406. Biden, Springsteen, and Trump: Dancing in the Dark

What does Trump’s outburst against Bruce Springsteen and Joe Biden tell us about his psychology? Why has he lifted sanctions on al-Sharaa’s Syria, and why now? Has Portugal finally lost its immunity to far-right populism? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics Plus: Become a member for exclusive bonus content, early access to Question Time episodes to live show tickets, ad-free listening for both TRIP and Leading, our exclusive newsletter, discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, and our members’ chatroom on Discord. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away FREE TRIP+ membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP+ gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit GetFuse.com/Politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producers: Evan Green, India Dunkley Video Editor: Adam Thornton Producers: 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.

• 0:00Rory Stewart?

  The Rest Is Politics is as ever powered by our friends at Fuse Energy.

• 0:04Alastair Campbell?

  And if you've got an electric vehicle or you're thinking of switching, Fuse can help you with that. They're offering a new overnight charging tariff that makes things very, very simple.

• 0:14Rory Stewart?

  It's available now through their iOS app and Android's on its way. It works with a wide and growing range of home chargers.

• 0:21Alastair Campbell?

  No obscure hardware, no complicated setup. You just plug in, you charge overnight and you're on your way.

• 0:26Rory Stewart?

  And you can even get that electric vehicle charger installed at home in as little as seven days, depending on your setup. Hardware fitting the whole lot handled.

• 0:34Alastair Campbell?

  Which, let's be honest, is not something you hear about every product you deal with.

• 0:37Rory Stewart?

  And when you sign up, you'll get trip plus membership completely free. That's not just ad free listening, that's amazing bonus episodes and unique interviews that we do, early access to question time and pre-sale tickets to our live shows.

• 0:49Alastair Campbell?

  So while your car charges, you're also helping our podcast.

• 0:54Rory Stewart?

  Just head to getfuse.com/politics, download the app and use the code POLITICS when you sign up.

• 1:00Alastair Campbell?

  Practical, painless, no committee required.

• 1:08Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 1:10Alastair 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.

• 1:23Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve and of course the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN and 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.

• 1:46Alastair Campbell?

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

• 1:53Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:10Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.

• 2:45Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:49Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And just a reminder to those who might have missed it, on Monday, we've already done a fairly chunky half hour on the UK EU summit, the AMLE Monday. That would have gone out to members in their feed yesterday if they missed it. And anybody else who wants to catch up, it is there. We may touch upon it in the second half of this one anyway, because we're going to be talking about the spate of European elections that were over the weekend. But in the first half, we're going to talk about the United States and both the current president, but let's start with the former president, Joe Biden, and the news of his health, Rory.

• 3:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, very sad. So he seems to have been diagnosed with what looks like quite advanced serious prostate cancer. And at the same time, there have been a series of reports and now a big book out saying that his cognitive decline was very extreme and was concealed from people, including one very colourful claim that people may have come across, which is that one of the reasons that George Clooney decided not to endorse him or call for him to step down is that having known Biden very long for many years, it became clear to him that Biden didn't recognise him. I had heard that actually from a UK Cabinet Minister, who at the time swore me to secrecy, but said that he'd been in a

• 4:13Rory Stewart?

  meeting with Biden and Biden had come in, said hello to them all, sat down, been taken out by his staff for a few minutes and then re-entered the room five minutes later and reintroduced himself again to all the same people as though he'd never met them. And that was about 12 months before the election. Yeah.

• 4:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I, I think the, look, the, the thing that brought it to a head was the, the Trump TV debate when Trump, as ever, was, you know, whatever you think of incredibly energetic and it was that killer moment when, when he said to Biden, I don't know what he just said, and I don't think he knows what he just said. Um, or so I don't know what he means, and I don't think you know what he means. There's no doubt now that lots and lots and lots of people were seeing him, who were saying to each other and saying to others outside, he's not in a good way, he shouldn't, he shouldn't run. But what the book appears to be saying is that he had this very tight circle, including part family, part advisors who felt they could keep the show on the road.

• 5:13Alastair Campbell?

  I think it also maybe puts into, look, on the, on the illness, and as you say, reading between the lines, I mean, I've, I've drafted and read quite a lot of sort of dealing with health issues for politicians is always very, very difficult. Um, but reading between the lines on this one, it looks quite serious to me. Um, I also really wanted to just, I mean, let me just read you this post from Donald Trump yesterday. Malinaya and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden's recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family. And with Joe, a fast and successful recovery, which is the sort of thing that a president should say.

• 5:55Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, but it sits so badly alongside his relentless ranting about Joe Biden. Pretty much up until yesterday.

• 6:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I mean, it's this interesting message, isn't it? Because it shows that he can occasionally. Do the normal thing. I was expecting it to lead to lead on to him saying, but like his happy Easter message, which begins happy Easter and then attacks Joe Biden and everybody else. Yeah.

• 6:23Alastair Campbell?

  We had that situation on the the episode we did on Monday on the on the Keir Starmer Von der Leyen summit, where somebody said that Nigel Farage was living inside my head. It's very easy to get inside Donald Trump's head. Um. Did you see his tweet about Bruce Springsteen? Absolutely amazing. So Bruce Springsteen.

• 6:43Rory Stewart?

  Pretty, pretty, pretty extraordinary. Yeah. Have you? Have you got the text?

• 6:46Alastair Campbell?

  I've got to hear. Yeah, I've got to hear. Yeah. So Bruce Springsteen is on tour at the moment. He started. He's kicked off the tour in Manchester. That's Manchester, England. And he basically stood up. And I thought it was brilliantly done. He basically said, he talked about the need for people to stand up, rise up, speak out, because my country's been taken over by a corrupt, incompetent, treasonous administration. And then he went on. Anyway, Donald Trump says as follows, I see that highly overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a foreign country, and that's you people in the UK, to speak badly about the President of the United States. Never liked him, never liked his music or his radical

• 7:25Alastair Campbell?

  left politics. And importantly, he's not a talented guy, just a pushy, obnoxious, capital letters jerk, who fervently supported crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent capitals fool, and our capitals worst ever president, who came close to destroying our country. This is the guy he's hoping gets well soon. If I wasn't elected, it would have been gone by now, whatever that means. Sleepy Joe didn't have a

• 7:54Rory Stewart?

  The country, I think.

• 7:54Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, the country. Sleepy Joe didn't have a clue what he was doing. But Springsteen is, quotes, dumb as a rock. Couldn't see what was going on. Or could he? Which is even worse, question mark. This dried out, quotes, prune of a rocker, brackets, his skin is all atrophied, ought to, caps, keep his mouth shut until he gets back into the country. That's just standard fare. Then we'll see how it goes for him. I mean, that is, that is inside your head living of, I mean, well done, Bruce. I say, well done. The boss is the boss and he is right inside DJT's head there.

• 8:32Rory Stewart?

  And it's also fascinating that you can, I mean, you don't need to be a sort of great kind of French critic to pull out the fact that the same themes come up in almost every post.

• 8:42Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 8:42Rory Stewart?

  So there's the sleepy Joe, there's the I'm the president of the United States, there's the foreign country. And then there's the threat on borders and immigration, just you come back to this country.

• 8:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's also the obsession with skin. I mean, his skin to require the level of makeup that he wears, I mean, the mooch is described as the process of makeupology of Trump.

• 9:06Rory Stewart?

  And the mooch really understands skin, doesn't he?

• 9:08Alastair Campbell?

  That, that is, I thought, strange. And he also had last week, Taylor Swift. Since I, since she came out for me and I called her out, she used to be hot, she's now not hot anymore. He's gone off her and he now fancies Amidal Shara. I was talking to somebody the other day, Roy, who, who, who.

• 9:26Rory Stewart?

  What do you mean, he now fancies him?

• 9:29Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he basically said he was hot. I'm sorry, I'm going to say this because I think it's important. I heard this story about Trump, Trump does sort of, he, he, he tells, he likes telling men how handsome they are and how good looking they are. Apparently he went up to a couple of guys who were at Mar-a-Lago, just said, went over to them and said, you're beautiful, can you just stay there forever? Um, now the thing, and the thing about, the thing about the, um, the post when about Joe Biden's illness, let's just, let's just accept for a minute, maybe it was sincere. Let's just assume that it's hard to know because of what he'd said about in the day before. The, this same person who knows Trump land really, really well, said that one of Trump's really big motivations is an, is a pathological fear of death,

• 10:15Alastair Campbell?

  that he's really, really, really scared of dying. And he even took this to the next level and said that, but there's lots of reasons why he kind of likes to treat with Putin and Xi Jinping. Obviously the fact that they're powerful people, they've got, you know, they, they basically run their countries like their extension of themselves, et cetera, et cetera. But he actually said to me, this guy, and he's, and I'm talking about somebody who's quite a serious person, well, very serious person. So then actually part of it is this fear of death because they've got a lot of nukes. And this kind of, you know, a lot of what he's about is just making sure these guys don't use nukes on America because he really doesn't want to go like that. What do you think of that?

• 10:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I like it. I mean, I I've also sort of a kind of um meta point which I'm becoming increasingly obsessed with, which is that we talk all the time about Trump's psychology, don't we? You know, he's obsessed with death, you know, he um likes rich people, he's worried about his skin. And this is what happens when somebody turns from being an elected president in a normal democratic system with checks and balances into a a king. I mean, this is what used to happen with Louis XIV. People spend their whole time kind of trying to get into his head.

• 11:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and the court and the court are all just hovering, constantly analyzing their relationships with each other through the context of how is this going to appeal to him. So you saw that with Mike Walz. I mean, Mike Walz was his departure as National Security Advisor would have been accompanied by endless maneuvering by Vance and Hexeth and all these other people in the orbit. And now he's gone and they're still there, but they might be next.

• 11:57Rory Stewart?

  And it's also weird that the psychology doesn't really help anybody, even people who know him reasonably well, to actually predict what he can do. I mean, we can all say he's unbelievably unpredictable.

• 12:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:09Rory Stewart?

  But you will see, you know, people who know him well predicting that he'll only put up with Musk for a day and then he puts up Musk weeks, or they'll predict that he's never going to put up tariffs, and then he puts out tariffs, and then when he's put them up, they'll predict and never bring them down, and he brings them down. And we just saw the same, just to segue a little bit on to the Middle East tour, because we we talked about that Middle East tour, and it's all been happening between the last podcast and now. So just to remind people, he he went to Riyadh on Tuesday, the thirteenth of May, where he signed a $600 billion investment deal, apparently, or it was agreed, it wasn't signed, and 142 billion arms deal. Then he went to Doha next day, 1.2 trillion economic exchange was talked about, Abu Dhabi, 200 billion and stuff on AI, and then back to Doha again.

• 12:55Rory Stewart?

  And one of the things in it, which was really startling, which we trailed in the last podcast, was of course, this decision on Ahmad al-Shara.

• 13:05Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 13:06Rory Stewart?

  When we went to see Ahmad al-Shara, the conventional wisdom was this man is an international terrorist. He very recently had a $10 million price on his head and nobody should be dealing with him. And it was very controversial. We even interviewed him. Now President Trump has said, as you say, that he's hot and he's lifted sanctions on him. And it's very interesting he's done it because, again, two weeks ago, I had a lot of people explaining that he would never do that. And they had two explanations. One of them was that he was very influenced by Israel and Israel does not want sanctions lifted on him. In fact, they want him gone. They want al-Shara gone. So he ignored Israel. The second is he ignored a whole series of power players in his own administration.

• 13:48Rory Stewart?

  The Assistant Secretary of State, for example, and a man called Gurkha, who again is a very, very powerful, was supposed to be a very powerful player, who was really against lifting sanctions. And Trump's ignored them all and instead he's gone, it seems, roughly with what Mohammed bin Salman wanted and what the Qataris wanted, which is the sanctions being lifted. And he met al-Shara. Very, very unusual thing for a president to do. So I just want to get to this because it's all part of, as we look at the next three and a half years of this roller coaster, how unbelievably difficult it is even people who think they know him well, like Gurkha, in the middle of his administration, to know what he's going to do in two days' time.

• 14:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the current episode of Leading, which I really, really, really read, I know we always plug the Leading, but I think if there's one, if you don't listen to Leading, please listen to this week with this guy, Arab Barghouti, whose father, Mahwan Barghouti, is in jail, has been for over 20 years, but he's reckoned by many Palestinians and by moderate Israelis to be the guy who could be the key to trying to help, you know, get Palestinian and Israeli relations into a better place. But we talked to him about al-Shara and he made the point, he said, I've thought ever since Trump came in, that his unpredictability...

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  Might actually lead to better prospects for Palestine. And you and I, both of us before the presidential election, we said, look, Netanyahu is basically just waiting for Trump, same as Putin, is waiting for Trump. But actually, Trump, not least as shown, not least by going to the Gulf without going to Israel and all the other things we talked about last week that he's done, the Houthis, Iran, he is not conforming to type, he is not following the narrative that everybody else has set for him. And the Syria and the Al-Shara thing, because when we talked to Al-Shara, he was not sounding confident about getting sanctions lifted at all. He was based, I think one of the reasons he did the interview with us was actually to

• 15:47Alastair Campbell?

  try and get the message out into a kind of European, British European context, that what the, why it was so important the sanctions got lifted. But he didn't sound at all confident. And there, and it's happened like that.

• 16:01Rory Stewart?

  Let's just also step back. I was, I was talking to our friend Gerard Russell this morning, who's the Middle East expert, former diplomat, former Foreign Office diplomat. And he was raising the question of what an unusual presidential trip this was, how a conventional president wouldn't have gone on his first big trip to the Gulf. And if he had, there would have been a much bigger agenda or story, the president would have been trying to get much more out of it. He would have been hoping for some big breakthrough on Israel or Iran. So this was a sort of interesting thing. I mean, it, it's, you know, he, Trump gave a lot in this trip, you know, he gave concessions

• 16:43Rory Stewart?

  on AI to UAE, which will have worried people. He gave concessions on Syria. He seems to have accepted the plane from the Qataris. Oh, I suppose he called that.

• 16:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, is that, sorry, sorry, sorry, Roy, is that a concession? Reluctantly, I'll take 400 million pounds worth of a plane. Yeah, I'm not sure about that.

• 17:07Rory Stewart?

  And I suppose to some extent, maybe he thinks it trouble-free, looks good, enjoyable. And there's this talk about money, but very little of that money is actually signed, sealed and delivered. And I wondered in the back of my head whether he might not have been hoping for a bit more. You know, did he hope that actually he could have got a ceasefire? Out of Israel Gaza, or even more ambitious, could he have made a little bit movement with the Abraham Accords, or was he hoping to do something with Iran? Was there something that didn't quite happen on the trip, or was it never about that in the first place?

• 17:39Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't know, but the way they set the trip up was very much about money and about business. I saw a French TV discussion the other night, they were talking about the visit, and this guy said, I've totted up all the deals that at various points Trump said had been done, I've trotted up all the numbers. And he said, if these deals all came off, brackets, very large if, the combined total is greater than the size of the entire French economy. So that's quite a lot of deals, right? So I think there was, I think the other thing, don't look, we, as you say, we do talk a lot about his psychology. And

• 18:20Alastair Campbell?

  I'm very strongly of the view now that he's motivated by a desire to be the most famous person in the world, the most powerful person in the world, and the richest person in the world. I think he sees that as a, as a pretty good triptych to go for if you're him. And so I think a lot of this was about, about money and about showing his power. And I just think he likes being in places where everything is glitzy, gold is everywhere. He talked endlessly about how beautiful these buildings were, and the carpets and the sofas. And I just think they know how to play him. They play him in that way.

• 19:00Rory Stewart?

  Well, there were marvelous moments, weren't there? MBS literally drove, Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, literally drove him around a golf cart, didn't he?

• 19:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And playing YMCA, it's like gay anthem, but it happens to be so that they come off the stage to YMCA, and he's thinking, hold on a minute, what's going on here? But, you know, so I think a lot of it is about that. And if you think that, you mentioned Jared Russell saying that this is an unusual first trip. Historically, the first trip of most presidents has usually been to Canada or the UK. Well, Canada at the moment, he keeps saying he wants to be the 51st state, so that's unlikely to happen. And the UK, we've done this kind of charity. Just on Canada briefly, the one thing that this guy was talking to Um. And I wish I could say it was because then you'd have a really good sense of why I'm

• 19:50Alastair Campbell?

  sort of quite confident in this, but uh he said of all the kind of stuff on the foreign policy stuff that he that he kind of puts out there, he said, Canada, we shouldn't take that seriously. There's they've got no intention of Canada being the fifty fifth state. That's just that's that's going to disappear. But the one you should really watch out for is is Greenland. Uh, that that is that is serious. Now, I don't know if you've heard that as well, but.

• 20:14Rory Stewart?

  It it does make sense. I mean, taking Canada would be close to impossible with a Canadian population that is massively against it. You've got twenty million highly armed people in an incredibly wealthy country. Greenland is fifty thousand people and it's ninety percent.

• 20:28Alastair Campbell?

  But it's Denmark, but it's Denmark, which is NATO.

• 20:31Rory Stewart?

  Canada's NATO, but if you were if you're trying to plan the logistics of one or the other, I'm afraid, uh, you know, Canada, he'd be facing uh.

• 20:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:40Rory Stewart?

  Bloodshed and not not in Greenland, would he?

• 20:42Alastair Campbell?

  May maybe before we go to break, Roy, I should I should play. I mentioned, I've already mentioned, but I've seen the whole thing now, so I'm going to plug it again because it's if you if people need a bit of light relief amidst all the kind of horrors of the world of Trump and Ukraine and Gaza and climate change and all that. Joe Lycett, the United States of Birmingham, is one of the funniest, best things I've seen on TV for a while. Joe Lysat, the comedian from Birmingham, he goes to every Birmingham in America, which includes Birmingham, Alabama, big ones, but also these tiny hamlets called Birmingham, and he gets every single mayor in every single place that he goes to or governor, whatever it is, to sign a historic, it's beautifully

• 21:23Alastair Campbell?

  done, and it's basically become the United States of Birmingham, which could become a replacement for NATO. If the worst if if the worst is to happen, it's it's it's very gentle, very, very nice.

• 21:37Rory Stewart?

  This this is what I like. I mean, given I failed to convince the First Minister of Wales to even support me in my idea of teaching Welsh and English schools, his ability to get all these American.

• 21:47Alastair Campbell?

  It was brilliant.

• 21:48Rory Stewart?

  To sign up.

• 21:49Alastair Campbell?

  It was brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant. I I I, as you know, I was quite supportive of your idea. I'm I'm up for anything that that keeps languages uh alive. And I even had a bit of the football at the weekend, a couple of Scots fans going on about all the Gaelic signs everywhere. Keep them, I say, keep them. They're very, very important. Right, shall we take a break and then come back with Europe?

• 22:09Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. Absolutely.

• 22:13Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks. Made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  Chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

• 22:59Speaker 05

  Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 23:42Speaker 06

  Instagram teen accounts come with automatic protections that limit who can contact teens, the content they can see, and the time they spend on the app. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts.

• 24:06Rory Stewart?

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

• 24:09Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And we had quite a few elections over the weekend, Romania, Poland and Portugal.

• 24:14Rory Stewart?

  So if I may really cheekily, can we please start with Portugal?

• 24:18Alastair Campbell?

  Happily, happily.

• 24:19Rory Stewart?

  Because the niche listener to The Rest Is Politics, those loyal listeners who've stacked up thousands of hours of listening, will know that we've actually done quite a lot on Portugal. And one of the reasons we've done quite a lot on Portugal is there was in fact, an election in 2022, 2024, and now there's been a third election in 2025. And the big story behind it is that yours truly believed a myth which has now been completely exploded, which is that Portugal didn't really have populism. There was in fact, a very grand academic theory called Iberian exceptionalism, that said because, partly because Spain and Portugal had had right-wing dictatorships, they were kind of immune to populism. And that all seemed to be pretty much true, until things began to become a part, sometimes

• 25:01Rory Stewart?

  sort of in the middle of Covid. Anyway, since then, things have changed very quickly. And let's just give you the figures on this. So we started as quite fans of Mr Costa, the Prime Minister, who managed to take with his Socialist Party 120 seats and 41% of the vote in January 2022. 41% of the vote. And at the same time, an eccentric man called Ventura, sort of part-time law professor, part-time football commentator, moved from one seat, which is what he'd got before, to 12 seats, but still only 7% of the vote. And the big party still dominated. So there was this big left-wing party, and then there was the right-wing party. There was then another election, and Ventura and Chager began to creep up. He only crept from 7% of the vote to 10% of the vote, but he hopped up

• 25:45Rory Stewart?

  to 50 seats. Meanwhile, our friend Costa managed to get himself involved in some bewildering corruption scandal involving payments from the Portuguese airline and lithium factories and goodness knows what, and resigned.

• 25:57Alastair Campbell?

  We should point out Rory, that is, despite that, he maintained his own innocence, but accepted responsibility for other people's failings. Despite residing in those circumstances, he went on immediately to become the same Antonio Costa that we talked about as one of his. The two European union leaders alongside Keir Starmer at the press conference on Monday.

• 26:17Rory Stewart?

  Oh my goodness. Yes, of course. He's the guy that we saw with with Ossian Line. You're completely right. No. So that's right. Well done. Well, that's good. There's a future for all of us. Because his final days were a little bit, I hesitate to say Boris Johnson, he had 11 secretaries of state finally resigning on him before he decided to do the honourable thing and maybe thought it was a time to move on. Anyway, second election we talked about. And then in the latest election, just to cut to the chase, latest election, Acosta's party, the socialists, now down to about 23% of the vote, 58 seats, and the far right, Chega, up at exactly the same numbers, 58 seats, about 23% of the vote.

• 26:56Alastair Campbell?

  Meanwhile, the the the other party, the the sort of mainstream right wing party, has come top, but will not be able to form a government and is refusing to to do a deal with Chega, and therefore is likely to have another minority government. So we could have another election fairly soon. It's a bit of a mess.

• 27:13Rory Stewart?

  Bit of a mess. So Chega is a proper, a proper far right populist party. It's a party that it's discussed things such as removing ovaries from women who have abortions. It's got a very strong Catholic base. Talks about forced sterilization, life imprisonment. Ventura has made very inflammatory comments about the Roma, Gypsy Roma community, big reduction in Muslim immigration. One of the members of parliament whose family originates from Guinea Bissau had made a statement about returning Portuguese colonial looted artifacts back to the countries they came from. And Ventura said, why don't you go back to the country you came from? So it's a proper, proper, proper, proper far right party.

• 27:55Alastair Campbell?

  A couple of points, though. The first is, I I think that, and you're right, we were very, very positive about Costa. I remember writing a piece, a huge piece profile of Costa in the New European, saying this is the guy who's defying the trends. He's the one who's and of course, and Sanchez in Spain, another one, left of centre leader, who seems to be doing pretty well. That's what led to this.

• 28:17Rory Stewart?

  The Iberian exception.

• 28:18Alastair Campbell?

  Correct, correct.

• 28:19Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 28:19Alastair Campbell?

  But I think that when you've had as much corruption as they've had, when you've had as many elections as they've had, that does lead to this feeling of they're all the same. So let's look at something a bit different. As to which, immigration. A big issue. Also, it seems that there's a bit of a north-south divide going on that the the Algarve, which I guess is the bit that the the those Brits who will be looking forward to the new AEGate processes know best, has tended to be left-leaning, but they actually have gone pretty much to the right. And the other thing, I think, somebody, a company called Syabra, which I think is one of these firms that like you got when we did the thing with Mooch about the bots and the and all the sort of fake stuff about

• 29:04Alastair Campbell?

  you, me and him when we're when we're on social media, they sent me a really interesting report. Fifty-eight, this is the high, I'll go through the whole thing actually, because they they actually covered five elections and I read the methodology and it was quite interesting. So in Romania, we'll talk about Romania in a minute, 16% of the protest accounts, i.e. against the guy who eventually won, the ones that were trying to help the hard-right candidate, Simeon, they were fake. Philippines were deterte, despite being sort of not allowed in the country, not in the country, has just won an election. And actually on trial in the Hague. He's in Holland, waiting for waiting for trial, and he's just won an election.

• 29:47Alastair Campbell?

  Thirty-two percent of the support for him was fake. In the Australian election, 17% of accounts in the election conversations, fake. And in Canada, 28% of the posts attacking Mark Carney were fake bots, call it what you will. In Portugal, 58% of the profiles that were engaging positively with Chega were fake. Fifty-eight percent? Fifty-eight percent, yeah. So as the report says, this is disinformation on on steroids. And although, as you say, they're neck and neck now with the Socialist Party, so you've got Farage here with his five MPs, saying that we've, you know, broken open

• 30:25Alastair Campbell?

  the duopoly of Labour-Tory, I think that Chega, given that they are now literally neck and neck in seats as well, within a parliament, this is a parliamentary election, not a local election. This is a really big, big, big deal in Portugal and it's going to be very, very hard for them, I think, to, to put together anything other than a minority government.

• 30:46Rory Stewart?

  Two final things. Um, first is, I, I guess, just to step back and say, exceptionalism's finished. Uh, Portugal's now about a league average. It's not unusual now across Europe to have these, um, far-right parties into the low twenties. And in fact, of course, in, in Italy, Maloney's coalition's getting sort of forty percent. In Austria, they're crossing thirty percent. Um, second thing is, I'm, I'm often a bit, um, I don't think I've ever, despite loving this podcast, ever really, uh, looked at political science. And that always makes me a bit guilty. I think it's all these academics studying political science and we're a politics podcast, we don't talk about it. And I did actually come across quite a good article by political scientists that I want to talk about on about

• 31:30Rory Stewart?

  the Portuguese election. So it's in Political Research Exchange and it's Lee Hain and Luca Manucci and they do a really granular analysis of what it was that led to Chega's rise. And in particular, young, less educated men, more religious, in rural areas, particularly connected with Facebook. And the point they're making, I guess, in the end, is that is against the Iberian exception, that the profile really of these Choga voters, and they're spotting this as early as twenty twenty-one, is beginning to look much more like the European norm. And they make the same point for Vox in Spain. Anyway, enough from me.

• 32:07Alastair Campbell?

  No, that's really interesting because I, I, I've been digging into, because the thing about, uh, every time I mention Farage and I've got this, this image of the guy who said he's, but this is, this is really interesting, Rory, right?

• 32:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody told me, somebody told me, if I'll tell you who told me, the real Rory in my life told me, it worked out that Nigel Farage has got more TikTok followers than every other MP combined. Okay?

• 32:31Rory Stewart?

  Every other MP combined.

• 32:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, let me just go through this. Right. So Donald, let's go through some leaders in the world. Donald Trump has fifteen point one million TikTok followers.

• 32:39Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 32:40Alastair Campbell?

  But, but Kayleigh, his friend from El Salvador, ten point seven.

• 32:43Rory Stewart?

  Which is almost more than the population of El Salvador. I mean, that's really interesting because

• 32:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 32:47Rory Stewart?

  with Trump, we're talking about sort of one twentieth of the population of the US, because Kayleigh can talk about every single person in this country and more.

• 32:53Alastair Campbell?

  But that's because, that's partly because of this sort of right wing, you know, they will follow each other. It's like Orban has probably more. I don't know how many Orban has on social media. He's not in this list. Macron, six million, six point one. Lula in Brazil, five point one. AOC. Four point one million, Georgia Maloney, Prime Minister officially two point four, Nigel Farage, one point two million. Now, the Labour Cabinet, I could be wrong about this, but the Labour Cabinet, as far as I can tell, zero, because they don't have accounts. So, this, I think this will surprise you, Rory. So Farage is number one in the list of MP TikTok account holders. Number two, the suspended Labour MP with very, very, very strong views on Gaza, which may explain why she

• 33:38Alastair Campbell?

  has so many followers, I'm sure it partly does, four hundred and fifty three thousand followers, Zara Sultana. And, and you know, do you know who's number three? Just, it's just past two hundred followers, two hundred thousand followers on TikTok?

• 33:50Rory Stewart?

  Liz Truss?

• 33:51Alastair Campbell?

  Jeremy Corbyn.

• 33:52Rory Stewart?

  Jeremy Corbyn. So, well, that's, that's not, that's not Labour MPs, they're independent MPs we're talking about, aren't we?

• 33:57Alastair Campbell?

  Pretty much, yeah, yeah. And by the way, look, you and I know this because I'm not on TikTok, the podcast is on TikTok, but I find just doing Twitter and Instagram sort of takes up enough time, just sort of posting a few things a day. The idea of then doing sort of these complicated films and all that, which you have to do on TikTok. But it's really, really interesting that, isn't it? I think that, that, there's Jeremy, I'm not saying Jeremy's in the same boat as the populist right, but I would argue it shows that the populist right have done a better job of populating what is now viewed as the most influential social media platform among these young men that you're talking about.

• 34:35Rory Stewart?

  Just, just before we wrap up, because we promised people this will be shorter, because we've already done this big thing on the, the UK EU trade deal. A little update on what happened in the Poland election, also very interesting.

• 34:47Alastair Campbell?

  What have you got against Romania?

• 34:49Rory Stewart?

  We're going to do Romania tomorrow in detail in question time.

• 34:52Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. I look forward to that. So Poland, well, Poland, of course, you've got Donald Tusk, who's the Prime Minister, and that does not change, but this was the, the presidential election. And the, the right wing law and justice guy, very much an enemy of Tusk, he's, he's gone because he can't serve more than, than two terms. The guy who's replacing him on the right, the candidate, main candidate on the right is this guy, Karol Nowrocki. I'm very, I'm really not good on Polish pronunciation, so please Polish listeners forgive me. And then the, the liberal candidate is the mayor, current mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Traskowski.

• 35:32Alastair Campbell?

  And he is slightly ahead in after the first round. And this is a classic, it's like the French system, it goes down to two if you don't get over fifty percent in the first round. So they will go to a second round in two weeks. Now, again, our old friends, brackets enemies on the far right, the far right votes added up to over twenty percent. Now, you have to assume, I guess, that quite a lot of those are going to go to the conservative candidate, Narokki. So the liberal guy, the mayor of Warsaw, is going to have his work cut out. He seemed very confident in his after-match interviews, but, you know, it feels a bit like a kind of a way leg second time round.

• 36:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, we'll watch it very closely because one of the things that's been a constant theme since Tusk came in is the fact that the president had been elected and the former populist far-right party which took over Poland in 2015.

• 36:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 36:28Rory Stewart?

  Has been a real block to many of the things that he's wanted to do. So this will be really interesting. It'll either be Poland continuing down this anti-populist path, or it'll be a sort of more troubling sign of this much more complicated European narrative of people coming back the other way.

• 36:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. But when we do get to Romania in question time, that is part of the Carney-Albanese sort of fight back against the sort of right-wing populism, et cetera. So Rory, we're going to do, we've got question time tomorrow, we've got loads and loads of questions there. Some of the things that I'm hoping that we're going to get through are Romania, as we've discussed. You mentioned in the main podcast, you want to talk about Germany and immigration. I'm very keen, not least because of some of the things I heard up in Scotland over the weekend, to answer some of the questions we've had about winter fuel. So lots and lots and lots to get through. And there we are.

• 37:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, final one, I mean, I know that Bruce Springsteen is not someone you love in the way that you love ABBA, but I just wondered whether you'd give us a little bit of a sense of Bruce, that you're not going to sing it, are you? But I know Obama loved him, didn't he? One of the lines that I'm vaguely aware of is, which maybe applies to Trump, is poor man want to be rich, rich man want to be king, and a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything.

• 37:46Alastair Campbell?

  That's brilliant, that's brilliant. No, I do love, I think Bruce Springsteen is just awesome. I love the legend of Bruce Springsteen as well, and I love the fact that he's been churning this stuff out for over half a century. Um, I'd love to be able to sing, you know, I, I do love, I know it's a cliche, but born in the U S A, I was, I mean, that is, I just love that little bit, but I wasn't born in the USA, so I don't feel like I can identify with it terribly well.

• 38:12Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think you've given us enough to finish the podcast, so let's just finish with that.

• 38:17Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you very much.

• 38:17Rory Stewart?

  See you soon.

• 38:18Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

• 38:35Speaker 07

  The Great Game, the strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 38:43Speaker 08

  We assess Prime Minister with high confidence it was Russian.

• 38:49Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War Three.

• 38:51Speaker 09

  They took down a British passenger jet containing three hundred and fifty people.

• 38:54Speaker 07

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

• 39:07Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or Frago.

• 39:18Alastair Campbell?

  A Frago that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 39:23Speaker 07

  Yes.

• 39:25Speaker 10

  New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 39:29Speaker 11

  You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom MacDuff, Duffy!

• 39:34Speaker 10

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 39:36Speaker 11

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 39:39Speaker 10

  Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. We have two tight friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.