577. Is Badenoch Finally Stopping Farage and Why Are French Schools on Fire?

With Reform bogged down in scandal, and Kemi Badenoch setting out her political vision at Conservative Party conference, have the Tories finally wrestled momentum on the right of British politics away from Farage? As French schools burn, how are Le Pen and the French far right exploiting the unrest? And why has Spain's left-wing leader Sánchez called a snap election over the country's rental crisis – and can he defy the odds and win a majority? Join Alastair and former Conservative Cabinet Minister and arch Brexiteer Michael Gove as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Shabana Mahmood by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Sponsored by Lloyds. Move faster with daily global market analysis, the download on tokenisation and how to manage your company's energy transition all from Lloyds Corporate & Institutional Banking. Search Lloyds Corporate. 🌏 Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! Get an exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee! __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: James Clayden, Oli Ortega, Caroline Kaye Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames 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.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

  By any reckoning, Labour had a good conference last week in Liverpool as the Burnham bounce continued to lift the party in the polls. This week, at the Tory conference in Birmingham, there is a much better mood than there was a year ago. Both Andy Burnham and Tory leader Kemi Badenoch seem firmly in control of their parties. Pessimism these days is more likely to be found in Reform UK, which has been hit, continued by scandal and personality clashes, and the Greens, with Zach Polanski struggling to make a mark in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election taking place on Thursday. Both Polanski and Nigel Farage, it will seem, might well have peaked. But how confident can Labour afford to be with such a challenging economic scenario

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  and a budget later this month, in which some very tough choices are going to have to be made? And with the Tories still behind Reform in the polls, how confident can they be of ever regaining power without some kind of deal with the parties to the right of them? To help me answer all of this, I'm joined by someone to the right of Rory Stewart, otherwise engaged this week, and that is the former Tory Cabinet Minister, Michael Gove.

• 1:06Rory Stewart?

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• 1:09Alastair Campbell?

  Most energy companies are counting on you doing absolutely nothing, not questioning what you're paying, not switching, just letting your tariff roll on, which is costing you hundreds of pounds every year.

• 1:20Rory Stewart?

  But the apathy goes deeper than our bills. We've almost given up on energy itself. We seem to all be accepting energy is expensive, the system's outdated, but that complacency is costing us.

• 1:31Alastair Campbell?

  Fuse Energy does not accept that because the energy transition is not something that just happens somewhere else.

• 1:38Rory Stewart?

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• 1:48Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:55Rory Stewart?

  Switch to Fuse at fuseenergy.com/politics, use the code POLITICS, and you'll get a free trip plus subscription, allowing you to hear all the extraordinary members' content that Alistair and I are now producing for you. Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions.

• 2:10Alastair Campbell?

  This episode is brought to you by Wise. It's only when you start moving money between currencies that you really think about the exchange rate, the fee, and what might be hidden away in the small print. Whether you're living abroad, paying someone overseas, or just trying to manage your money across borders, you want a fair exchange rate, an easy transfer, and no surprises along the way. Wise keeps things simple. Wise is a smart way to move the currencies you need around the globe. It works in more than 160 countries and with over 40 currencies, most transfers arrive instantly. Wise uses the mid-market exchange rate, like the one you see on Google, with no markups or hidden fees.

• 2:53Alastair Campbell?

  So when money needs to move, you can see the rate, know the fee, and get on with it. Join millions saving billions on hidden fees by downloading the Wise app today. Be smart, get wise, Ts and Cs apply.

• 3:06Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 3:13Alastair 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.

• 3:26Rory 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 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.

• 3:49Alastair 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?

• 3:55Rory 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.

• 4:11Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  And me, Michael Gove.

• 4:24Alastair Campbell?

  So, Michael, thank you for standing in for Rory Stewart, having yet another week off. I've had none thus far in our four years together. And we are going to talk about your party and my party and their various conferences. We're going to talk about Kemi Badenoch's leadership style and how she's developed and grown, and a very interesting document that she wrote on the eve of the conference. We're going to talk about France and Spain, where there are a lot of protests going on. In France, very violent, involving schoolkids. And in Spain, have led to the calling of a general election by Pedro Sanchez. We're going to talk about Brazil, and we're briefly going to talk about the election in Bosnia as well. So I'm looking forward to that, and looking forward to even more looking forward to

• 5:08Alastair Campbell?

  Question Time, where I suspect you and I will disagree, agreeably possibly, on Brexit and Israel-Gaza, where I think we have very, very differing positions. So, thank you for being here. Let's start with the Tories and Labour.

• 5:23Speaker 02

  It's an absolute pleasure, Alistair. And I know that I can't live up to the standards set by Rory of reasonableness, and I know that we're going to disagree, but I will do my best to make sure that it's agreeable. And the first thing that I would have to say is that I agree with your broad analysis. I think that the introduction that you set is absolutely correct, that both the principal parties have, over the last two years, faced pesky insurgents who've been energised and who've been successful in eating away at the votes, the core votes of both Labour and Tory. But for the reasons that you've outlined, the Greens are being in hock to a particular

• 6:05Speaker 02

  group within the party who've elevated Palestine over other issues, and with Reform because of the scandals that have hit their leadership and the splits that that's exposed, both of those parties have had difficult summers, and that's given the Conservatives in particular a sense that they're back in the game. But while the Conservatives, you're absolutely right, are united behind Kemi Badenoch, they still remain anchored at around 20% in the polls. And this week, there was a very sobering message from John Curtis, the polling guru, who said to the, not quite exuberant, but certainly more confident Tory grassroots, that their polling position was exactly the same as the 2024 election.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  And of course, that was the election that resulted in the most humiliating defeat that my party ever endured, and one which saw my own seat fall to the Liberal Democrats and my Lib Dem successor secure a five and a half thousand majority.

• 6:59Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I want to come back to the Tories, and in particular, this very long essay that Kemi Badenoch has written, which I read yesterday, The Right Way, as it's called. But I just want to first of all ask you about your impressions of Labour, because you were at Liverpool. I just wondered, first of all, how weird that is for you to be at the Labour Party Conference, what your impressions were, and what you think the big change has been from Starmer to Burnham.

• 7:21Speaker 02

  Well, the key thing about governing party conferences is that there's an eerie similarity to them. So I don't want to dishearten those people who are encouraged by Andy Burnham's arrival by saying that I felt quite at home, because the corporate lobbyists, the NGOs, the charities, they're out in force. So in that sense, there was an element of being reminded of what it was like when the Conservatives were in government. It has that complexion. However, the big difference is not so much between Labour and Conservative, but between Labour last year and Labour this year. Last year, there was a sense, if not of despair, of uncertainty. So there was a willingness on the part of the grassroots to give Keir Starmer more time

• 8:06Speaker 02

  to prove that he could be the leader that they'd hoped, but also a sense of deep anxiety that despite the successful 2024 election victory, that Labour wasn't doing anything worthwhile with it, that it had alienated its core support, that the sense of hope that a majority of over 200 should bring was entirely absent. This year, it was very different, that Andy Burnham had infused the party with a renewed sense of optimism. I think that for Labour, there are going to be very, very challenging days ahead when the budget comes with economic difficulties and also with some security questions that remain unresolved.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  But nevertheless, it was undoubtedly the case that across the party, there was that enthusiasm. I think Burnham's taking the party to the left, not to the further shores or the outer reaches of the left, but he's situating the party firmly in its soft-left, Kinnockite comfort zone. But what was striking is that there wasn't any disquiet from those people whom you might think of as on the right of the Labour Party. So some of those who might call themselves continuity Blairites were just happy that they had a Labour leader who was articulate, engaging, could forge an emotional bond not just in the hall, but with the viewing audience at home.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  And so in that sense, I think for Team Burnham, it was a wholly successful exercise.

• 9:34Alastair Campbell?

  Rory and I interviewed Shabana Mahmood last week, and she's our current episode on leading. And she said something, I thought, well, she said a lot of interesting things, but something that stuck with me. She said that she felt Andy Burnham had given Labour a second chance to make a first impression. And I thought that was very, very well put, because I went to that conference. It's the first one I've actually been inside the conference zone for some years, because I find it quite stressful wandering around the place. But I was struck by a complete change in mood from, as you say, despair to a sense of confidence. And it is extraordinary how quickly that has emanated to the Cabinet as well. I felt that Shabana is a very, very, very good example.

• 10:18Alastair Campbell?

  I think that the feedback we've had to her interview has been extraordinary. And yet, this is somebody that people think they have known quite well for some time, and they have an image of her. So I think that's what he's done, is he's injected a sense of confidence. And maybe that's a good link to Kemi Badenoch and the Tory Congress, where you are now, because the one thing I have to say about Kemi Badenoch, she sort of does exude an extraordinary self-confidence. I just wonder whether I'm right about that. You know her better than I do. And secondly... Whether, where it comes from, where does that confidence come from?

• 10:56Speaker 02

  Uh, I think you're right about it and, and there is a parallel, funnily enough, um, with Shabana Mahmood. Um, I found the interview that you and Rory conducted with her absolutely fascinating. And right from the off, she was candid uh about her faith and the impact that it has on her politics. And you all remarked on the fact that probably for the last sort of twenty years in politics, maybe longer. Having someone talk so openly and honestly about their belief in God, how it motivates them, why it's so central to their life. That would have been the sort of thing that for any politician would have invited skepticism or hostility from some.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  And you know, in the past, the view would have been, as you pointed out in the case of Tony Blair. Are you trying to claim God for your party? Are you trying to claim the mandate of heaven for your policies? Come off it. But actually, in Shabana's case, what it was, I thought, was both uh moving and powerful. What you see is what you get with Shabana Mahmood. Um, she is someone whose faith and also whose position in the Labour Party is devoid of spin or self-consciousness. And one of the reasons why I admire her, though I don't always agree with her, is that at a time when people seek authenticity, she has it and she can't be anything other than the type of politician that she is. And the same, I think, is true of Kemi Badenoch.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  So Kemi, partly because of her life experience earlier on, partly because she was a student at Sussex University, where she was almost alone in having conservative views, partly because people assumed, both when she was a student and when she was a young professional, that because of her Nigerian background, she must be on the left. That's meant that she's got used not just to defending her position, but asserting it. And that confidence carried through to her time in Parliament. She was a junior minister when I was a Secretary of State. And I often remarked afterwards that if people came in to any meeting that the two of us had,

• 13:04Speaker 02

  they would have assumed that she was the Secretary of State and I was the junior minister. Because she had that intellectual self-confidence, some people find it irritating because she is so clear in her own mind that she can be sometimes brisk, almost to the point of rudeness with people with whom she disagrees. But actually, in her mind, she's paying them a compliment. She's saying, okay, uh, you take your politics seriously, so do I. There's no need for any politest, let's get down to it. Um, I will defend my ideas, you defend yours.

• 13:43Alastair Campbell?

  I mentioned this booklet, she calls it a booklet, but it's actually, I think, a much more, you know, booklet sounds a bit trivial. It's actually, I think, quite a serious piece of work, The Right Way. And it's obviously modeled on Margaret Thatcher's The Right Approach back in the seventies. In fact, she says that that's largely inspired by that. And the reason why I found it interesting, yes, there's a bit of party political knockabout within it, but you get a sense of there being some sort of pretty big ideas and big intellectual analysis going on. I'll come on to some of that. I feel, however, that, and I was honestly, Michael, I was going to come to this podcast prepared to praise Kebby Badenoch for this serious piece of work. But I think it's clashed with the way that the part, your party is conducting itself at this conference.

• 14:27Alastair Campbell?

  Because she says that we've got to get away from this idea that thinking an announcement is more important than actually what the policy will do over time. And of course, what have we seen so far this week? A lot of announcements that strike me as being not very thought through. At eve of conference, on the back of Labour following through with your prisoner release scheme, that how she comes saying, we're going to build, is it fifty thousand new prison places? I'm going to pay for them by getting rid of overseas aid, which is next to none left, and cutting some budgets on DCMS, including, I would imagine, for youth clubs and that sort of thing. Pipeline back to more prison population. That felt a bit weird. I then think this morning we wake up

• 15:11Alastair Campbell?

  and we've got a ten billion pound pledge on some kind of iron dough Israeli style defence system, which again does not feel to be terribly thought through. We have this thing about we're now going to, anybody earning over a hundred thousand pound a year will get the same childcare as somebody earning less. And here's one I'd love your opinion on, she says we're going to keep the triple lock as was. Now, I've, I've talked to many conservatives over the last decade who all have said to me, the triple lock is an absolute disaster, it's fiscally incoherent and we've got to get rid of it. And yet there she is saying we're going to keep it. So less serious this week than her document, I would say.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  So there are two things there. The first thing is the document, and I agree with you. And uh I think that we're asking a lot of the Restless Politics listeners to go through a thirty thousand word document from a party leader, but I think-

• 16:05Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I did it. I think the listeners can do it if I did it.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Precisely. Um, I think it's, uh, the, the first thing is, I'm glad that long essays are back. Um, uh, as ever, Tony Blair was the trailblazer. Uh, his essay, uh, which shaped or framed or should have framed a Labour Party leadership election. I don't think many of the contenders or wannabe contenders paid enough attention to what he was saying. But I think that that has raised the bar overall. And I think Kemi Badenoch, to her enormous credit, wrote this herself. You can hear her voice in the pages. And the fact that one of the thinkers that she cites is the uh American academic Thomas Sowell uh is reflective of that. He's the biggest intellectual influence on her.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  And he is the person who makes the point that you make, which is that you should judge a policy by the incentives it creates rather than the intent that you cloak it in. So you may say that this policy is designed to generate growth, as this trust did at the time of the mini budget.

• 17:08Alastair Campbell?

  Of which Kemi Badenoch is very, very critical.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Very critical. But the, the key thing is, uh, never mind your good intentions. What are the concrete uh consequences of what you've done? And that, I think, is core to the Kemi view. She is, as I say, sometimes scornful of the idea that you need to demonstrate your good faith, your bona fides, your uh compassion. What she is absolutely focused on is uh the logical outcome of what she's done. And she makes great play of the fact that she's an engineer and that as an engineer, the judgment you have to make is about how your input changes the system, hopefully for the better. And that, of course, takes us to the points that you make about the policies announced.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  I remember once, um, at a political cabinet, making the point that we shouldn't rush out policies for conference simply in order to uh be seen to be dominating the media grid. That almost always those policies fell apart on contact with reality. Um, and that the ultimate desire or appetite for the country for good government trumped the need to fill the immediate media appetite for those three or four days. But this time round, I think that, as we were touching on earlier, what the Tories feel they need to do is to demonstrate momentum. Because Reform have stalled, not just in the polls, but more broadly in terms of generating any sense of excitement.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  The Conservatives are locked in a death match with them. And the Conservatives feel that they've got to show that at that point where people are asking the question, which is the energetic force on the right, which is the rising party between the two, that they've got to show on tax, as you quite rightly point out, um, but also on the questions of national security and migration, that they're the party that is capable of taking things forward. Now, as one looks at each of those individual policies, I can see the merits in all of them. Uh, but I do think you are right that there is a, a natural risk that if you throw policy out at this rate, that your opponents

• 19:19Speaker 02

  will find the weakest policy plank in what you've put forward, scrutinize that. And if that falls apart under pressure, it damages the most important thing which an opposition leader needs, which is credibility.

• 19:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I mean, so, you see, I think she would have been better- To have actually stayed true to the conviction she's trying to put across in this document and actually taken some of the talking points from that and and and built the conference around them as opposed to these sort of big policy positions which I think will either disappear or fall apart because I don't think they do stack up. I mean, I'll just give you one example, actually, this comes from the document. The removals force, the removals force will have double the budget of the current immigration enforcement director at the border force. This will cost an extra eight hundred and two million a year or one point six billion in total.

• 20:11Alastair Campbell?

  This will be funded from closing the asylum hotels at the wider costs of the out of control asylum system. Well, there is an awful lot of wishful thinking in that, and I think you saw that in the prisons announcement as well. But let me just read you one part, which which I thought was really interesting because she's very critical of trust and the mini budget. She's quite critical of the governments of which both you and she were part.

• 20:34Speaker 02

  And Rory.

• 20:35Alastair Campbell?

  She says this. And indeed Rory, but he's he's having a day off, Rory, so you don't have to kick it.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  No, I won't, I know.

• 20:41Alastair Campbell?

  Britain's problems did not begin with the twenty twenty four Labour government. Some began under earlier Labour governments, I can dispute that, and became worse under Conservative ones, I don't dispute that. Others arose because assumptions shared across the political spectrum went unchallenged for too long. We promised lower immigration without a strategy for delivering it. You, Michael. Net zero was legislative for before we had an economically feasible route to get there. We left the European Union, you, Michael, without the economic plan that should have gone with it. The path to failure was paved with announcements, targets and good intentions. Now, I think that is a very strong thing to say, and I broadly agree with it.

• 21:25Alastair Campbell?

  And yet I think that is what she has undermined by some of the announcements that have been made in the last few days.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  I think you are right, and more to the point, so is Kemi. However, I think that the key thing that the public will take away from the Conservative Party Conference will be her speech. We can look at each of the individual policies and all oppositions feel the need to command attention by announcing these policies, even though we are probably two years out from an election, even though the state of the public finances then could be far better or far worse than we have now. They've become the sort of entry fee, they've become the down payment that political parties feel that they need to make in order to enter a contention.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  And it will be, I think, ultimately, the clips of Kemi Badenoch, not just on the evening news, but also on social media after she's spoken, that will determine whether or not this has been a success. So all of these policy canapes, you might find them indigestible, I might think that they only whet my appetite for more, but they are not what the the chef is going to be judged on. And I think that your analysis of those those three things, those three policy errors is, as I say, your judgment is right, Kemi's analysis is spot on, and it reinforces, I

• 22:54Speaker 02

  think, a hunger for a degree of candour and seriousness from a political leader. And that is where I think that the contrast between Kemi and Nigel Farage works to her advantage. Until recently, Farage was in the position where he could present himself as the truth teller, the person who was the insurgent outside the uniparty tent, not constrained by the rigged rules of the establishment game. Now, however, after the summer, he looks like just another politician on the take. And Kemi, and here I draw the comparison with Shabana, is someone who tells the truth,

• 23:34Speaker 02

  even though some of what she says will alienate or confuse potential supporters, but she doesn't care because it's more important to her to be true to herself than to offer honeyed words to lead people to support her when she knows that the policies that she is going to implement and to which she is committed are not those which her listener wants to hear.

• 23:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and and there's there's another very, very interesting passage where actually it reminded me a little bit of what Andy Burnham's saying about past Labour governments. She says this, that Labour believes more in spending direction regulation, Conservatives too often oppose that approach in rhetoric while preserving or extending it when in office between twenty ten and twenty four. This is the root of the often heard criticism you had fourteen years, you know, and I do think, by the way, I don't think your party is going to recover until there is more honesty about from both the people who were there and the current leadership about some of the mistakes that were made. She goes on to say, in relation to this fourteen years, the charge which we must accept is that we did little to reverse the structural changes Labour had made, which, in her view,

• 24:44Alastair Campbell?

  took the country in the wrong direction. Now, Andy Burnham makes the same case, as it were, from the left, says that we, the Blair government, the Brown governments, we did not change the neoliberal or Thatcherite model. So I think that's what's interesting about the battle that's been developed, that is going to develop between the two of them. And on your point about Nigel Farage, I, Andy Burnham's name comes up a lot in this document, some of it is the sort of party political knockabout that we might expect, which he's trying to get rid of. But actually, I thought there would have been more of an attack upon the populist right, and I still worry, from your perspective, that she's not yet decided whether her future lies in having people like Rory Stewart and Gavin Barwell and David Gork back in the

• 25:26Alastair Campbell?

  fold, or whether she has to try to get some of the soft reform voters back on back in the Conservative camp. And I think until that's resolved in her mind, I'm not sure where she goes.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  I think those are fair points, and I think you are you are right that both Burnham and Badenoch are in effect saying that the promise of the country was not realised over the course of the last two or three decades, four decades. And that reflects the fact that we are in broadly a populist moment across the West, that ever since the global financial crisis, low growth, sluggish productivity, and in particular, growing inequality between generations has created this profound sense of discontent. So if you are now saying the centrist dads got it completely right, and it's time to

• 26:19Speaker 02

  recover our moderate mojo, there are big sections of the country that say, no, you're the guys that got it wrong, you're the guys that have landed us in the current mess, we have voted consistently for change, so of course, different people will mean different things by that, we don't want a pose of moderation and an approach which essentially says, trust us, we're the establishment, we want something more radical. Both Burnham and Badenoch are offering that. And that, I think, goes to your point about the rejection of Farage and the populist right more broadly. Farage is a flawed advocate for whatever cause he leads, articulate, charismatic for

• 27:02Speaker 02

  some, but flaky, and reform bears the imprint of his character. But the country has moved, particularly on questions like migration, over the course of the last ten or fifteen years. And I think that any party that aspires to govern, particularly a party of the right, has to take account of that. And therefore, positions that you or I might have thought were quite outre in two thousand and five and twenty ten are now positions that are actually in the European mainstream. And if you look at what Macron or the CDU or Maloney certainly are now articulating,

• 27:42Speaker 02

  or the Danish Social Democrats, they're articulating policies that, when we were, I hesitate to say, in our prime, because you're in your prime, Alistair.

• 27:50Alastair Campbell?

  When we had jobs, when we had proper jobs.

• 27:56Speaker 02

  When we had proper jobs, those positions would have been regarded as pretty spicy. And so I think that's that's one of the explanations.

• 28:04Alastair Campbell?

  Interesting, yeah. Well, look, there's a lot in this. I I I think we should put it in our in our newsletter the right way. I think if she could strip out some of the more obviously party political thing, and I'll tell you the thing that leapt out when she talked about dealing with activist judges, that sort of made my flesh crawl somewhat. But but I think there's a lot in it. I can see, put it this way, I think I underestimated a year a year ago, I think she grew when she got rid of Robert Jenrick, which was a very, probably a very good move. And it is extraordinary how both of them now, Burnham is completely in charge of Labour, it strikes me that she's very, very strong within her own party. I'm also very pleased that she pointed out that Brexit made immigration worse. We'll talk about that in Question Time tomorrow, along with the Middle East, because I think

• 28:47Alastair Campbell?

  we should be, I think some of our listeners will be horrified at the extent to which you keep telling me how right I am, but that's because you're a very polite person. We'll disagree more tomorrow, but in the meantime, we'll take a break and we'll come back, we're going to talk about France, we're going to talk about Spain, and we're going to talk about Brazil, and if we've got time, we might even squeeze in a bit of Bosnia.

• 29:07Speaker 02

  Brilliant. Thanks very much, Alistair.

• 29:10Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by Lloyds Corporate and Institutional. Over the next few weeks, decisions will be made that will travel far beyond politics and into boardrooms around the planet. We will, of course, have next week's IMF meeting in Thailand, the UK Autumn Budget resetting domestic priorities, and of course, the US midterm elections.

• 29:32Alastair Campbell?

  These are not headlines to wait for, they're signals to turn ambition into action. When big decisions need to be made, the quality of your intelligence is critical.

• 29:40Rory Stewart?

  And and that's the thing, Alistair, why we, you know, often talk about things that other people aren't covering, such as the civil war in Ethiopia, or what's happening along the coast of Yemen, because these things too can have massive market impacts in ways people can't predict. So through Daily Insights and the Annual Markets Summit and the Special Sectors Report, Lloyds Corporate and Institutional combines the strength of one of Britain's most trusted institutions with the innovation shaping the future of finance. Search Lloyds Market Insights because big ambitions need more than capital. Bank on Lloyds.

• 30:17Speaker 03

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• 30:23Speaker 03

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• 31:52Speaker 02

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Michael Gove.

• 31:56Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And Michael Gove is standing in for Rory Stewart, who is otherwise detained. Now Rory, oh God, now Michael. That was a force of habit. Michael, we're going to talk about the country where I am right now, which is France. There is so much going on. We're recording this on Tuesday morning. France is today bracing itself for three separate things. The first is continuing protests at their lycée, their senior schools, which have seen some extraordinary scenes of violence in the last couple of weeks. Other protests going on today is a public sector, a series of public sector marches to protest against the planned budget cuts, which the government is trying to take through.

• 32:40Alastair Campbell?

  And the third big thing happening today is Marine Le Pen has got a big speech where she's going to try to persuade the French people and perhaps more importantly, the markets, that she actually has a bloody clue when it comes to the economy, because thus far in her very, very long career, that has not really been the case. You were Secretary of State for Education, probably, I think that was the job you served in the longest in your various ministerial roles. In Britain, have we ever seen anything like this that's going on in France now? Because I can't recall anything like it.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  No, I'm tempted to sort of reflect ruefully on the most thunderous denunciations that the teachers' unions or indeed some students directed my way. The worst that ever happened is when the Socialist Workers' Party occupied the lobby of the Department for Education to protest against what they considered to be my crime in getting rid of To Kill a Mockingbird from GCSE. I hadn't actually cancelled it, but it was their campaign. But apart from a few surprisingly well mannered trots attempting to get in my way when I was on my way to get my Pret a Manger sandwich, there was nothing really to compare.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  And I shouldn't really make light of it because it's horrifying. We've had schools being burnt down. We've had a student, as I understand it, whose hand has been blown off because of the way in which a police grenade was somehow deployed. Accounts vary as to who's to blame. But it's undoubtedly the case that we've had millions of euros worth of damage. We've had people hurt. We've had scenes on the streets of students and the CRS at loggerheads. It's horrific and it speaks to a sort of fundamental problem in French society. We mustn't consider ourselves superior in the UK, that would be a mistake, but there is a fundamental problem in French society, which I think is rooted in the sense, in

• 34:39Speaker 02

  particular but not exclusively, amongst ethnic minorities in poorer areas, that French society operates a two-tier system. The education for the elite in France is pretty good, but if you're in the banlieue or if you're in any of the cities that are less fashionable, that have been overlooked in the past by Paris, then your educational opportunities are narrower and the amount being invested in your future, smaller.

• 35:08Alastair Campbell?

  This whole thing, because it's become so huge and so, and it's getting covered, this is getting coverage right around the world. It actually started with a very small protest by teachers at a particular school. So it started at one school, this Lycée Saint-Exupéry in a place called Céte. And it was teachers protesting about the fact that teachers that they were losing were not being replaced. It wasn't a strike, it was a protest. And then the kids at this school, they joined the protest. And this is where it developed into something about class sizes. I had no idea, I come to France a lot, I had no idea that you have some of these classes in senior schools, class sizes of 40. The other big, big thing that happened was during the heatwave, which we had a while

• 35:51Alastair Campbell?

  back, that the kids were just complaining that it was impossible to learn in this sort of, you know, horrible hot environment and buildings that were, say, in some cases, falling down. So this protest started and then spread so quickly. And I don't think this is just social media, it's also organisation. And then it's also, it's now playing into, we've had today, 500 schools shut, we've had over 5,000 arrests, we've had hundreds of police officers who've been injured, and as you say, some pretty horrific accidents involving the protesters as well. And of the arrests, 85% are minors, under the age of 18. But it's also playing into the politics of France, which are very, very tense and very, very tricky.

• 36:34Alastair Campbell?

  Got an election, presidential election coming up. And both the government and the Le Pen party, the Rassemblement National, they're trying to pin this on Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left wing leader, who has been encouraging these protests. There was one, and one of his senior figures who said that actually in some instances, violence can be legitimate, which is of course being seized upon, as saying that they're fueling this. But it's very hard to see how the French bring this under control in the short term because of course, you have a, I mean, I'm really interested in what you think about this. I was watching some of the coverage in France and you had parents who were effectively saying, the kids have got a point.

• 37:17Alastair Campbell?

  And they were effectively, they were all, they were sort of saying, there was a parent of one child who was saying, well, you know, what do you expect them to do? Is that a generational thing? Do you think if this kind of thing did happen in Britain, that parents would actually be supporting their children in setting bins on fire? In some cases, you say, setting schools on fire, including one that's named after Nelson Mandela. Would parents in Britain, do you think, still be of a view that there is never, ever any excuse for violence? Would you think there's been a generational shift?

• 37:48Speaker 02

  I think there may have been some shifts across the generations, but I'd like to think that the basic attitude of the overwhelming number of British parents would be get over yourself, that there is something literally self-defeating about objecting to the fact that you're not getting a good enough education by burning down your school. It is the case that there has been a growing sense amongst some parents, I don't want to overstate it, that if their children are unhappy in school, that may be the fault of the teachers or the system, rather than a requirement on the part of the student to buckle down, as my mum would have put it.

• 38:30Speaker 02

  So I think there is that, but I don't think it's at anything like this scale that we've seen exhibited in France. And again, I have to be very wary about being someone who's too patronising and too inclined to indulge in stereotypes. But it is the case that in France, social discontent finds its outlet on, has found its outlet on the streets in a way that has been far less frequent in the UK.

• 38:57Alastair Campbell?

  But Michael, you're a radical, you're a radical. Is there anything in you that... Admires that. Is there anything new that sort of admires the fact that they they had a proper revolution?

• 39:07Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:08Alastair Campbell?

  And that in nineteen sixty eight, nothing at all.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 39:10Alastair Campbell?

  Nineteen sixty eight, they had these extraordinary riots and it led to real change. Nothing at all.

• 39:15Speaker 02

  One of the things I'm worried about the French is that they take ideas very seriously. Um, and French political debate is absorbing and fascinating and French political leaders, they attract attention on the basis of the the rigor of their ideas. I find that genuinely admirable. But however radical I might be, uh, the crusty old Tory in me means that I like order on our streets. And so, uh, you know, French farmers are, um, they make Jeremy Clarkson look positively uh, reticent and self-effacing when it comes to drawing attention to their discontent. And similarly, French students, you were around at the time, I was just a babe and arms. In nineteen sixty eight, French students are prepared to take to the streets in order

• 39:57Speaker 02

  to demonstrate their discontent at times of sort of high political temperature. And and again, one of the things about French politics at the moment, and that relates to the street protests and to the school uh, insurgency, as it were, is that both political fringes, I was going to say fringes, but now the leading figures in French politics can see something in it for them. So Mélenchon can say this is an example of inequality and discontent. And Le Pen and her auxiliaries can say this demonstrates the failure of the government and the need for order. And there is an echo of nineteen sixty eight in France in that, in that the street protests then were exhilarating for figures on the left, who saw this as a chance finally to

• 40:40Speaker 02

  break the sort of bourgeois hold um, of the republic. But then for figures on the right, it was also empowering. This was the uh, a demonstration of the need for for greater authority and the need to protect property and the need to rally behind conservative forces. So uh, these sorts of protests are polarizing. They do speak to a populist moment on both left and right. And actually, that's one of the reasons why, as I say, the horrid Tory in me um, uh, feels that these things are unsettling eruptions into the body politic, which rarely end well.

• 41:17Alastair Campbell?

  Before we flip to another European country, which has got a lot of protests going at the moment, Spain, which is leading to a new election, just briefly on Le Pen, this speech that she's making today. We've been, we've been promised she's going to give us details of how she's going to get a hundred and twenty five billion of government spending cut in the next, in five years of a presidential term. Thus far, this sounds a bit like the criticism I was making about the Tories and their big announcements. Thus far, she said it's going to be done by reducing fraud, well, we've heard that one a million times, cutting public spending on migrants and illegally withholding France's payments to the EU. So I think the markets are going to want to hear a little bit more than that. And the other point about the interesting thing going on with Le Pen at the moment

• 41:59Alastair Campbell?

  is Jordan Bardella, this young handsome chap who thought he was going to be the presidential candidate until she decided, no, you can just be prime minister. He has been um, exposed by this investigative website, Mediapart, for making anti-Semitic statements when he was a young party member, thirteen, fourteen years ago. And what's interesting is he's not come out and said, oh, well, I might have said that, but I'm now a very different person, the party's changed. He's actually come out and said, these messages have been faked. And Mediapart say they have the proof that these are real messages sent by him. And I think that will become a problem for them if he's shown to lie on this, on the

• 42:40Alastair Campbell?

  subject, which is so central to Le Pen, sort of saying that they've cleansed this once under her dad, avowedly anti-Semitic racist party. So interesting stuff going on there. Now, what about Spain? We interviewed Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, a while back, and your fellow Conservative, Rory Stewart, was very impressed by him, as was I, we were, we were both impressed. I don't know if you, have you followed, been following this story about the, this is a housing rental crisis, which has been, he has tried to make changes to the law to prevent these sort of rogue landlords from whacking up rents as much as high as they want. And the right wing parties voted him down. So he has now gone to the country saying, I need a, I need a proper majority, which he's not had for a long time.

• 43:23Alastair Campbell?

  I need a proper majority to be able to get through the changes the country needs.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Pedro Sanchez is a formidable politician. Um, and uh, he's in power at the moment because he also, um, on a previous occasion of uh, just over two years ago, uh, outfoxed his opponents by calling an early uh, general election, one that he was expected to lose. He did actually record slightly fewer votes in that election than the Conservative opposition. But he knew that he had a path to government through the uh, the smaller parties, the regional um, and separatist parties. Uh, he, he hung on to power. And this time round, he knew that uh, he would face defeat at the next election unless he managed uh, to change the terms of trade. And he succeeded, well, he certainly succeeded on finding an issue where a majority, particularly

• 44:11Speaker 02

  of younger Spaniards, will be on his side. Because if you're a party of the right, your natural tendency to defend property rights can lead you into sympathy for landlords. And at the moment, across Western Europe, we're living through a housing crisis that housing crisis is experienced most acutely by younger people in rented accommodation. And being on their side, even if it may not make long-term economic sense, makes short-term political sense. And there's another thing as well, which is that he can, as he did in the last election, turn the argument against his opponents, not just by saying, I'm on the side of the young and the aspirational, but also by saying to the Partido Popular, the, the mainstream

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Spanish Conservative Party that's in the lead, you guys are only going to uh, manage to construct a majority with the help of Vox, the party to your right. And last time round, the PP suffered because people thought, well, I might like the moderate Conservatives, but I don't want them dependent on Vox. Um, and also Vox's uh, uh, overall approach to uh, Spanish federalism, as it were, is we don't like it. So if you are a Catalan or a Basque, uh, even if you're on the right, you might be worried about what Vox might do. And so, uh, or how they might influence a, a, a centre right government.

• 45:38Speaker 02

  So I still think Sanchez is on a losing wicket, but he's managed successfully in the past to frame an election, to put the pressure on his opponents. And I wouldn't underestimate him going into this contest.

• 45:52Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think that's right. And I, I, I think, as you say, the, the right wing parties face the same challenge that Kennedy Baiden does is how close do you get to these parties that those who like them, love them. But actually, a lot of the people that you're trying to win over are very, very wary of them. And it's just, it's just worth underlining the, the specific, because sometimes it is the sort of specific thing that will act as the, the kind of, the, the light, the, the flame that really flies up and, and sets this thing off and has led to him calling this election. And this was about an eighty seven year old woman called Maria Carmen Abascal, disabled. And she'd lived in this same flat in Madrid for seventy years. The block was bought by one of these big faceless investment funds and suddenly slapped

• 46:36Alastair Campbell?

  on a two hundred and thirty percent rent rise. So her rent went immediately from five hundred euros to two thousand six hundred and fifty. They later cut it, but still it was well, well, well above what she gets in as a, as a pension. And the thing that really, pictures are so important in politics, as you know, and as, as a journalist, you know, a picture of her being carried out on a stretcher, being evicted, just became the sort of symbol for these extraordinary protests that have taken place right across the country. And I think in that Sanchez has seen, right, well, there is a cause, there is a, a left-right cause. I think he thought at one point, you know, that maybe the position he was taking vis-à-vis

• 47:18Alastair Campbell?

  Trump and the, and the very strong position that he was taking on Gaza in particular, that that might have been the cause that united the left.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  The funny thing, well, there are many funny things about Spain, but one of them is, maybe I should have mentioned this, that um, it's had relatively good growth recently. Now, I believe that it's had relatively good growth because austerity was imposed and endured, and that meant that the Spanish economy was rebooted. But the, the, the, the striking thing is that many of the things that Sanchez does and stands for, I don't like at all. But uh, uh, he's a politician of great guile and Spain's relative economic success at the moment means that he's in a stronger position than almost any other European left-wing leader.

• 47:59Alastair Campbell?

  We'll be coming back to it. And to those who haven't listened to our interview with Sanchez, I do recommend it. He's a, as, as, as Michael says, he's a, he's a very impressive uh, political operator. He's also got these corruption charges regarding family members hanging around, which are never good as you go into an election. Now, what about Brazil? Let's stick with the um, The theme of elections. So in Brazil, these two giant names in Brazilian politics, Lula and Bolsonaro. And it looks to me like Flavio Bolsonaro, son of the, serving a 27 year sentence for doing what Donald Trump tried to do in America on January the 6th.

• 48:41Alastair Campbell?

  I think his was on January the 8th, Bolsonaro. But his son, who says the first thing he'll do if he wins his pardon, his dad, I think he looking pretty nailed on because he's 2% ahead in the first round. And the smaller parties who now get eliminated before the second round, they tend to be more right wing than than left wing. So it's looking pretty tricky for Lula, I would say.

• 49:02Speaker 02

  It is. And again, Brazilian politics, again, like a lot of Latin American politics, and indeed, American politics, seems increasingly dynastic. So Lula wins, loses, then returns again. And then similarly, Bolsonaro wins, loses, and then his son returns again. But behind that, there are deep divisions in Brazilian society. And actually, if you look at a map of Brazil, to see which regions Lula is strong in and which regions Bolsonaro has won, it tends to be the South, which actually tends to include some of the richer areas, both the areas where the beef barons are stronger, but also where you've got the

• 49:45Speaker 02

  sort of the gilded business elite. They are Bolsonaro's stronghold alongside, and this is a striking thing in what was a Catholic country, what is still a majority Catholic country, there's a growing evangelical Christian movement, Protestant movement in Brazil as well. They're very strongly behind Bolsonaro. And I think that the strength of that base combined with economic discontent, and also the fact that Latin America as a continent, or South America as a continent, has moved to the right. We can, you know, you can attribute that to the Trump effect, you can attribute that to a populist effect, but it's broadly moved to the right. So I think it's only Uruguay now, and of course, Brazil at the

• 50:25Speaker 02

  moment, that has a left wing progressive, or even centre left government. That means, I think, that the wind is in Bolsonaro's sails. And it is striking that South America, which we we we looked to five or 10 years ago, as a place where there was a sort of left alternative to globalisation, where, you know, discredited, he may have been, Chavez, was acting as a, in Venezuela, acting as a flag bearer for that. And there was a strong feeling across the continent. It is striking now, that it has succumbed or

• 51:10Speaker 02

  opted into that broad right wing move.

• 51:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And of course, you've still got Claudia Schambo up at the top in in Mexico. But as you say, Mexico and Uruguay, about all is left. And I mean, I shared with our team, we'll put it in the newsletter, a map of Latin America, and it has literally gone from red, prominent red, to dominant blue.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:34Alastair Campbell?

  If we if we have the British European red and blue, rather than the the American one. And I guess, I, you know, hard to know exactly, but I guess Trump, the factor of Trump is a, it does play into all this. He's somebody who has been very, very clear that he even even announced tariffs on Brazil because they sent Bolsonaro to jail, which I think gives you a very clear, clear idea as to where his his sympathies lie. So we'll see where this goes. But I think if I was on the Lula side of things, I'd be feeling, I mean, who's he who's he going to get to turn unless he feels he can squeeze some of these people who who voted for right wing parties because they so don't like Bolsonaro?

• 52:16Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know. But if you look, it's not like a French election where generally, people will come back to the the more centrist candidate, because both of them are very, very polarising figures. It's a very traditional left right battle.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 52:31Alastair Campbell?

  And the Bolsonaro brand is so strong, he's even got his own, Bolsonaro's third wife, Michelle, she's been elected, his son has been elected into, and one of his other sons has been elected to another position. And they did very, very well in the congressional and the senate elections as well, the Bolsonaro lot. So there we go. Finally, very, very briefly, Michael, would you like to explain the Bosnian electoral system to our listeners and viewers, Michael? Do you be able to do that?

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Well, I think, I think the main thing about the Bosnian electoral system is that it is unfeasibly complex, so complex that only Alastair Campbell, with his gift for rendering the esoteric accessible, would be able to explain it to even the discerning rest is politics audience. But the key element in Bosnia is that the ethnic divisions between Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Bosnian Serbs, mean that there has to be, even within Bosnia as governor, a recognition, not just of how you reconcile those three ethnic identities, but also a proportional system, which if it can do, seeks to encourage working across

• 53:43Speaker 02

  ethnic boundaries. But that is formidably difficult. And of course, one of the challenges that we have in Bosnia is that the people who've been least reconciled to Bosnia's existence as an independent state has been its Serb minority. And they've been strengthened by a resurgence in Serbian national feeling. You and Rory interviewed Aleksandar Vucic on Leading, a fascinating interview. But one of the things that was pretty clear about that is that Serbia is probably the one country in the Balkans that has decided pretty firmly that in the choice between the EU on the one side and Russia on the other, it does not

• 54:26Speaker 02

  want to be forced into the EU camp. I wouldn't say that it was firmly in the Russian camp, but it doesn't want to be considered a candidate country in the same way that others do. Because there is a, some would say sturdy nationalism, others would say a compromised attachment to Russia amongst Serbian elites.

• 54:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I thought that was very, showed considerable depth of knowledge there, Michael, may I say so. Just on the election, it is an incredibly complicated system, and it was set up by the the peace agreement back in the mid 90s, under the Dayton Accords. But if there is a big, and it's impossible to say there is an overall winner, because you have you have this three headed presidency, you have one from each of the ethnic groups who sort of rotates as as president. But if you look at which party's done particularly well, I'm afraid to say the big winner is this guy, Milorad Dodik, who is pro Russia, he's anti NATO, he's a Bosnian Serb, he's banned from office, he cannot stand, but

• 55:33Alastair Campbell?

  he was a big, big, big part of the debate. And and he's now going around saying that he won because his party won because of support from from Trump and Putin. So their stated goal, a bit like Serbia, of becoming a member of the European Union, I think it's looking, I'd say, quite, quite tricky.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  I was in Belgrade on holiday over Easter. And if you're in Belgrade, it's a beautiful city, or most of it's beautiful. Lovely, lovely place, incredibly friendly people. And it feels like a sort of, you know, European city overall, feels like a Prague or a Budapest or, not quite a Vienna, but certainly a Bruslava, or, you know, any standard European city. However, one thing that you are aware of is the strength of national feeling. And there was fresh graffiti on one wall, in quite an attractive area that we were visiting, which said, the real victims of the genocide were the Serbs. And so there is the sense,

• 56:34Speaker 02

  amongst sections of the Serbian population, that going right back to the war in the 1990s, they believe that they were not the oppressors, but the victims. And it is also the case for historic and commercial reasons, that Russian business and political interests have their tentacles very deep into Serb society. Again, we have to be wary about tarring everyone with one brush, or characterising a whole nation on the basis of one single piece of graffiti. But what is clear, and the Bosnian elections, as you point out, reinforce this, is that Putin, wherever there is an opportunity to suborn or to seduce a political

• 57:14Speaker 02

  movement, will take it. And the the problems that we face with Putin aren't restricted to the horrific slaughter in Ukraine. It's also the case that he's in a constant campaign of political subversion across the continent.

• 57:28Alastair Campbell?

  I'm glad you enjoyed our interview with Vucic. We got quite a lot of stick for it in, from the sort of anti Vucic brigade in Serbia, because they felt we were far too soft on him. But actually, I think we, I think what we did bring out was his, the difficulties he has in deciding which way he wants to go on a strategic level. And the generally, one senses he's going into the into the Serb comfort zone.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 57:55Alastair Campbell?

  But this result, this result in Bosnia, I regret to say, will be as welcome in the Kremlin, as was the Brexit referendum result, Michael, which we will talk about tomorrow. Michael, it's very interesting for you and I to be saying roughly the same thing in relation to the Balkans, because there was a time, I remember, when you used to attack me ferociously about the role I played in supporting Kosovo in the dispute, the war with the vile, evil Slobodan Milosevic.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  That is absolutely correct. So my my record in Campbell fandom and anti Campbellism is a very mixed one. So it was the case, you may not remember, and you may not rejoice in it, that I was an enthusiastic supporter of you during the Iraq war and stood up for your position. However,

• 58:51Alastair Campbell?

  You did.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  I was also a foam-flecked opponent of what you were trying to do in Kosovo for a variety of reasons. But I'm very happy to admit, Alistair, that I was wrong about that. So the terrible thing, and I know that the only enraged listeners of my own podcast, Quite Right, and the Conservative sort of blogiverse more broadly, is that Alistair Campbell, war monger, well, I'm on the same side as Alistair in all of the wars that he mongered.

• 59:24Alastair Campbell?

  Well, thank you for that. Thank you for admitting you were wrong. It's a rare, rare thing to hear. Maybe that's something we can see we continue in question time when we talk about Brexit. Because I think you were wrong about that, too. But we shall discuss. To be continued. But before we go, Michael, Rory and I always plug something, and you'll forgive me if I, if I plug my own book, a copy of which has now arrived. This is number twenty-two. And you're in it.

• 59:50Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 59:50Alastair Campbell?

  And would you like to know the circumstances of which you're in it?

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Is it my attack on experts?

• 59:57Alastair Campbell?

  It's not your attack on experts. It's on June the twenty-second, June the twenty-second, two thousand and eleven, less than a year after his first Labour Labour leadership election defeat, Andy Burnham came to our house for dinner. He was shadowing then Education Secretary Michael Gove and really not enjoying it.

• 1:00:19Alastair Campbell?

  So the theme of the book is perseverance, and my point is that Andy Burnham learns from the things that set him back and learns from the things he doesn't enjoy. I think you're one of the reasons he left Westminster. How do you feel about that now that he's come back as Prime Minister?

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Uh, conflicted, I think is probably what to say.

• 1:00:39Alastair Campbell?

  But so far, you'd have to say he's quite a perseverant character.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Uh, perseverance is his middle name.

• 1:00:49Alastair Campbell?

  Michael, we shall see you tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it.

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Thanks very much, Alice. Thank you.

• 1:00:54Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you.

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