63. TRUSS DOWN, KWARTENG OUT

Join Alastair and Rory for an emergency bonus podcast after the news that Kwasi Kwarteng has been sacked as Chancellor. Facing the lowest ever approval ratings for a British PM, is it over already for the Truss premiership? 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. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:44Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics special edition on the resignation of the Chancellor with me Rory Stewart.

• 1:50Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell, who had I been introducing it would have said the sacking of the Chancellor.

• 1:55Rory Stewart?

  That is the sacking of the Chancellor. Let's be honest here, he was fired.

• 1:59Alastair Campbell?

  I think so.

• 1:59Rory Stewart?

  And pretty dramatic. It was one of those ones where... It's become normal now, hasn't it? When they fly back from abroad, everybody follows them on flight tracker and then helicopters start whirring above number 10. And it all came out of this IMF meeting, didn't it? So he came hurried about from the IMF meeting to be fired.

• 2:16Alastair Campbell?

  There was obviously a lot of immediate excitement. I very much doubt that he will replace the flight of Her Majesty the Queen from Scotland to England, which apparently was the most tracked flight in the history of flight tracking.

• 2:29Rory Stewart?

  Wow.

• 2:30Alastair Campbell?

  But yeah, no, he was, so there was Kwasi Kwarteng out in America, did an interview, asked if he would be in, he and Liz Truss would be in the same job in a month's time. And he said, 100%, absolutely, I'm not going anywhere. And meanwhile, number 10 was booking his flight back. I don't know where he goes from here because I don't know if you were able to see her press conference today, Rory, but it was, it was pretty bad. And I don't see how she divorces herself from the fact that she didn't say he had done anything wrong. She basically, she, she's been in lockstep as she keeps saying with him on this. It's her budget. It's her plan. We got a wonderful, when, when we announced that we're doing

• 3:12Alastair Campbell?

  this emergency podcast, there was a wonderful lesson, a wonderful message from somebody called Stephen Hopkins, who says that now that she's reversed the mini budget or parts of it, does that mean that she's part of the anti-growth coalition?

• 3:27Rory Stewart?

  That's good. Well, presumably she is.

• 3:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you know, what we were told by both her and Kwarteng was that if, unless you agreed with what she was trying to do, you were somehow anti-growth. And of course, Jeremy Hunt now, I mean, to all intents and purposes, he's virtually the prime minister.

• 3:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Well, so just, just, yeah, I mean, well, quickly on that, but just, just to remind listeners of just how dramatic this has been and how quick this has been. So basically this is all unraveled in three weeks. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng came in just before the Queen died. So really weeks were occupied. The first few weeks of her premiership were occupied with, with the Queen's funeral and the new king taking over. So she only really got going with this mini budget, which was meant to be the great big start to her premiership. And as we discussed on the podcast, it was meant to set the tone. And I think Alastair, really, who understands this stuff much better than anyone else, was saying this is the moment at which she needs to take the initiative, set the agenda.

• 4:29Rory Stewart?

  It's when she's going to announce the the price cap on energy and where she can set out her stall. So sure enough, the the mini budget was announced by Kwasi Kwarteng. And from the moment it came out, everything conceivable went wrong. I mean, there were immediately scandals about him going off to drink champagne with hedge fund donors immediately before it was announced. But the much more dramatic thing, of course, is that within a very short period of the announcement, the markets, which Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng had assumed would be very excited by the growth agenda and the tax cuts and the sort of radical free market libertarian agenda were instead horrified horrified that the

• 5:13Rory Stewart?

  government was proposing to spend an incredible amount, borrow an incredible amount and cut taxes on the back of spending and borrowing. And so currency went into free fall, gilts collapsed, mortgage interest rates. I was talking to someone this morning who got a mortgage in July for 2.4%. I was offered 6.7% last week. And that, of course, for somebody on a low income is completely devastating. I mean, that's tripling your and mortgage is often the very biggest part of the cost of many people's incomes if they've just bought a house. So anyway, that's the mess. But back to you on on Jeremy Hunt becoming the prime minister.

• 5:51Alastair Campbell?

  Steve Brien, who I think is a Hunt Sunak supporter, he's been going around the place saying that how you have to view this government now is that Liz Truss is the chairman and Jeremy's effective the chief executive officer. Now, this does give Jeremy Hunt enormous power. I think in to some extent, I can see why it's a moderately sensible appointment. He's got quite a good reputation inside the Conservative Party. He has been around the block. I don't think it will help them in putting off a nurses' strike. I think his name is pretty much mud within the National Health Service. But I think he will kind of calm the Tory party down a bit. But the messages, I don't know about you, but the

• 6:34Alastair Campbell?

  messages I've been getting from the Tories who keep sending me messages is that even if they're glad that Kwarteng has gone, they don't see how that helps her authority because it was her budget. And secondly, I think they watched the press conference with absolute horror. And one thing that's becoming Really, really clear. I mean, you said the other day that, you know, she was able to kind of relax and be quite charming in private and so forth. But it strikes me, she has no EQ, emotional quotient, emotional intelligence whatsoever. And that press conference, I know you didn't have time to see it, but if I just tell you, and I don't know if you know this, Rory,

• 7:15Alastair Campbell?

  but the, I think one of the longest pop songs in history is American Pie by Don McLean, which was eight minutes, forty two seconds long.

• 7:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:23Alastair Campbell?

  Her press conference came well under that because she said a few words with a few platitudes. She announced this U-turn on corporation tax. And then she took four questions. And it was extraordinary to watch because the press is sitting there. The normal thing that's been done down the years is you call the BBC, call ITV, call Sky. She's obviously decided she's not doing that because she doesn't like them. So she called the guy from the Daily Telegraph, who of course had been the one paper that's, apart from the Express, that's been saying this budget was wonderful. And the guy from the Telegraph asked quite a difficult question. Then she called Harry Cole, who's, you know, virtually part of the Downing Street family.

• 8:03Rory Stewart?

  From the Sun.

• 8:04Alastair Campbell?

  From the Sun. And he asked quite a tough question. Then she called Robert Peston, but she for some reason called Robert Pest on, literally like that, Robert Pest on. And then she called Chris Mason of the BBC, who, I might have got the order wrong there, but Chris Mason just asked a very, very straight blunt question. What on earth gives you the right to stand there and pretend you have any credibility and authority as a, as a prime minister? And she gave the same answers to all of them and then walked off.

• 8:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So let's just, it's amazing, but let's just take it back and deconstruct a couple of things very quickly again for listeners who've not been following every nook and cranny of this. So we often say on the podcast that the right wing media has been absolutely critical to the success of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. And it's absolutely true. Of course, the right wing media has been very, very important to their success. But there's been a very noticeable turn against Liz Truss from a lot of these major newspapers. And The Telegraph, for example, led its front page, The Telegraph, obviously the biggest right wing board sheet out there, with Peter Quasi courting and a huge sign above his head saying,

• 9:16Rory Stewart?

  "I'm staying in my job", which is, you know, a real clue that the poor man was on his way out. And, and, and, you know, this was also the paper that I was saying last week, ran with a huge photograph of a Tory minister who'd been sacked in a sex scandal. So along with those questions, I think she's in trouble with her base. But it's also true that she is part of this accelerating world, I think. I mean, these prime ministers are lasting shorter and shorter times. It's becoming like, you have to go back really to the 18th, 19th century to see prime ministers dropping three of them in a year.

• 9:57Rory Stewart?

  And that's somehow because structurally, 21st century Conservative politics is becoming like 18th, 19th century politics. And what that means is the politics before the full emergence of the modern party system, because party discipline is splitting. And what's happening is these people are being toppled almost as soon as they get in.

• 10:15Alastair Campbell?

  But isn't, but I do think there's something peculiar in British here, because, you know, you've just seen Macron win another election. You've seen Merkel have four terms. The Portuguese guy got re-elected. I mean, I, and by the way, on that, on the sort of the turnover, I saw somebody pointed out, they've now had four chancellors within a year. Labour have had four chancellors since 1967.

• 10:40Rory Stewart?

  That's, that's quite a fact. That's since 67 is quite a fact, isn't it?

• 10:43Alastair Campbell?

  Because Gordon Brown, of course, a lot of those years Labour weren't in power, but that, you know, quite a lot they were. And of course Gordon Brown had a decade, Alistair Darling.

• 10:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  And I'll tell you the other problem with Jeremy Hunt, though. That I think will become a problem. It's perfectly obvious now, Rory, whatever she said to Keir Starmer the other day about there aren't going to be spending cuts. She indicated today that there will. I kind of read that between the lines of what she's saying. Jeremy Hunt is quite closely associated with your old friend austerity. And I don't believe the country will take anything like the austerity that they tried last time.

• 11:18Rory Stewart?

  One hundred percent. And I'm sorry that I keep kind of looping back. But again, just in case listeners aren't completely on top of who Jeremy Hunt is.

• 11:28Alastair Campbell?

  Our listeners know everything, very, very well informed.

• 11:32Rory Stewart?

  So very quickly, Jeremy Hunt, MP, came in, he was this sort of classic, kind of tall, almost the only sort of front bench Tory MP, kind of tall and good luck enough to be a kind of American politician. So sort of out of central casting, six foot three, he was head boy at his school, head of the Conservative.

• 11:54Alastair Campbell?

  Charterhouse.

• 11:55Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. A son of an admiral with a knighthood, speaks, I think speaks pretty fluent Japanese as foreign secretary gave speech Japanese, made a lot of money setting up a company.

• 12:07Alastair Campbell?

  Forty million.

• 12:08Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Got into politics in two thousand, you're better than me on the facts. Got into politics two thousand and five and was very close to David Cameron. And Cameron made him a cabinet minister in two thousand and ten, initially Culture, Media and Sport, where he got in a big scandal to do with whether or not people were talking, I think it was whether or not they were talking to Murdoch during the phone.

• 12:29Alastair Campbell?

  B Sky B.

• 12:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. So he then moved on from that to be the Health Secretary, then the Foreign Secretary. And he ran against Boris Johnson in the leadership twenty nineteen when I was running, and he made it into the last two. And Boris Johnson defeated him by a very large margin. It looked as though his career was really finished because he didn't really feature at all in the leadership running this time round, when Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss were coming through.

• 12:56Rory Stewart?

  But what will have been happening is Liz Truss will have been casting around thinking, which Chancellor can I appoint to reassure the markets? And I wonder whether she would have considered Rishi Sunak. That would have been a possible call because, of course, he was the one person clearly for weeks who's been saying that what she would do would destroy the pound, destroy the gilts, and was trying to push against this tax cutting. She probably considered Sajid Javid, who'd been the Chancellor before, but in the end she went for Jeremy Hunt because I guess he's seen unusually as a very senior neutral figure. He was somebody who wasn't associated with Boris Johnson's government. He's a throwback to what nostalgically people now see probably as the more centrist

• 13:41Rory Stewart?

  days of Cameron conservatism. But, and we can come back to this, I'm not sure he really can reassure the markets because, but we can talk about that a bit more. Anyway, over to you.

• 13:50Alastair Campbell?

  I thought it was interesting that she seemed to think in the four answers that she gave, where she basically said the same thing.

• 13:59Alastair Campbell?

  She'd obviously been told, don't say anything that upsets anybody. But I think today was about sentiment, it was about mood, it was about what sense people had from her. And she didn't look confident, she didn't emanate confidence. And I don't think that people looking at that, whether they were members of the public, MPs or people who are working on the trading floors, were going to take much confidence out of it. But she kept saying, I've acted decisively today to deliver economic stability. How on earth can you even say that? And just getting rid of Kwasi Kwarteng and replacing him with Jeremy Hunt, who, as you say, has not actually got a track, he's got a track record as a minister. People can say whether it's good or it's bad, but he's got no, there's no sense of

• 14:41Alastair Campbell?

  him being somebody who understands or appreciates how the markets work.

• 14:45Rory Stewart?

  So one of the things that makes me a little anxious about Jeremy Hunt is that although he's got this reputation as a very centrist, steady bear of hands, that wasn't really how I experienced him during the Brexit thing, although he was a Remainer. He was one of the people in Theresa May's cabinet who seemed to go increasingly towards rejecting her deal. He was one of the people who, during the leadership campaign... Was very much on the side of I'm going to deliver a deal by this date and we're going to get out and I'm going to solve the Northern Ireland problem. And he was very much, I think, more importantly, on the side of I'm going to cut taxes, I'm going to generate US level growth, which is a very strange comment because we haven't really had US level growth since the Second World War. He was going to double defence

• 15:30Rory Stewart?

  spending. So he was very much at that stage in 2019 on the quasi-quoting Liz Truss wing of the party, which believed that if you just cut taxes, you would automatically generate unprecedented growth and you would be able to spend an enormous amount more on conservative things like defence.

• 15:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, our good friend, Professor Tim Bale, who regularly gives us food for thought on the podcast, he sent us a message this afternoon saying, I'm sure you remember Jeremy Hunt's signature policy when he ran for leader against Johnson in 2019 was cutting corporation tax to 12.5%. I also think in the last leadership election, this one that just went by that ended up with Truss, I think we discussed this earlier, not necessarily just in relation to Hunt, but I think those people who were sort of what I call the kind of pretend Brexiteers, the ones who, because the wind had blown so much in that direction in the Conservative Party, that they were trying to sort of not just put a brave face on it, but actually pretend that they'd embraced it. I think he had moved right over into the kind of populist

• 16:31Alastair Campbell?

  space. But he has got, there's no doubt about it now, within what's happening in the Conservative Party, I still think she's toast, I still think she's finished. But I think, and until she goes, he is now in a very, very powerful position. And, you know, a lot of the talk seems to be, I did that BBC Newscast podcast last night.

• 16:53Rory Stewart?

  You didn't.

• 16:54Alastair Campbell?

  I did, but Rory, Rory, I got so many plugs in for the Pod for Our podcast. It was, and also Craig Oliver did the best plug for our podcast of all. So honestly, it was really worth doing, believe me. But anyway, Chris Mason was presenting it, the BBC political editor. And he was just giving me a sense of what it had been like for him walking around the Commons during the day and the sorts of things that were being said by Conservative MPs that he was bumping into. And I don't think they'll be settled simply by the idea that she's got rid of Quatton because I think they think it's about Liz Truss.

• 17:27Rory Stewart?

  Let's go to a break, but after the break, I'd love to return to this very interesting question of why we've moved into this accelerated world where there's some lovely stuff going on on social media at the moment, that the star is, has a live feed seeing whether

• 17:40Alastair Campbell?

  With the lettuce.

• 17:41Rory Stewart?

  Truss will outlive a lettuce, yeah. Then you've got fairy washing up liquid, one bottle lasts longer than three Conservative leaders. Anyway, let's return after the break and maybe look at some of the structural reasons why British politics has accelerated in this way. Over to the break.

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• 19:58Alastair Campbell?

  So, welcome back to this emergency 999 podcast with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 20:06Rory Stewart?

  And me Rory Stewart.

• 20:08Alastair Campbell?

  While we're talking about Kwasi, Rory, I was looking up, this is how sad I am. I was looking up Kwasi Kwarteng's maiden speech.

• 20:16Rory Stewart?

  Oh, gosh, okay.

• 20:18Alastair Campbell?

  When he became an MP in 2010. And as you know, from your maiden speech, you're not meant to be too sort of controversial. It's one of the many ridiculous conventions in the house. But I don't know if Gordon Brown or Alistair Darling are listening to our podcast. I know they both have people who do because I occasionally get messages from them. But so please make sure that Gordon and Alistair know that in Kwasi Kwarteng's maiden speech, he said this, "They," by which he meant "them," have not once accepted any blame for what happened. They seem to think we can just sail on as before, which frankly, I think we could all say about Liz Truss today. There was no blame. She actually was saying her strategy was right. Kwasi did nothing wrong.

• 21:01Alastair Campbell?

  It's just that she had to stabilize the markets and this was the way she decided to do it.

• 21:05Rory Stewart?

  Before we leave Kwasi Kwarteng, I mean, it is very interesting. I mean, he is, he's been a very radical voice. And one of the things that we talked about in the last podcast when I was in North Africa was Libya. And we talked about Field Marshal Hiftar, who's this very sinister figure with the secret police and these amazing kind of Islamist control mechanisms who controls a lot of eastern Libya. And Kwasi Kwarteng, somebody sent me an article he'd written in Evening Standard endorsing Hiftar and saying what Libya needs is a strong man just a few years ago. And it's a sort of reminder that How provocative, sort of dangerously provocative, he's been because actually that was a very, very bad idea. Phil Marshall Hiftar is a very bad man and I'm very troubled

• 21:50Rory Stewart?

  to see that he'd been endorsing him. Anyway. Why didn't, why didn't you say that before when you were telling us that he was a friend of yours and you liked him and you thought of school? Well, he is, he is a friend of mine and I, I do like him and I, I, it's a difficult thing to say. I mean, he's somebody who was, I knew as this gangly 13 year old. He was incredibly bright. I mean, he came in with a, it's an extraordinary story. He came from this Ghanaian family with a, a very, very high scholarship to Eton. He was incredibly eager, charming. He, we used to discuss modernist poetry when he was 14 and, and he had this great kind of gruff persona, but I would never have guessed for a moment that he was

• 22:35Rory Stewart?

  going to become a politician. And, and I think he could have been, you know, a, a great sort of provocative university lecturer or teacher. And I just think it's a tragedy that he, he got into politics. Incidentally, I've got a sort of small apology to you. No, not a small apology, a big apology. In trying to work out how to describe Kwasi Koting and Les Truss, I said that, in trying to describe the fact that they throw out ideas and they won't sit down and discuss them and they seem to change what they're saying every, you know, few minutes. I said they had attention deficit disorder. And that was very, very, you know, that, that was wrong of me. And I've, a number of people

• 23:17Rory Stewart?

  have reached out to me who either have ADHD or have children with ADHD to say that actually people with ADHD, unlike these politicians, often have extreme empathy, have deep, deep empathy for other people. That their lives are very difficult and that it's to take awful politicians and sort of use attention deficit disorder as an insult is awful. So I want to very much apologize for that and said, I've got a lot of learning to do.

• 23:47Alastair Campbell?

  I'm glad to hear that because I had a little, I had a gentle go at you about it in relation when we talk about being a bit weird and all that because I felt that was part of the same thing. And if the program that I'm doing with Saeda, make me Prime Minister, one of the candidates who is really amongst the strongest and anybody who saw the episode this week would see that Kelly from Scotland is really is amongst the strongest. And, and she has autism. And, and, and I do think that we are often a bit too casual about how we use language to do with, you know, whether it's autism or spectrum or asperger's or whatever, I think so. So anyway, well done for fessing up to that one, Rory.

• 24:32Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, no, that was not good. Very, very quickly, just on the, on the acceleration point. So I think that the reason why things are accelerating. So we went from a world in which obviously Mrs Thatcher was in for a long time, 10 years. John Major was, was in for a long time, seven years. Tony Blair was in for how many years?

• 24:55Alastair Campbell?

  10.

• 24:55Rory Stewart?

  10, right.

• 24:57Alastair Campbell?

  Or by Gordon III.

• 24:58Rory Stewart?

  Gordon, Gordon III, but Gordon Brown only finished by an election, otherwise he would have continued. And then obviously David Cameron in for six. And so that, that, that's the norm in British politics is the way we sort of think about British politics in the, in the modern era. And then suddenly things began to accelerate. I mean, obviously Theresa May did about two, Boris Johnson did about two, and it feels as though Liz Truss is going to be lucky to do a few months. And so why is this? And this is where I, I go to you, Alistair, because I think it's the big word that you understand better than anyone. What is the reason why things are accelerating so much?

• 25:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Brexit.

• 25:33Rory Stewart?

  It is Brexit, isn't it?

• 25:35Alastair Campbell?

  I think a lot. Well, I think it's, I think, look, it's complicated.

• 25:40Alastair Campbell?

  I do, I really do. I was in Dublin on, on Tuesday and I was, I was actually making, at a conference, I was speaking about Brexit and definitely the, the view in the room was that Britain has not recovered from Brexit. This, these were Irish business people.

• 25:56Alastair Campbell?

  They feel that Britain has just taken a terrible step into an unknown future and they, and we, we, Britain can't work out how to, how to manage it. But I've seen the other thing that's going on. I'm reading a book at the moment by Christopher Wiley. Do you remember Christopher Wiley, the guy who worked for Cambridge Analytica and then became a whistleblower and?

• 26:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, that guy.

• 26:13Alastair Campbell?

  I can say the title of the book in a way I probably couldn't say it on the BBC. It's called Mindfuck.

• 26:19Rory Stewart?

  Do you know we've been banned from Sky for our, for our abusive language?

• 26:23Alastair Campbell?

  I saw that, but they swear, they say, they maybe don't say the F word, but anyway. We can get by without Sky. We have more people listening to us than watch Sky, Rory. Don't worry about that. But, and by the way, I'm really sorry to everybody. We have sold out the Palladium. Even I am shocked by that. It sold out in seven minutes.

• 26:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:41Alastair Campbell?

  Which is utterly ridiculous.

• 26:43Rory Stewart?

  As you can imagine, because Alistair sometimes gets quite confident. He has these moments of confidence. He was trying to tell us the Palladium was too small and we needed to play, what was it, O2 Wembley Arena?

• 26:53Alastair Campbell?

  I saw the O2 or Wembley, yeah.

• 26:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. And now, of course, he's absolutely convinced to this because the Palladium, which had two and a half thousand seats, sold out in seven minutes.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  You're the one who keeps talking about Harry Lorder and?

• 27:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I, I thought, well, I mean, because I'm a Harry, Harry Lorder, Max Miller, you know, Tony Hancock fan, I think those places are pretty big because, you know, Bob Mancouse didn't always sell out the Palladium. So I, I thought that was about as good as we could do, but obviously.

• 27:17Alastair Campbell?

  I wonder if Boris Johnson will be on that circuit. I see he got 150,000 for a speech the other day. I mean, I think people are quite offended by that, you know?

• 27:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Alastair Campbell?

  He's completely screwed the country. He's left us with a total dud. He's got a constituency to run. He's still an MP and he's, he's gone and picked up 150 grand for a speech. And, and then taken his family on holiday.

• 27:38Rory Stewart?

  Although, although I think of all the things that these ex-prime ministers do. I mean, Tony Blair also made a lot of money from speaking.

• 27:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 27:47Rory Stewart?

  And, and ex-politicians do.

• 27:50Rory Stewart?

  It's probably it.

• 27:52Alastair Campbell?

  You and I do, Rory, you and I do.

• 27:53Rory Stewart?

  We do, and I can see it's upsetting for people, but it is less bad than many of the other things they could do. It's much less bad than lobbying, much less bad than taking dodgy jobs.

• 28:02Alastair Campbell?

  It's also, in his case, is much less bad than him being Prime Minister. So I don't care if he gets $10 million, as long as he's never Prime Minister again.

• 28:09Rory Stewart?

  But the question is, why does somebody want to pay all that money to hear? And that's what surprises me.

• 28:12Alastair Campbell?

  That's a good question. So we were talking about this longevity thing, and Chris Wiley's book, Mindfuck, really does, I'm only about a third of the way through, but I do think that social media has, it's accelerated, it's accelerated people's intolerance. And I think it's made people, I think politicians have far less ability to get away with the benefit of the doubt when, once they're in power. I think this stuff helps bad guys get into power, but I think once they're in, if there isn't a basic level of competence, I think you're done for quicker.

• 28:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 28:48Alastair Campbell?

  And, and so, and I do think, Rory, there aren't, you know, we used to all laugh about Italy where they changed Prime Minister every 10 minutes. But I think we are becoming seen as that kind of basket.

• 28:59Rory Stewart?

  Well, you completely, I mean, well, because Boris Johnson is Berlusconi, basically, right? And, and now people are trying to bring in a sort of Mario Draghi figure in the Chancellor. They're trying to get a reassuring technocrat to come in, which is what they always.

• 29:14Alastair Campbell?

  Is let's trust Georgia Maloney.

• 29:17Rory Stewart?

  Well, she's, she's not yet, but the question is, is it round the corner? So I, I think the way in which Brexit plays into this isn't just the economics. It's the way in which Brexit as a manifestation, as you say, of populism and its acceleration and the way that social media accelerates things, has riven the Conservative Party, because this is a party that, from the moment Brexit passed, was split.

• 29:41Rory Stewart?

  Initially with the majority of people having voted Remain, then the majority of people having voted Brexit, but completely unreconciled to itself. So Theresa May was destroyed by the Brexit right of the party. Boris Johnson, many of the people who moved against him were from the Remain left of the Conservative Party, which is why many Boris supporters have never really forgiven that. Liz Truss won on the back of the Brexit right, so she was seen as a Boris Johnson loyalist, and the people who came out immediately against her were mostly on the non-Brexit left. There were some exceptions, she put a few Remains in the cabinet. But basically, the Conservative Party is in a civil war, and it's a civil

• 30:20Rory Stewart?

  war between the libertarian, almost Trumpian populist right and the more one-nation conservatism, which was trying to win votes in the centre ground, which David Cameron came out of. And this war's been going on, really, since Mrs Statu went.

• 30:39Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's more complicated than that. I think you've got the one nation and you've got the libertarians. But I don't think all the populists are necessarily in the same place as Truss's libertarianism. I think that's something that's even more extreme.

• 30:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's right, because a lot of the populists, I mean, you're right, Boris Johnson was not on the side of what Liz Truss was trying to do. He, of course, approved these tax rises to balance the budgets.

• 31:01Alastair Campbell?

  He was obviously part of the anti-growth coalition.

• 31:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's what she means. I mean, she's saying since 2008, we've had anemic growth, and she, in that press conference. And she blames it almost entirely on the fact that taxes are too high. Now, you then said, I think, something very important, which is the fundamental question here, which is about whether the public will wear more cuts. And the answer is, of course, they will not. They really will not. And although we've had our disagreements, many disagreements about austerity, and I would actually say that, in a way, the way in which Kwasi Kourting and Liz Truss blew up the markets and blew up the country.

• 31:48Rory Stewart?

  Is from my point of view, if you come from my side of politics, a reminder of why people like me believe that being prudent fiscally, being responsible fiscally balancing the budget matters, that if you're seen to borrow and spend too much, you can really trash stuff.

• 32:02Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, just on our previous arguments about austerity, I think you said last week that the Labour had no plan to bring it down. I think I'm right that the election that Labour lost, Alistair Darling was talking about reducing it at half the pace that Osborne said he was going to do. So I don't think you were quite right on that one, Rory, but we should maybe get, we should try and get Gordon and Alistair on.

• 32:26Rory Stewart?

  We should get them on. We want them on. We want them on.

• 32:28Alastair Campbell?

  I'd love to get them both on.

• 32:29Rory Stewart?

  We should talk through. I mean, they definitely were talking about cuts and they were definitely talking about cuts which were less than the Tory cuts, but they would have fallen in different ways. They were actually talking about cuts that would have gone right across the board. They didn't believe in what George Osborne did, which was to protect the NHS, protect education and increase spend on international development. They tried to argue that the only fair way to do it would be to reduce spending almost equally across departments. Anyway, and it would be interesting to play through for critics of austerity, whether they had really taken on board what the impact those Labour cuts would have been if they'd come through. Yep.

• 33:04Alastair Campbell?

  Keir Starmer has basically said that Truss is now finished, she's a lame duck, and the only way now for the country to get out, to begin to get out of this mess is to have a general election. Do you think there's any chance of getting a general election?

• 33:18Rory Stewart?

  No, there's no chance of getting a general election because the only way you can get a general election is for the majority of MPs to vote for a general election. And the Conservatives won a very, very big majority in 2019.

• 33:31Alastair Campbell?

  Right, okay, let me, let me, let me ask you another way. Is if the Conservatives do get rid of Liz Truss, do you think that they can really inflict upon the country another leadership change without having a general election?

• 33:45Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I think they can. I think they can and they probably will. I mean, I think they. They're in a, I mean, we've talked about this before, they're in a sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't position. I think it's going to be very difficult for them to win the next election, whatever they do. They're now thirty points behind and they've blown the only thing that mattered for the Conservative Party. Because, you know, you and I completely disagree about whether it was, whether it was true or not, but there's, there's no doubt that a very important part of the Conservatives' reputation for two hundred years has been that they were supposed to be the people who were careful with money. The cliche was supposed to be, and I know we disagree about this, but anyway, they, the brand, even if

• 34:28Rory Stewart?

  it was a fake brand, was meant to be that Labour were sort of nice, generous people who were a bit loose with the cash and the Tories were nasty people who were careful with the cash.

• 34:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 34:36Rory Stewart?

  So they've blown that. They've, they've blown that. And so they're going to-

• 34:39Alastair Campbell?

  They're now nasty and useless.

• 34:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And, and they were supposed to be. That was not meant to be their brand.

• 34:46Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, so here's a question for you. Given that Rishi Sunak literally, almost word for word, predicted what would happen if they, if they elected Liz Truss, okay, do you think that might give him the authority to be the person around whom, even those who voted against him, even those who don't like him, to say, right, the only chance, and it's a slim chance, the only chance we have now is to go with a loaded revolver and a glass of whisky to Liz Truss, say, bye bye, you're finished, and here's Rishi Sunak, and we are electing him, anointed, no election, he is the new leader of the party, he's the new Prime Minister. Don't you think that's the only thing they've got left?

• 35:28Rory Stewart?

  So I, I agree with you, Alastair. If, if you and I were advising, that's what you've got to do. Because the, the point is that they're going to look ridiculous, obviously, having, you know, a third leader in this amount of time. It's, it, it'll be humiliating and mad, and many people will say it's completely illegitimate. But if you look at the alternative, the alternative for them is much, much worse. They cannot possibly win an election under Liz Truss. So long as she remains Prime Minister, it doesn't matter which chance that she brings in. She's not going to reassure the markets. So they will say, I think ultimately they'll see the logic, which is they're very unlikely to win the next election, but they have zero chance with Liz Truss. So they might as well roll the dice again. They have at least a 10% chance, maybe with somebody else.

• 36:13Alastair Campbell?

  And if they, if they do go for an anointing, they don't have to go to the members. The members don't have to endorse that, do they?

• 36:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, remember with, yes is the answer. So with Theresa May, because all the other candidates dropped out. This was when she, she came in after David Cameron in 2016. Andrea Ledson dropped out. It didn't go to the membership. She just became the Prime Minister. So if the MPs want to do that, they can absolutely do that. But you're right, in the middle of this is this very, very strange thing about the members, which is a problem for the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, which is that there is nothing democratic about paying money to join a political party. Doesn't matter whether you've got 100,000 members or 500,000 members. It's not democratic. At least the MPs are elected, right? They have some kind of democratic mandate. And them MPs voting for a Prime Minister is the traditional way it happened in Britain.

• 37:06Rory Stewart?

  And it makes some kind of democratic sense. But the parties doing it is what produced Jeremy Corbyn. It's what produced Boris Johnson. It's what produces Liz Truss. And it's a very, very bad system.

• 37:16Alastair Campbell?

  I've already been ticked off in the chat box for, for plugging a BBC podcast. I'm now going to plug Tortoise because James Harding, you mentioned the membership. He's continuing with his attempts to expose the reality of the Conservative Party membership. I think he's taking the whole leadership process to judicial review. Because of course he enrolled Archie the Tortoise amongst others as a member of the Conservative Party and got a vote.

• 37:44Rory Stewart?

  And there's no transparency, they won't reveal what the, I mean, it's extraordinary. I mean, I was obviously, you know, a Conservative Party member, but until this very good research done by Tortoise Media, which is a very interesting media company, it wasn't made brutally clear until they started doing it, just how dodgy the rules around these parties are, they're completely untransparent, they won't reveal their membership lists, they won't tell you how many of their members are not even British nationals or registered voters, I mean, it's terrifying, absolutely terrifying.

• 38:16Alastair Campbell?

  So you would like to see, whatever happens next, it is just the MPs who decide?

• 38:22Rory Stewart?

  I'd like just the MPs to decide, and I think the only hope for the Conservative Party is to get rid of Liz Truss, because so long as she stays, they don't have a chance. Bring in somebody, and that person would have to come in immediately, raise taxes, corporation tax, national insurance would have to go up, put some kind of control on spending, so we can actually see what happens in a year or two with the energy price cap. And if they manage to reassure the markets, if, if, if, if, if inflation began coming down, if, because I didn't see it coming down, if interest rates began coming down,

• 39:03Rory Stewart?

  and if they actually ran a very, very tight competence ship with a very mature, experienced leader, which I can't see them finding at the moment, they might have a sliver of a chance if Labour did something catastrophic of winning the next election, but I'd put the chance at 10% with a new leader and zero with Liz Truss.

• 39:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that's great, that's really cheering me up a lot. And just to maybe wrap up with this, on the back of Liz Truss's press conference, the yield on bonds to be paid in 30 years went up to 4.85% and the

• 39:38Rory Stewart?

  Which means the price has, yeah, the bill has gone down.

• 39:41Alastair Campbell?

  The value of the pound went down.

• 39:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 39:44Alastair Campbell?

  So she did not, if that was part of the purpose of the press conference, it was not successful. And one of your former colleagues I was talking to said, you just get the feeling now that even if they try really hard, even if they do their best, whatever they do, they don't know how to do it. I think she doesn't know how to do the job. I think that yet again, we've seen The gap between what it takes to be a cabinet minister and what it takes to be Prime Minister is utterly enormous. People have no idea how big that gap is.

• 40:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, because you can hide as a cabinet minister. It's very, very easy to hide. I mean, particularly if you're a trade minister or a foreign minister, you get to take photographs in front of flags with dignitaries. You don't really have to deliver on policy. And the Prime Minister carries the can. It's impossible for anybody to know really what it's like to be Prime Minister, and we need a much better system of testing them. And that's why a lot of the most successful prime ministers seem to have been people who were leaders of the opposition before.

• 40:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 40:41Rory Stewart?

  Really helped Tony Blair, helped David Cameron, helped Margaret Thatcher to come in with that experience.

• 40:46Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Well, maybe we should choose the next Prime Minister by Saidi Vaseen and doing a TV programme.

• 40:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I must say, I don't know, we should do, talk about this, but I'm not completely convinced that the candidates on your show will make brilliant prime ministers.

• 41:01Alastair Campbell?

  That was a bit of a joke. That was a bit of a joke.

• 41:03Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 41:04Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, I'm glad that we were able to do our, we pressed the emergency podcast emergency protocol. I'd love to, I wish we were being filmed so that people could see exactly what you're wearing.

• 41:18Rory Stewart?

  I can tell the listeners, I'm stark naked. He's dragged me out of the bar and he's admiring my rippling biceps as we speak.

• 41:26Alastair Campbell?

  Not quite, not quite. We're talking Tweedy three piece is what we're talking.

• 41:33Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, it's lovely to see you, Roy. I think we'll be doing another couple of podcasts next week so that we can stay right at the top of the charts, selling out big venues. You become Max Miller, the cheeky chappy, and all will be well in the world, especially once this rotten Tory government is out of power.

• 41:52Rory Stewart?

  Right. And so on that, farewell, speak soon. Bye bye.

• 41:55Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

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