193. What makes the Tory right so powerful?

Why do the ERG and the right wing of the Tory party hold so much power over their leadership? Could a universal basic income work? How often do Rory and Alastair think about the Roman Empire? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:36Speaker 03

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• 2:14Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:18Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 2:20Rory Stewart?

  And a lot going on and we've done our emergency pod, people haven't heard it, which I thought was very exciting. And then we've done our main podcast and now we've got a lot of questions coming in on a huge number of different issues. But one I thought we'd start with is Dr W Elliot Boomer. If Scotland were an independent country, and I'm asking this knowing you're both ardent unionists, although I think I'm more of an ardent unionist than you are.

• 2:45Alastair Campbell?

  I think you're ardenter than I am.

• 2:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so it calls for a stretch of imagination. What should be the priorities of the Scottish government? A closer relationship with England or a closer relationship with Europe?

• 2:55Alastair Campbell?

  If Scotland were independent, interesting. If Scotland were independent, which I don't think is going to happen in my lifetime, if Scotland were independent, they'd have to focus on both. But I think actually, one of the lessons of Brexit is that they'd have to address an awful lot of complexities about the unravelling of the relationship with the rest of the UK. So I suspect England would be.

• 3:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 3:17Alastair Campbell?

  Do you agree with that?

• 3:18Rory Stewart?

  That's the paradox and it's the problem with both Brexit and Scottish independence, that the movement is driven by a rejection. But then what you have to do is then spend the next few years really focusing on a very, very close relationship to get the best relationship you can, which is psychologically difficult because the people that have pushed for independence have amped up the anti-English thing. And then you realise that you're going to have to come to a lot of compromises, make a lot of concessions. I mean, something like three quarters of Scotland's trade, business links are into England, not out to Europe. And it would be very, very, very tough for the Scottish economy. It'd be an amplified version of what Britain went through leaving the European Union.

• 3:59Alastair Campbell?

  Now, you and I were in Dublin together briefly last week. And after you left, I was at a dinner with some of the people who'd been at the event that we were at. And I did a round table show of hands, you know how I love my show of hands. And I was asking them their view. As to whether they thought there'd be United Ireland in my lifetime, I think that was the timeframe, and not a single hand was raised.

• 4:27Rory Stewart?

  Gosh.

• 4:27Alastair Campbell?

  And I think that is a major shift. And I think the answer, the reason for that is part of the, I've actually written my new European column about this because I was quite taken back by it, is I, I think the reasons are them looking north and seeing a bit of a basket case with this political stalemate going on, but also looking east at us in Great Britain and thinking, do we really want to kind of get that much closer?

• 4:52Alastair Campbell?

  Anyways, I found it very interesting. And I said to the people there, do you think there would have been the same answer five, 10, 15, 20 years ago? They said, no, absolutely not.

• 4:58Rory Stewart?

  Right. Very interesting. Very interesting. Here's a question from Tommy Heatley. Alistair, would you put Sinn Féin in the column as the three Ps? So to remind people, three Ps are populism, polarisation and post-truth. And the question is, is Sinn Féin a populist party? And to remind people, in case they've forgotten, Sinn Féin was the political wing of the IRA, right? And, you know, we were in the middle of a huge controversies about people chanting Palestine should be free from the river to the sea. But of course, the IRA was absolutely committed to destroying the British state in Northern Ireland, had no, you know, I mean, it's a, it's an interesting question about recognising somebody's right

• 5:40Rory Stewart?

  to exist, but certainly traditionally Sinn Féin and the IRA did not recognise the right of the British state in Northern Ireland to exist and was associated with terrorism. So Tommy Heatley says he feels that Sinn Féin are a populist party, FFFG are not perfect.

• 5:53Alastair Campbell?

  In a foil, in a girl.

• 5:54Rory Stewart?

  A big Irish political party, it's not perfect, but I think they're working well together. Sinn Féin seems to have simple answers for very complicated problems. Love the pipes on the Late Late Show. And I wanted to pin you on that.

• 6:05Alastair Campbell?

  What, the pipes on the Late Late Show?

• 6:06Rory Stewart?

  No, pipes on the Late Late Show. I think we can just take as granted.

• 6:09Alastair Campbell?

  I played the fields of Athan Rye.

• 6:10Rory Stewart?

  We're doing, you did well on that. I think you often are a bit soft on Sinn Féin and therefore you'll be a bit reluctant to acknowledge what most of my Irish friends think, which is they're pretty horrified by it and think people are forgetting their history too quickly and that they are a populist party.

• 6:24Alastair Campbell?

  I think they are a populist party in that I think they are offering very simple solutions to incredibly complicated problems. Housing and health are the things that they're really. Campaigning against the big two on. And I actually think that round table, I think part of the reason they may have shifted is because they're actually now as business community confronting the possibility, if not probability, that they'll have a Sinn Féin government.

• 6:48Rory Stewart?

  And that's right. How does that affect their views on whether or not it's going to be United Ireland?

• 6:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't know whether that wasn't, I wasn't asking them about that, but I wonder whether I, because I think that they think that United Ireland is like, in a way, independence is a driving mission for the SNP in Scotland, that United Ireland is a driving mission for Sinn Féin.

• 7:04Rory Stewart?

  Which was that? That was that?

• 7:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And they'll make a big thing of it in the election. And whereas the, that community that I was with, pretty high heeled, they were all chairs of companies and boards and stuff, that they would be possibly not very favorably disposed towards Sinn Féin from the business perspective. So therefore that might have colored their judgment and the question of United Ireland.

• 7:23Rory Stewart?

  And, and just to explain again to listeners, that's because Sinn Féin is traditionally seen as a pretty left wing.

• 7:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:28Rory Stewart?

  Force, yeah.

• 7:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So populist, yes. Polarizing, I'd say no, in that I think they're trying to project themselves in a much more cooperative kind of way. So I don't know, I don't think they're going out and saying, if you're not with us, you're a terrible person, which is kind of what polarization is about. And on post-truth, I mean, you've got to remember on post-truth, you talk about the, the old days when the IRA would, would be doing all sorts of stuff and Sinn Féin line was that they, they had nothing to do with the IRA. So that, that was, that was pre-post-truth in a way. But I think what Mary Lou McDonald as leader and Michelle O'Neill in the North are both trying to do is to project themselves as modern democratic leaders. So they would, I would say they're populist. Some of your

• 8:11Alastair Campbell?

  Irish friends might say they're polarizing and post-truth, but I'd say possibly less than they used to be.

• 8:16Rory Stewart?

  But I think one of the uncomfortable questions, if we talk about Georgia Maloney, the populist leader in Italy, or Marine Le Pen in France, is that many, or the Swedish Democrats, many of these parties try to rebrand themselves as being moderate, distance themselves from their slightly extreme path.

• 8:35Alastair Campbell?

  Paché Le Pen turning up at the antisemitism march.

• 8:37Rory Stewart?

  Part of the question is how much are you prepared to forget about who they were pretty recently and the movements in which these People grew up, how much you prepared to take at face value. Leaders who grew up in those movements suddenly saying, oh, no, we're nothing to do with that anymore. We're now, you know, friendly progressive democrats.

• 8:53Alastair Campbell?

  And that's, that's something that, that Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gáil are having to wrestle with. Because when I was on the Late Late Show, I was on with this, this guy who's a very, very smart guy. He's, he's got a very successful podcast. He's a comedian, he's a writer called Blind Boy, who, who, who wears a, a plastic bag over his head everywhere he goes. Cause he doesn't want to be recognised when he's out and about. But I was talking about how I think actually there's some good politicians in, in Ireland. And I was mentioning, I thought it was amazing the way that this sort of, you know, you've got, you've got the two main parties in. So that they swap the role of Tisha from Mihal Martin, now Leo Varadkar. And he said, and he got a laugh for it and a round of applause. As far as I'm concerned, they're just two cheeks of the same arse. Um, which is a kind of nice, easy jibe to make.

• 9:39Alastair Campbell?

  Um, but I think that what Sinn Fein are banking on actually is for young people in particular, confronted with really bad housing, uh, crisis. But then literally to forget not to know about. So then the Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gáil have got to decide, well, do they attack Sinn Fein for those past relationships or not?

• 9:56Rory Stewart?

  This is the question for Joe Biden. It's the question for Keir Starmer. It's the question for Macron. It's a question for Schultz in Germany, isn't it? That there could be politicians out there who people admire. I mean, I think we look at Ireland's politicians, we tend to think they're pretty good, pretty serious. Ireland has been a genuine, genuine miracle. I mean, it's now got some of the highest life expectancy, educational schools in the whole of Europe, one of the highest GDP per capita's. From a very, very poor base, it's a genuinely a miracle. It's, it's quite, I mean, you're right, there are problems in Ireland like housing, but by and large, my goodness, it's performed well.

• 10:33Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah. And also the sort of the progress on the kind of questions of. What normally social conservatism has been huge as well.

• 10:41Rory Stewart?

  And also surprising, not quite as much regional inequality as you get in many European countries. And yet, as you say, the populace can still come in and take on even pretty good, pretty formidable, competent politicians and destroy them.

• 10:55Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I think the next Irish election will be really, really interesting, very interesting. And where is, where Blind Boy has got a point about, you know, two cheeks with the same arse. I mean, I wouldn't phrase it like that, but, but I think unless you do know the history of Ireland, actually sort of working out the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gáil is not always straightforward. I mean, it's not, you know, generally people would say, oh, well, Veracca is more of a Tory, but it's kind of not as simple as that.

• 11:20Rory Stewart?

  Just my final one on Ireland. What did you make of the Irish president and his position on Palestine? And just remind people what happened there.

• 11:29Alastair Campbell?

  So the Irish president, Michael Higgins, who's a very, very popular guy and pretty left wing. He made a very, very outspoken statement on what's happening in the Middle East. And again, I asked the business leaders what they thought.

• 11:44Rory Stewart?

  And he was wearing a Palestinian scarf.

• 11:45Alastair Campbell?

  Palestinian scarf. He was very, very strongly, you'd put him on the pro Palestinian side, which historically Ireland has always been.

• 11:53Rory Stewart?

  I saw an interview with an Israeli diplomat saying that they see Ireland as almost the most difficult country for them to deal with on the whole of the UK.

• 12:00Alastair Campbell?

  I think they see Ireland, Ireland and Spain as the most sort of, you know. They define it as anti-Israel. I've got a very good friend in Ireland who actually does some work with Israel, who says that it is a difficult place to have this debate. But interestingly, the business leaders, again, I did another show of hands on that one. They were, they were not happy about that. They felt that that was an overstepping of the president's mark.

• 12:23Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay. Now, how will the US election impact UK Labour anti-bias? Which will be more beneficial for the Labour Party? A general election prior to the US election or after it? Or will the impact of one not affect the other? So let's just think this through. So I suppose there are four possibilities. There's an election before which Biden wins, an election before which Trump wins, an election after which Biden wins, an election after which Trump wins. Which marginally might be more of a problem for the Labour Party, more of an advantage?

• 12:51Alastair Campbell?

  I think the ideal for Labour would be an election before which Biden wins, which takes away, this is a sort of major question. It will be a big question. If the president, if the American presidential election doesn't happen. Before a general election here, then Labour will legitimately and constantly be asked. And I mean, you could imagine a situation where Labour end up saying, well, we don't comment or interfere in the elections of other countries. I don't think that will happen because I think it would be so clear that a Labour government would prefer to work with Biden than with Trump. So I would, I would say that would be the, the trickiest would be an American election before which Trump wins. No, in fact, it might even be

• 13:30Alastair Campbell?

  an American election after which Trump wins, because you'd be sort of working with Biden up to the point of, and then that could get very, very difficult.

• 13:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 13:41Alastair Campbell?

  What about books? Shall we talk about books? So this is Gavin Dingwall, Dingwall, the home of Ross County Football Club.

• 13:48Rory Stewart?

  Uh, very good.

• 13:48Alastair Campbell?

  You knew that, didn't you?

• 13:49Rory Stewart?

  I did not until this moment, but that's a very good, very good, very good, very good insight. Thank you.

• 13:54Alastair Campbell?

  All right. So Gavin says, other than your own, what are your favorite of the many political books that have been published this year? I'm going to start with a book that wasn't published this year, but which is very relevant this year. And that is a book by my old friend Donald McIntyre, who I'm sure you know, journalist, spent a lot of time in the Middle East. And his book is quite, is simply called Gaza. And if you really want to know the history of Gaza, then that is a book worth getting. I'm also going to give a shout out to Chris Bryant for his book Code of Conduct. Similar theme, Ian Dunt, How Westminster Works and Why It Doesn't. And I think a book I've mentioned

• 14:36Alastair Campbell?

  on the podcast before, Russell Jones wrote a book called The Tyranny of Nostalgia, which is a really, really good analysis of why our economy is not as strong as it should be.

• 14:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, so my, my recommendations on politics more broadly. I did a, I did an event yesterday with Mary Beard, who's just written a book called Emperor of Rome. And we had a really

• 14:55Alastair Campbell?

  Oh Rory, before you go on, before you go on, we had a question a couple of weeks ago, which we didn't get around to. But also I was also asked this by somebody called Alice in the swimming pool the other day. Very keen listener to the podcast, said she'd love to ask you in particular, how often do you think about the Roman Empire?

• 15:11Rory Stewart?

  It's a weird question, isn't it?

• 15:12Alastair Campbell?

  But it's been asked a lot apparently.

• 15:14Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, I obviously think about a lot, so.

• 15:16Alastair Campbell?

  How many times a day would you think about the Roman Empire?

• 15:18Rory Stewart?

  Oh, um, five or six.

• 15:20Alastair Campbell?

  Really?

• 15:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think about the Roman Empire a lot, yeah. Mary Beard and I had a very detailed discussion about Roman emperors yesterday for an hour and a half on a, on a stage at the Cadogan Hall.

• 15:30Alastair Campbell?

  So yesterday you thought about it a lot.

• 15:32Rory Stewart?

  Thought about it a great deal and people are interested in it. So Mary Beard, who people will know, has written a beautiful book, not about specific emperors, but about the nature of power in Rome and the way in which power is play acting, the role of women in Roman politics. Because of course women were not emperors, never became emperors. And I think it's, it's, it's, I think she was actually really good on this stage at thinking about some of the echoes between Roman politics and British politics.

• 15:59Alastair Campbell?

  Including today?

• 16:00Rory Stewart?

  Including today, yeah.

• 16:01Alastair Campbell?

  I suppose, I suppose bringing Cameron back is sort of, we described as being Victorian, but you could probably go back even further.

• 16:08Rory Stewart?

  The Romans get in. Couple of AI books, if people haven't particularly been picking up on that, from people we've interviewed on leading. And if you haven't heard, do listen to them, Mustafa Suleiman's Coming Wave and Read.

• 16:19Alastair Campbell?

  His book is getting a lot of love in the bookshops, I've noticed.

• 16:22Rory Stewart?

  Read Hoffman's Impromptu, which he wrote with ChatGPT. Yasha Monk, who I think we've, we've talked about getting on the podcast, and I think we should at some point, has written a really powerful book called The Great Experiment. And Yasha Monk is very interested in two different types of things at the moment. He's very interested in the way that immigration works and multicultural societies have formed. And he challenges the populist far right on that. He's also very interesting, though, increasingly on challenging the far left on identity politics. In some ways, we should get him on, but he's trying to stand up for a vision of liberalism. Which is neither national identity politics nor other forms of identity politics.

• 17:03Alastair Campbell?

  The book I'm most looking forward to.

• 17:05Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 17:06Alastair Campbell?

  Next year is that I'm not giving up on my attempts to get Angela Merkel onto the podcast.

• 17:12Rory Stewart?

  Very good. That would be a real coup.

• 17:13Alastair Campbell?

  And I know that one of her key advisers is a regular listener.

• 17:19Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 17:20Alastair Campbell?

  So Merkel is not doing interviews at the moment because she's writing her book and memoirs, which I think will be a great read.

• 17:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, let me put in a final plug for a book that I've just finished, which hasn't yet been published. It was about to come out and people can preorder by Gary Stevenson called Trading Game. Gary Stevenson, working class guy from London, who became a currency trader in a bank just before 2008. And it is the most chilling, terrifying account of the madness of those banks and their culture. I mean, I sometimes, you know, there I am thinking politics is the most noxious, disgusting, bullying, horrifying game in the world. But when he describes these city traders in full roar, you see something absolutely appalling.

• 18:06Rory Stewart?

  I mean, both the way that he was treated by Citibank, the way in which they blew up the economy, the way in which they made money, the way in which their bonuses are just the culture, the day to day culture of those trading floors. So Gary Stevenson, Trading Game.

• 18:20Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we should just say that lots of people I know will have got your book and my last book through Cole's Books, which is a fantastic bookshop down in Bister. And any of the books that we mention on the podcast, at any time, you can get 10% off at Cole's Books by becoming a trip plus member and see all the books we mention every week by signing up to the newsletter.

• 18:45Rory Stewart?

  Let's take a break.

• 18:48Speaker 03

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• 20:06Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 20:09Rory Stewart?

  And with me Rory Stewart and a plug for our leading interview with Comfort Iro, who is a British Nigerian who is the head of International Crisis Group and gave us, I thought, a stunning interview looking at crises around the world. An amazing introduction to the complexity of the world today. What did you think?

• 20:29Alastair Campbell?

  No, I really enjoyed it. Really enjoyed it. Her work is meant to be about the crisis group who used to try to prevent crises. There are a lot of crises that have not been prevented. I don't think we could put the blame at their door at all. But there was a lot to talk about and it was a reminder of, even though we pride ourselves on talking about stuff that much of the British mainstream media doesn't focus on, there's an awful lot of other stuff that we don't have time for.

• 20:54Rory Stewart?

  You know, she got us into Haiti and the Philippines and Venezuela.

• 20:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yemen and all these different places. And also, I'm particularly, I'm really looking forward to another leading interviewee that we've got coming up, which is Tony Clug. This is a guy who's represented both sides in the Middle East peace process debate. So I'm looking forward to that.

• 21:15Rory Stewart?

  Great. Looking forward to that, too.

• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  Thomas Van der Veele. Can you give your insights on the upcoming Dutch election and why Omsicht and his new party NSC are doing so well in the polls? Have you been following this at all?

• 21:26Rory Stewart?

  No, I'm telling us about that.

• 21:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, this guy, Pieter Omsicht, is a sort of centre-right kind of politician who's set up a new party, the new social contract, a few months ago, and he's currently leading the polls. And this is an election that was caused by Mark Rutte, his coalition collapsed. I think he's on to his fourth coalition, Billie Merkel, but he's now not standing. So you've got all the leaders who are standing for the main parties are new, you've got this new party, you've got Frans Timmerman, European Commissioner, who's leading a kind of left Labour-Green sort of coalition. But Omsicht is doing really, really well in the polls.

• 22:10Rory Stewart?

  And what do they stand for?

• 22:11Alastair Campbell?

  They're quite interesting. He's from the sort of centre-right background, but he's more left-wing on some issues. So he's kind of, he's a centre.

• 22:18Rory Stewart?

  And is he seen as a sort of Macron figure?

• 22:20Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think he's seen as a Macron figure. And also, interestingly, he said that he doesn't intend to be Prime Minister. So he's saying he's leading the party, vote for the party, and then they're going to decide who'll be Prime Minister. He's not come out of nowhere in terms of being quite well-known in the Netherlands, but his party has literally just been formed almost for this election. So it's got elements of Macron.

• 22:39Rory Stewart?

  What's the platform? Why is he so hugely popular? What's the thing, what are they fed up with? What are they doing? What's the, why do voters want him?

• 22:47Alastair Campbell?

  Because he's basically saying, he's sensible on the economy, but look after people, kind of thing. And, you know, fairly obvious stuff, but in a...

• 22:54Rory Stewart?

  You wouldn't thought you can blow up a political system with that kind of message.

• 22:57Alastair Campbell?

  But he isn't really blowing it up, because one of the problems that has led to this election is that small parties can emerge and do very, very well. And if you look at, if you look at the full list, I haven't got it in front of me, but take a look at the full list of all the parties that are standing. I mean, there are so many of them, but they will get some votes. And, you know, because it's a proportional representation, some of them will end up in in Parliament. But it's a very, very interesting one. And, you know, maybe because Mark Rutter was there and was seen as quite a strong figure and he held things together, him going, I think, has possibly just opened up the space for people to look at other people differently. Franz Timmermann as well is doing, he's doing pretty well.

• 23:36Rory Stewart?

  Who we may get on to the podcast.

• 23:38Alastair Campbell?

  I would love to get on the podcast and we definitely will. If he becomes Prime Minister, we'd like to have Mr. Peter Omsicht and I can, I can, I can try my one sentence of Dutch out on him.

• 23:48Rory Stewart?

  That's very good. That's very good. You remind us your one sentence of Dutch.

• 23:50Alastair Campbell?

  He kept the feel of my daughter's house built.

• 23:52Rory Stewart?

  No, that is impressive.

• 23:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Do you know what it means?

• 23:54Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 23:54Alastair Campbell?

  I've played my bagpipes too much.

• 23:56Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Very good. Now that is true as well as Peter.

• 23:59Alastair Campbell?

  We should, we should keep tabs on that and maybe talk about it again after the event. But Peter Omsicht, definitely worth watching.

• 24:05Rory Stewart?

  Is Githson has written to us saying, are Hague and Miliband the most influential politicians in the UK? Are there disastrous changes to leadership elections within their parties, largely to blame for Brexit, Johnson, Corbyn, Trust and Zinex? So clever. Initially, I thought this was a question about whether William Hague and David Miliband.

• 24:23Alastair Campbell?

  Should be brought back. Yeah.

• 24:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Alastair Campbell?

  This is about Ed Miliband and William Hague.

• 24:26Rory Stewart?

  And let me start on that. I absolutely agree with these questions. I think the changes to the leadership elections that allowed Boris Johnson to come through, allowed Jeremy Corbyn to come through, allowed Liz Truss to come through, were catastrophic. And at least the way the Conservative Party used to organise things before these Hague reforms, which allowed the MPs who actually work day in, day out with these people, knew that Boris Johnson was somebody who could not be trusted and would not have voted for him, I think, if they hadn't sensed that the power Labour, the party and the party and the country would vote for him, was a much better system. And you can also make a democratic argument for it. And it's difficult sometimes to get the head around. But the point is that at least

• 25:10Rory Stewart?

  the MPs are elected. Whereas the members of the Conservative Party in the country, two and a half million when my mother was a member in the nineteen fifty's, now are only just over a hundred thousand members, they get effectively to select the prime minister. So this is totally much less democratic, even though it's more people than the MPs, it's much less democratic because unlike the MPs, they're elected. So I would like to return to a system where the MPs chose the leader.

• 25:37Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, it's interesting because this is where sometimes you have to be honest with people about the limitations of the franchise and democracy and the systems that you have. I remember Bruce Grokot, who was now in the House of Lords and was Tony's parliamentary private secretary, and I remember at the time of the changes in labour system, that he was saying, oh, this is not sensible, this is not clever. The one thing the MPs always have in mind, first of all, they know the contenders better, and secondly, they have a broader interest in making sure they try to get the right person, whereas members will be a little bit, if anything, more divorced from where real public opinion might be. So

• 26:20Alastair Campbell?

  he was always very, very, very against this, I remember that. And of course, it's a hard thing to argue against. What are you saying that the members shouldn't have a say? Well, no, we're not saying that, we're just saying they shouldn't have as big a say as the MPs. And of course, the other problem is that a lot of MPs aren't terribly well respected in their communities. But I broadly agree with you. I think that both the main parties should have another look at how they elect their leaders.

• 26:42Rory Stewart?

  Lucy Bishop. I'm a politics student at UCL, looking at what my next steps are for a life in the political sphere, particularly in foreign policy and diplomacy. Do I need a master's civil service far stream any advice based on the requirements and skills needed before I start my career? So I'd say a couple of things on that, and maybe this is just too much my own experience. The first is, I would really recommend, if you want to work in foreign policy, getting out and spending some time living in a foreign country, and ideally, in a country in the global south and in a rural area where you're in somewhere very, very different, because one of the biggest challenges in foreign policy is understanding What life is like outside the capital city in a remote rural area in a developing

• 27:22Rory Stewart?

  country. So spend a year there. Secondly, I could not recommend the civil service fast stream more. It was life changing for me. That five years I spent gave me so much of the basic skills of organising myself, running meetings.

• 27:39Alastair Campbell?

  How hard did you get on to?

• 27:40Rory Stewart?

  It's a competitive exam, but it's a pretty fair meritocratic exam. In the days when I did it, it was largely an IQ test, basically a long IQ test. And then the final stage, you were given some exercises on doing some paper and sharing committees. But I, for the rest of my life, even, you know, setting up a charity, it was drawing on that five years' basic experience I had in the civil service just set me up for life.

• 28:03Alastair Campbell?

  Now, listen, this is definitely one for you. Ned Gibbons, why is the far right of the Conservative Party so powerful? The way I see it, their only way out of the current message is to move towards the centre, but many in the party want to head further to the right. What am I missing? Another question, Amazing Grace, not my daughter, currently appearing in New York, by the way, at the Soho Playhouse, and it's not her, though. Why do the ERG and the right wing of the Tory Party hold so much power and sway over their leadership? Are they in the majority? What is it that makes the prime ministers dance to their tune?

• 28:31Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's actually not very different from the power that the the left had with Corbyn and the Labour Party. It's partly that the Tory Party members are older and more right wing than the general population. It's partly that Boris Johnson bucked the trend in the 2019 election where he got an over eighty seat majority by tilting to the right when the conventional wisdom is that you should fight in the centre. But more than any of that, it's that people who are very ideologically charged, people who spend their time in echo chamber, talking to each other, it doesn't matter whether it's Corbynistas with their own particular socialist vision of Britain, or whether it's right wing conservatives with their particular, I don't know what it is quite. I mean, with

• 29:13Rory Stewart?

  Liz Truss, it's a sort of distorted tribute act to Margaret Thatcher. With others, it's kind of nationalism. But whatever it is, they operate in echo chamber, they talk to their party members, they convince themselves that everybody in the country agrees with them. And in the case of both. Corbyn supporters and sort of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss supporters, of course, sometimes they're right. There are often things that the centre ground politicians aren't concentrating on that the public really care about.

• 29:38Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 29:39Rory Stewart?

  So Corbyn was absolutely right to say that the public were very, very angry about the 2008 financial crisis and the way that the banks got away with things and that no centrist party was really gripping that. And unfortunately, I think it probably is true that the right of the Conservative Party has caught on to something when they think that there's a lot of concern amongst the public about immigration. So there will be things that they say which resonate with people, which convince them that they're right about everything.

• 30:05Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 30:06Rory Stewart?

  But the major problem is the way that they can hold the balance of power out of all proportion to their numbers. So this horrible group, from my point of view at least during Brexit, called the Spartans, led by Marc Francois, who eventually were reduced to a rump of barely kind of thirty people, in the end were able to control the whole party because that was the thirty votes that was needed.

• 30:25Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I saw last night, I was sort of channel hopping a bit last night and John Craig on Sky News was reporting from outside this meeting of the so-called new conservatives who'd been briefing that they were the new power in the land. And he said, you could sort of count on two hands how many MPs were there. I think they overstate their power and their power is given, when they say, why did the prime ministers dance to their tunes? It's the fact of the prime ministers dancing to the tunes that gives them their power. And what you've seen post Corbyn with Keir Starmer clearly going in a different direction is that erodes their power. And I think you'll see that now with, this is why Sun actually had done this right at the start.

• 31:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Alastair Campbell?

  I think what he's done with bringing back Cameron is going to erode their power. And I suspect with before too long, I'll make a prediction that while the other hard right figure Farage is making a complete idiot of himself in.

• 31:18Rory Stewart?

  What, 1.2 million eating kangaroo testicles?

• 31:20Alastair Campbell?

  1.5, yeah.

• 31:21Rory Stewart?

  1.5 million.

• 31:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I was offered a million at one point.

• 31:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and you don't think for 1.5 you might change your mind when I'm a celebrity?

• 31:26Alastair Campbell?

  No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. No, I think the tragedy, look, if Farage is not stupid, right? And he's probably, yes, he likes money. Okay, so he's gone there, he's making a lot of money. But I actually do think this is part of his rehabilitation into the Conservative Party. And just like Trump made his political name on reality TV, Farage is thinking the same game. And what I keep saying to people, any audience that's willing to listen, if we don't get serious about our politics again, we are finished. And what this says, if we now reward somebody. Now, the lesson for the Armistead thing is, I mean, Hancock, Matt Hancock did not help his reputation. I hope Farage doesn't help his reputation, because I think what the public should say,

• 32:10Alastair Campbell?

  you're either a serious political figure or you're not. But you can't go down and do stupid reality TV shows and remain a political, a serious political figure. But that's his game. So I think the right's power will see itself eroded. And this is how leadership is meant to work. You set a course, and then you try and take people with you. Whereas what Sunak has done since he became Prime Minister is allow his course to be set by everybody else.

• 32:32Rory Stewart?

  It's so difficult, though, isn't it? I always feel that you are on a tight rope in politics, because if you push it too far, you can be toppled.

• 32:39Alastair Campbell?

  For sure.

• 32:40Rory Stewart?

  And in the end, Theresa May was brought down by the right. She couldn't, she tried to confront them, maybe too late, maybe she didn't do it in the right way, but in the end, they took her down and they brought in Boris Johnson. But you're absolutely right. Equally, sometimes you face them down in the way that Keir Starmer seems to have done with the left of the Labour Party. And it's gone much better for him than many of the Corbynistas would have predicted. Presumably, many of them would have thought, he's never going to get away with that, we're going to destroy him if he does this. And he did get away with it.

• 33:04Alastair Campbell?

  And if you think about when Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, okay, so John McDonnell is still around and you see him from time to time, but there was a kind of, sort of a dozen MPs who for a time were kind of household names, they were never off the television screen. Well, they're now never on it. And I think that's because there's a different course which is being tracked and people are gathering around that. Now, listen, here's one I really want to ask, because one, I like the chutzpah of her asking it in this way. Ginny Smith, from the editorial team at Sussex Bylines, one of 10 regional titles in the Bylines network of online newspapers, how important do you think citizen journalism is becoming?

• 33:46Alastair Campbell?

  In combating the mainstream right wing bias and giving local communities a voice, very, and I'm a bit of a fan of the Bylines Group. I think they do, yes, they are broadly in the same political space as I am, I guess. But I think, you know, they call out all sides. But I think it's good that we're we're getting these new sort of voices out there. I put the New European in the same category. I think that the, you know, new voices that are not part of this kind of right wing media mix, which I think has done massive damage to the country and to our culture. So yeah, big fan, Ginny, carry on, keep up the good work.

• 34:22Rory Stewart?

  Last question from me, Katrina Shepherd, UBI. Last week, Rory outlined how cash given directly transformed homelessness. Perhaps did you discuss your take on how a universal basic income might work to grow the economy, eradicate poverty, redistribute wealth and access resources, and might the Labour Party ever consider it? I was thinking, we were joking yesterday about legacy, and I failed to say that if I really was dreaming of a legacy, a legacy I would love to have, is being associated with a generation that ended extreme poverty globally. I mean, it remains unbelievably shocking that there are over 700 million people who cannot meet their most basic ends, who are eating once or twice a day, who are dying very young, living in completely unsuitable accommodation,

• 35:06Rory Stewart?

  whose kids are not in school, et cetera. So on an international basis, I think the idea of cash transfers to lift people out of poverty is very strong. But I also think in a domestic context, there is more and more evidence that generous, unconditional cash transfers can really transform the lives of people caught in poverty. And I'm very interested in this because Labour can be a bit uneven on this. On the one hand, strong socialist tradition of wanting to tackle inequality and care for the poor. On the other hand, sometimes a temptation to sound pretty kind of macho and aggressive

• 35:48Rory Stewart?

  on benefits cheating and this kind of stuff. Where do you think Labour's likely to go on this? Can we expect some fresh radical thinking around addressing poverty in Britain?

• 35:58Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think on the universal basic income, Katrina's question, I think I'm right. I could be wrong about this. I'm going to mention another book now, but Ed Miliband's book, Go Big. I can't remember whether this, I think this was one of the sort of proposals that he was at least saying, let's look at this. And he was giving some sort of analysis as to why this might be a good thing. I can't see Labour going for it in this next manifesto, but I think it's one of those things that's, that's on the agenda. Interestingly, I think Elon Musk was talking about this as well.

• 36:26Rory Stewart?

  A lot of the Silicon Valley people like it because they think that AI is going to lead to mass unemployment and a lot of redistribution of wealth towards the Elon Musk of this world, at which point taxing them and giving a universal basic income to people would be the only solution if you ended up with mass unemployment.

• 36:42Alastair Campbell?

  Where I am, and I sort of blow hot and cold on this. On the one hand, I can see the, the logic and the, and I can see the political attraction as well. On the other hand, I can see a lot of the difficulties. Do you know, I think we should do a special on this at some point.

• 36:54Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 36:55Alastair Campbell?

  I think we should get a couple of people in.

• 36:57Rory Stewart?

  Yep, to do UBI?

• 36:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think, I think, I think it's a really, really-

• 37:00Rory Stewart?

  Maybe some of these big ideas, maybe, I think that's a great idea. Maybe we could get someone on a UBI and Yashamunk at the same time, or something like that, where we could get ideas, radical ideas on, on direction of modern democracies.

• 37:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Good. Excellent. Well, on that commitment to yet another workload for the rest is politics. I remember, well, I said when I first found you, Rory, but I know when I was first approached by this, it won't be more than a few hours a week, you'll just be able to fit it around everything else.

• 37:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's, it's getting, it's getting a lot. I've, very kindly, occasionally I get approached by headhunters trying to convince me to be chairs of boards. And they always say to me-

• 37:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, a couple of hours a week.

• 37:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, a couple of hours. And then you talk to the previous board chair and it's like, you couldn't do it under eight days a month. And you're like, oh.

• 37:45Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, not that we don't enjoy it, Rory.

• 37:49Rory Stewart?

  Not that we don't enjoy it. We love it. Thank you all for your wonderful questions.

• 37:52Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.

• 37:52Rory Stewart?

  See you all next week. Bye bye.

• 37:58Speaker 06

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• 38:35Speaker 07

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