happened with the coalition for. So in this case, it was an election in Thailand, July last year. And it was very exciting because this guy called Peter Limajurad, who is a Harvard educated, New Zealand educated, bright young thing in his early 40s, the kind of macron of Thailand, swept through the election on a pretty progressive, anti-militaries, sceptical about the monarchy, modernising, favour of gay marriage, against conscription, modernising ticket.

• 7:59Rory Stewart?

  And it really felt as though, my goodness, this is a massive rebuke to the old establishment. And Thailand is going to have to get with the times and modernise. And here is this Harvard Kennedy School graduate who's now made it through. Fast forward a year, and of course, the forces of reaction have massively dug in. He wasn't allowed to form a government. The coalition instead was formed by the most conservative forces with the military and the monarchy backing him. And his entire party has now been declared illegal. And he's been done for some offence he committed two years ago and is no longer allowed to run. So, I mean, you know, we talk a lot about democratic backsliding and we'll touch in question time on what's happening in Bangladesh.

• 8:41Rory Stewart?

  But this whole story of the way in which Asian democracies seemed in the 1990s to be on a steady path towards liberal democracies and backsliding.

• 8:49Alastair Campbell?

  When you hear situations like this, Rory, and we kind of did predict this. Although maybe not quite as dramatically or as speedily as it's happened. But it underlines how utterly ridiculous it is for people like Musk and Nigel Farage to say that Keir Starmer is the biggest threat to free speech in in the history of the world, where this guy has won an election, setting out a progressive programme of change. Not even criticizing the royal family, just saying maybe sometime in the future that's worth looking at further down the track. And suddenly he gets banned from public life, his party gets banned. And, you know, you're talking serious jail sentences in that country. You criticize the royal family or the military.

• 9:30Rory Stewart?

  The reason people turn a blind eye to it is that Thailand is of course an incredible economic success story. And this was part of the story with Bangladesh. Its economy was growing so fast, people turned a blind eye to the authoritarian government. Thailand is far, far wealthy. I mean, it's a pretty poor country when I first went there in the early eighties. It's now a proper upper middle income country and an economic miracle. And this is one of the problems, that the link between being a liberal democracy and delivering growth, which was the sort of story for 200 years, has been broken. And increasingly, from China to Thailand, people are looking at these more authoritarian models and saying, well, we don't really mind as long as we're getting wealthier. And maybe just just to sort of fast forward a bit, I mean, one of the things that goes wrong in media,

• 10:14Rory Stewart?

  and it's something that we can partially deal with on the podcast, but not completely, is that you raise an issue and then you don't follow up.

• 10:20Alastair Campbell?

  So on that basis, we should tell our listeners that the new prime minister of Bangladesh is Muhammad Yunus. He is their only ever Nobel laureate. He's been sworn in as the chief advisor of a caretaker government. Sheikh Asena, who is currently in India, I think, has indicated that if and when they get around to future elections, she would consider throwing her hat in the ring again.

• 10:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, so Mohamed Yunus, just to remind people, he got his Nobel Prize because he was the guy that pioneered microcredit. So he made these very small loans to Bangladeshi women and had, apparently, and it's now become more controversial, and people like me who believe in not making loans at all but just doing direct cash transfer, maybe would say that you didn't need to charge such high interest rates. But the basic idea was the same, which is that very small amounts of cash given to the extreme poor allowed people, particularly women, to really transform their economic conditions. But he was sentenced to six months in jail under the last government for a labour violation case. So it was one of the real sort of test cases of Bangladesh getting authoritarian, that this great national

• 11:30Rory Stewart?

  hero had been thrown in jails through the general lawfare and is now the interim president.

• 11:35Alastair Campbell?

  He's a few years older than Joe Biden, but inside the group of senior advisers are a couple of the leaders of the youth protest movement. Anyway, so I think we've covered off Bangladesh, Roy, but we can come back to it again. What do you think?

• 11:47Rory Stewart?

  We can come back to it again. I wonder whether there is enough proper international reporting in the British press and whether people are able to connect the dots. Because, so for example, you know, we should follow up on things like Uruguay, you know, what's happening there, where again, you know, there was a very, very positive story that seemed to be turning dark. It's returning to some of the themes I think is really important.

• 12:06Alastair Campbell?

  No, I totally, I totally agree with you. And, you know, it's one of the reasons why both of us read widely abroad. It's why I do get the Le Monde Diplomatique and why we do get, you know, you do get the New York Times and these other papers that sort of do stick with. I think the decline of interest in foreign policy in our media, I still think the public are as interested in it, not all of them, obviously, but, you know, a lot of people are interested in what goes on beyond our borders. Right, let's stick with beyond our borders. Alex Boardman, does the Waltz pick, that's the new vice presidential pick for Vice President Harris, signal that if the Democrats were in the US, could have its most left-wing administration in decades? How much do you think the progressive left will shape the approaches the campaigns take and the ultimate election result?

• 12:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's very hard to put, and bear in mind, this is a guy, Walts, this is a guy that Donald Trump appointed as the chair of his gubernatorial advisers and who said was a great governor. Did Trump push the liberal left thing in these interview with Musk?

• 13:07Rory Stewart?

  No, it didn't particularly. No, what his push in the interview with Musk is the obvious one, which I guess you would advise him to do if you were doing his campaign, which is to say, it's all very well, these people complaining about immigration now, but they've been in office for four years and they didn't get on top of it. So his basic line is similar, I guess, the line that Labour took against Conservatives. It's all very well during the election campaign, saying you're going to fix all these things, why didn't you fix them when you were in power? He was concentrating less on the Walts issue. Walts has been the most astonishing find in terms of speaking. I mean, he's a great, great communicator, isn't he? Have you been impressed by his speeches and his stuff?

• 13:44Alastair Campbell?

  I thought his first big speech, when she was standing behind him, I thought it was brilliant. It was a masterclass in, oratory is the wrong word, it was kind of folksy communication, very funny at times, but then he could flip between the funny and the very, very serious. And I just love that line about Vance, when he said, you know, I can't wait to debate the guy, because he sort of, it wasn't bombast, it was, you know, when Trump does, you know, she's going to be great, because she's even worse than Biden, nobody thinks he believes that. What he says with Walts is he really does look forward to taking this guy apart.

• 14:18Rory Stewart?

  And it's difficult thinking of a British politician, actually, who's able to achieve that kind of communication style, because he genuinely seems so relaxed and cheerful. In terms of left wing stuff, the controversy there is that in his own home state, he's introduced policies which in the UK would be considered, you know, perfectly sort of centre right, you know, child tax credits.

• 14:41Alastair Campbell?

  Free school meals.

• 14:42Rory Stewart?

  Which is continuing exactly free school meals stuff. So it's hardly the beginning of the communist revolution.

• 14:48Alastair Campbell?

  One of the interviews I saw, he's been pressed on it. And he said, yeah, hell, yeah, I want kids to have food in their belly. That's so bad, so bad. He's just got this lovely way of kind of pushing back on this stuff.

• 15:00Rory Stewart?

  I was, I was interested, I mean, we talked a little bit about this, but in the Trump mask interview, I was struck that Trump isn't going there. Trump clearly thinks that he should stick on, they've lost control of the border and there are nasty people coming in the border and they're not dealing with immigration, and stick with cost of living.

• 15:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Rory Stewart?

  You know, the prices are going up. His instinct at the moment, at least in that last interview, is, is not particularly to lean into that stuff. He thinks that he's more likely, I think, to win if he can make it about immigration and cost of living. And he's probably right, isn't he?

• 15:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, Rory, you're in America at the moment. I'm, I'm in the last few days of my, of my time, my post Olympian hangover in, in France. But we will next be meeting in Chicago because we're going to be doing the podcast from the Democratic Party Convention.

• 15:46Rory Stewart?

  Looking forward to it very, very much, very exciting. I think these things are gonna, I mean, these things are pretty. I mean, we'll have to get some colourful clothing on and stuff. I think there's a real kind of party atmosphere around this.

• 15:56Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think we have to. No, I don't think we should do that. I think we should be very British and very sober. I could bring my bagpipes if you felt that was necessary, but.

• 16:03Rory Stewart?

  You must bring your bagpipes. Now, quick break and then back for more questions.

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• 17:55Rory Stewart?

  Anushka, given the fact that Germany, UK and France are still sending weapons to Israel, how effective do you think the call between German Chancellor Oloch Scholz and the Iranian President Masoud Peshkian will be at convincing Iran to prevent further military escalation in the Middle East? So, okay, remind people what's happened. So latest figures from Gaza's Health Administration. Last 48 hours, 142 Palestinians killed, 150 injured. And we are very, very close now to crossing 40,000 Palestinians killed and 100,000 injured. And where is the escalation? Well, escalation is coming from the fact that Netanyahu just did a trip to the States, where he was applauded by Congress.

• 18:40Rory Stewart?

  There has been an Israeli attack that took out the political leader of Hamas, who was there for the inauguration of the Iranian president. And Iran has vowed to retaliate. And there are certainly strong factions within the Israeli government that now feel that they need to take the war to the Hezbollah, which are the Iranian proxies or allies in Lebanon, and some on the far extremes who almost think now is the time to go to war with Iran. And I picked this up actually, talking... Also to Americans who are very close to the Israeli government over the last few days, they keep returning to the story that Iran is the head of the Hydra and the only

• 19:22Rory Stewart?

  way to solve the situation in the Middle East is to go after Iran. This is something that the Biden administration profoundly disagrees with and they are going all out to try to stop escalation into Lebanon and Iran. But as this question implies, how much leverage does the Biden administration really think it's got if Netanyahu can turn up and get an applause from both houses of Congress and apparently is able to act with complete impunity and largely ignore the US on all this stuff. So I would have thought the risk of Ben Gavir and others, Ben Gavir being one of the right wing politicians, dragging Israel to a confrontation with Lebanon and Iran is relatively high at the moment.

• 20:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well, watching the American media yesterday, it was as if it was a given and there were some Israeli intelligence experts, I don't know whether they're experts or not, but they were billed as such, essentially saying this is the week when it's all going to kick off and that we should be, it's a sort of question of when, not if. Now, I don't know if that's right or wrong, but I, it does feel like it's in a perilous state. This thing you said about impunity there, Rory, is interesting. You know, in the main podcast, we talked about China and Serbia and we talked about the fact that a quarter of a century on, there's still these consequences from when NATO accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy. And at the time, we had to apologize and explain and make reparations. And yet

• 20:46Alastair Campbell?

  the other day, you have a school that gets bombed, 90 people or so killed. And it's just stated as a fact, we were taking out Hamas leadership or Hamas command center that happened to be there. And we've now become so sort of inured to this that it's barely getting any international commentary anymore. And, and I just sort of worry that we're now at a stage where, you know, you said in, when we talked about Ukraine, that we haven't talked about Ukraine for a while. And it's back to this point about things reach a sort of state of where it's just accepted this bad stuff's going to happen. And we only then take an interest when something really big and bad happens. But I, I found that really troubling this week.

• 21:28Rory Stewart?

  You're right. I mean, as the whole world gets more. Violent. And I mean, this is not just a sort of perception, this is statistics, right? Over the last 10 years, every single year, we have had more civilians killed in conflict, more refugees, more internally displaced people. And we are now in a situation where about across 40,000 people killed in Gaza, which is a very, very high proportion of a pretty small population. The Ukraine war still absolute, you know, meat grinder, Soviet tactics is the way that it's characterized from both armies on the front lines. Sudan, the millions of people displaced and the drought now followed up with flooding, which

• 22:08Rory Stewart?

  is causing even more chaos and horror. And a general sense that this becomes the new normal, that think things which, you know, 10 years ago, we had the luxury to pretend or not pretend that genuinely, the world was had been becoming more peaceful.

• 22:24Alastair Campbell?

  I read that Keir Starmer had his first phone call with the new leader of Iran, making the same points that Sholz and Macron had done. Biden has been speaking to Keir Starmer, Olaf Scholz and Macron and others. But it sort of feels at this stage like they all feel this is heading in a very, a very dangerous direction. Just on Ben Gavir, by the way, Rory, he said that instead of agreeing to a ceasefire deal, Israel should be blocking the entry of all humanitarian aid and fuel to Gaza until Hamas releases all of the hostages. And this has said that he'd bring down the government of Netanyahu who goes too far. And Burrell, Joseph Burrell, who's the EU's top European diplomat, he's called for the

• 23:06Alastair Campbell?

  EU to consider sanctions on Israel on the basis of that, saying that Ben Gavir's suggestion to cut off aid to Gaza is an incitement to war crime. So it's sort of, we all know Netanyahu is a great survivor. But will he ever run out of road in trying to manage this cabinet and these different relationships between these very different people inside his cabinet?

• 23:26Rory Stewart?

  It's also, you know, a very interesting question about what exactly is Israel's doing with some of these targeted assassinations? So what's happening by killing the political leader? So by killing Ismail Haniya? We now have a new political leader who's taken over Hamas, who's much more extreme. It's Yahya Sinwar, who's the man who masterminded the horrifying attacks. This is a sort of strange thing, which is both favoring the more extreme factions within Hamas. And look, some people listening to this will resent my saying there are more extreme factions in Hamas, but there certainly are. As with all these groups, it's true with the Taliban that we talked about, it's true

• 24:09Rory Stewart?

  with the Israeli government, there are more and less extreme factions going on. It suits the more extreme factions within Hamas, because on a spectrum, a slightly more moderate person has been killed and a more extreme person's been brought in. But it also suits the more extreme narrative in Israel, because then they're able to say, look, you know, this is a more extreme organization. So it is this sort of sense that all these tactics are just increasing the tensions, increasing the risk of conflict. And a confrontation with Hezbollah in Iran is enormous. I mean, we keep coming back to this. Hezbollah has over 20,000 people under arms.

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  It is one of the most tested, tried military units in the Middle East, which developed huge capacity during the Syrian war, is much better armed than Hamas. And opening up another front in another country, because fighting Hezbollah will involve not going to Gaza in this time, it will involve invading a sovereign, independent country, it will involve invading Lebanon itself, let alone taking on Iran. I mean, this is really, really dangerous stuff. And it's partly driven by people who think this makes strategic sense. So there are people in the Israeli government who think this is our chance to put this to bed once and for all. But it's also caused politics.

• 25:30Rory Stewart?

  It's about Netanyahu trying to keep his coalition together and avoid an election by flattering the more right wing elements.

• 25:36Alastair Campbell?

  Now, let's stay with a fairly heavy subject, steak knife. Paul O'Connor. When you interviewed Eliza Manning and Buller, former head of MI5 in April, she claimed that MI5 was unaware of steak knife until they were required to resettle him. This is the double agent that we talked about at the time.

• 25:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, just a quick reminder. So this was a man who was right in the heart of the IRA, ran the IRA's security section, which was involved in assassinating and executing and torturing IRA informants. And it turned out that British intelligence, particularly military intelligence, had recruited him. So they were getting information from him on IRA operations while also turning a blind eye, it seems, to him continuing to execute and torture people in Northern Ireland.

• 26:23Alastair Campbell?

  So the question goes on. He calls this claim by Eliza Manning Buller bizarre. Operation Kenava confirmed to us yesterday, that's the official investigation into these events, that new documents reveal that the security service was aware of his role much earlier. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. Perhaps you should get back to the former director. And Paul O'Connor himself, I should, I should say, I just happen to know this, he is the, himself, the director of the Pat Fanoukhan Centre in Derry, and they provide advocacy support to victims and survivors of the, of the conflict.

• 26:57Rory Stewart?

  Well, this was something that surprised me when we were interviewing Eliza Manning Buller, ex-head of MI5, because I tried to push her on this and said there wasn't enough guidance around the way that MI5 operated.

• 27:07Alastair Campbell?

  And she said it changed.

• 27:09Rory Stewart?

  She said, no, no, no, you know, we had very strong rules in place from the 1970s and legal guidance. Well, definitely, the current investigation seems to favor, my view rather than hers, and seems to say that the British security service, MI5, didn't have adequate stuff in place. And it's also suggested that MI5 would certainly have been aware of the existence of steak knife, because MI5 had absolute responsibility for intelligence operations in Northern Ireland, would have been coordinating strongly with military intelligence. And I think that's true. I think it's highly unlikely that British military intelligence would have been able to run an informant of that level and seniority. I mean, this is the kind of jewel in the crown.

• 27:51Rory Stewart?

  To have managed to recruit the man who was the head of the counterintelligence operations, the IRA, I mean, that's like the KGB recruiting Kim Philby when he was running counterintelligence operations against the Russians in the British intelligence agency. The idea that the most senior people at least would not have been briefed on his existence. I mean, of course, they would have gone very, very hard to protect his identity. So the need to know would have been very, very narrow. But I'd be very surprised that there wasn't one person in the security service who was aware.

• 28:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, she essentially said that the MI5 basically took him over when it came to relocating him and giving him a new identity and all that sort of stuff. But I, I, I think it would be pretty remarkable if MI5 in Northern Ireland did not know who the agents were, particularly when they were as, as senior as he was. Anyway, Paul, thank you for bringing that to, to our attention. Now, Rory, my last one, I hope you'll forgive me, but you know how much these things mean to me. I want to go back to the Olympics. Anita Gardner. Yep. Do you think Macron should have waited until after the Olympics to hold the election in France? Given the success of the Olympics, do you think the feel-good factor would have had an impact on the election outcome? And then Alex Lowry, I've been hooked on the Olympics over the last few weeks, as

• 29:03Alastair Campbell?

  I'm sure have many others. It got me thinking, what are the benefits to a nation politically, economically and culturally of performing well and winning loads of medals? I actually think that this, these Olympics have been fantastic for France. I've been in France for the whole time. I've been to the Olympics. I went to the athletics the other night, which was absolutely fantastic. Paris seems a bit like London in 2012, to have swallowed a sort of non-moaning happiness pill. Everybody just seemed very cheerful.

• 29:33Rory Stewart?

  Parisians are not, Parisians are not famous for their cheerfulness.

• 29:36Alastair Campbell?

  But it was absolutely beautifully organised. The way that they use the city, the river, the monuments, the old buildings, absolutely brilliant. And, and, and I think it has created a different mood. I mean, I, you know, talking to some people in a cafe the other night. And they just said, I felt so proud to be French for the first time in I don't know how long. Now, the political question, is there a political mileage in that? Very interestingly, at the closing ceremony, Willie Bach, who's the kind of the head of the IOC, the International Olympic Committee, in his final remarks, he made a point of saying, and I want particularly to thank President Macron for his indefatigable support

• 30:18Alastair Campbell?

  of all that it's taken to make these games a success. And there was a very, very loud round of applause in the stadium. Now, I think two weeks ago, a mention of Emmanuel Macron in a speech might have got booed. So is that, was that because there was an international audience? I don't know. But I think there is something there to be tapped into. And the point about what the benefit to a nation is, I think that, look, America won the medal table, they narrowly beat China. We would have been third, Rory, if it was on medals total, but we were beaten into seventh by others who got more gold medals, it goes on the gold medals. I was looking at the scenes in Pakistan, the Pakistani javelin thrower got a gold medal. Absolutely amazing. The woman from Saint Lucia, who's their first

• 31:00Alastair Campbell?

  ever medalist, Tito Dominica. It's amazing what this does for countries and their morale and their happiness and so forth. It's why I'm such a big fan of the Olympics.

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  Oh, great. Well, I think that is great. So, final one for me. Tony Gates and Kevin Bishop, 75 years ago, the government had the vision to establish national parks in England and Wales. Is it time for a new deal for the national parks, one that recognizes their value in the face of climate, ecological and health crises? So, this, Alastair, on your occasional walks with Keir Starmer, is a huge opportunity for the new Labour Government. So, 75th anniversary of the national parks, amazing institutions, cheap as chips, their budgets are very, very small, and they're rather wonderfully set up. So the Budget Lake National Park, a couple of million pounds, and you get a very independent chief executive, who, without too much interference from civil service, is able to pursue some

• 31:52Rory Stewart?

  really great policies. And it's a rather kind of genius system, because each of the chief executives in national parks, so someone like Tony Gates up in Northumberland, is able to focus on many things, but he can focus- On Roman heritage, the Lake District can focus on rewilding, the Yorkshire Dales can focus on working with small farmers. They're all doing different things. And I think that freedom should be encouraged. I think we should see Labour do what I was able to do when I was the National Parks Minister, which is to guarantee their funding for a fixed period. So let's say a small amount of money, but for five years, your budget is protected in real terms. So you can get on and plan. And then Labour get in behind this, make it a, you know, a charter for the people. Really make the National Parks part of the new Labour defra story. Huge opportunity and not one that will cost much money.

• 32:37Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I totally support that. I mean, I've not bumped into Keir on Hampstead Heath at all since the election. I fear he may have moved house, Rory. I'm not sure that the, I'm not sure that bumping it on the Heath is going to happen quite as frequently in the future.

• 32:50Rory Stewart?

  Well, maybe you could bump into him in a National Park, take him on, take on a bit of a.

• 32:54Alastair Campbell?

  I do think this, I also think that the, I really hope that, I mean, Lisa Nandi said when we interviewed it, you know, the era of the culture wars is over. I really also hope that this sort of war that the right have been waged on the National Trust comes to an end as well. But listen, I love the National Parks. And do you think we've got the right number? Or do you think we could do with another one?

• 33:12Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you for that prompt. Look, this is going to be something that I really want to sell again. If there's anyone from the Labour government listening, I understand that they want to build more houses. And I understand that may involve them building a small amount of houses on Greenbelt around London. And they may have to do that. But the opportunity is to do a deal like this. We'll build on a small amount and in return, we will turn the rest of the Greenbelt into an amazing National Park. We will make it the most biodiverse, magnificent landscape in Britain. We'll plant 100 million trees in the Greenbelt around London. We'll create lungs for the city. We'll bring visitors out. So here's a great vision for Labour. As part of the price of building on a bit of the Greenbelt,

• 33:55Rory Stewart?

  let's improve the rest of it in terms of nature and let it be something that in two, 300 years' time, people can look at these giant oak trees planted by this government, which are going to improve air quality, climate, leisure, temperature in London for the future.

• 34:11Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, that's absolutely wonderful. While we're on the subject of trees, I want to support the Urban Heat Campaign. Which is Trees for Cities. And this is where they're going for their, they're basically promoting trees in cities. And check them out. Trees for Cities online, absolutely wonderful. So you don't want Trees for Cities, you want a forest around London.

• 34:33Rory Stewart?

  I also want a lot of Trees for Cities, Alistair. And in fact, when I was running as an independent

• 34:37Alastair Campbell?

  I know, I know.

• 34:37Rory Stewart?

  Kind of from there. And that was one of the things I was always criticizing.

• 34:40Alastair Campbell?

  You stopped going on about trees, talk about housing, blah, blah, blah. You were right, they were wrong. Good. I shall see you in Chicago.

• 34:49Rory Stewart?

  See you in Chicago. Have a great day. Bye bye.