53. Question Time: Blair-Brown, the Special Relationship, and official apologies

Who would you cast to play yourself in a film? Rory and Alastair give their answers to this question and many more in today's Question Time episode. Plus the rarity of political apologies, friendship (and animosity) between ex Prime Ministers, and the UK's 'special relationship' with the US. Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Blackpool live show tickets: Saturday 8th October: wintergardensblackpool.co.uk/events/the-rest-is-politics-live/ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson 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/restispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  Hello and welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:47Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:49Alastair Campbell?

  Many thanks to those of you who've signed up to the Rest is Politics Plus and are enjoying the early release of these Question Time episodes. If you want to sign up and haven't already, just go to therestispolitics.com. That is also where you can find how to buy the remaining tickets for our live show in Blackpool on October 8th, although the posh seats have all now sold out. Now Rory, I said on the main podcast, I wanted to kick off with education because it's quite interesting how many questions there were this week. Richard Wesker, why is there so little focus on education in the political debate? People obsess about the health service, but there's next to nothing on funding for state schools, which are struggling. Martin Brader, you'll like this one, we've had nine secretaries of state

• 2:31Alastair Campbell?

  for education in 12 years. How can that be considered a priority? How long do you need in a job to get on top of the, get on top of things and make a difference? Dord says, schools asking parents for money to fund basics. Is this not incremental privatisation? And Tim Roach, I'd like to know your thoughts on lifting a grammar school moratorium. Will it increase inequality? Well, I can answer that one very, very briefly. Yes, it would. So Rory, what do you think? It's true, isn't it? We don't hear, you know, when, when, when I was working with Tony Blair, priority, education, education, education. I think we did focus on that, but it doesn't really get into the debate in a way that it used to.

• 3:10Rory Stewart?

  It's difficult, isn't it? Very difficult, very tough. And I don't, don't know what's going on there because everybody gets that fundamentally, if we're really to transform our economy, get our growth going, we need much, much higher quality education. And Britain is very sadly behind in a loss of the international metrics and league tables, even on very basic stuff like, like literacy and maths. And that's not good. And we, you know, all the drives of various governments to get STEM subjects off the ground haven't paid off as much as people had hoped. We're not getting as many people into science, technology, engineering, maths as we'd hoped. Compared to, you know, we were talking on this, the podcast, the incredible figures that are being achieved in China in terms of engineering

• 3:54Rory Stewart?

  graduates. So, no, we, we've got to talk about it more, but maybe it's just another example of something that people struggle to get stories out of because a lot of it is so detailed. It's to do with everything from how you fund teachers' pensions to how you deal with students with special needs, how you deal with school exclusions, how you deal with curriculum, how you deal with decaying school buildings. And maybe this stuff is just difficult to communicate.

• 4:18Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other thing, sorry to get on to one of my regular hobby horses, but You know, seven percent of the country use private education.

• 4:28Alastair Campbell?

  But if you get the figure for, for example, the cabinet, which is one of the most privately educated we've ever had. If you get the figure for leading editors and commentators, many of them use private schools for their own children. And I think that the state system is not treated with the respect that it needs within the national debate. I think that is one of the reasons that those who control the terms of national debate, too many of them either have their own experience of private education or experience with their children. And certainly, large parts of the media, in my view, cover state schools either not at all or as a basket case. When actually, if we all came together, and this is, this is the lesson from Canada

• 5:13Alastair Campbell?

  and from Finland and from those countries that are always right up near the top of the P S L E tables, is that where there is a societal commitment to state education, then the state education is a lot stronger.

• 5:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and I think I'm sure you're right, that, that people report well, thoughtfully about things they understand. And if, if all these dominant voices in the media and politics are privately educated, they're simply don't understand what they're talking about. Really cheeky question here, but I thought it was, I thought it was cheeky, but, but it was, it was maybe worth, worth having a go at you on. So Rupert Carlton-Jones, I've just listened to Alistair's interview with Stephen Mangan on his confessions show. Where Alistair confessed to never having done anything practical in his life, including never having cooked a meal. One, was Rory aware of this? Two, is Fiona an actual saint? Three, if he tells us he has never changed a nappy, I think I may have to stop listening.

• 6:14Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I told you last week. We were getting comments from people that they felt that question time was not as serious as the main podcast and most of our listeners, I think, want us to stay serious. So tell me, tell me the serious.

• 6:30Rory Stewart?

  You've become a politician, you're trying to avoid the question.

• 6:32Alastair Campbell?

  Tell me the serious. No, I'm happy to answer it.

• 6:34Rory Stewart?

  This is terrifying.

• 6:36Alastair Campbell?

  I'm happy to answer it.

• 6:37Rory Stewart?

  Most of our listeners want to hear something else. That's exactly what all those Tory politicians are. I don't think they want to. I think the listeners want to hear about.

• 6:43Alastair Campbell?

  I think what the listener wants to hear about is my views on what's happening in Azerbaijan. No, look, it's true that it's not strictly true that I've never cooked a meal. I've cooked one meal in my life. It was a tuna and potato souffle.

• 6:56Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 6:57Alastair Campbell?

  It was in the, it was in the early days of my and Fiona's courtship, 42, 43 years ago.

• 7:03Rory Stewart?

  And, and we can, we can conclude, we can conclude it did not go very well.

• 7:07Alastair Campbell?

  It was okay. It was okay, although she did have to help me. I, I am not proud of my lack of practicality. Um, I'm not proud of the fact that I don't know how to change a plug. I don't know how to change a tire. Um, I'm not proud of it, but it's just, I, I think I'm good at some things and I'm not good at other things. Is Fiona a saint? I think probably, yeah, I think she's pretty close. And what was the third part of this?

• 7:32Rory Stewart?

  Uh, it, it, so you said if he tells us he's never changed a nappy.

• 7:36Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I changed loads of nappies. I changed loads of nappies. I think that, I think Fiona would say that even though I had a very, very, very, very busy job for much of their childhood, I was very good at being a dad, but I was probably only good at the things that she, I didn't do things like, you know, I like taking them out, I like playing with them, I like going out and playing football with the boys. But no, I'm not proud of it, Rory. I'm very, very impractical, but shall we move on to something a bit less?

• 8:00Rory Stewart?

  Very good, Jonny. Go give us some more serious sense. Sorry about that.

• 8:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Let's go for, let's go for Biden trust. Paul Harrison. I get the sense that the Biden administration is fed up with the UK. How is the special relationship holding up? Ruth Wilkinson, is the Biden snub to trust? This was Biden not seeing trust in the margins of the funeral significant? Is this about him signaling his priority for Northern Ireland? And is that relevant to the trade deal? And Jeremy Huer, how important do you think Biden's Irish heritage is in relation to his dealings with the UK? So I do think it's, you know, I, I think it would have been pretty extraordinary if it had been any previous prime minister. If there'd been a president in town and there was no meeting. I think that was pretty, I do think that was pretty big.

• 8:44Rory Stewart?

  Really a bit odd and she could have got to the airport, seen and done almost anything. It's very, very strange. Um, I, I do think that it's certainly true that Biden began his presidency with a lot of reservations about Britain. And um, I remember when we were dealing with him over Iraq, when I go back to 2005, 2006. A friend of mine went into a meeting with then Vice President Biden and tried to explain the situation between Sunni and Shia. And he said, I get it, I get it. They don't like each other. It's like me and the Brits, I'm Irish. So that, that, there is definitely a background there of him making jokes about not liking British people.

• 9:21Alastair Campbell?

  Is that being public? Is that, is that a known fact?

• 9:24Rory Stewart?

  Don't know, don't know whether people have been talking much about that, but definitely he said that.

• 9:27Alastair Campbell?

  I've heard him, I've heard him make similar comments about his mother, but not about himself.

• 9:32Rory Stewart?

  Not about himself, yeah. So, but I think since he's come in, he's been um, practical. And like many American presidents, he understands the special relationship matters a lot to Britain. It's worth bearing in mind this special relationship point, that somebody tried to track how many times the United States uses variance on special relationship. And they use it for something like nine or 10 different countries. Obviously they, you know, they would do it in a particular way in relation to Israel. They'd do it in a particular way in relation to, to, you know, many, many other places that they're part of, Canada, et cetera. Um, but I think he's okay in his relationship to Britain. I definitely don't think he's going to put up with something that might lead to the breaking of the Northern Ireland protocol there.

• 10:11Alastair Campbell?

  But that's what he fears is on the cards. And that's possibly why he has been indicating, we've said before, I, I think at some point, I really do hope he comes up and says in black and white, why it would be so dangerous to the so-called special relationship. I, my sense of the Americans on the special relationship is that they only say it in reference to Britain. When the British media are around, I don't think they kind of feel it in the way that we maybe feel it.

• 10:34Rory Stewart?

  Here's a good question, Tim Bell, he's a very smart professor, teaches at London, does a lot on Twitter, worth following for people who are political geeks. But he just asked us, the government has basically written a huge blank cheque worth at least a hundred billion pounds. If you ran the country and could write such a big blank cheque, what single thing would you spend the money on? I guess he's talking about the fact that the choice was to spend a hundred and fifty billion probably on capping energy prices. Is that what you would have done or would you have done something else for the money?

• 11:03Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my God, a hundred and fifty billion. I mean, you can do a lot with a hundred and fifty billion. You have to bear in mind, though, it's being borrowed.

• 11:10Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 11:11Alastair Campbell?

  So it's not as it were, it's not that you've got a hundred and fifty billion in the bank, how do you spend it?

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  It's a huge amount, right? It's sort of, it's probably about twenty percent of government expenditure in a normal year.

• 11:18Alastair Campbell?

  I'll tell you, I'll tell you what, this probably sounds a bit crazy.

• 11:22Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 11:22Alastair Campbell?

  Given that one of my sort of passions in life is the utter revolution in our approach to mental health, understanding and services, my God, if you had a hundred and fifty billion pounds to invest in the mental health of the nation, we would be able to fix an awful lot of things.

• 11:40Rory Stewart?

  I'd spend it on adult social care. So the real shame that I always felt as an MP, and it hasn't been dealt with at all, is the poor elderly currently get about fifteen minutes of care a day. It's not enough really to wash them, let alone feed them. And it's the great unfinished revolution the NHS never really extended to care for the frail elderly. And we should be using it to provide free care to the frail elderly.

• 12:06Alastair Campbell?

  Good. Here's a good one. Rob Lencie, just watched Jacinda Ardern on the BBC, listened to Mark Drakeford on The Rest Is Politics. They both communicate so much more clearly than the leaders we see in Westminster. Why do you think that is? I did think about Mark Drakeford last week. I listened back to it a couple of times. I really like the fact that he just answered the questions.

• 12:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he sort of does, doesn't he? I mean, he sometimes answers them missing out bits. I mean, he's still a politician, right? I mean, it's not.

• 12:35Alastair Campbell?

  No, Rory, I think you're being very harsh on him. I think you're finding it very difficult. Fiona, I'm going to pass on a point that Fiona made. She came back from walking the dog, having listened to the podcast. And she said Rory doesn't like admitting that Labour politicians are very effective.

• 12:49Rory Stewart?

  Ah, I don't like admitting any politicians are very effective, I think, if you were honest. I think Fiona needs to.

• 12:56Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think you're being unfair. I think he answered the questions very, very clearly. And I think he answered them in a way that I had a lot of reactions like that. We had a lot of reactions to the podcast from people saying they found it really refreshing that he he basically listened to the question, then he answered it, and then he started a debate around it. So you don't agree with the premise of that question?

• 13:19Rory Stewart?

  I found, I mean, it's a difficult one. We should come back to this. I still found him a little bit on the boring side, but maybe this isn't the time to be having this discussion. Okay, now, there was a good question, I thought, which was, which goes to the heart of stuff that you know and that people are very interested in. So Seb Elson, watching the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, noticed George Gordon Brown, Sri Blair, talking while seated next to each other. What's the relationship between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown now? He goes on to say, would you say they're friends? He finds the dynamic between ex-PM's fascinating, particularly when you see Johnson, May, Cameron Brown, Blair and Major all together. Are they friends? They close friends? Or is that not the right way of putting it?

• 13:57Alastair Campbell?

  I think, I think they were, there was a time in their relationship in opposition when they were very, very, very close friends politically and personally. I think that the strains and stresses of government meant that there were periods during our time in office when, well, this is no secret, you know, there are eight volumes of it, when things became quite strained. But I'd say they are, I think that their relationship is a lot better. I think there's a, I think there's a real mutual respect that they both have. But equally, they've gone on to do, they're both still very active and very involved, but they, you know, they don't, as it were, do stuff together in the way that for most of their careers they did.

• 14:40Alastair Campbell?

  I found that, we talked on the main podcast about how interesting it was, all the body, all the the sort of people watching that you could do at the funeral. I did find that, you know, because we've had so many prime ministers in these last 12 years of Conservative failure, Rory, austerity, Brexit, Conservatives, devaluation, disaster. We now have more former prime ministers than we've ever had in our history. One of my favourite moments of the entire funeral service is when the Archbishop of Canterbury, he was definitely looking at Boris Johnson when he said the line about, "People who really serve will be remembered long after those who sought to cling on to power and privilege."

• 15:24Alastair Campbell?

  I thought that was a, that was a very, very, very good line.

• 15:27Rory Stewart?

  It's also a good line from an Archbishop, I guess. It's something we really wanna.

• 15:30Alastair Campbell?

  Was that the main sermon, wasn't it? I thought it was really good. It was, it was short, it was punchy.

• 15:35Rory Stewart?

  It's also for kind of historical geeks, it's amazing the role of clergyman giving speeches in these royal contexts. And a lot of what was going on in Shakespeare's plays is responding to the other great dramatic moments in Elizabethan, early Jacobian England, which were about priests challenging the Queen and the King in their Sunday sermons. And this went all the way back to Henry VIII. The queens and kings had to sit there and listen to sometimes quite radical preachers who'd pop up on a Sunday. An hour and a half, two hour sermon lecturing them on the sins of the kings and all this kind of thing. John Knox, of course, a great one at doing this to, to James I of Scotland.

• 16:18Alastair Campbell?

  I, I thought, what I liked about the Archbishop's contribution, I thought there was a, there was a personality to it. I didn't think the readings were very good. I wasn't that moved by the hymns and I, I do like a, I do like a nice hymn.

• 16:32Rory Stewart?

  You didn't, you didn't like "The Lord's My Shepherd", is it, right?

• 16:34Alastair Campbell?

  Oh yeah, that was fine, that was fine. But that's kind of, you know, that, that, but, but I just felt the, the readings could have maybe been, had a bit more personal and personality in them.

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• 18:43Rory Stewart?

  And here we are back again with the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 18:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. Andrew Kitching wants to know, I don't know if you've been to state funerals Rory, what's your most memorable state funeral from your days in government? Mine actually is very, very close to where you're sitting right now. It was King Hussein.

• 19:01Rory Stewart?

  Was the very sad point of your of your mother's death, was that the same event?

• 19:05Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, no, no, no, it wasn't. I was, I was, that was separate. I was in Jordan when my mother died. But no, the King Hussein's funeral, which was

• 19:13Rory Stewart?

  What do you remember about it?

• 19:15Alastair Campbell?

  I just remember the elements of chaos. I remember when we were reading about the buildup to the Queen's funeral and there was the whole thing about the leaders would have to go on a bus. And Biden's people say there's no way he's going to go to a bus. And then the other leaders saying, well, why do I have to go to a bus if he's not on a bus? And all that stuff. And there was, there was, everyone was taken to this kind of Vast, I could, in my diary, I called it a holding palace. Everyone was sort of bundled into this palace. And so what you had was these literally hundreds of dignitaries from different parts of the world bumping into each other. I remember Shirak and Clinton having what they, Clinton was joking, was one of the sort of, you know,

• 19:58Alastair Campbell?

  one of the best bilaterals he'd ever had, and it was literally on a staircase. While across the way, there was another bilateral going on between, you know, the Israeli and the Jordanian. And then down the stairs, Tony Blair had bumped into the German Chancellor. And there were just, it was, it was like this kind of, and of course, people were being respectful, but there were no cameras in there. So it was literally, it was like a political bizarre. People were thinking, right, I can get, and I remember on the walk down, they would then had to walk down to the, to the burial. And it was like, you could see the leaders who were desperately trying to get in the shop behind Clinton. And there's all this sort of jostling going on. And people who were just wanting to, I remember Clinton turning to Shirak at one point and saying, hey, Jack, how many bilaterals you know?

• 20:42Alastair Campbell?

  I had thirty down the staircase, I did twelve in that little room with the coffee. And it was just, it was just chaos. It was, but it was something wonderful about it.

• 20:50Rory Stewart?

  No, no, we, we had a, we had a question from somebody about apologies. Lewis Thomas asked, could you please give some insight on why there are many historic wrongs the government's acknowledged but don't apologize for? An example being the Amritsar massacre. And so that's an interesting one. So I think the Queen laid a wreath at Amritsar. Amritsar was where General Dyer opened fire on a crowd in Amritsar. It's a very, very big scene in the film Gandhi that people will, will remember. Queen laid a wreath in ninety seven. David Cameron said it was deeply shameful in twenty thirteen. Twenty nineteen, Theresa May said, we deeply regret what happened and the suffering caused. She called it a shameful scar on British Indian history.

• 21:34Rory Stewart?

  But she didn't apologize. What's going on that they say all these things, but they just somehow fall short of apologizing?

• 21:41Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know in relation to that one. You probably know more about it than I do. There is something strange about the extent to which. Politicians and governments don't like to apologize and yet some of the most powerful moments come from apology. Was it Kevin Rudd who was Prime Minister Australia when he apologized for the treatment of the indigenous population?

• 22:04Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 22:05Alastair Campbell?

  People often say that one of David Cameron's finest moments was his response to the bloody Sunday Inquiry. And I guess what that says is that sometimes it's easier to apologize for things that have happened that were not, as it were, directly your fault, your responsibility.

• 22:18Rory Stewart?

  And that's definitely true with the Amritsar massacre. I mean, why wouldn't you do it? I mean, if you're gonna say it's deeply shameful, it's an indelible scar on Britain's reputation, I mean, you basically have apologized. So why not just say, and we profoundly apologize?

• 22:30Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know, is the answer on that. I don't know why you wouldn't do that. I imagine at the time, there would have been political pressures possibly from other parts of Indian politics, other parts of the region's politics. I just don't know.

• 22:45Rory Stewart?

  Or what maybe people are saying with, when it comes to British Empire, that it's not quite clear where you'd ever stop. And, you know, are you gonna be, how far back are you gonna go with your apologies? Are you gonna apologize to what happened 300 years ago, 400 years ago, et cetera?

• 22:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I saw, I saw in the, in the build up to the Queen's funeral, the interview with a member of the Greek establishment and was on to the theme of the Elgin Marbles. And I've often wondered about that, whether it's because it's a kind of where do you draw the line? Once you've conceded a principle about where something rightfully belongs, what then is the next one? I don't know. But it's a, I, I, I think there is, because in that, we know in our own lives, that actually apology often can be very healing and very strengthening. I actually think that the public are far more tolerant of people apologizing. Although you might, you may remember Nick Clegg when he apologized

• 23:39Alastair Campbell?

  for tuition fees. I mean, that, do you remember? And he, he was immediately sort of lampooned by some of the best memes that were ever made.

• 23:46Rory Stewart?

  One, one of the questions on that education question that you read right at the beginning of this episode, commented on ministers turning over so quickly. And clearly, that is very, very, very fundamental to our entire problems and I mean, we talked about that. We've had, you know, six foreign secretaries in whatever it is, eight years compared to six and twenty four years.

• 24:04Alastair Campbell?

  But nine education secretaries in twelve years, that's pretty extraordinary, isn't it?

• 24:07Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely unbelievable. But if you, you know, in my, my ministerial career, I was in my first job for just under twelve months as environment minister. I was then Middle East Asian minister for, I think, another twelve months, Africa minister for probably seven months, prisons minister for fourteen months. I mean, it's completely mad. And so we've got this odd situation where, on the one hand, we pretend that ministers run things. So we've got a sort of slightly headless chicken situation where our entire constitution is based on this idea that civil servants advise and ministers decide. And if there aren't strong ministers in place, often there's real inertia and it's very difficult for stuff to get done.

• 24:47Rory Stewart?

  But on the other hand, the civil service are very, very aware that the ministers are going to be swapped over every year or most every two years. And so if a minister comes in with very strong views, wants to do something, they will be very aware that their successor may well not want to do that. And there's no point going down that path. I mean, I felt this again and again. I would try to think I was being bold, doing something really big on, I don't know, doubling diffid spend on environment and climate change. And I couldn't understand the resistance. But now I realize that, of course, they're thinking, well, if we go right over the top and make a two billion pound commitment for this guy, the next woman or man coming in is, is likely to reverse it. So why would we do it?

• 25:24Alastair Campbell?

  We've had all those jobs, Roy. I'm about to give you another job, Hobbit King. If you could work, asking us both, if you could work for any prime minister in history, who would it be and why?

• 25:34Rory Stewart?

  For me, I would definitely work for William Gladstone.

• 25:38Alastair Campbell?

  What would your job be?

• 25:39Rory Stewart?

  Oh, blimey, I'd do anything for him. I'd carry his bag. I'd be his chief of staff. I'd, I'd, I'd do anything. What I love about him is the sense that he got so much more radical as he got older. I love people who start as kind of rigid conservatives as he did. He started as a defender of the slave trade and finished as one of our most liberal prime ministers ever, trying to solve the problems in Ireland. In fact, if he'd got his home rule bill through, he may well have been able to save such untold misery. And, and the older he got, the more radical he got. And I, I, there's, there's a lovely interview, which I'm completely obsessed with, with Samuel Beckett, towards the end of his life, where a French interviewer is asking him, this, you know, he's in his eighties, do you miss your youth? And Beckett says, not with the fire that's in me now.

• 26:26Alastair Campbell?

  That's interesting because I was utterly obsessed by Samuel Beckett when I was at university, including making pilgrimages to Paris to try and track him down in cafes.

• 26:35Rory Stewart?

  Did you find him?

• 26:36Alastair Campbell?

  No, I found him once and it was very brief and very unsatisfying. I think I'd go for Atlee.

• 26:43Rory Stewart?

  Aha, what would you do for him?

• 26:45Alastair Campbell?

  I just would have liked to have observed him because he's, I do think he's one of those prime ministers that genuinely changed the country for the better. And obviously that era was very, very special in our history. I was probably, I probably would have, I'd like to have been his speechwriter, actually. I think that would have been quite an interesting job.

• 27:01Rory Stewart?

  You definitely would have been a bit more oomph. His speeches were phenomenally boring, so could have, could have done with you. Although Atlee had these incredibly dominating charismatic figures in his cabinet, Bevan, Bevan, others, I mean, I, and that's slightly what I worry Labour's lacking at the moment. I'm, we're lacking these huge big beasts that, that was the secret for Atlee's team of rivals. And here's a question, not for today, but to put us on our metal for us to answer next week. Because I don't think we can do it, we'll humiliate ourselves if we try now. But Fabiana Lopez da Silveira, I'm an enthusiastic, yet slightly frustrated Brazilian listener of your podcast. As you constantly name drop Bolsonaro as a token example of the rise of mainly right wing populism across the globe,

• 27:46Rory Stewart?

  but never actually talk about him or Brazil in general. So here is my challenge, that both of you spend at least five straight minutes commenting on Brazilian politics, including former President Lula, who's leading all the polls, even though Bolsonaro insists that it's all a lie.

• 28:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well, actually, Roy, I would be very happy to spend five minutes talking about that right now. But however, I have to be in the dentist's chair in a few minutes. So, but I'm happy, I'm happy. I think she, I think Fabiana is right. I think we, given that Brazil is such an enormous country, given Bolsonaro is such a controversial figure, and Lula's a very controversial figure too, we probably have been a little bit remiss in not talking more about the Brazilian election. So yeah, let's do that, let's do that next week.

• 28:29Rory Stewart?

  I really think that thing about the dentist is a bit cheeky. I don't think most of our listeners believe that you can do five minutes non-stop on Brazilian politics.

• 28:36Alastair Campbell?

  I, well, I can, and I will do it with the dentist. If you like, I will film myself, I will film myself in the dentist's chair.

• 28:43Rory Stewart?

  No, go on, do it next.

• 28:44Alastair Campbell?

  Talking to the dentist about Brazil. Let's, why, why don't, why don't we close on, on something a little bit lighter? It's perfectly obvious to me from responses just walking around the place and on social media that Peter Morgan's film The Queen was obviously played at some point on television in recent days. Because there were quite a lot of questions of it about it. Sam Galloway asks me, how frustrating was it to be portrayed as a caricature in The Queen? Ed, did you like your portrayal in The Thick of It? Rory, who would you like to play you if a film was made of your life? And lots of questions just asking, what did I think of the movie The Queen? And what do I think of the new Labour portrayals and the actors who have played me? So let's do you first. Who would you like to?

• 29:29Alastair Campbell?

  I know you said Danny DeVito the last time we were asked this, but what's a serious answer? Who would you like to play you?

• 29:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, to play me.

• 29:35Alastair Campbell?

  It has to be one of those posh boy actors, wouldn't it? Damien Lewis, Benedict Cumberbatch, one of the Italian Herovians.

• 29:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'm a huge, huge fan of Eddie Redmayne and in certain lights.

• 29:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he looks a bit like you.

• 29:45Rory Stewart?

  He looks like a much better looking version of myself, so maybe that would be the way to go.

• 29:49Alastair Campbell?

  Have you seen Private Eye this week?

• 29:50Rory Stewart?

  No, I didn't see Private Eye this week.

• 29:52Alastair Campbell?

  You are in Private Eye. Please don't get scared. You are in Private Eye as the, you know, the thing where they do, are they by any chance related? And it's you and Abraham Lincoln. And the caption says, don't let anybody be fooled by Lincoln's beard. And you do have that Eddie Redmayne sort of lined face look, both of you. So let's go with Eddie Redmayne playing Rory Stewart, Abraham Lincoln.

• 30:17Rory Stewart?

  Go on, what's your answer to those questions?

• 30:20Alastair Campbell?

  I thought The Queen was an extraordinary film because it didn't portray the Queen or Tony Blair as caricatures, but it did portray the other characters, me, Duke of Edinburgh, Cherie Blair, I think we were caricatured. But that maybe that's just because they don't have, you know, the central story was the relationship between the Queen and the Prime Minister. I thought they were very well portrayed. I've been played by quite a lot of actors in quite a lot of different films. The best one, I think.

• 30:53Alastair Campbell?

  Was the guy who played me, I don't like the subject matter, but I turn hats off to the guy who played me was was the the film about David Kelly. I think it was called Death of a Government Inspector. I was Ian Duncan Smith's son is an actor and he played me.

• 31:12Rory Stewart?

  Oh, well, there we are. That's a thing.

• 31:14Alastair Campbell?

  In a play at some point. I never saw the play, but people tell me that he was he was quite good.

• 31:20Rory Stewart?

  So I my my great moment of glory is there was a play about me at the Hampstead Theatre and I got played by an actor who'd acted as a Quidditch captain in Harry Potter. There we are. Now, the final, final question going Emily Drayson, does either of you have a favorite Scots word or phrase? She says hers are out with and scunnered.

• 31:40Alastair Campbell?

  Mine is glakit. My mum used that a lot.

• 31:43Rory Stewart?

  Tell us about glakit.

• 31:44Alastair Campbell?

  Glakit basically means gormless.

• 31:46Rory Stewart?

  Very good. My father liked scunnered. He loved saying weeshed to me.

• 31:50Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah. Weeshed. Weeshed. Yeah.

• 31:52Rory Stewart?

  And Scottish politics, as you know, they love the word firt and firti as a way of getting at each other.

• 31:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:59Rory Stewart?

  Thanks. Thanks. Enjoy the dentist.

• 32:01Alastair Campbell?

  I'll try.

• 32:02Rory Stewart?

  And we look forward to your bolsonar around next week.

• 32:04Alastair Campbell?

  It's a crowd. It's very relevant. It's a crowd in the week of the

• 32:07Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Crown yourself. That's very good. Your own crown. All right. Los saludos. See you soon.

• 32:12Alastair Campbell?

  All the best. Bye bye.

• 32:12Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 32:15Speaker 02

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• 32:19Speaker 03

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