17. Question Time: Austerity, diaries, and impostors

Join Rory and Alastair as they answer your questions on Austerity, John Bercow, protest, schools, carbon footprints, imposter syndrome, cheese, interview techniques, political diaries, and the Duc de Saint-Simon. 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 Creef. 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

  A BetterHelp ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day, every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy tailored to you to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com/rustpolitics.

• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the second episode of the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:49Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Asda Campbell.

• 1:51Rory Stewart?

  After the drama of this political week, today's episode is going to be mostly a Boris Johnson free zone, led by another 500 questions from you. So Anasta, where should we start?

• 2:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I want to start with a couple that are about us and this podcast. Peter Yarrow, you say you disagree agreeably, but have you changed each other's mind on anything? And related to that, John. Rory, would Alastair be more effective if he was less angry and more tolerant of other views? Alastair, would Rory be more effective politician if he was less tolerant and more ruthless?

• 2:33Rory Stewart?

  Well, why don't we start on that? Would I be a more effective politician if I was less tolerant and more ruthless?

• 2:38Alastair Campbell?

  I think you would. I think you would. I think you're a bit, I think you're a bit soft for this game sometimes.

• 2:44Rory Stewart?

  I think I do see the point of the way that you operate, and I think I'm learning that kind of clarity. But I do think sometimes on policy, you need to be able to have the objectivity and the critical thinking, which is a pretentious way of saying, I think sometimes if you're in permanent campaign mode, it's then quite difficult to flip back to sitting at your desk or sitting at the, in the cabinet room and really going back to first principles and working out what you really think regardless of the politics.

• 3:20Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Yeah, maybe. I mean, I'll tell you one thing that sprung to my mind with Peter Arrow's question about whether you've changed my mind on anything. I said this at the live show we did. I do find myself sometimes now when I'm about to tweet angrily, that I just sort of hold myself back and think, oh, no, Rory says I get too angry on social media. So I have found myself sort of pulling back. But you've yet to change my mind about any of the big policy issues. In fact, one question I've got to throw at you, Rory. How can you sit there, basically, Eric Selly says, and bemoan all that's going wrong in the world? Because basically, 13 years of austerity and underfunding is reducing

• 4:05Alastair Campbell?

  us to a third-rate country. Collapsing state, airports, NHS, DVLA, passports, social care. You, Rory, says Eric, were part responsible. Reply.

• 4:18Rory Stewart?

  Well, so I think this brings us, I think the way to reply is to get to the fantastic question from Matt, who basically is on the same line. So Matt says, could you please go more into the deficit and Britain being bankrupt when David Cameron came into government? I've never believed this claim. Wonder whether you could shed any more light on it. So I think this is completely central to the whole question. So let me, let me do my best attempt to describe why I was in favour of austerity. And I think there are four answers to that. And I can see you already wincing because I can see obviously politicians are not meant to have four reasons to say something. But I'll try to do them as quickly as possible. I think the first one is there are economic arguments for why you don't want to keep running a big deficit and ballooning up your debt, and they relate to inflation.

• 5:02Rory Stewart?

  I think the second thing is that there is a question about markets. In other words, the way in which your debt operates, the amount of interest you pay, the willingness of people to keep funding your government depends on the market's confidence that ultimately you're running a responsible financial system. And that is, that's pretty difficult to put a number on, but it seemed to me that at a time at which our deficit was running at a hundred and forty billion pounds a year, and it's amazing, if you look at a graph, during, you know, Thatcher, Major, Tony Blair, debt sits below fifty percent of GDP. Financial crisis comes along, two thousand and eight, and it explodes up. It starts growing at a hundred and forty billion pounds a year, shoots up to about

• 5:46Rory Stewart?

  eight, seventy, seventy, seventy-five percent of GDP when the Conservatives take over. If it had kept going on that chart, if the government hadn't tried to reduce the deficit, we get to the third problem, which is when another crisis comes along, you need a bit of fuel in the tank. If you allow your debt to keep growing, when Covid came along, we suddenly were in a position of having to borrow another three hundred billion pounds to deal with Covid. Debt to GDP shot up to about a hundred percent. But if we hadn't cut it over the previous twelve years, we would have been getting up closer to two hundred percent. And that brings the final argument. Where are we now? Where are we now? So we're at about a hundred percent now. So just to explain that, what happened is that George Osborne, David Cameron came in,

• 6:30Rory Stewart?

  they reduced the deficit dramatically and flattened debt to GDP at about the seventy percent mark. And that meant that when Covid came along. There was headroom to jump up to 100%, but if they hadn't held it down when Covid came along, we would have been jumping up to closer to 200%.

• 6:46Alastair Campbell?

  You see, I think you're falling into the trap that you accuse me of doing, which is you're not being objective about this because you're trying to justify your own decisions, but deep down, you probably think they're unjustifiable. I mean, which other country operated a similar austerity policy that is now doing as badly as we are?

• 7:05Rory Stewart?

  Weirdly, of course, the European Union had pretty strict austerity policies. They didn't talk about it very much, but there were these very strict fiscal rules operating in Europe. That was one of the reasons for the Greek financial crisis.

• 7:16Alastair Campbell?

  They're always happy.

• 7:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And that meant that within the eurozone, there was very, very limited ability for governments to increase their borrowing and sending. So Germany, for example, drove through what in effect you'd call an austerity package. Their policies were very similar.

• 7:30Alastair Campbell?

  Just answer me this, though. We're talking about our relative political ruthlessness. The one thing I would give to Cameron and Osborne is the utter political ruthlessness with which they pushed that through as a political campaign. Do you not at least accept that it was driven as much by politics as economics and it was actually just trying to hang the crash around Labour's neck?

• 7:53Rory Stewart?

  I think it was a lot of ruthless politics, and I agree with you on that. I think Gordon Brown did a very good job in the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, and I think it's very unfair to blame him in any way for what happened. I think if you were going to blame him, it's not because of his response to the financial crisis, it's that public spending was quite high when he went into that crisis.

• 8:11Alastair Campbell?

  Public spending was was something that we wanted to do.

• 8:14Rory Stewart?

  But but remember, he had this cyclical story. So he changed the rules.

• 8:18Alastair Campbell?

  No more boom and bust.

• 8:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the story was there'd be no more boom and bust, and he was always hoping that he could then bring the spending down. And of course, he caught himself at a moment where his spending was rising and the spending had to rise more. The final argument, though, I guess, is is the sort of political moral argument, which is that if governments don't have constraints on public spending, there are so many reasons for governments to keep making promises to spend more. There are so many good projects out there, almost limitless. If you are a prime minister, everybody is asking for money all the time. The NHS desperately needs more money, schools desperately need more money, roads desperately need more money. But if you answer all those requests and keep spending that money, you are basically driving up your debt and deficit. And you're putting the problem eventually on your children and grandchildren.

• 9:02Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 9:02Rory Stewart?

  Because at some point, you've either got to cut spending or increase taxes.

• 9:05Alastair Campbell?

  Because you keep telling me how busy you are, we've only got twenty five minutes. On you defending the indefensible, I'm going to move on. Uh, I promised on one of my Instagram rants, I promised Zayd Hussein that we would ask his question. What are our, our shared experiences of John Bercow? What are our views of Lindsay Hoyle? And what ideas do we have for the reform of the role of the speaker? Now, John Bercow, I would, my first main experience of John Bercow was that he phoned me up after my diaries came out to say he was really touched by my work for Bloodwise Charity. And would I like to have an event at the Speaker's House? And we had one every year thereafter where he gave us the Speaker's House for a fundraising event.

• 9:49Alastair Campbell?

  My second experience of John Bercow is watching him at an Arsenal match where he is one of the most unbelievably passionate football fans I've ever seen. Um, you can give a more political objective, a political analysis. And then of Lindsay Hoyle, I think Lindsay Hoyle is a good bloke. But I wish to God he would just do, be a little bit more proactive about, about calling out the, the lies in the House of Commons. And there was a great question from the master at the master. Would it not be a good idea to have a fact checker next to the speaker? Who could give immediate rebuttal when politicians say things that aren't true?

• 10:26Rory Stewart?

  I think it's a lovely idea. Um, on John Bercow, it's without being too pious, it's worth recording that he has been, uh, now, I think, quite clearly exposed as having done some pretty horrifying bullying within the House of Commons. To junior staff, which is something that you and I care about, and that needs to be called out. I think he made a very, very major decision, which was catastrophic for the country in trying to invoke a sixteen oh five precedent to stop Theresa May bringing back a withdrawal agreement third time. Uh, which actually killed the possibility, I think, of getting a moderate Brexit over the line with Labour's support. But I agree with you, he can be incredibly intelligent, he can be very courteous. He was always very kind to me, so I feel a bit bad

• 11:11Rory Stewart?

  uh, kicking him, but I'm afraid that there are serious reasons to be concerned about him.

• 11:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Okay, let's go on. Caroline Kay. Uh. She talks about growing up in the sixties and then also in the eighties and seeing lots and lots of protests. And she says, where are the protests, given that there is so much bad stuff going on in the country at the moment? And it's a very interesting question that, because, you know, we've talked about Johnson and the booze and all that stuff. But the fact is that there aren't that many protests going on. And I wonder whether it's because people think that protest is what you do on social media now.

• 11:44Rory Stewart?

  I'm sure that's right. I'm sure that's right. And I'm sure that's, I mean, protests basically traditionally have been driven, obviously, by young people. You look at those crowds in the sixties, they're eighty percent people under twenty five. And the question is, what is the culture of people under twenty five? And are they politically motivated in that way? Here's a question for you, Susan. What three places sites should every school child visit as part of their education? I would suggest Auschwitz, she says.

• 12:08Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, wow. Um, I would say a history museum, a science museum, and then for a field visit, I think the Killing Fields of France.

• 12:18Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 12:19Alastair Campbell?

  I think that that would be a very good thing to do. And of course, Brexit has made that more difficult, Rory.

• 12:23Rory Stewart?

  Here's my three, the caves of Lascaux in France, those amazing cave paintings, which are bizarre because it turns out that the paintings are almost identical from sort of thirty thousand years ago and from ten thousand years ago. So nearly twenty thousand years, they're painting in the same style.

• 12:39Rory Stewart?

  I'd like people to go to the Isle of Skye. I think there's no way of seeing geology, nature, ocean, rocks. In, it's like, you know, it's, it's incredibly beautiful. It's got all the romance of Scottish history. But you can also sometimes feel you're like on another planet.

• 12:57Alastair Campbell?

  You had, you'd have, you'd have to do that, Rory, all year, because Fiona and I went to Skye at a fairly busy time of the year last year. We, we swam in the fairy pools, which was pretty extraordinary, but it was unbelievably busy.

• 13:12Rory Stewart?

  Oh, was it?

• 13:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it really was. So if we're taking every school child in the country to Skye, we're going to have to stage that very, very, very carefully.

• 13:20Rory Stewart?

  Well, I guess most of the, the, most of the islands are amazing, so we could spread it out between the islands. I mean, I think huge argument for getting people to Iona, getting people up to the Orkneys would be incredible.

• 13:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And your third one?

• 13:33Rory Stewart?

  Jerusalem. I've just come back from Jerusalem. I was there three days ago. I, there's nothing like it. I mean, it is tragic, it's moving. The concentration of religious belief in the Dome of the Rock, the Wailing Wall, the Temple of the Holy Sepulchre, I mean, it's just extraordinary.

• 13:50Alastair Campbell?

  I also find, I also do, I've been both to Auschwitz and to the Yabishem Museum. I do find their museum particularly affecting and moving and educational. Martin Edwards, do we think that MPs should take, have to take a basic competence test and also a lie detector test?

• 14:14Rory Stewart?

  No, no, we shouldn't. It's a democratic right that we can elect anybody as an MP regardless of their competence and honesty.

• 14:21Alastair Campbell?

  Wow, but isn't that a bit of a problem?

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  It is, it is, well, actually, it was very weird. When I was in Iraq, I, I, we were setting up democratic elections for the first time in this council, I was in 2003, four, and the Iraqis kept arguing that you should only be entitled to stand for election if you had a master's degree or a doctorate. And I had to explain, you know, John, John Major was a non-graduate.

• 14:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Rory Stewart?

  When it came to parliament, and that that's not really our system.

• 14:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Um, how, here's one for us personally, Rory, Charlotte Baylor, how do we, that's you and I, square our relentless travelling around the world with our oft-expressed concerns for the future of the planet and the climate?

• 15:01Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:01Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I know, can I say something in your defence?

• 15:03Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 15:03Alastair Campbell?

  Because when we were up in your place in Scotland.

• 15:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:06Alastair Campbell?

  You have personally planted a lot of trees. I know that, I saw them, and I have planted trees by doing the off, the offsetting thing. But it's a fair point, isn't it?

• 15:17Rory Stewart?

  It's a fair point. On the other hand, particularly the stuff that I'm working on a lot at the moment, which is international development, I do not believe that you can run high-quality programmes in Rwanda or Malawi without getting out on the ground. I think it's very dangerous to believe that you can manage things well remotely. Here's one for you. Is there anything we're doing today that you think, this is from Alister as opposed to Alastair, that you think we'll look back on in thirty, fifty or a hundred years and feel unthinkable? Petrol cars, eating meat, unregulated social media?

• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I guess my, my hope is that we'll look back in fifty years and think, did we really used to think that if you had a certain mental health condition, there were jobs you couldn't do? I hope we'll look back in fifty years and think that the prisons that we have in fifty years are civilized and reforming and rehabilitative. But I don't hold up much hope, to be absolutely frank, where I am at the moment. I think the other thing, I think, is, you know, if you think about public health and how the debate on smoking has transformed in the last fifty years. I don't know whether the debate on drink might go in the same way. I doubt it. But again, I think that we may reach a point of thinking, my God, did we really used

• 16:32Alastair Campbell?

  to sort of drown ourselves in alcohol in that way? I don't know. But and on the social media regulation, that's another one where I'll believe it while I see it. What do you think?

• 16:41Rory Stewart?

  So for me, I think people will look back and be completely bewildered by how busy we made ourselves and how little time we gave ourselves for contemplation.

• 16:51Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 16:52Rory Stewart?

  The way in which we made emails, tweets, back-to-back Zoom meetings a living hell and what weird human beings we created through this complete overload of information and data.

• 17:05Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think that's probably a nice chilled moment at which to take a very short break.

• 17:10Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company informed 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.

• 17:21Speaker 04

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

• 17:27Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 17:31Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 17:34Speaker 05

  I'm not the first then.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under seventeen, not a minute without parent.

• 17:41Speaker 06

  How about a latte?

• 17:42Speaker 04

  Maybe dark roast?

• 17:43Speaker 06

  Vanilla?

• 17:44Speaker 04

  Caramel?

• 17:44Speaker 06

  Blueberry?

• 17:45Speaker 07

  You could get them to agree on one flavor or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over five hundred K-Cup pod varieties of fresh, flavorful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settling. Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 18:08Speaker 08

  Espolon Tequila. It arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead. Espolon Tequila. Balanced, delicious, perfect for nights out, nights in, and people who like to drink tequila. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth. Then hold on tight. 100% agave, 0% Ego. Espolon Tequila. For a real margarita, ride the rooster.

• 18:31Speaker 09

  Espolon Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Compaia America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.

• 18:38Speaker 10

  For the moments that matter, choose Curad Naturals. Infused with aloe vera and vitamin E, Curad Naturals bandages protect your unexpected scrapes, cuts, and burns while also moisturizing your skin. Find deeper relief with natural ingredients you can trust to start the healing. When life surprises call for the best, choose Curad, a deeper level of care. Shop the full collection on Amazon or visit curad.com to learn more.

• 19:15Rory Stewart?

  So here we are. We've got some great questions from Natasha, who asks, are there any female leaders in politics today you'd call out as charismatic and ones to watch? For starters, Prime Minister's Finland, outstanding New Zealand. And Jennifer, who are the most inspirational and promising female politicians you've ever met across the political world and ideological spectrum? I'd like to tell my daughter more about contemporary female politicians, but my limited knowledge of them only really extends to Theresa May, Hillary Clinton, and Angela Merkel.

• 19:41Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. The name that popped into my head when you started the question was Hillary Clinton. She was over in South Shields with David Miliband doing his annual lecture this week. I do, I think there is something happening. In fact, the speech I made in Portugal last week, I talked about all the women leaders who'd done really, really well on COVID. And I think there is such a kind of armoury of literature and research into the whole strong man theory of leadership, but actually, I think there is a sense of more women leaders emerging and frankly, often doing the job better. And I would, I do think, Jacinda Ardern, funnily enough, is getting a bit of a rough time in New Zealand

• 20:25Alastair Campbell?

  at the moment. She's not maybe, she's getting a touch of the Gorbachev syndrome. But actually, I think she does have something very, very special. All those that were mentioned by Natasha in Finland, Estonia, the Estonian Prime Minister, who's just done a, you know, a pretty big move this week, getting rid of quite a few of her, of her governments. So I think there is, there is something going on, which I think is, is good. And I think actually, it's partly driven by those parliaments where there have been, you know, they, they have actually made moves to, to, to insist on a certain level of female representation. I think it's a good thing.

• 21:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, in Afghanistan, there were some really remarkable politicians, a woman called Habib Sarabi, who was the governor of Bamian, Sima Samar, who ran the Human Rights Commission, extraordinary people. I think it's also worth bearing in mind that there have been also extremely controversial, slightly autocratic, big personality politicians, which we've seen in, in India, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, and in Britain.

• 21:25Alastair Campbell?

  Let's not talk about Margaret Thatcher, there's really, really no point in that. On a similar theme, Stephen Monroe, who runs, who works on the Corrane Ferry that I've talked about before, does Rory's wife influence his politics in the same way that Fiona influences Alistair's?

• 21:39Rory Stewart?

  Yes, particularly over education. She was a teacher in inner city schools in New York and Boston, very, very challenging schools. That was the first job she went into when she graduated. And I think she's really helped me to understand the way in which really good schools involve being very loving, developing very good relationships, but also knowing when to set boundaries and when to be strict.

• 22:05Alastair Campbell?

  Is she broadly in favour or against private education?

• 22:10Rory Stewart?

  Well, she didn't go to a private school herself, so I think she's skeptical. But I think she believes in really good schools. She does believe in quality and she thinks that her experience, particularly in difficult bits of Harlem, that she did get frustrated with an idea that people weren't setting high enough standards for children from difficult backgrounds, that you could challenge people and you could get much better performance out of them than some of her colleagues felt.

• 22:36Alastair Campbell?

  At Snail Clout, have you ever had imposter syndrome?

• 22:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, me all the time, yeah. I mean, I think I feel whenever I give a speech and I get too much applause or whenever people come up, I was on the plane, actually, your podcast house was doing very well, so that the flight attendant stopped the trolley next to me and said that she'd just been listening to it. And then the guy behind me on the seat, this is flying from London to Oman yesterday, said he was listening to it at the time at which he was sitting on the plane behind me. So at that point, I feel real imposter syndrome. I feel completely yucky. I don't feel I can sort of live up to this kind of view. How about you?

• 23:12Alastair Campbell?

  I had exactly the same on a plane the other day at Glasgow Airport, where the guy who was checking the tickets said, I've just been listening to your podcast. It is quite strange how many people are listening to it. I'll tell you when I had a really strong, I think any time I was in the presence of Mandela, I had a slight imposter syndrome. In fact, there was another question, by the way, what was our favourite Parliament building? And I think mine is Cape Town. But the other time when I had real imposter syndrome was during the Kosovo war, when General Wes Clark, who was the head of the whole NATO operation, and he had me in this room where he was basically taking me through the targeting plans. And I got, I realised at one point, he was sort of asking me whether I thought these targets were justified.

• 23:58Alastair Campbell?

  And I'm thinking, look, I'm quite up to making decisions and I'm perfectly happy to represent Tony Blair here in this NATO headquarters, but I think you're asking me whether you should bomb the Milosevic media machine.

• 24:15Alastair Campbell?

  So that was, I definitely had imposter syndrome. So, so, yeah, that was, that was a big moment of imposter syndrome.

• 24:21Rory Stewart?

  Now, Matthew, what is your favourite cheese?

• 24:25Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Rockford by, I mean, I'm addicted to it. I can eat it all.

• 24:32Rory Stewart?

  Very good, okay.

• 24:33Alastair Campbell?

  What's yours?

• 24:34Rory Stewart?

  Uh, well, I'm afraid it's a cheese from Beucastle in North Cumbria. Coincidentally in my constituency, but not just because it comes from my constituency.

• 24:41Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I see. So is that where you're gonna try and get your seat? When you get back, when Johnson's gone, okay.

• 24:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, perish the border is still what I'm very much in love with. And it's made by a lot of the milk comes from amazing guy called Steve Patkinson, who has some, some dairy cows, just sixty, herd of sixty, up on this amazing territory north of Patrins, called Beucastle Cheese.

• 25:00Alastair Campbell?

  Right, on food, James says he's going on a lads' trip to Jordan. And he wants to know what, he's going on a lads' trip to Jordan.

• 25:08Rory Stewart?

  Oh, for goodness sake.

• 25:08Alastair Campbell?

  And he wants to know what the food's like and what you recommend.

• 25:11Rory Stewart?

  Well, the food is amazing. I mean, the food is unbelievable. Um, it's Middle East food, so obviously all this aubergine eggplant stuff, uh, hummus, credible grilled meats. But above all, fantastic salads. I don't know whether that works with his vision of a lads' trip to Jordan.

• 25:30Alastair Campbell?

  No, there's one here. So there's a question here about Mumsnet and the interview that Mumsnet did with Boris Johnson, where the first question, which was from one of their followers, it was, why should we believe a word you say when it's proven that you're a habitual liar? And it was a very, very tough question. It was a very tough interview. And John Ashton asks, why are our main interviewers on BBC, et cetera, so tame and supine when we see proper interviewing like that by something like Mumsnet? And I do think the BBC at the moment has got a real problem. I thought the way that they don't talk about Brexit in relation to the economy going wrong, when it's so clearly a big part of it.

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  And even the thing about Johnson getting booed was sort of, you know, really downplayed. And I think they sort of think they're doing themselves a favour, but I think the opposite.

• 26:21Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's a difficult balance, though, isn't it? Because obviously... There is something wrong with the sort of Jeremy Paxton style of overly aggressive interviewing. You know, you remember he goes into every interview thinking, what is it? What is this lying, lying?

• 26:34Alastair Campbell?

  Why is this like, yeah, he claims he never said that, by the way.

• 26:36Rory Stewart?

  Well, all right. But I think that that style doesn't give a chance for a politician to actually come across with any kind of seriousness. Because you've just, in the Scottish sense, but equally, you're right. If you don't challenge, I mean, I think actually there's been some great interviewing done by Sky. I think Sky is really good across the board, actually, on on the way in which they're holding people to account and pinning people down. Um, here's a, here's a good question from Captain Grant, maybe, maybe as we move towards the end. Whose political diaries have influenced your thinking or persuaded you in some way? No mention of Alastair's diaries allowed. And what non-political diaries have you enjoyed?

• 27:12Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I find the second part of that easier to answer because I read for the first time last year in Alf Deutsch. But I read Anne Frank's diary, which was so not what I expected. It was absolutely one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read, partly because she's, for somebody so young to be such a brilliant writer is extraordinary. And it wasn't really just about the privations of war and and and hiding, being hidden. It was about sexual awakening. It was about relationships. It was about family. Um, and when Fiona and I were in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago, we actually, we visited the the house and

• 27:53Alastair Campbell?

  so, yeah, I think that had a massive impact on me because it's one of those books that everybody thinks they know. And of course, I would happily have sort of opined about the importance of Anne Frank's diary all my life, but having now read it. It is, I I get now just why it is such an extraordinary piece of literature.

• 28:12Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my, my, my response to that is much less impressive, but it is, if somebody's interested in geeking out, there's an incredible set of diaries which are available free on Kindle if you want by the Duke de Saint-Simon, and these are diaries describing his experience of Louis XIV's court. So it's very odd. It takes you right into the middle of France in the early seventeen hundreds. And the weird jockeying for power, the crazy, uh, touchiness.

• 28:42Alastair Campbell?

  I thought we were meant to be talking about my diaries.

• 28:46Rory Stewart?

  You are the Duke de Saint-Simon. Right, I think on that, it's a goodbye from me, Rory Stewart.

• 28:51Alastair Campbell?

  And it's a goodbye from me, Alastair Campbell. See you next week.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Ravenhead.

• 29:15Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 29:23Speaker 05

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 29:24Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Under 17.0 without parent.

• 29:29Speaker 08

  Espolon Tequila. It arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead. Espolon Tequila. Balanced, delicious, perfect for nights out, nights in, and people who like to drink tequila. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth, then hold on tight. 100% agave, 0% eagle. Espolon Tequila. For a real margarita, ride the rooster.

• 29:53Speaker 09

  Espolon Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Compaia America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.