91. Zelensky's message, Netanyahu's return, and Putin's 'mystery woman'

Join Rory and Alastair this week as they discuss what Alastair has described as ‘one of the best pieces of communication he has ever seen’, the definition of populism, and their controversial predictions for the year ahead. Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, join the TRIP Plus Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Callum Hill 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?

  And thanks for all the questions this week. Really appreciate the effort that you all go to send the amen. It really does help us to work out what we want to talk about each week. And if you want to carry on the conversation around all things Rest is Politics, as we mentioned in the main podcast this week, we've set up an online trip chatroom exclusively for the Rest is Politics Plus members on the website Discord, D I S C O R D.

• 2:15Alastair Campbell?

  You just get on there and you chat away about whatever you want, be it British politics, America, your favourite books, your favourite TV shows, what we've said, which one of us you like, which one of us you don't like, who you agree with, who you don't agree with. If you want to join in, you just head to therestispolitics.com. There'll be a link to the server in your welcome email. Right, Rory, first question.

• 2:38Rory Stewart?

  Will Stone, Zelensky's New Year's speech was epic. How would Alistair and Rory rate it? And after 311 days, what would they do to help Ukraine conclude the war? What do you think about the speech first?

• 2:50Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we were going to talk about this on the main podcast, but we got distracted into tea with Gordon Brown and Mo Moleman drugs and all sorts of other stuff. So apologies to those who wanted to hear about this on the main podcast. As I said on the main podcast, I thought Zelensky's New Year message was amongst the best pieces of communications I have ever seen. And to think of him doing that at a really difficult time, I don't know about you Rory, but I always find New Year really, really difficult psychologically for some reason. I always have major plunges around this time of year. But to do that when he's just come back from Washington, he's just had another sort of, you know,

• 3:30Alastair Campbell?

  massive hit in relation to the way the war's developing. And it was just, it was, look, it was 17 minutes long, which is a long time for one guy just to stand there and talk into a camera. There was a little bit of footage, there was film footage of some of the past, he told some of the story. What I loved about it was that he told the story and it wasn't really about him, it was about the Ukrainian people. And it was about what they were doing and why they were doing it. And he just, it was, it was like watching a kind of jigsaw puzzle of emotion and story. And lots of the other thing he did was, it's only been 311 days, there were so many things that I'd forgotten that had happened and we've already forgotten them. And he was bringing them out there. And then when you

• 4:13Alastair Campbell?

  got to the end of it, it was, you felt this, you did felt a sense, you felt a sense of hope.

• 4:19Rory Stewart?

  It was, it was incredible, wasn't it? And I think the thing that makes the speech partly is real clarity. And there's a sense in that which we didn't see in any other politician's New Year messages. There's just one thing that he was talking about, which was victory. And he kept coming back to that.

• 4:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Rory Stewart?

  And also the way in which a war leader, and he's a real war leader, can do things that no normal politician can do in terms of oratory. And it was a very beautifully constructed speech. He used a lot of that technique, which Neil Kinnock loves, the tricolon, where we put three phrases together. So he'd talk about warriors to their homes, captives to their houses, IDPs to Ukraine, or he'd say, this is why each of us is here, why I'm here, why you are here.

• 5:04Alastair Campbell?

  He also did, he also did that thing that I actually really liked in a speech, but Tony Blair never, never really went for this much, but is when you tell stories and often you just have one word in a sentence. So he did the thing about, he was telling a story about, I can't remember the, the child's name, but he just said, then he said, baby, bomb, died. You know, he just sort of had this, it was almost like he was going from rat-a-tat and then slight change of tone. We said in the podcast just before the new year, you know, about there was some criticism of his wearing his fatigues at, when he went to speak in Congress, but having that trademark look and he had that, I don't know if you noticed the sort of setting of it, this sort of, the flag was there, but it was very vague. It was actually quite a dark setting.

• 5:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Was, was he not outdoors? Was he not outdoors?

• 5:50Alastair Campbell?

  Definitely it was outdoors and it was freezing cold and he just sort of stood there and he just kind of, and I, I guess it must have been scripted, there must have been an autocue, but maybe not, because there was a very natural communication.

• 6:00Rory Stewart?

  But there were definitely elements that were beautifully written, which he must have either memorized or or to cue, but I, I thought it was extraordinary.

• 6:07Alastair Campbell?

  Did you see Putin's?

• 6:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I did see Putin's speech. Putin, as usual, manages to, every speech he gives gives the impression he's standing in front of a blue screen and that there's a sort of some weird virtual reality thing. I mean, there were people behind him moving.

• 6:19Alastair Campbell?

  They were military, weren't they?

• 6:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, except for one lady who, Clarice Ward, who's the CNN international correspondent, has picked up, appears in almost every image with Putin. She appeared in that image, she appears with an image of him on a boat, she appears with him in church. So there was a lot of discussion on Twitter on whether she was a bodyguard or an actor, but eventually they've decided she's a woman called Svetlana Radchenko, who's his junior environment minister. Who for some astonishing reason, he puts in every single shot that he appears in. But she was, you're right, in a military uniform.

• 6:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I do you think there might be something going on there that I don't even know who the current Mrs. Putin is, but whether there might be something she should object to there.

• 6:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's something very peculiar going on there. And it was an odd speech. I mean, of course, in its way, it did the business for his audience. And what he does, like many, many extreme nationalist leaders, is this extreme clarification, black and white. So he said in his speech, this year clarified things. It clarified the difference between heroism and cowardice. It revealed through the difficult situation in Donbass that the West that had been pretending to try to resolve it had actually secretly all along been plotting with the neo Nazis to do these war crimes. So in its way, I think it did its business. But of course, he looked very, very stiff compared to Zelensky.

• 7:39Rory Stewart?

  I mean, you really felt Zelensky vindicated being outdoors in his combat fatigues. Putin looks elderly, his face looks overbotoxed. I'm saying all this because the Russians obviously have banned me from ever going to Russia again, which makes me a little bit bitter.

• 7:55Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, I got a question from somebody called Samantha Powell. Why, she said, you often talk about things that the mainstream media don't give sufficient coverage to. Why has there been so little coverage of the comments by Sir Geoffrey Nice? And this is that, you know who Geoffrey Nice is? He's the guy who led the prosecution of Milosevic. And he did an interview on the BBC, setting out why Putin should be, should go on trial for war crimes committed in Ukraine, which I did think was quite a big, this is a guy who knows the Geneva Convention and knows the rules of war inside out, and who was giving a pretty compelling case that Putin should go on trial for war crimes.

• 8:36Rory Stewart?

  That's fantastic. And it's a surprise that that people aren't talking about this more openly.

• 8:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 8:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's, I guess, I guess for, for people like Macron, who are trying to find a route out for Putin. They'd be reluctant politically to go down that route, wouldn't they?

• 8:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, on that Rory, I wasn't going to raise it, but I'm now going to raise it because I did have a few little messages from some of my French friends, can I put it like that? Who felt that you'd been a bit harsh on Macron, although you did say he was your politician, foreign politician of the year, but they felt that you were caricaturing his position on Ukraine, that it is not a sort of black and white, as you think of Biden thinking it's got to be all at war to the end and Macron thinking there has to be negotiation. And one of these people, Sophie Pedder, who's the bureau chief in Paris of The Economist, she sent me a message saying, get Rory to take a look at the Ukrainian Defence Minister's response to Macron's New Year address.

• 9:31Alastair Campbell?

  And the Defence Minister is called Andrei Zogorodunyik, and he says, kudos to Macron, his post in Ukrainian language, link below, where he says, France and Europe will be supporting us till victory is a very strategic statement as the Western allies join us in anticipation, the war must end with victory.

• 9:52Rory Stewart?

  We are this good, good, well, well done Sophie Pedder, we look forward to reading more of her stuff. Okay, question for you, Hugh Walker, as Israel shifts violently to the right, you continually avoid any discussion of it. Why? And just to give you some time to think about your answer, just for listeners to bring them up to date on that, what's happened, of course, is that Bibi Netanyahu is coming back in and he's coming back in with a very, very odd coalition, including some extremely unfortunate figures who've made unbelievably unpleasant and threatening remarks, including about retaking the West Bank and others. So why don't we talk more about Israel?

• 10:29Alastair Campbell?

  I guess because, well, we have talked about, the first thing to say is we have talked about Israel and we've talked about Netanyahu and his comeback. And I think I told the story not long ago about John Holmes, Tony Blair's former foreign affairs advisor, saying in 1997 Netanyahu was a 24 carat bullshitter. We have talked about it, but I think what's happened is that we're back to the point about when things are not high up the actual political agenda. So of course, a new Israeli election is newsworthy, Netanyahu coming back is newsworthy, but has it moved the dial on the Middle East peace process? Insofar as it has, it's moved it backwards. And that just then just becomes a danger that, well, what do we keep saying, other than the fact that you and I, I'm sure, are in pretty much the same place. We believe in

• 11:14Alastair Campbell?

  a two-state solution. We think that the Americans have got a key role to play. They are trying to play that role, but it becomes very, very difficult when you have this coalition put together. So what are we going to say about Israel, other than what you've already just said, which is that Netanyahu is a pretty bad guy, who's done a lot of bad things, and he's now surrounded by really bad guys who've said and done a lot of really, really bad things?

• 11:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, I think that the people, and again, I mean, if I'm getting pushback on Macron, I'll definitely get an enormous pushback from friends of mine on this. But part of the trouble seems to be the religious Zionism party, which is led by a man called Bezalel Smotrich, which is very, very ultra-nationalist.

• 11:52Alastair Campbell?

  He's the finance minister now, isn't he?

• 11:54Rory Stewart?

  I'm sure people are going to push back and come back on us on this too.

• 11:59Alastair Campbell?

  He said, by the way, Roy, just, and again, maybe we should, because we did talk a little bit about God in our last episode of 2022. So they now have, as the deputy minister in the prime minister's office, they've got somebody who is avowedly homophobic, that's Abi Maaz. They've got this guy that you've just mentioned, who's now the finance minister, whose big slogan is that it's time for Israel to try obeying God's commandments as an economic approach. How is that one going to work out? So I don't quite know. Whoever asks us that question, what do they want us to talk about Israel, other than what we've said many, many times, which is that it's deeply concerning, it's really

• 12:43Alastair Campbell?

  hard to see how it's going to get resolved, but it only gets resolved if the international community, and particularly the Americans, stay absolutely fixated on trying to get it resolved.

• 12:51Rory Stewart?

  And reengage, because there is a sense that, as I think we've talked about in the past, that over the last 20, 30 years, the attention of the world has very much moved away from Israel, Palestine, that increasingly the Gulf, which was the sort of backwater 40 years ago, now Saudi and UAE are very much front and centre. And the cultural centres, the Arab world, which were Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Palestine, have very much been marginalised from the Arab world. Spring onwards. Abraham Accords meant that Israel's now created all these new economic links. So I think there is a sense in which people are no longer really engaged.

• 13:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I think they're engaged, but I think it's very hard to know how you get it to the point in the international agenda where you can actually start to make change. Particularly now you've got an Israeli government that is going to be even more hardline than the ones that we've already got, you know, all too used to.

• 13:41Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 13:41Alastair Campbell?

  Right, Martin, here's one, Rory, Martin Fever Year.

• 13:45Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 13:46Alastair Campbell?

  I'm assuming that's a real name as opposed to a prediction for 2023. Could you please explain the definition of populism? It's a term that you use all the time, but I don't understand it. I, would you want to have a go first?

• 13:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, can I have a go first? So the first thing I think about populism in its modern form is it involves presenting yourself as speaking for the people against the elite, but the people that you're speaking for is always called the real people. And it's not actual, it's not all the people, obviously, and often it's not even the majority of the people. It's a particular often nationalist nativist appeal to a section of the population that tries to represent themselves as though they're everybody and treat anyone who disagrees with them, minority groups and others, as though they are a feat, out of touch, treacherous elites, and that gives them the legitimacy to challenge constitutions. Anyway, back to you.

• 14:39Alastair Campbell?

  No, I would, I would agree with that. I think, I think a classic definition is it's a form of politics whereby the view of what the politician represents as the people is turned against what the politician represents as an out of touch elite. And even though the politician may be Trump, Johnson, as elitist as they come, particularly with the help now of technology, they have the tools to make that effective as a political strategy. Now, here's one, Rory, this, this is.

• 15:08Rory Stewart?

  Wait, wait, just very quickly, this is, this is a strange thing because you just asked me a question from a man who was called, what was he called Fever?

• 15:14Alastair Campbell?

  Fever Year.

• 15:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, here's a question from someone called Jack LaFever. So if China were to invade Taiwan, would there be a similar global reaction to Russia's invasions to Ukraine or markedly different? I agree, it's slightly off topic, but the name, that's an interesting coincidence.

• 15:28Alastair Campbell?

  So our question, our choice of questions is now being driven by the name of the person. Rory, you've got to remember, we get a lot of complaints about why we don't, so for example, we've already had, why don't you talk about Israel? I've spotted three already recently. Why don't you, haven't you talked about Venezuela? So I think that what we should say to people, just say that your name has something related to fever and we're bound to listen. And the answer to the question is, I think the reaction will be even more dramatic. By the way, Rory, I was-

• 15:57Rory Stewart?

  It'll be unbelievable because we've talked about, sorry, just very quickly, we've talked about semiconductor chips and the fact that 90% of the advanced semiconductor chips in the world are made in Taiwan and 50% of all, but 80% of the electric batteries in the world are made in China. I mean, one of the reasons why it's tough for Keir Starmer and others to talk about green growth plans and investing in gigafactories for batteries and things is that China has taken the march on that as it has on so much else. And sanctions and counter sanctions against China is going to have the most catastrophic impact on our economy, but I think we'll do it. But I think China and the rest of the world will suffer deeply. And what I think already is likely to be a prolonged recession will get much, much worse.

• 16:36Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, three, three quick points to make. The first is that somebody that we know up here in the Scottish Highlands, who is a very, is a regular listener to the podcast, said, what on earth is Rory doing? Saying there's a 40% chance of this Chinese invasion of Taiwan happening. And what does he base that on? And I'm going to give you a couple of little pointers that maybe you can help make him even more terrified. The first is that the Taiwan's president has rewritten the conscription rules in Taiwan, that all Taiwanese males who turn 18 next year are going to have to serve 12 months in the military

• 17:17Alastair Campbell?

  rather than the present, I think the current system is four months. And the second thing is, I saw a report, I think it was in the Times, which was a discussion going on- Inside the UK government, saying that Britain is very badly prepared for the possible economic consequences that would result from the Chinese invasion of Taiwan, that it would cripple supply chains, it would lead to Covid-style shortages of imports, and that industry's leaders need to think very, very hard about where they're going to get goods from.

• 17:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's terrible, isn't it? Because of course that's true in Britain, it's true right the way across Europe and the United States. And the problem is that insuring yourself against that, having the resilience to deal with losing your supply chain from China is incredibly expensive. I mean, it would involve incredible investments in setting up alternative supply chains. Why do I think 40%? Well, as we've discussed in the past, there's a couple of good recent biographies of Xi Jinping, you promoted a really good German one, there's also another good English language one, which is quite a scholarly biography. But in both cases, they make it very, very clear that the issue of Taiwan has been central to Xi Jinping's political identity almost from the beginning of his time. And it's very, very

• 18:33Rory Stewart?

  likely that he will see unifying China, or bringing Taiwan into China, as being the legacy he wants. And it's just a question of time. There are two things in balance, which is why we're at 40%, not 60%, which is balancing the fact that he hasn't quite got the Chinese military and navy where he wants it to be, to absolutely guarantee an easy victory in Taiwan. But that has to be weighed against the fact that if I were he, I would think this is quite a good moment to move, because it's a moment where the West is already thrown off balance by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So it cuts both ways. I do think the response that Britain, Europe, the United States have brought to Ukraine has been an important deterrent against Xi Jinping's actions. But it also will suggest

• 19:18Rory Stewart?

  to him that we are economically in a very difficult situation, and it will be quite difficult, he will feel, to say to our voters who are already facing this unbelievable inflation and energy costs, that we're going to take sanctions and counter sanctions over Taiwan, which would be 10, 20 times worse than anything we've seen to date.

• 19:35Alastair Campbell?

  All right, Rory, let's go for a break.

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• 20:13Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics question time. Now, bring it home again. This goes back to something we discussed last time, and I want to revisit this because I don't think I said what I really think. Okay. News 23/5. In a recent episode, Rory was passionate about maintaining the UK's green belt in relation to constructing new homes, yet he never seems to stop traveling, especially flying. How does he balance this position with his carbon footprint? Lucian Lawrence. Rory said he wants to protect the green belt from housing and build higher in London to reduce housing scarcity. How does he propose to do the latter with such resistance to new development in both law and local nimbyism? And if you remember, Rory, last time, I didn't realize that that had been asked, the question about the green belt, and I said I was broadly in favor.

• 20:55Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think, I think I'd said that because I was just sort of thinking aloud. I actually don't see how we are, I think the green belt risks becoming a kind of totem. That there has to be, I agree with you, there should be a broader environmental strategy, environmental policy, but we are going to have to build more homes, and we are going to have to build them in places where currently we don't build. And I think we cannot forever just say that because we've got this green belt thing, it's like some sort of sacrosanct totem that we can never touch in the future.

• 21:27Rory Stewart?

  Okay, well, that's very interesting. I'm, I'm, it's good, good, we've, I'm on the other side of this because I think if you give up on the green belts, not just in London, but around our other cities, you will create exactly the kind of urban sprawl that you see in the United States. And we're not a large enough country to accommodate that. It will, you can see so many parts of our country that are now really wrecked. And I think at a time when nature and biodiversity is under huge threat in Britain, it would be horrible to build over the green belt. And I think there's such potential to make it a much more biodiverse landscape. And I do think the real problem in London is our obsession on building, you know, low two-story houses, which sprawl all the way out, metro land, all the way out through West London. And I think freeing up planning,

• 22:11Rory Stewart?

  a brave government freed up planning that would allow people to double the size of their houses, put a flat on top and rent it out.

• 22:18Alastair Campbell?

  And go down below?

• 22:19Rory Stewart?

  And go down below. But I think going up is the easiest thing. It can be done very easily. And there's some very good examples of it already happening in London.

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  Did you see, did you see the, in Tokyo, the Japanese now are paying people to leave Tokyo?

• 22:33Rory Stewart?

  Ah, very interesting.

• 22:34Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think, do you think we might have to move eventually to a kind of new generation of, of Milton Keynes type developments?

• 22:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, I definitely, definitely Milton Keynes was, was actually in a way a real success. And I think building really ambitious new towns is a way of dealing with it. And thinking about what I would call gentle density, which is building at six, seven stories, which is of course, what makes the beauty of Paris, is a very well, good way of thinking about it. Not forty, fifty stories, which actually in UK law, you need to have so much standoff around the base of them that they're not really worth doing, but going for the gentle density. Question for you, Chris Cartage, why don't we have ministers with more industrial backgrounds? E.G. Surely the Minister for Transport should have some experience managing transport infrastructure. Same for other minister roles, question mark.

• 23:20Alastair Campbell?

  Ah, but I think we're back to the thing about, you know, why don't, why don't people from a far broader network and gene pool go into politics? And I'm always struck when I do events with business, some of which I did with you last year, where when you get into sort of people asking questions, they will, there's always a question about, you know, why does the quality of politicians seem to fall and why have so few people who've from this background, that background got into politics? And it's easy to blame politics as some kind of abstract, but I always say to these people, well, have any of you ever thought of going into politics? And, you know, sort of, there's lots of uncomfortable shuffling in their seats and occasionally somebody might put their hand up and say, well, I did think about it, but I didn't like the intrusion into my life or whatever it might be.

• 24:05Alastair Campbell?

  So, you know, I, I don't think it's impossible for people, look, it's hard, it's still hard to get into politics and that more people want to be MPs than there are places by a long, long chore. But I think that one of the, you know, whoever's asking that question is right on one level, that it'd be good if we had people from a far broader range of professional backgrounds. But we're only going to get that if people from those backgrounds say, I am going to go in and make a difference.

• 24:31Rory Stewart?

  Well, the, the other solution, of course, which I favour is, is the much more radical one, which is to say that the problem is that you're dragging your ministers out of this very limited pool. So, you know, the recent governments had about three hundred, three hundred and twenty MPs, of which they're trying to find a hundred ministers and most of these people on both sides are professional politicians who know very little about the rest of the world because they've been local councillors and they've been local party members since university. And frankly, people with other kinds of jobs don't, don't really go into politics. So the answer, of course, is to go to more of a US system where you can appoint a cabinet that doesn't come from your MPs. I mean, I was always struck that when we had Philip Hammond and Michael Fallon

• 25:12Rory Stewart?

  and Gavin Williamson as Defence Secretaries, and these were people who'd taken zero interest in defence before they became Defence Secretaries. I mean, they were people who I remember joking that they didn't know the difference between a javelin and a tomahawk.

• 25:24Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 25:25Rory Stewart?

  And up against them.

• 25:26Alastair Campbell?

  I know the difference. There isn't, there isn't an event in the Olympics for the tomahawk.

• 25:30Rory Stewart?

  There we are. Beautiful. On the other side, you've got the US where they were sitting opposite. Ash Carter, who was a defence academic, or General Maitlis, who'd been the head of the US Marine Corps, you know, it's a very, very different situation. It's sort of unthinkable in the US system.

• 25:48Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but Rory, you're arguing for a totally different political system then because, you know, I don't think you can envisage a situation where you have an elected prime minister who then appoints cabinet ministers from wherever he or she wants and sticks them in the House of Lords, which is now, I think, so discredited as a political institution.

• 26:06Rory Stewart?

  Although that's what Gordon Brown did, isn't it? I mean, that was his government of all talents. He tried to do that, didn't he?

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  No, well, there were one or two ministers, Adam West, the naval guy, and you can see why there's a case for that.

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  Mark Mallett-Brown in the Foreign Office.

• 26:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but they weren't cabinet ministers.

• 26:20Rory Stewart?

  Peter Mandelson, he put him in the cabinet, put him in the Lords to get him in the cabinet?

• 26:23Alastair Campbell?

  That's true, that's true. But I'd say that was an exception, not a rule. You're sort of saying the prime minister should have even more power to decide who they want around that table and a less accountability department.

• 26:36Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'd want something much more. I'd want a separation between the legislature and the executive.

• 26:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, you are arguing for a completely different political system.

• 26:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, 100%.

• 26:45Alastair Campbell?

  Now, what about this one? Hot Buzz. As Scotland would have celebrated 50 years in the EEC EU today, this was when the question was sent in, and many of their employee rights are about to go on a potential bonfire, do you feel any empathy at all for those Scots who may now want a different future for themselves and their country because of Brexit? P.S. Happy New Year.

• 27:08Rory Stewart?

  P.S. I do have sympathy. I remain very, I mean, I think two quick things. One is, I think Scotland would have a tough time joining the European Union, and most of its trading relationships are, of course, within the United Kingdom. And it would then find itself facing significant barriers, trading with its biggest trading partner, if it suddenly joined the EU Single Markets and Customs Union, because it would find itself in some version of the situation which Germany and I find itself in, where German-UK trade has collapsed over the last few years. I also think that, as we've talked about when we discussed Kosovo and Montenegro joining. European Union. There are many countries of the European Union that are very, very unwilling

• 27:50Rory Stewart?

  to allow in countries that are separated from other countries because if you're Spain, or indeed the four other countries that are currently blocking Montenegro in accession, they have strong internal reasons not to favour nationalism in their own countries.

• 28:03Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, did you see that the border was shut briefly in Kosovo Serbia?

• 28:08Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Yeah, no, I mean, I agree. And that's a prediction, I think, that sadly may prove right, that the chance for conflict again on the European conflict.

• 28:18Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I've triggered Rory into predicting another war.

• 28:20Rory Stewart?

  That's it. I like predictable. Dilly-dally. This links this. Make a controversial political prediction for 2023 and each suggest a forfeit for the other if they get it wrong.

• 28:29Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know if this is controversial, but a political prediction I will make, I can already see the beginnings of it in the client journalists who are basically in the pocket of the worst prime minister in history, the blonde one, well, the blonde male one. And that is that Johnson will try to effect some sort of comeback. But I hope, this is maybe wishful thinking, but if there is any real respect for truth and parliamentary sovereignty that he claims to believe in, then I hope he will be thwarted by the current, I believe, still ongoing inquiry into whether he lied to parliament and that his career will be ended by that.

• 29:09Rory Stewart?

  Okay, here's my political prediction. I think the Republican Party in Congress is going to tear itself to shreds. There's a really interesting thing happening at the moment with the election of the Speaker, Kevin McCarthy, where he's basically being blocked by five or six extreme right wing Republicans. He's falling over backwards to try to pander to them, including saying he's going to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary and set up new committees to overturn everything that was done to investigate January 6. He's got Trump calling for him and he still can't win them over. And it reminds me a lot of the way in which the right wing of the Tory party took over and destroyed any attempts by Theresa May to get a compromise on Brexit. Because one of the elements of

• 29:51Rory Stewart?

  it is that the right of these parties seems to hold the whip hand by refusing to compromise. And you find yourself in a very odd situation, which has had the Democrats been willing to come across and actually A few moderate Democrats vote for him, they could have marginalized this right wing group. But of course, Democrats are never going to do that. And the Republican Party will be dragged ever further to the right.

• 30:14Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Rory, we did say that part of the question which you're avoiding was what are the forfeits? If you're wrong, I'm going to suggest that if you're proved to be wrong.

• 30:23Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 30:24Alastair Campbell?

  What's the time limit? This is your prediction for this year, yeah?

• 30:27Rory Stewart?

  Might this year, yeah, yeah.

• 30:29Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I'm going to suggest that the forfeit for you should be at the live event that we do closest to that time when this year ends.

• 30:37Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 30:37Alastair Campbell?

  You have to end it playing the bagpipes, not me.

• 30:41Rory Stewart?

  Oh, jeez, wow. Okay, that's very tough. All right. Okay.

• 30:45Alastair Campbell?

  So that's a good incentive for you to do a bit of practice.

• 30:48Rory Stewart?

  That really, blimey, that's a big incentive to do a lot of practice. Wow. Okay, forfeit for you. If you are proven to be wrong, you have to go and give a speech at Eton.

• 30:59Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, well, I've been asked to do a speech at Eton many times. And maybe the new head teacher, or is it, do we still call him a headmaster? Headmaster?

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  Headmaster.

• 31:10Alastair Campbell?

  The headmaster, who, by the way, we're having on as a guest on the podcast one day. We are, Rory, I'm telling you that now, we're doing it. Maybe we could do it. Maybe we could do that at Eton in front of all the boys.

• 31:22Rory Stewart?

  Yep. Well, there we are. That's a possibility. But that's your forfeit. I was hoping you were going to make me swim in the cold water and.

• 31:29Alastair Campbell?

  Would you rather do that than play the bagpipes?

• 31:30Rory Stewart?

  I'd much rather do that.

• 31:31Alastair Campbell?

  Would you? Okay. The thing I was, the point I was going to make is that the last time that I was invited to go and speak to you, and I said, I will do it as long as I can bring, I could bring a TV crew with me. And they said, oh, let's just, let's just put it on hold for now.

• 31:47Rory Stewart?

  Put it on hold for now. Good. All right. Well, Alastair, thank you very much. It's been a jolly, jolly 50th birthday party. Thank you.

• 31:54Alastair Campbell?

  Good. Well, listen, Rory, as it is your birthday, the other thing, as I am up in Scotland, we've got a lot of questions about, because I tweeted going to see Charles Kennedy's grave and playing the bagpipes. I always go every year, we're up there and play the lament that was played at his funeral. And it had, you always talk about. You know, Twitter being a horrible place and often it is, but this year I had like, I don't know, it's up to a million views and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of nice comments and people remembering Charles and so forth. It's not always horrible. And I think that's because it's music. And the other thing I'm planning for this year, Rory.

• 32:27Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 32:27Alastair Campbell?

  I plan to, I plan to try to, to get you to become generally more musical. My musical highlight of the year so far, yesterday, we have a friend of ours, Catherine MacLeod, who you may know was a journalist and then she worked for Alistair Darling. And we went to, she was up staying with us and we went to see some of her friends yesterday and two of them, Megan and Ewan, they are in a very, very famous folk band called Braebach. And I'm, they said that if I mentioned James Lindsay, their double bass player, he loves the podcast so much, he will probably have a heart attack. I don't want him to have a heart attack, but I want him to know that Megan and Ewan put on a

• 33:08Alastair Campbell?

  special performance just for us yesterday. It was absolutely brilliant. And in that spirit, Rory.

• 33:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 33:14Alastair Campbell?

  Given the day that this is, if you just sit very tight, sit very, very tight.

• 33:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 33:21Alastair Campbell?

  And I'll be back with you in a moment. Hold on.

• 33:23Rory Stewart?

  All right, go on then, sitting tight.

• 33:45Alastair Campbell?

  How was that?

• 33:46Rory Stewart?

  It was really lovely, Alistair. Thank you very, very, very much.

• 33:49Alastair Campbell?

  How do you think the drones sounded?

• 33:51Rory Stewart?

  Well, I see, this is the problem. I'm not properly musical. This is why I think I've got a weird relationship with you, rather like my father. My father was very musical and believed that I just wasn't making enough of an effort. But I genuinely think it's not just a question of effort. I think there's something wrong with my ear.

• 34:06Alastair Campbell?

  I played the pipes at a New Year's Eve thing down in Ard Gower, this little brewery called the Ard Gower Ales. And I was the only person, you'd think the Scottish Highlands would be sort of crawling with people who play the bagpipes. I was the only one there who could play the bagpipes. They asked me to play and it was freezing, freezing cold. And the, the bagpipes, this sounds weird, but they hate changes in temperature. So the fact is, Roy, my drones were off there slightly because I didn't want to spend the records at 15 minutes tuning them up just so you could, just you could sit there and wait for me to play Happy Birthday. But anyway, I hope you have a lovely birthday and we'll speak again next week. Speak next week. Lots of love.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 35:08Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 35:13Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 35:17Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9 and middle without parent.