81. Ex-New Zealand PM Helen Clark on monarchy, extreme poverty, and Jacinda Ardern

Alastair and Rory are joined by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark to discuss democracy, the rise of populism, the Monarchy, the importance of arts and culture, the United Nations development programmes and much, much more. TRIP Plus: 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. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen + Theo Young-Smith 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/rustaspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:44Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to another special episode of The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And I say special because we've got a very special guest. We're thrilled to have another former prime minister, another female former prime minister, another antipodean former prime minister in the form of Helen Clark, who was prime minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, who was leader of the Labor Party in New Zealand. I think I'm right in saying for even longer than my old boss was leader of the Labor Party here. You were leader of the Labor Party for 15 years. And have stayed very, very involved in public policy. You chaired the World Health Organization inquiry into COVID.

• 2:25Alastair Campbell?

  You are very into the whole extractive industries and how that might relate to climate. And you buzz around the world doing all sorts of things. And one thing I know that Rory wants to talk about in particular is the work that you did as the head of UNDP and focused on the United Nations Development Programme. But you come to us, to this splendid jazz club somewhere in Soho, hot foot from Prime Minister's Questions. I'm amazed that you even, I mean, why did you want to go and watch it, Helen?

• 2:57Speaker 02

  I love Prime Minister's Questions. I still see the snippets on the BBC News when I'm home. And I first began popping into PMQ when I was a student on a scholarship in London in 1976. And you'd queue outside to get in, no business, it passes those days. And so often when I've been in London, I've made sure I've got a card to the speakers gallery these days and go and watch.

• 3:21Alastair Campbell?

  And give us your, I didn't watch it today, and I suspect Rory didn't either. He's, yeah, he's confirming. Give us your assessment of what you saw.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  So it began with a to and fro, obviously, on the cost of living and the pressures families are under with mortgage payments, with food and energy costs and so on. But probably the news reporting out of it today, I would think, would be on the Scot Nats following up on the Supreme Court decision on whether the Scottish Assembly had the competence to call a referendum.

• 3:53Alastair Campbell?

  Parliament, you have to call it a parliament, Helen, you can't call it an assembly.

• 3:56Speaker 02

  My goodness, I've committed a mortal sin and more than half my ancestry is of Scottish descent. So there you are. But yeah, that was quite a big theme. And the line that the SNP ran was, given that we have won X number of elections since 2014, and it's clear that the people of Scotland support independence, quote unquote, what do you have to do to be able to leave a voluntary union? That was their argument.

• 4:20Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, if you were still in the Conservative government, what is the answer to that question? What do they have to do?

• 4:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think firstly, luckily, for those of us that are unionists, the SNP didn't succeed in winning more than 50% of the vote in the elections. And actually, the polling at the moment suggests they're very far from being able to point to polls showing a majority of Scots in favour of independence. Furthermore, Very clearly at the time, and this is going to annoy Scott and I, so we're going to take to Twitter and attack me, but.

• 4:48Alastair Campbell?

  Rory's very sensitive to Twitter commentary, Helen, I have to warn you.

• 4:51Rory Stewart?

  A once in a generation choice. And I think it's really important that you don't do a referendum and then because you don't like the result, come along again in five, six years' time and run it again.

• 5:02Alastair Campbell?

  Now, what about the other referendum, Helen? Give us your sense of what Britain's position in the world is right now, how Britain is seen around the world, not least in your part of the world, and what you think the impact of Brexit has been.

• 5:16Speaker 02

  Well firstly, with a New Zealand hat on, of course, there's enormous affection for Britain. A highlight of so many young Kiwis is to come to the UK on the two-year working holiday visa. So many of us have literally all our ancestry from the UK, a lot of roots here. We, of course, have got a very good free trade agreement with Britain following recent negotiations.

• 5:40Alastair Campbell?

  Very good from a New Zealand perspective.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  Very good from a New Zealand point of view. I understand that there's some questioning in some quarters of whether it's too good for Australia and New Zealand, which is another matter. But I think, I mean, obviously, I think we watch with some concern when you read that Britain's GDP could be down 4% a year because of the impact of Brexit. That's got to be a concern to British people because it's about living standards, it's about level of prosperity. And then I think the recent multiple changes of heads of government and cabinets and ministries and so on, it's all been a very unsettling period for Britain.

• 6:18Rory Stewart?

  And I think there's a very interesting analogy, isn't there? Of course, a sort of strange historical irony, which is that Britain joining the European Community had a very profound effect on New Zealand. In fact, there are strange echoes, aren't there? Because about 50% of New Zealand's trade was with Britain, about 50% of, this is in the 1970s, about 50% of Britain's trade was with the European Union when we left. And the impact on the New Zealand economy in the short term was very, very dramatic. People believe that GDP may have shrunk by as much as 20% because of Britain cutting its trading ties with New Zealand and joining the European Community. And in fact, I think many of us that have been worried about the impact on Britain of leaving the European Union have looked at the experience of New Zealand losing 50% of its trade overnight and how long it took to recover.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  It required an incredible adjustment by New Zealand, really knocked us for six. And of course, there was tremendous sympathy for New Zealand in many parts of the British Parliament. You know, you look at the debates on Brexit, on the entry to the European Union, and you'll find, you know, members of parliament saying, "Poor little New Zealand, how's it going to cope?" And, you know, the British terms of entry did, you know, provide some access for New Zealand. And Britain was always number one champion for New Zealand access within the European Union, followed by the Germans, the Dutch, and in more recent years, the Swedes. But the ties with Britain were obviously much deeper and stronger than with other friends.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  So obviously, we have to work a lot harder now to be heard in Brussels without a British voice and support.

• 7:52Rory Stewart?

  Sorry, just very quickly, it was nearly 10 years of damage, wasn't it? Almost 10 years of sustained damage.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  We went through hell. The 70s were bad, the 80s, when the financial bubble burst for us, end of 87, were bad. It took us a long time to find our feet.

• 8:07Alastair Campbell?

  Do you look at, you mentioned the turnover of British prime ministers. You were there nine years. Your sense, I imagine, through your life of British politics has been fairly stable. And what have you made of the churn? And what do you think it says about, not just about British politics, but about politics, maybe, and democracy more generally?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  I think democracy is under pressure. The rise of populism has had a profound impact on the politics of the US, the UK, profound impact, I think, in Italy, in France. You know, the parties of the broad centre-left-right, let's face it, barely fanned off the far-right. We've just seen what is often referred to as the neo-Nazi party emerge as the second biggest party in Sweden. I mean, there are quite a lot of concerning trends around Western democracies.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  So I think in a way, there's a broad centre that needs to come together against populism and argue for reason and logic and evidence-based policy to try and get us back on a, you know, a better track.

• 9:23Rory Stewart?

  You've been watching PMQs for a very, very long time, as you say. Do you think the style of British politics has changed? Do you, can you remember who was Prime Minister when you first watched it or who would have been? Was it Edward Heath when you first saw PMQs or Harold Wilson?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  So it was seventy six. So didn't, didn't Harold win two elections in seventy four?

• 9:46Alastair Campbell?

  And then Jim Callaghan.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  And then Jim Callaghan came along. Look, my memory of nineteen seventy six was it was not as sort of shouty as it is today. Today it was very difficult even speaking, almost sitting almost above the key players. Very difficult to hear above the noise. There's not much of a civil exchange goes on.

• 10:09Rory Stewart?

  No, it's become a bit kind of like a sort of, it feels sometimes a bit like a sort of, you know, like Burnley Football Stadium when you go.

• 10:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. I mean, politics is always a stage, you know, theatre where we play out often, you know, quite profound differences of opinion, but we play it out within, within rules. But I think the referee struggles with the British House of Commons.

• 10:29Alastair Campbell?

  What did you make of the, that's presumably the first time you've seen Rishi Sunak in the flesh and Keir Starmer.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Keir also.

• 10:35Alastair Campbell?

  So what did you make of, of them on first sight?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Well, I think, you know, Keir comes to it with that background of being the Crown Prosecutor. So quite, quite logical and not, in my opinion, using hyperbole. Rishi comes to it with, you know, sort of background of finance and, you know, having those interests. Quite clinical. So I didn't feel that either of them emoted, right? So I think, you know.

• 11:05Alastair Campbell?

  Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

• 11:07Speaker 02

  No, I think it's, I think it's a good thing. I think populism's at, at bay. But of course, what is baying is the crowd on each side. And that's what makes it difficult to hear.

• 11:17Alastair Campbell?

  When Tony Blair was always, we was, we found out eventually that as long as he was close to the microphone, people outside could hear, but inside you can't hear. And with, with all that kind of barracking going on. I mean, your politics is pretty rough, but nothing like as rough as ours.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Nothing like as rough as this and nothing like as rough as the Australian public.

• 11:39Alastair Campbell?

  Would you say the Australians are even rougher than ours?

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Well, they're rough, but the chamber is bigger, so it kind of goes into the ether more. But your chamber is so intimate, you know, they're barely sort of a, you know, fist punch away from each other.

• 11:54Alastair Campbell?

  Two sword lengths plus a bit.

• 11:55Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 11:57Alastair Campbell?

  And what was your, when you were in Parliament and when you were Prime Minister, you didn't have to do the same as the Australian Prime Minister does of going to Parliament literally every day, did you?

• 12:06Speaker 02

  We met three days a week and I personally went to questions two of those three days. I'd go Tuesday and Wednesday, usually reserve Thursday for going out around the, you know, provincial centres in New Zealand and my deputy would do the questions. But they could ask questions to the Prime Minister every day.

• 12:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  And you also had a media stand-up every day. I mean, you did your post-cabinet press conference on Monday in a full theatret. And then every day that you walked to parliamentary questions, there was a media stand-up. On a Tuesday morning, when you had your party caucus, there was a media stand-up.

• 12:41Alastair Campbell?

  Even when you had nothing to say?

• 12:43Speaker 02

  Well, they always wanted you to say something.

• 12:46Alastair Campbell?

  Alan, the rule is to you decide when you want to speak to them, not the other way around.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  I mean, I knew every back corridor to get to places, but they'd always pop up.

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  And just back to Brexit briefly, what, if you were to be asked by somebody who's interested in your part of the world, where do you assess the importance, relative importance of your relationships with other parts of the world? What are the most important relationships now for New Zealand? How would you frame them?

• 13:15Speaker 02

  Number one is Australia. Of course, many New Zealanders live in Australia and we have long had a Trans Tasman travel agreement and free trade area where we enjoy open access to each other's countries. And Australia obviously will always be a major trade partner. So number one is Australia. But then I think in trade terms, China's loomed very large. European Union is very important to us as a whole. And of course, when Britain was in, even more important as a whole. The UK remains an important partner. US, Japan, Korea, you know, the ASEAN bloc.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  We tend to think of, you know, in trade terms, what matters to us and that's the grouping.

• 14:01Rory Stewart?

  One of the things I'd love to get a sense of is... Whether you can explain to our audience what politics is and how the difference between your experience as a really experienced politician, I mean, you really lived it, spent nearly a decade as Prime Minister, and I think you were in active politics for 20 years before you became Prime Minister, so you really get it. What do you think the public maybe doesn't quite pick up about the reality, the day-to-day reality of being a politician compared to maybe what they see on television, or what the public feel angry about, or how they compare it to other professions? What makes it a unique profession? What's the substance of this job?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Well, I think what politics does is often exaggerate the differences between parties for differentiation, and the reality is that there's a lot of policy that's ongoing without a lot of change between governments of centre-right and centre-left. But that's not so often on display. There's a lot of collegial work, you know, the committee work, for example, particularly with the mixed-member proportional system that New Zealand now has, that's the voting system, where it's very unusual for a government party to get a majority in its own right. You have to reach out to others. You see, in the nine years, three terms, which I had as Prime Minister, I never had

• 15:27Speaker 02

  Labour as a majority in the parliament. I had to do deals, frankly, and those deals would involve deals on budgets, on positions, primarily on confidence votes, because you can't form a government unless you can assure the Governor General, representing what was, who was then the Queen, now the King, that you command a majority in parliament. So while New Zealand politics is robust, proportional representation has forced a lot more cross-party discussion. Now, obviously, to form your majority, you're mostly speaking with the smaller parties. It might be the Greens, it might be the New Zealand First Party, it might have been United Future, it might have been the Maori Party, there's a range of options.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  But also what people don't see is that sometimes you will have the minor parties completely opposed to something, like a free trade agreement, where you walk across the aisle and you get the votes from the Conservatives.

• 16:22Alastair Campbell?

  Are you surprised at the level of resistance within much of UK politics to looking at the revision of our electoral system?

• 16:32Speaker 02

  No, I'm not, I'm not surprised, uh, because if you're in one of the major parties as I was, I didn't support the change. I didn't support it because I knew it would be hell, uh, to go through the transition. It was very, very difficult. Because when you first make the step to MMP, and, and we were in a position of weakness really when it, when it happened. We, and in the first MMP election, we got twenty eight percent of the vote.

• 16:58Alastair Campbell?

  Just explain what MMP is and how it works.

• 17:00Speaker 02

  So it's, it's a, our parliament is proportional to the votes cast for parties that get over four percent of the vote, which is the entry threshold. With the exception that if a party wins one seat, it then gets proportionally represented, even if it got under the, actually the five percent threshold. Uh, so basically if Greens get ten percent of the vote, they get ten percent of the hundred and twenty seats. Uh, you know, that, that's, that's how it goes. Um, Jacinda Ardern's, uh, uh, as leader of the party, they actually won fifty percent last time, which is absolutely staggering. Uh, and, you know, may never happen again because it's, it's, it's so difficult.

• 17:46Speaker 02

  But we are highly proportional. It does require accommodations across party lines.

• 17:50Rory Stewart?

  It allows, it allows, um, new parties to enter, doesn't it? It's one of the things that I've always been struck by. I, I ran as an independent to be mayor of London and I was polling, I suppose, at tops, still under twenty percent. Which of course is no use at all in a first past the post system, but in a proportional system, you know, with luck, you, you'd get a chunk of the seats in the assembly. And it allows you to, if you're not in the big parties, allows you to believe that you could refresh things, bring in new ideas, bring in new parties. Has that happened in New Zealand?

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Yes, uh, parties arise out of almost nowhere. Usually from someone who's left a major party and has enough force of personality or, or point of distinction to be able to gather a following. There's been a, a number of those. But to, to come back to that question of why is it resisted here? I mean, the major parties will resist it because they know there'll be quite a transition. But the transition can be positive, that's my point in the end, reflecting on the experience. Because what it enabled us to do with Labour was shed those to our right, who who should have been in a different party anyway, shed those to the far left. Those who are green could go somewhere else.

• 18:59Speaker 02

  I mean, people went in all directions and we had the chance to rebuild a coherent social democratic party. Our counterparts, the National Party, equivalent of British Conservative, had a similar experience. They lost people to their their right. They lost people to the more to the the centre than they were. So it was quite a shakeout and it enabled more, you know, if you like, the parties to become more cohesive. It didn't stop them in the end becoming major parties. The first MMP election, the Conservatives got around thirty five percent, Labour twenty eight. But over the years, the the parties tended to get back with the two party share, normally being up about eighty percent for the major parties.

• 19:41Rory Stewart?

  One last thing which I'm fascinated, so I I was nothing like a proper politician the way that you were. I was I was in the House of Commons for only ten years. But I came from having been a civil servant and I was very, very surprised by the difference between being in government as a civil servant and being a MP and then a minister. I sort of thought being a minister would be a bit like being a senior civil servant and I'd be able to run a department like a senior civil servant and I could sort of.

• 20:10Alastair Campbell?

  She's smiling at your naivety, Rory.

• 20:12Rory Stewart?

  And and I thought that it would be very much about, you know, grappling with in real detail for an enormous amount of time with individual policies in the way that I would have done as a civil servant. One of the things I picked up very quickly, which I wasn't expecting as an outsider coming in, is just how much it is a team sport. There isn't that much time spent having deep, earnest, ten-hour conversations about policy. A lot of it is about voting with the whips, getting the vote out, making sure you land the blows on the opposition, getting your messaging right. That I think what surprised me is this sort of tension, I suppose, between campaigning and a civil service style of governing. And I wonder whether you could reflect a bit on that.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Yes, and I'd also reflect on the fact that when you come from, say, a position where you have a lot of knowledge about a particular thing, and then you come into politics, and then into a ministry, actually, you have to be able to take the helicopter view over a broader area than you yourself will have direct expertise in. And some people really struggle with that, because they're used to being, you know, the font of knowledge on a particular thing. But that's not how it works. And as you know, even when you're a minister, you still had to deal with, you know, dangerous dogs back in the constituency, or why were the rural bus services not turning up? So you become very much a jack or jill

• 21:40Speaker 02

  of all trades. You know, you end up knowing a little about a lot. And yes, the ministerial job will take quite a lot of time, but the constituency takes a lot of time, the party takes a lot of time, right? So, yeah, much more multitasking than if you're a civil servant working on a particular desk.

• 21:57Rory Stewart?

  And how about this team player thing? I mean, I'm very interested in how much of a team sport it is, that it's never really a solitary sport.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  No, you're right. No, you're absolutely right. This is not tennis, right? It's not tennis singles. It's cricket, it's rugby, it's where you have to pack down together and put up as much of a united front if you can. And once a party can't do that, it's in trouble. And it's a bit the story, isn't it, of how parties here have pulled themselves apart in recent years? I mean, Brexit cut through, you know, both the major parties in quite fundamental and divisive ways. So, you know, it'll take

• 22:42Speaker 02

  Well, maybe that old cohesion will never come back, you know, and in my view, British politics would probably be healthier for making a transition to something like mixed member proportional representation where you let that fall, you know, field of flowers bloom, you'll have, you know, a range of parties. You've got a range of parties in Parliament now. It's not like you're used to having just two parties.

• 23:06Alastair Campbell?

  Do you not worry that it could open the door to popul- open the door even wider to populism?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Well, they'll be there in some form, right? So Farage would have his party and who knows, in a bad year, he might get 15% of the vote, like the far right in Sweden, maybe he'd get 20%. But I don't think they're ever going to be the first major party in a British election. So they'll be there. But is it better to have, you know, the old story, inside, I won't use the word, urinating out, or outside urinate again?

• 23:43Alastair Campbell?

  The point you made as well about how, I think what you were saying is if you're a Prime Minister, you have to be sort of vaguely on top of everything. You can't be across the detail of everything. But I was interested that you, I think I'm right in saying, you, as well as being Prime Minister, you appointed yourself Minister of Arts, Culture and Heritage. Why did you do that?

• 24:04Speaker 02

  Well, I felt that this was a sector of enormous importance to New Zealand life. And when you looked at surveys of how New Zealanders spent their leisure time, a greater proportion actually spent it on arts and culture and crafts than ever spent it actively in sport, right? But this was never really acknowledged and everyone thinks of us, you know, great sporting country, we're quite good at rugby, cricket, a few things.

• 24:27Alastair Campbell?

  You throw away very large leads at the moment.

• 24:30Speaker 02

  That was a pathetic performance the other day, but anyway, went to sleep in the second. Well, it doesn't help to have someone sent off 10 minutes before the end, does it? But anyway, I felt that this needed attention and I felt that through the arts and culture and acknowledging New Zealand's unique heritage and combination of peoples that.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  We could express our national identity and show the world we're more than just sports. So yes, I put money into film funds to get our stories made because no one else will make them. Into the performing and visual arts. Yeah, very proud of what we did. So that was the reason.

• 25:09Alastair Campbell?

  And we're going to have a break in a minute, then we'll come back and talk about, I know Rory wants to talk about development. But just final question on the UK, looking at, you've followed our politics closely, you know a lot about politics and campaigns around the world. Do you look at the current landscape in the UK and see any way that the Tories can win again?

• 25:27Speaker 02

  I think it will be hard because it's already been a 12 year run. In New Zealand, the tolerance for a government only just runs to nine years. No one's done more than nine years since the Holier government from 1960 to 72. Now, this is half a century ago, right, that we had the last government that lasted 12 years. Now, I know in Britain, before Tony Blair came to power, conservatives were in for 18 years. It's a long run. But whether people are as tolerant of that kind of long run now as they were then, I guess, you know, only the next election will tell. But for me, I went up for a fourth term because the judgment still was that,

• 26:12Speaker 02

  you know, we didn't have a lot of chance, but I probably had the best chance. But it was too hard. You know, so nine years was kind of it.

• 26:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Well, listen, that's lovely to talk to you so far. I know we'll come back after a very short break. And Rory, you can fire away all your questions about development and you can try and get Helen to endorse your view of how development should work as you eat a sandwich at the end of this first half. We'll take a break while Rory eats.

• 27:15Alastair Campbell?

  So, welcome back to this special episode of The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 27:19Speaker 02

  And me Rory Stewart.

• 27:21Alastair Campbell?

  And Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand. And before we get on to development Rory, during the break Rory confessed, I've banned Rory from eating on the podcast Helen, because I find eating, the sound of eating on a podcast ruins it. But Rory had a marmalade sandwich in the break. And you did quite a good impersonation of Her Majesty the Queen in that scene with Paddington Bear. Paddington Bear, isn't it amazing how everything ties up, who somebody has posted a graphic of Rory Stewart on social media as Paddington Bear. So can we briefly ask you about the Queen? And how New Zealand reacted to what was one of the major events of this year, which was the death of Queen Elizabeth?

• 28:04Speaker 02

  Well firstly, I thought that the video the Queen did for her 70th Jubilee with Paddington Bear was one of the most touching things I'd ever seen. You know, "I have one too", she said as Paddington offered her a sandwich. And the sight of Paddington kind of stumbling with the tea everywhere. It was just side-splittingly funny. But Rory's taken it too much to heart, eating it on the programme.

• 28:32Alastair Campbell?

  He's got his tea now as well.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  But to be more serious, no, I think it was a time of reflection for everybody. The Queen had not been in New Zealand for 20 years. I hosted her as Prime Minister in 2002, 2002.

• 28:52Alastair Campbell?

  That was her last visit.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  That was her last visit. And I recall when I met her at the chogum in Kampala in 2007. I said to her, "Your Majesty, the Government and people of New Zealand would be very pleased to welcome you to our shores again." And she said to me then, You know, Prime Minister, Philip and I are not getting any younger. And it was a bit of a sad message in a way because I felt she would never come again, which was the, which was the case.

• 29:22Alastair Campbell?

  Because she'd done a visit every decade, hadn't she?

• 29:24Speaker 02

  She had been ten times to New Zealand as Queen. So in her first half century, she'd come roughly, on, on average.

• 29:31Alastair Campbell?

  Twice a decade.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, five, every five years. And she was there during the coronation tour at a, at a very special time when there was a major um tragedy in New Zealand with a train crash caused by a volcanic lahar hitting the track. And so she became part of the, the grieving of, of that and it always left a very good memory. But she came many times. I met her many times, particularly at Commonwealth summits, but also coming uh to the United Kingdom and, and meeting her here. So, no, it was a, it was a sad time and I think everybody reflected on this incredible life of service. I mean, it was incredible, the sense of duty. Um, so, no, we, we won't see her like again, is, is the truth.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  I mean, I have um a great deal of respect for King Charles, who I've also met on many occasions in New Zealand, uh at Gallipoli, uh here, and he will bring his, his own touch. I like the fact that he was out advocating for nature conservation, sustainable development before it was the, the thing to do. I think that'll go down very well in, in New Zealand. Uh, and I, you know, really wish him well. He, he'll be different and he'll make his own mark.

• 30:44Rory Stewart?

  Can I bring you on to the next phase of your life, which is one that touches me very closely, which is you, you moved on to run the UN Development Programme and then you did run to be Secretary General of the UN. And um certainly in, in Britain, many of us were cheering you on uh for that role.

• 31:02Alastair Campbell?

  Including Gordon Brown.

• 31:03Rory Stewart?

  You would have been, you would have been the first, first woman in the role and it would have been a very, very exciting moment, apart from being a very, very good candidate in general. Um, so, one of the things that obviously is at the heart of many of our issues today is extreme poverty globally. And we set an objective in two thousand of ending extreme poverty, making poverty history, and then again in twenty thirty with the Sustainable Development Goals. And the truth is that in some places, we're going very much backwards. I mean, there is many people in extreme poverty today in Africa, slightly more in fact than there were in 1980. Malawi has had 15 billion spent on it over 15 years and the poverty

• 31:46Rory Stewart?

  rate has increased from 70.3 to 71%. And it's something that should be eminently doable, to lift people above $2 a day, and these are people living in extreme destitution, as you know, who may be eating only one meal a day and whose children often are not in school, incredibly vulnerable to diseases, would cost us a, you know, about 0.1% of global GDP to do it, and yet we're not doing it. What's going on here? And why haven't we managed to tackle global poverty in our lifetimes?

• 32:20Speaker 02

  Well, you're right, the trends have been very negative the last couple of years. With that first year of COVID, we saw a rise in the numbers living in extreme poverty for the first time this century. And if you look at the impact on, say, the Human Development Index, it was a staggering proportion of countries who actually went backwards on that index, on the human development value, in 2020 and also 2021. So I think what's going on is what we call at the Partnership for Maternal Newborn and Child Health, which

• 32:59Speaker 02

  I'm the board chair of, we call it the CCC Crisis, COVID, Climate and Conflicts. And the compounding effects of these simultaneous crises, the sort of permy crises, as it were, have been absolutely devastating. Now, I mean, COVID ain't over, but...

• 33:22Speaker 02

  With vaccines, we can mitigate the worst impacts of it, although, of course, the the rollout to the Malawis of the world has been absolutely shocking, and that's a really indictment on global solidarity. But the, as the effects of what's happening to our climate deepen, of course, we have more extreme weather events, putting more and more pressure on food production. And I think that an important point to make about priorities and development assistance is investment in sustainable agriculture for the people living on the margins with the plot of land where, you know, you need irrigation because the rain isn't coming, you need water storage facilities.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  I mean, reinvesting in agriculture, which went very out of fashion among Western donors, I think would be quite important. But then, you know, you pile on for a number of countries, the devastating impact of conflict. And look, look, our media is dominated by the Ukraine war, which is tragic. But let's highlight another, which is the, the war that has been going on in northern Ethiopia. Now, Ethiopia, Rory, in your time and when Alistair was working out of Downing Street, it was a bit of a development success story.

• 34:39Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely.

• 34:40Speaker 02

  You know, the famine story had, had gone.

• 34:41Rory Stewart?

  Eight percent growth annually, right the way through from the 1980s, almost doubled its GDP per capita, and then suddenly collapses into civil war.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  That's right. Collapses in civil, civil war. And they say that, you know, anywhere from 300 to 600,000 people, maybe a million people have died in Tigray because of war.

• 34:59Rory Stewart?

  And, and people barely covering it. And of course, eastern Congo again, too, at the moment. But, and one of the things, I've just taken over as the, the president of GiveDirectly, which does direct cash transfers to communities, particularly focusing on the extreme poor. And I'm noticing a loss of pushback now from populations in Europe and the United States against international development, that often now, when I tweet out or we're talking about programs, you get an immediate pushback, saying, we've got enough problems at home. And and I think it is a combination of energy crisis, inflation, and also a sense of despair, a sense that we haven't actually made as much progress on development as people thought we might be able to in sixties and seventies.

• 35:43Alastair Campbell?

  Hold on, hold on, Rory, it's also it's also it's also a political choice. You know, I was going to ask Helen what what you think of the fact the UK government, which was, I think, under Labour and Conservatives, seen as a leader.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  You were a development superpower.

• 35:59Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  You know.

• 36:00Alastair Campbell?

  And we've now abolished the Department for International Development and given up on the pledge to have 0.7% of GDP spent. Now, you saw Andrew Mitchell, who's a friend of both Rory and mine, and is a developmentist. I think we both acknowledge his commitment. But the government as a whole has pushed back on it. I mean, what does what does that say about international solidarity?

• 36:21Speaker 02

  So I think, you know, for the for countries in the West, the relationships with the global South are so much better when there's international solidarity, where people feel you're on you're on their side, you know, you're prepared to do your bit to help. I mean, never underestimate the huge soft power that came with that big development budget. And I really hope that, you know, when the the two tests for getting back to the the 0.7 are met, that this can be done as as as quickly as possible. But I think it was good for the United Kingdom as it was good for those who were on the, you know, the recipient end of the of of

• 37:03Speaker 02

  the money. But, look, we all know that, you know, the politics will say, hey, people are hungry in Britain, they're cold in Britain, the the bills are high. But I I think the the sort of moral case for aid isn't, in the end, the one that often resonates. The case is that as

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Developing countries become emerging economies, this opens up markets for goods and services. There's the argument that development and prosperity also, in most cases, will bring with it greater cohesion and peace in a country. So it's not going to lapse into civil war and conflict and cause problems for its neighbours and the world. There's the argument that if countries are healthy and capacitated and can have a decent health system and other administrative apparatus in place, that the chances are if you get a disease outbreak, you can nip it in the bud before it becomes something much bigger. So there are a lot of self-interest cases to be made for the West to be funding development.

• 38:05Rory Stewart?

  Do you think then we could, I mean, I would love to feel that within our lifetime, we could end global poverty, that extreme poverty could be history. And I'd love, obviously, from the angle I come in, to see us much more generous with cash and believing in people and trusting their dignity and trusting the extreme poor to know what their priorities are. But do you think that is likely? Do you think we will be able to do that? Do you think the practical case, the moral case can come together to make that something that happens in the next 20 years?

• 38:36Speaker 02

  I think so, but I think we need to be very, very focused. Let's face it, even before Covid, we were off track on all these goals. And there were reports coming out of a range of the development think tanks saying that by 2030, we were still likely to have at least, what, 6% in extreme poverty, which is quite a significant number. So I think we need to refocus on where the challenges are, focus the support, attention, opening up the fiscal space, supporting the governance capacity in the countries where

• 39:15Speaker 02

  the greatest challenges are. And I think the UK, under both governments, both sides of the line, was very focused on the least developed and low-income countries. That's where the focus needs to be. And as I say, put more focus now on climate resilient agriculture for the small holders.

• 39:35Alastair Campbell?

  You mentioned lack of global solidarity, and you've had a ringside seat with both outside and within the United Nations. Do you think the United Nations is fit for purpose? And is that inbuilt division now between the dictatorships of China and Russia?

• 39:50Alastair Campbell?

  And the democracies and with Trump still on the scene worries about America. Do you think it is even possible for the United Nations to to bring that global solidarity with that split right at the top table that's that seems to be permanent?

• 40:06Speaker 02

  Well, what one would hope is that you could get back at least to a situation where despite the significant geopolitical tensions, you could have countries cooperating on what are shared interests, like a better pandemic preparedness response system, like an effective response to the great challenge of climate change, like getting a decent new treaty around the ocean areas that are beyond borders and national jurisdictions. We have a range of shared interests. Let's remember that in 2020, the world celebrated the 40th

• 40:47Speaker 02

  anniversary of the eradication of smallpox. That was achieved during a Cold War. You know, people were able to come together and and focus. Now, you know, at the height of this devastating war in Ukraine, you know, Russia's clearly on a on another journey. I think the China relationship becomes extremely important, and I'm quite encouraged by the the talks, highly choreographed, but sending important messages that President Biden and President Xi could talk constructively around a range of issues. We need to really focus on what needs our joint attention and and pack in behind that and use the multilateral

• 41:31Speaker 02

  system to advance discussions and negotiations where it really matters.

• 41:36Rory Stewart?

  Do we need big structural changes? I mean, it's there's a temptation to think the UN system is pretty broken. The Secretary General was remarkably silent of the Russian invasion of Ukraine initially, was obviously paralyzed and presumably had political problems coming out speaking. We've seen ever since Libya a real difficulty of getting the Security Council to coalesce again together. And most countries I go to, it feels as though the credibility of the UN system is really under threat, partly because other models have emerged. You know, this isn't the 90s anymore, when there's a sort of big dominant Western liberal model. So do you think we need structural change, or it's just a question of working with what we've got and focusing on priorities?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's hard hats on. I chaired a discussion on this at a kind of discreet leadership meeting recently, and a former deputy secretary general of the UN reminded us that the UN kind of made it through decades of Cold War and still provided a forum, a stage for people to state their positions and cooperate where they could. So I think the question is whether we can reach a kind of, I don't want to say an equilibrium, because it's not the point I want to make, but at least where we can, on the issues where we

• 42:58Speaker 02

  have to work together, do that even though we retain quite significant differences on, from a values point of view, of invasions of other people's territory and so on. So hard hats on, I think. I don't think structural change is terribly likely. The Security Council, the permanent five, if you've got a vote, no one votes for, no turkey votes for an early Christmas, I guess. I mean, it will be expanded at some point, but that's also a tough discussion. But I don't think that's the real issue. I think the real issue now is to get back to some diplomacy, to find the space to address the issues we have to work on together.

• 43:39Rory Stewart?

  And yeah, sorry, I'm going to hand to Alistair here, but I think just my final note on that is my worry is that we're losing the will, that countries, even countries which haven't gone populist, have gone more isolationist, that there's a tendency across North America, across Europe, for countries to turn in on themselves. Their interest in exporting values, their interest in international development seems to be waning. People don't want to play a global role on the same one. Anyway, Alistair, over to you, sorry.

• 44:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I was actually going to ask you, Helen, what you learnt from the work you did with Ellen Johnson Serleaf in co-chairing the inquiry into the WHO handling of COVID, because it strikes me that what you ended up saying was that China could have done better. The WHO could have done better and most of the big individual countries around the world could have done better. So you talked about pandemic preparedness. Are we any better prepared, you think, for the next time this this happens, which surely

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Not yet, not yet. It's a work in progress and it remains to be seen.

• 44:39Alastair Campbell?

  And how does that happen within that nationalist environment, populist environment that Roy's talking about?

• 44:42Speaker 02

  So what our finding was, in effect, was that the WHO didn't let the world down. The world let down WHO.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  The international health regulations are not fit for purpose. They don't facilitate, but they don't give the WHO the right of access to the site of an outbreak. This needs to be immediate. This needs to be in the international health regulations. Isn't it a crazy world where in the middle of a war, the International Atomic Energy Agency has the right of access to nuclear power plants under attack? And the WHO can't go to Wuhan? Come on. I mean, this has to happen. Secondly, A, being denied access. B, the WHO has no right, under the international health regulations, to publish information that it has, to, you know, call the world's attention. It has to get the permission of a country. When you're dealing with a very opaque country, this isn't so easy to get.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  So our conclusion was that January was a lost month because the international health regulations did not facilitate the job of the WHO. But even when the WHO declared the public health emergency of international concern the 30th of January, most countries did three parts of nothing in February, and that's when the pandemic accelerated.

• 45:58Rory Stewart?

  And the UK was a dramatic example of that. Boris Johnson clearly was extremely ambivalent about shutting down until surprisingly late.

• 46:06Speaker 02

  Surprisingly late, but

• 46:08Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, I thought you got the big calls right. I kept hearing you got the big calls right. You're telling me you got the big calls wrong.

• 46:12Rory Stewart?

  I'm bitter about the about the Covid call. But can we, as we come towards the end, I'd love to loop you back a little bit back to domestic politics and your thoughts on the way things are going. I mean, and slightly wickedly tease you again about having been a really experienced veteran politician, what would your advice be to a young politician? And please don't be too idealistic, because sometimes you ask someone this and you get a very high-minded bit of advice about changing roles.

• 46:41Alastair Campbell?

  I'm sensing here Rory is clearly, this is twice he's asking you for career's advice here, that's what's going on. Rory's obviously thinking about throwing his hat back into the ring, and he wants you to tell him whether he should and how.

• 46:53Rory Stewart?

  Imagine you were talking to a member of the New Zealand Parliament who'd been in the Parliament for a year or so, and you were trying to make them thoughtful and realistic about what it means to be a politician. What would you say?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I started life as an opposition backbencher, and I say there's no lower form of life in the political system than an opposition backbencher. Even the messengers don't bother to learn your name. And then after three years, I was a government backbencher. That wasn't much, much better. So my advice to young people is don't expect instant success. I often say when speaking to young women politicians or people who'd like to become politicians, I say, you've got to realise, no one is going to lay out the red carpet for you or open the door. You have to lay the carpet yourself and kick the door open, right? You have to have the resilience to stick with it. And if you stick with it, it will be a very rewarding profession. I also say, if you don't like people much,

• 47:49Speaker 02

  and if you're not very tolerant of people and all their foibles, don't go into politics because it's about people. And people, of course, can be quite irritating sometimes, but they can also be wonderful. And you learn a lot from direct engagement with the public and taking up the concerns of constituents and taking up issues. So my advice is be resilient. There are a lot of knocks in politics, a lot of knocks. The media can be very unpleasant, but it will be a very rewarding career if you stick with it.

• 48:18Alastair Campbell?

  And to take a fairly experienced member of the New Zealand Parliament, Jacinda, who's one of those few politicians that even in the UK, I think most people will know by her first name alone, but your current Prime Minister, who, as you said earlier, had a pretty remarkable Success and is, you know, is actually very, I think, very respected and popular. But everything I read about what's happening in New Zealand at the moment suggests to me that politically at home, she's, she's struggling a bit.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  I think it's a hard time anywhere to be in government because you're copping, you know, the compounding impacts of all these, these crises. Now, COVID, you know, the government's response in the first year, you know, people went into Christmas in 2020, there was no COVID in the country and we felt, you know, pretty proud of ourselves really that the team of five million pulled together. But of course, in 2021, the team of five million started to fracture, but particularly when the entire metropolitan Auckland and most of the region to the south, one and a half million of the five million population was locked down for four months and people get grumpy, they get grumpy. And then the diaspora got very grumpy because they couldn't come home for Christmas. They went many places in quarantine.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  That went for two years and now, of course, all the spillover impacts of the war in Ukraine on everybody's food prices and, and the, the fuel prices. So the electorate's grumpy at the moment.

• 49:42Alastair Campbell?

  But can she win?

• 49:43Speaker 02

  Well, look, the election will likely be in a year, November next year, anything can happen a year. New leader of the opposition's obviously doing much better than the predecessor. So depend whether the government can get his measure and land a few blows.

• 49:58Rory Stewart?

  But, but it's tough, isn't it? I mean, inflation, New Zealand now, seven point three percent.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  It's tough.

• 50:02Rory Stewart?

  You've just had the largest rise in your interest rates, I think, in recorded history. You've just gone up seventy five basis points just nine hours ago. So very, very tough. And I, I mean, I feel this, I mean, in a way, as we sort of loop back to British politics, that incredibly tough for the government that's in, very, very difficult, obviously, for Rishi Sunak, because Liz Truss and Kwasi Kourou quite clearly blew up the economy in a very dramatic way over two weeks and were very much associated with that. But it's also tough for the incumbent government, very difficult to know if you're a Labour government coming in in Britain, where your options are. The deficit's at a record level, debt's high, and there's no obvious ways in which you're going to get through.

• 50:46Rory Stewart?

  I mean, where do you find the savings in public services? Where do you find the money for investment? How do you generate growth? I mean, it's, it's a pretty, pretty depressing time for the opposition.

• 50:56Alastair Campbell?

  Well, as Helen said, it's better to be in government and try than to be in opposition, not having the chance to, so.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  I had a deputy, late Germanderton, who used to say, "One bad day in government is better than nine years in opposition."

• 51:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, he was absolutely right about that. Well, Helen, it's been lovely to talk to you. Thanks for being so generous with your time and your views. And, you know, we'll keep in touch and maybe the next time you and I have dinner, we won't be looking on our phones to see the All Blacks surrender a massive lead.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  Well, we should have finished the dinner at half time, shouldn't we?

• 51:35Alastair Campbell?

  Thanks very much, and Rory, we'll see you soon.

• 51:39Rory Stewart?

  Thank you. Bye bye.

• 51:46Alastair Campbell?

  Right, Rory, Helen Clark, what do you make of that?

• 51:49Rory Stewart?

  Can you first tell us, Alastair, where are you? You're in some extraordinary sort of Austin Powers room.

• 51:56Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you can only see this sort of blue backdrop, but if I look out, there's a piano in the corner, there's a drum set, there are a few musical instruments lying around, some of which I'll be tempted to play afterwards.

• 52:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, that was my main question, how did you resist? I mean, I would have thought, that's like putting one of my children in a toy shop.

• 52:15Alastair Campbell?

  I'm surprised your children are allowed in toy shops. I thought they were just reading The Economist and watching Shakespeare plays. What toys do you get in a Shakespearean toy shop? No, so it's a beautiful jazz club done in the round, and it's just been a very, very nice place to sit and talk to Helen.

• 52:32Rory Stewart?

  I thought that was really interesting, and I thought it was interesting couple of levels. So, one of the things that listeners maybe didn't fully pick up is that, and we didn't get into this enough, is that she had a very, very good chance of being Secretary General of the United Nations, and was actually defeated by the current Secretary General, partly because I think, and we didn't get a going on this, but certainly the French betrayed her, possibly the US betrayed her in vates and the. Security Council. And it would be interesting to know how it would feel from being going from being Prime Minister of New Zealand to being Secretary General, whether that's something that she regrets. And I sort of feel that I couldn't put her enough on that because she's still very much part of the UN system. She's been doing a lot with the WHO. So maybe she can't be as brutally blunt about what she thinks about the current Secretary General

• 53:17Rory Stewart?

  as I'd like. So maybe we need to get her back when she's a little bit more distanced from the system.

• 53:22Alastair Campbell?

  But she had lots of international backing. And I think there was a lot of a lot of desire for there to be the first woman. I think that is, and I know it's always, it's always a kind of historic tick. And then people can can move on and maybe stop talking so much about the issue of gender. But I think what's great about Helen, because the, so she's 72 now, she was 58 when she left office. And even though that's by sort of Cameron Johnson standards, quite, you know, old, it's still very, very young.

• 53:54Rory Stewart?

  And but by Biden's standards, very, very.

• 53:57Alastair Campbell?

  This sort of juvenile, yeah. But I think what's great is that she has just carried on doing public service in a very different sort of way. So she, you know, the stuff she does in the mining industries and climate and very, very engaged and involved on health as well, and not just on COVID. So I do think there's such a place, I think it's why these interviews that we've done with former presidents have gone down pretty well, actually. And you've made the point before that sometimes people still very active, aren't necessarily as interesting as reflective as people who've been through the mill.

• 54:28Rory Stewart?

  She's also somebody who obviously did love politics. And I think she's sincere when she says she found it very satisfying. And she started very, very young as a Labour activist, I think in her early twenties. So as you say, a long time before she became, she set up opposition backbenchers. Less of the sort of cynicism that we got from François Hollande, you know, she didn't didn't make any jokes about politicians being liars or anything like that. I was trying to pull her into being a little bit more brutal about the truth, you know, I was hinting at this with the team sport, but I find politics has a pretty brutal kind of Machiavellian edge to it. But maybe New Zealand politics less so. She certainly. She talked about resilience in the media, but she still gave a pretty positive picture of the whole thing.

• 55:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I, look, my only real close up of experience was when I was rather bizarrely on the British and Irish Lions tour, so I was there for several months in 2005. And it is, I think it is a gentler country in lots of ways. I think you feel that you're in a gentler environment, I think maybe than the UK and Australia. And also, there's something about their politics. I think Jacinda will get a very rough ride in the next election, but I still think they have that ability to debate in a fairly civil way, which I think that we've maybe lost, and which is why you and I, with this podcast, sort of

• 55:56Alastair Campbell?

  tried to bring it back in part. But I think, the other thing about New Zealand, I mean, it's a country of five million people, and

• 56:03Rory Stewart?

  Which is sort of the size of Norway, Denmark, right?

• 56:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but it's a smaller country.

• 56:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 56:09Alastair Campbell?

  But it's one of those countries, you know, Helen talked about the concept of soft power in relation to the UK's role as what she called a development superpower. And if you're a smaller country, your soft power assets are, if anything, even more important. And I think, I think New Zealand does have extraordinary soft power. Some of it comes through sport, some of it comes through culture. I thought the stuff she mentioned about the film industry was really interesting, because of course, so many of the, of the really successful films of recent years, they've been down there because they've taken benefit of the tax regime and so forth. So, no, I think Helen's somebody who can look back on her political career with an awful lot of satisfaction, despite having been kicked out after the fourth election.

• 56:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I, yeah, I thought that was really good. Thank you. And that's, that's a huge credit to you.

• 56:59Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Rory, you know, I keep landing these

• 57:02Rory Stewart?

  You're doing very well.

• 57:03Alastair Campbell?

  A-list politicians. And I'm beginning to wonder, with all this travelling you do, whether you ever actually meet anybody.

• 57:07Rory Stewart?

  I finally, I think, managed to last the ex-president of Liberia for you. I hope.

• 57:13Alastair Campbell?

  That's good. I'd love to talk to the current president of Liberia, George Weah, about why he's allowed his son to play for America, for heaven's sake. What's that about? I mean, what did you think? What did you think of Wales' goal for America, Rory?

• 57:28Rory Stewart?

  Actually, you know, I wanted to ask you about Holland. Why is Holland such a footballing superstar?

• 57:34Alastair Campbell?

  Superstar? You mean superpower?

• 57:36Rory Stewart?

  Superpower. And I want more information about it on our next podcast.

• 57:39Alastair Campbell?

  Holland, they aren't really, Rory. They're not going to win the World Cup. Let me tell you that now. The only, I'll tell you, I actually think, following their humiliation at the hands of Saudi Arabia, in a bizarre sort of way, I think it's made it more likely that Argentina might win the whole thing. Now, I've said from the word go, Brazil or France.

• 57:58Rory Stewart?

  A lot of injured players, though.

• 58:00Alastair Campbell?

  Well done, Rory. I'm loving the way you're pretending to know about this. Name three of the injured players.

• 58:06Rory Stewart?

  I can't do that.

• 58:08Alastair Campbell?

  You're looking at that thing on the New York Times app, which has got a World Cup summary, and you think, oh, mug up a bit on that.

• 58:14Rory Stewart?

  To be honest, just to finish on this, I think actually I got that from Gary Lineker's tweet. Incidentally, you think you're a big star in the world. I was in a taxi driving through Jordan today, and all the taxi driver wanted to talk about was Gary Lineker, and how he'd watched all of Gary Lineker's games, and how they didn't make anyone like Gary Lineker anymore. And he was the most thoughtful player in the world, and the certainly other.

• 58:35Alastair Campbell?

  One, I don't think I'm a big star. Two, wherever you go in the world, anybody who's interested in football, of a certain age in particular, knows and loves and reveres Gary Lineker. And of course, the younger generation in the UK just think he's that bloke on the telly. They've mostly probably forgotten he's ever a footballer. Poor Gary.

• 58:56Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, we're finishing with Helen Clark. I'm finishing with a very, very good news, of course, that, like me, she decided to make it not all about sport, but become Minister of Art and Culture to promote that side of life. So thank you very much indeed, Alison.

• 59:09Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.