574. Germany’s Political Disaster and Can the Lib Dems Fight Back?

As the far-right Alternative for Germany wins another regional election, wiping out the ruling Christian Democratic Union in former Chancellor Angela Merkel's own backyard, will Friedrich Merz face the same fate as Keir Starmer and lose his job? New polling shows that just 15% of people in rural communities think Labour cares about them, so how does the party deliver "growth in every postcode" to the countryside? With 70 seats in Parliament and the Tories in electoral trouble, why haven't the Liberal Democrats gained more traction in the week of their party conference? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Enjoy Rory and Alastair’s interview with Gordon Brown by searching ‘Leading’ on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter ⁠HERE⁠, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at ⁠therestispolitics.com⁠ to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at ⁠fuseenergy.com/politics⁠ and get a free TRIP+ subscription. 🌏 Upgrade your online protection with an all-in-one security app! Get an exclusive NordVPN deal + 4 months extra here ➼ ⁠nordvpn.com/restispolitics⁠ It’s risk free with NordVPN’s 30-day money-back guarantee! __________ Instagram: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Twitter: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Lead Video Editor: Josh Smith Video Editors: James Clayden, Louis Mealing Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Bella Soames 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.

• 0:00Alastair Campbell

  When Angela Merkel was busy serving over 16 years as the Chancellor of Germany, her party was the CDU and her constituency base was Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. At the regional election there at the weekend, the far-right Alternative for Deutschland topped the poll and Merkel's party secured precisely zero seats. The current Chancellor and CDU leader Friedrich Merz calls it a disaster. It is also a political earthquake. There was another one in Berlin, where the hard-left DIE LINKE party topped the poll, driving the CDU out of government there. Germany is the third-largest economy in the world. It sits right at the heart of the whole future of the EU and is increasingly central to how

• 0:44Alastair Campbell

  Europe funds its own defence. The AfD and DIE LINKE are existential threats to Germany's membership of the EU and of NATO. So is this just a German domestic story or is it actually the story that determines what happens to Europe's security and our future?

• 1:01Rory Stewart?

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• 1:04Alastair Campbell

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• 1:38Alastair Campbell

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• 2:12Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 2:14Alastair 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.

• 2:26Rory 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 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.

• 2:50Alastair Campbell

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

• 2:57Rory 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/rustuspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustuspolitics and the link is in the episode description.

• 3:21Rory Stewart?

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

• 3:25Alastair Campbell

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 3:26Rory Stewart?

  Range of really interesting questions that have come in, but the ones that are really driving it that we're going to be discussing today are the results in the German elections, where you absolutely understand Germany are going to take us into the hearts of what's happening, not just with the far-right, but now with the far-left in the most important economy and political force in Europe. Then we're going to talk about rural Britain, much neglected. What's happening with rural affairs? How do we think about rural communities in somewhere like Britain? We're going to get into the perennial subject of the Lib Dems and what their future could be. What's the future for centrist parties in Britain? We're going to talk about some more fun subjects, whether we could do longer interviews. We're going to talk about languages versus instruments. You're going to touch on the Royal National Lifeboat incident and particularly far-right

• 4:10Rory Stewart?

  protests against their escorting of migrants. And maybe we'll get on to the question ultimately of hope. And we're starting, Alistair, with a question from our listener, Valentin. Should Merz be replaced as Keir Starmer was? Should Friedrich Merz, the Chancellor of Germany, be replaced? And this, of course, is in the wake of this catastrophic election result in the province of Mecklenburg-Westpomeranian. And how do you say that in German?

• 4:38Alastair Campbell

  Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Well, it's very hard to replace him if he doesn't want to go because the only way to do it would be to have a vote of confidence, which he loses. And then you would almost certainly be forced into an election, which you would also, and these results clearly lose.

• 4:54Rory Stewart?

  And the results, just quickly, let's explain them before you do the commentary. AfD, the Alternative for Deutschland, the far-right party, 38.2%. SPD, the traditional Labour Party equivalent, 35.5%. And the CDU, which is the traditional Tory equivalent, which is Friedrich Merz's own party, and this is running in Angela Merkel's own state, and she was, of course, the CDU leader, right? Got below 5%, 4.9%, lost all its seats, all its seats. So, I mean, it's sort of unimaginable. It would be like the Tories being, I don't know, wiped out in a key seat where one of their leaders had been.

• 5:33Alastair Campbell

  Yeah, absolutely. No, it is unimaginable. I mean, if you think that when Fiona and I were in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a few months ago, the hotel that we stayed in had a massive portrait of Angela Merkel on the wall. It's like her territory and she won. She was an MP there for 30 years. She was four terms as Chancellor and in little or no time, they've gone to a place. This is the first time ever the CDU will have no representation in a regional parliament. And then before we come back to Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, there was this other election in Berlin, which is its own regional parliament, which was won by DIE LINKE, which is this very left-wing party.

• 6:16Alastair Campbell

  And this is again was previously Christian Democrats, previously CDU. Also there, the Social Democrat Party did really badly. And what's interesting about what's happened in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, people might think, well, this is good for the SPD. But the truth is that Manuela Schfeyzi, who was the Minister President there and the candidate, she fought a campaign that was very much about vote for me. This isn't a party vote for me. And added to it, she probably had a lot of tactical voting in her favour.

• 6:48Rory Stewart?

  Protest fit. I'm the only person who can really take on the AfD, so she will have got a lot of...

• 6:52Alastair Campbell

  Well, her slogan was die Frau gegen Blau, the woman against blue.

• 6:56Rory Stewart?

  Okay. And so she would have picked up DIE LINKE votes, CDU votes.

• 7:00Alastair Campbell

  Yeah. And she will have. One of the reasons why the CDU will have dropped below the 5% threshold that you have to get before you can get any seats in parliament, one of the reasons will be the CDU voters, I suspect, some of them will have voted for her as a protest against the AfD. That being said, it is catastrophic. Friedrich Merz came out straight away, did a press conference and said it's a disaster. And it is. And it's also, it's an earthquake, I would say. And the thing is, it's more, it's complicated though. It's not simply saying the AfD are on the march because over in Berlin, you've got them attacking from the left.

• 7:38Rory Stewart?

  And the Berlin thing is a double-edged sword. So this vote for DIE LINKE, which, as you say, is a pretty far-left populist party. I mean, it's got elements of the East German Communist Party. It was running on tickets, including things like the expropriation of all corporate landlords in Berlin, as well as, you know, stuff you love, like wealth taxes and all this kind of stuff that you want to lean into.

• 7:59Alastair Campbell

  And stuff I really hate though, like very, like the AfD leaning into anti-Ukraine, pro-Russia, very, very weak on NATO. So...

• 8:09Rory Stewart?

  They committed traditionally to leaving NATO, aren't they?

• 8:12Alastair Campbell

  And a deep strain of antisemitism.

• 8:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Now, that was something I really wanted to look at. So credible young vote for DIE LINKE and something like 45% of young women voted for DIE LINKE. I was talking to a friend who is a young German woman, plays football in Berlin. Everybody who plays football with her voted for DIE LINKE. And they, mostly driven by Gaza.

• 8:36Alastair Campbell

  Yep.

• 8:37Rory Stewart?

  Because they feel that the German government hasn't represented them on their horror about Gaza. The police have been pretty brutal when they've done demonstrations in favour of Gaza. But there is this very nasty undercurrent, particularly not at the leadership level, but down down of proper antisemitism. Now, the problem there is the Springer Group of newspapers is now using this to say, the AfD is not the problem, DIE LINKE is the problem. And this is going to be a really dangerous thing because it will normalise the AfD because they will be presented as the people who aren't antisemitic, right? So I wondered whether actually the time hasn't come for the centrist parties, the equivalent of Labour, the equivalent of Conservatives, the Greens, CDU, SPD, Greens,

• 9:21Rory Stewart?

  to come together and say, we're going to exclude D-Linka in Berlin. And we're also going to take the AFD to the Constitutional Court. And maybe the price of that is that the CDU gets the mayorship in Berlin as part of a deal that says, we are against all forms of extremism. We are against the antisemitism from D-Linka. We're not going to go into coalition with D-Linka unless they

• 9:45Alastair Campbell

  Well, that has been their position for some time. So Merz has been clear that he sees the radical populist left probably not as bad as the AFD and certainly not as popular across the country. But they're both, they see them both as needing this firewall. The famous firewall, the Brandmauer, this is where the mainstream parties essentially say, we will never go into government with the AFD. And the CDU being clear that they don't want to go into government with D-Linka either. So the firewall, once, once the numbers get bigger and bigger and bigger, if they do, then in a way, the firewall collapses because they get power anyway. The question that Valentine's asking about whether and how you get rid of Merz.

• 10:29Alastair Campbell

  Interestingly, the CDU minister presidents, of which there are a few in the different Lender, they came together very, very quickly and said, we're backing him. One exception was Markus Söder, who's the leader of the CSU, their sister party in Bavaria, who probably at some point does fancy his chances of going for the top job. The only one that people seriously talk about as a possible successor is this guy, Hendrik Wust, W U with an umlaut, love a good umlaut, Wust. And he is the Minister President of Nordrhein-Westfalia. Now, there's two problems with him, well, that he will be thinking. One is they've got an election in six months' time.

• 11:11Alastair Campbell

  He is popular and he probably thinks he can win that and buck the trend. But, you know, it's going to be tough because all elections are tough at the moment. But so he's probably thinking, why on earth would I want to take on this basket case politics in Berlin where this coalition seems not to be working? And Merz, in a way, Merz really is in a tough place because he's essentially saying, and he's not wrong, we have got to make some very, very serious reforms here.

• 11:39Rory Stewart?

  But let me

• 11:39Alastair Campbell

  But the social democrats are saying, well, yeah, okay, but not those.

• 11:42Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's really fascinating because of course, on the surface, what Merz is saying appeals to sort of centrist Tories like me because it sounds like it's pro-bridsness. We've got to sort out welfare and pensions. We've got to grow the German economy. At another level, it is unbelievably unpopular. I mean, his popularity rating is now down about 14%.

• 12:01Alastair Campbell

  I think it's, I think it's gone lower than that.

• 12:04Rory Stewart?

  Because it's unbelievable. And, and it's a warning for Andy Burnham, actually, in a way in which, because really, what are the big picture stories? The big picture stories are still international. What do you do about Russia, Ukraine? And how do you make sure Germany remains properly integrated into Europe? And what are the AFD and D-Linka? They are existential threats to Germany's membership of the European Union, its membership of NATO.

• 12:25Alastair Campbell

  Yeah.

• 12:25Rory Stewart?

  So I would be thinking that the big narrative that you need to be putting out in Germany for all the centrist parties is we are fighting for the existential future of Europe, NATO and our insecurity. And actually tinkering around with the pensions is fine, but that's not the main message because that will have to be done again for demographic reasons in four, five years' time.

• 12:46Alastair Campbell

  Yeah.

• 12:47Rory Stewart?

  And you're never going to win an election on, we're going to cut your pensions.

• 12:50Alastair Campbell

  The thing is, Merz has been trying to do that. I wonder whether Valentine's questioned about, you know, relating it to Keir Starmer. I wonder how much of this is about communication and a sort of feeling that people have that he's just not quite right somehow because

• 13:05Rory Stewart?

  Where's the Carney moment?

• 13:06Alastair Campbell

  But he does say, he says, one of his best speeches I've seen him make was about Ukraine. And again, if you talk to the other leaders, including Keir Starmer and Macron, that they say on Ukraine, he's been great.

• 13:19Rory Stewart?

  But should we not see this? Is this not, again, to return to what we did in yesterday's episode, a grace opportunity to use the Carney middle power reset to not just rebrand Merz, but make the world a better place?

• 13:32Alastair Campbell

  Obviously, yes. My problem, if thinking of it from his perspective, is, is that going to work? I mean, the AFD is now avowedly openly saying, you know, Ukraine is a problem. Why are we giving all this money to Ukraine?

• 13:46Rory Stewart?

  So lean into it, have an argument with them.

• 13:48Alastair Campbell

  But he's trying to do that.

• 13:49Rory Stewart?

  That's exactly the argument he should be having, right?

• 13:51Alastair Campbell

  Well, I think he's tried to do that. Why is it not connecting? I just don't know. I think they're in this place where there's a rejection. There's just a rejection of the so-called uni-party. And they now talk so openly about, they, they basically talk about the CDU and the social democrats as one and the same thing. Both D-Linka on the left and, and the, the AFD on the right. Look, he's in a hellish position, absolutely hellish. I mean, to have to cancel his visit to the United Nations General Assembly because he's having to deal with the fallout from this is not a good place to be. The other thing that, that German people will say to me is that the, you know, Wust is the nearest to it, but there kind of isn't an Andy Burnham in the wings. There isn't anybody that they can say, yeah, that's an obvious.

• 14:36Alastair Campbell

  And there was something obvious about Andy Burnham. And he'd, he'd sort of, you know, developed that profile and that sense of the change that he wanted to bring. There just isn't anybody there. So, but I, listen, I agree with you and he, he's, he's back is right against the wall. What do you do when your back's against the wall? You've got to really come out fighting. And the fight to have, I agree with you, is about these big existential questions facing, what is Germany about? And also these people, they're very good. This is why I so worry about the 72 million pounds of reform. They're very good at campaigning. And what you can do with 70 million quid in terms of hiring organisers in every part of the country, you know, you're talking about every postcode, they can get organisers in every postcode. And the social media lies and disinformation that they can pump out, which is, a lot of which we saw in the, in these German elections.

• 15:21Alastair Campbell

  So this is, this is really, really alarming and the consequences for Europe, for NATO, they are absolutely massive.

• 15:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you on Germany. It's wonderful, Alison, to, to do this programme with you because you know far, far more about Germany than I do. And I, I think one of the things to just keep reminding listeners who wonder why we're talking so much about Germany is Germany is the third largest economy in the world. It is an economy which is right at the heart of the whole future of the European Union, increasingly with its defence spending, all European security. And if anything's really going to determine, you know, what happens with the middle powers, it's Germany. So we're not just talking about Germany because you happen to know a lot about Germany, but actually Germany sorting itself out is the answer to so many of the problems we're talking about around the world.

• 16:11Alastair Campbell

  Yeah.

• 16:11Rory Stewart?

  So second question, a listener has very kindly sent in their own question with a video with a cow walking in the background and it's Minette Batters, the former head of the National Farmers Union, who we interviewed on leading. And here's the question.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  The countryside, it's fair to say, has had a really, really challenging time recently. On this farm, we faced into our worst harvest ever. And although everything looks green now, this has been a dust bowl for my cows for many months and we've been feeding our winter forage throughout the summer. And on the back of this year comes a real challenge for the countryside and what they've faced into. We've had a run of policies on tax, on traditional country pursuits, on horse racing, all of

• 17:04Speaker 02

  which have left the rural community feeling that government is working against them and not with them. So my question to the Prime Minister is how do we achieve a proper rural reset? One that can deliver on his aims of growth in every postcode?

• 17:28Rory Stewart?

  Here, here. Well, I, I thought one of the clever things she did there, actually, is to tie into making it positive, that it, it's not, we're victims. In the end, she was saying, Prime Minister believes in growth in every postcode. And the big question is, what's he going to do for rural Britain?

• 17:42Alastair Campbell

  Well, I, I agree with that. I wouldn't make it about hunting. I really wouldn't. I think they've got enough to go on. And I, so I, I, look, Minette, we interviewed Minette on leading a while back. She's very clever. She's a good campaigner. She probably thought, I know what I'll do. I'll send a little video to Rory and then I'll bet he'll want to do it on Question Top, he'll be on my side. But we've been in hunting. Anyway, what's, what is the answer to the question about the reset? Listen, where I've got massive sympathy is for, you know, I speak to people in farming who, you know, economically it is a massive challenge, particularly small farmers. It's a massive challenge. And the drought, I read the other day, is that we need seven months of rain without stop to get the country out of drought. That is terrifying.

• 18:27Alastair Campbell

  Therefore, we need to do more on climate change. I think the inheritance tax situation is, and, and it's become one of those things, my sense is that even those who don't feel terribly affected by it.

• 18:41Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 18:41Alastair Campbell

  It's become something that they all talk about all the time.

• 18:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And can I just explain it for a second? It's, it's actually about the fact that rural areas are very different to urban areas. And, and one of the strongest examples is around small farming. So some of the farms in my constituency could be a small upland farm where people are reporting tiny incomes, maybe 6,000, 10,000 pounds a year. But they could be sitting on an inherited family farm, which they might have been on for many, many generations, which could be worth many millions if they were to sell it. They don't want to sell it. They want to continue farming. And, and this is something the government finds it very difficult to understand because we're in a very materialistic world where an economist looks at it and says, it's not efficient allocation of resources, sell your farm, put it on the stock market or whatever, right?

• 19:27Rory Stewart?

  But the backbone of rural life, the people that keep the roads clear, the people that get their kids into school, the whole character of these areas is driven by people who have a vocation in farming. But that is not possible if they have to pay inheritance tax when they pass those farms on to their kids. And these defra figures that keep being produced on where they claim almost nobody will be affected, it doesn't make sense to me. I can think of so many farms in my constituency, and that's just one out of 650 constituencies that would be directly affected by this and make it difficult to pass on their land to their kids. And it's also, if they're acquiring more land in order to build a farming business, they're trying to build a farming business multi-generationally.

• 20:11Rory Stewart?

  They're trying to invest in the land, hoping their grandson, the great-grandson can keep farming this stuff. If they begin thinking, well, as soon as I acquire a bit more than this, there's going to be a huge inheritance tax bill and the guy's going to have to sell it off. The whole structure's holding changed. So where would I go to on this? I would say We need to recognise that rural areas are amazing. They're attracting incredible, energetic, young, retired people from all around the country. But that's driving up property prices. The councils are not getting the revenue. Services are much more expensive. Buses were a problem in my constituency back in the day. But rural buses have fallen by another 18% in just the last five years. It was a catastrophe enough in 2010.

• 20:55Rory Stewart?

  It's getting worse and worse and worse and worse. The number of farms is dropping all the time. Almost everything that people relied on, their local magistrate's court, their local community hospital, the local fire station, the police station, the bank, all these things are vanishing. We're hollowing out these communities. And that's why I think Minette is wonderful in saying, let's make it positive. There are 100 Labour MPs now in rural areas. It's all about growth in every postcode. But let's not make it London or even Manchester style growth. It's a growth that reflects what these areas are and what people want there.

• 21:29Alastair Campbell

  But that is why I think, so for example, the Countryside Alliance, who were a very, very effective campaigning organisation when we were in power, they might argue they didn't achieve all the things that they did, but there, they've done 27 demands of the government. Most of them are actually about hunting and shooting. I think they should move away from that, I really do. I think where she's absolutely right is, I think you could build, because this is what happens in politics. Leaders get identified with certain postures and certain phrases and certain policy priorities. And of all the language that Andy Burnham has been using, you know, growth in every postcode is kind of getting through to people. That's what he's trying to do. So I think, what I think is really clever about what Minette did was, was actually to

• 22:14Alastair Campbell

  say, look, he's saying growth in every postcode. We've got a lot of postcodes out here that look like this, with trees that are going, with trees and farms and cows and sheep and all the rest of it. So what's your strategy and what's your plan for us? And the truth is, in a way, they are one of those sectors, one of those communities. You could argue they get, I think they get reasonable attention. You know, you still have the BBC farming programme if you get up really, really early. But generally, they're not in the political debate. To your point, I think if you ally her point, growth in every postcode with the point that you just made, that Labour have a lot of rural MPs now, you've got the making of a strategy there.

• 22:57Alastair Campbell

  I think if you make that strategy all about hunting and shooting, you're not going to get the support you need.

• 23:00Rory Stewart?

  I, I think some of the stuff that's come out, it's been great stuff from your friend David Blunkett, in a very small way. Middleland, published this week, paperback edition, is an attempt to provide a kind of manifesto for these areas. It's an attempt to try to say to the Treasury in London, what is it that Cumbria is like? What do they really need? What, what do people care about? What kind of policies do you need to make an area like that feel alive and thriving, rather than the kind of marginalised place with weird templates being imposed from London?

• 23:27Alastair Campbell

  Because David Blunkett, who I saw this week, he's one of our interviewees for the mini-series we're going to do on Perseverance in a few weeks, after you've, after you've shocked and terrified us with your existential threat series. But he's, he's very engaged in this. And, and actually, he and, he and David Cameron teamed up quite recently to, to do something together. So I think you can, I guess what I'm saying to Minette is, I, I'm not saying there aren't people in Labour who, you know, might have strong views on hunting, but hunting and shooting is so identified with, with the right.

• 23:59Rory Stewart?

  We also need more rural representation, particularly in places like the House of Lords, that used to have a lot of people who knew about the countryside, who farmed. There are fewer and fewer now.

• 24:07Alastair Campbell

  Really?

• 24:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, partly because they got rid of all the hereditaries, which I know you wanted to do, but the one thing that they had in common is that they were generally people who actually ran farms, understood that.

• 24:16Alastair Campbell

  You know, you don't hear just major landlords, they really had their milking the cows in the morning. I'm not so sure.

• 24:24Rory Stewart?

  They certainly knew far more about rural areas than most of the other people in the House of Lords. And so they're actually struggling to man the committees, they're struggling to get people speaking in debates. So that's another thing. If you're, if we're going to keep an appointed House of Lords, we need to keep thinking about rebalancing to make sure these different interests have a voice.

• 24:40Alastair Campbell

  Yeah. So as a pledge to Minette and to all our rural listeners, we will, we will come back to this at some point. And also in the newsletter this week, we've got a piece from Julian Glover.

• 24:50Rory Stewart?

  Former Guardian correspondent, former speechwriter for David Cameron, who is very concerned, from, in his case, from the Peak District, about how to think about proper rural policy for Britain.

• 25:00Alastair Campbell

  If you haven't signed up, sign up at therestispolitics.com/newsletter. Okay, well, let's take a break and then we'll come back and talk about.

• 25:07Rory Stewart?

  First thing we're going to talk about is the Lib Dem Conference. And then we'll get on to some more jolly questions for question time.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  The great game, strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 25:32Speaker 04

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 25:38Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 25:40Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 25:44Speaker 03

  A man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself, you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing.

• 25:57Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 25:59Speaker 03

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today and disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 26:08Speaker 08

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

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  New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

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  Where Britain plays its strongest hand. Against its strongest foe.

• 26:41Speaker 05

  Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 26:59Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Rest is Politics, leading with me Rory Stewart.

• 27:02Alastair Campbell

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And Rory, you're gagging to talk about your friends, the Lib Dems.

• 27:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, question from David. Rory said the Lib Dems can't get these middle third flexible voters. Why not?

• 27:13Alastair Campbell

  Sorry, Rory, what is a middle third flexible voters? And where did you say this?

• 27:17Rory Stewart?

  I think, I think David's referring to the fact that there's been some really interesting polling suggesting that there is a very optimistic, often younger, more dynamic third of the voting population, which is quite different strangely from either left-wing Labour voters or right-wing Tory Reform voters in so many different things. They're more confident about the economy, they're more relaxed about immigration, they're more interested in global alliances, and they feel better about their lives. And they should be the natural central vote. And the Lib Dems are somehow struggling to really animate and excite them. And just being the Lib Dem Conference, and I just thought, there's something kind of heartbreaking about it.

• 28:01Rory Stewart?

  I mean, we, we've kept saying for years now that I thought Ed Davies should be taking more of a national, international position. They've got 70 seats in the House of Commons, it's huge. And I still believe the right leader would be able to turn that into a formidable fighting force, preparing to go into coalition after the next election, probably with Labour, right? It's a likely scenario. So it could be incredible. And they probably won't lose those 70 seats either. Those are pretty safe seats because the Tories, in their monstrous mistakes, have basically lost what were Tory seats to the Lib Dems, because a lot of traditional Tory voters, like me, are so horrified by the right with lurch that they're going to the Lib Dems.

• 28:43Alastair Campbell

  Do you think the Tories are going the way of the CDU?

• 28:45Rory Stewart?

  I think the Tories are in real danger, real, real danger. And they're in real, real danger because it's even worse than the CDU position. Because I don't think they're going to be able to, in the end, capture back those Reform voters. But the sort of voters that David Cameron built his coalition on have gone to Labour and the Lib Dems, and I'm not sure they're coming back anymore.

• 29:04Alastair Campbell

  So they have, so some have gone to the Lib Dems.

• 29:06Rory Stewart?

  Of those 70 seats, an enormous number of them were Tory seats.

• 29:09Alastair Campbell

  Yeah.

• 29:10Rory Stewart?

  And, and, and the Tories have vanished. I mean, it, it's incredible. Places like Sussex, where the Tories were once dominant, I mean, they barely have a seat on the council, they barely appear in places like Lewes and Hastings. It's, it's really weird what's happened to the Tories.

• 29:24Alastair Campbell

  They have, they have stepped up the gas a little bit on Europe. Now talking about, you know, we've got to get back into the single market and the customs union.

• 29:31Rory Stewart?

  This is the Lib Dems, not the Tories.

• 29:32Alastair Campbell

  The Lib Dems, yeah.

• 29:33Rory Stewart?

  And they've also, you know, big speech saying, we need global regulation on AI, we need to think about AI safety. But so the question, I guess, for you is, how do we get to this world where I will say on the show, why are they not talking about international issues? And then they will come back to me with a series of furious WhatsApps saying, we are literally taking something identical to your position on everything from middle powers to Europe to AI. Why the hell are you not reporting on it?

• 29:57Alastair Campbell

  And the answer is.

• 30:00Alastair Campbell

  That, I mean, I, I, I do have a lot of sympathy for the Lib Dems and I think it goes back to our culture and our media culture. Their conference coincided with Charles Spencer's book that we talked about. Anything to do with royal scandal and it's, you know, it used to be that that would, okay, be very big fodder for the papers. But it's now like all the media will go for one big story and you almost feel sometimes like unless it's Trump. Although I think even thankfully, I think that's fading a bit, but there was a point at which, you know, unless it was Trump, you weren't getting much debate about politics more generally. So I think the down market sort of thrust of much of our media, not all, and I don't want to tar them all with the same brush, but you know, generally.

• 30:46Alastair Campbell

  My view is that something like the Liberal Democrat Conference. Regardless of whether journalists think it's a bit dull, regardless of whether they think the positions aren't radical or exciting, should be covered. Should be covered on all of our TV channels. I don't mean live, I just mean that it should be taken seriously, should be covered seriously, not as a sort of add on. Especially when you compare it with the way that the media cover Reform with what is it, seven MPs, six or seven MPs. Lib Dems have got tons of them. Now, you can complain and I can criticize the Lib Dems for not understanding how you need to build a profile, why they need to do better than they are, but I think it is unfair to treat them like, you know, well, if they're not going to be as interesting as Reform, we're not going to cover them as much as Reform.

• 31:31Rory Stewart?

  Here's an idea for you. I think part of the problem is they don't really believe in themselves. They don't really see themselves as a national governing party and that is foolish. Cause we're in a world where over the last four years, all over the world, parties collapse, parties explode. When everything we cover is about the fact, you can't assume where you were four years ago is where you're going to be again in four years' time, right? So I would like to see them presenting themselves almost like a Mamdani insurgent party. I'd like them out in every constituency, out on the street. Everybody doing cool social media, giving a sense of a party that's really moving. And that could actually get a majority at the next election. I think they're in a defensive crouch. They're like the England football team in the final stage of that ghastly World Cup.

• 32:13Alastair Campbell

  Okay, interesting. Rory brings in football commentary of the Lib Dem Conference. Thank you very much indeed for that. Anyway, yeah, I do, I, I, I watched Ed Davey's speech. Look, he's not, he's not a great orator.

• 32:25Alastair Campbell

  He's got a nice manner, a nice style, but there's something.

• 32:28Rory Stewart?

  There's a fire in his belly.

• 32:30Alastair Campbell

  Yeah, there's, there's, there's something not connected.

• 32:32Rory Stewart?

  Does he feel like somebody who's campaigning to win, who's disrupting, who's pushing, who's driving the national conversation?

• 32:38Alastair Campbell

  Probably not, probably not. Will they think that their conference went quite well? That, that, because that would speak to complacency if they did. But listen, it's bloody frustrating. I remember there was a press officer called Ollie Grenda back in the day when I was on the Mirror. And we used to make, she'd come down every day with these press releases and, and every day, all around the press gallery and, you know. I love you, I love your perseverance.

• 32:59Rory Stewart?

  So you've been doing it for, for 40 years, this has been a problem for them?

• 33:02Alastair Campbell

  It has been a problem, but and they only break through sometimes on an issue. Charles Kennedy on Iraq.

• 33:08Rory Stewart?

  Nick Clegg got some breakthrough.

• 33:10Alastair Campbell

  Got into government.

• 33:11Rory Stewart?

  The right leader could really give a sense of energy.

• 33:14Alastair Campbell

  Well, there was, there was, there was a bit of talk around the conference about whether they needed to replace Ed Davey with Daisy Cooper. Daisy Cooper was very, very clear, not interested. Ed's going to be there till the election.

• 33:24Rory Stewart?

  Is Daisy Cooper the kind of, the Mamdani Burnham figure they need?

• 33:29Alastair Campbell

  I think she's got a bit of fire in her belly. Anyway, they're not in a great place, but as you say, they should be in a better place. But I honestly, I think it's bloody hard for them, really hard.

• 33:40Rory Stewart?

  They need to think again about what they're doing. I think that's, I think.

• 33:43Alastair Campbell

  Why don't you go and help them?

• 33:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, absolutely. Well, look, if I was involved, I would be making the pitch that they're going to be the next government. And I would say, we're in a world where everything can change in two years. And take the fight out to everybody in every constituency, make the big national arguments. Cause that's what effectively Reform does. Why are people interested in Reform? Because they think they could be the next prime minister. Why is nobody interested in the Lib Dems? They're giving the impression they've got 70 seats, they'll always have 70 seats and all they've got to do is do the right campaign.

• 34:11Alastair Campbell

  I think they've set themselves a goal of getting a hundred.

• 34:14Rory Stewart?

  It's not enough. The goal should be 300.

• 34:15Alastair Campbell

  Okay, all right, okay. Think big, says Rory Stewart. Right. Talking of thinking big and long, Carl, when will you do proper two to three hour conversations with guests? We've done some, but we've put them into parts. Listen, Carl, you may think that we just live in a studio for your benefit to give you our wisdom. We have lives to live, we have things to do beyond the podcast.

• 34:40Rory Stewart?

  Would you, I mean, but I was quite interested in this. I mean.

• 34:42Alastair Campbell

  I wouldn't mind.

• 34:43Rory Stewart?

  So Joe Rogan does them, obviously, famously. Is it that you sort of think that the audience would lose attention or is it, I mean, why, why don't we do longer?

• 34:52Alastair Campbell

  We have done, who have we done? We've done a few two parters, haven't we, with Theresa May or Major?

• 34:56Rory Stewart?

  But as you say, we, we, we could, the two parters sort of implies we don't quite trust people to stick with the Joe Rogan three hour. The three hours is quite interesting, isn't it? Cause it reminds me, my father had a friend who was an interrogator. And he was famous for being the best interrogator.

• 35:09Alastair Campbell

  Oh, interrogation is a different matter, right? I don't buy a long interrogation.

• 35:12Rory Stewart?

  But he would just sort of ground people down through, actually, he was famous because he was so boring that people would tell him everything by the end of three hours, just to get out of the room.

• 35:19Alastair Campbell

  Oh, he wasn't sort of torturing and stuff like that?

• 35:21Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no. He, his technique was to be so persistently dull that by the end you'd tell him anything.

• 35:26Alastair Campbell

  Well, it's not going to make a very good podcast, is it?

• 35:28Rory Stewart?

  Well, except I'm hoping, I'm hoping that we'd be really dull for two and a half hours and then finally in desperation of the last half hour, they'd drop their guard and release some incredible sort of revelation.

• 35:38Alastair Campbell

  Yeah, I'd like, well, look, if, who would you, if you.

• 35:41Rory Stewart?

  It's very difficult for a politician to just repeat the same line for three hours. I think there is something quite interesting about. Because if you'd been advising a politician on the sticky, you'd tell them not to do a three hour interview.

• 35:51Alastair Campbell

  Okay, Carl, we will do this for, let's, let's get our listeners and viewers to tell us, who do they think they would listen to talking to us for three hours? Who would we want to talk to for three hours?

• 36:03Rory Stewart?

  All these Lib Dem names are running through my head and I'm not going to mention them because it would be mean.

• 36:07Alastair Campbell

  Who, go on, who, who would we want to talk to for three hours? I'd talk to your friend, the King for three hours. I'd definitely talk to the Pope for three hours.

• 36:14Rory Stewart?

  Would you talk to Rishi Sunak for three hours?

• 36:16Alastair Campbell

  Three hours would be a stretch. Yeah, I think I would.

• 36:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, good.

• 36:18Alastair Campbell

  It'd be a stretch though, it'd be a stretch.

• 36:20Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 36:21Alastair Campbell

  You, what you'd probably have to do is like a lot on his life, a lot on his childhood, but then you'd, I think, I think an hour is pretty.

• 36:28Rory Stewart?

  Blaise Mitralle, do her three hours?

• 36:30Alastair Campbell

  Blaise, head of M6, three hours? No, because I don't think she'd be able to give what we'd want over three hours.

• 36:37Rory Stewart?

  I think she'd be brilliant over three hours, but maybe she'd have to be discreet. Discretion is always a bit of a problem.

• 36:41Alastair Campbell

  No, I think for an hour, Blaise would be, would be great and we, and there is a plan, don't worry, we've got a plan. I've just read this book, Profiles in.

• 36:50Rory Stewart?

  Cowardice.

• 36:50Alastair Campbell

  Cowardice. I'd actually love to get George W. Bush for three hours. One, because he never does interviews, so he probably won't ever do it. Two, because he's actually a much more interesting character than people think.

• 37:01Rory Stewart?

  Why don't, why don't we lean into this? We can fly out to Texas to see him.

• 37:05Alastair Campbell

  He won't do it.

• 37:06Rory Stewart?

  Really?

• 37:07Alastair Campbell

  Pretty sure, pretty sure. I've, I've asked, yeah.

• 37:10Rory Stewart?

  Let's try again.

• 37:10Alastair Campbell

  Okay, we'll try again, but listen, he's done no interviews since he left the office.

• 37:14Rory Stewart?

  Lovely idea. What a great.

• 37:15Alastair Campbell

  The Profiles in Cowardice book, it has him, this is going to lose us the interview, it has him as one of the Profiles. Because he says nothing about Trump.

• 37:23Rory Stewart?

  That doesn't sound very good, no.

• 37:24Alastair Campbell

  So I don't think he'd do it.

• 37:25Rory Stewart?

  Romney would be good, wouldn't it?

• 37:27Alastair Campbell

  Romney, three hours?

• 37:28Rory Stewart?

  No, you wouldn't do Romney.

• 37:30Alastair Campbell

  Do you know who I'd love to do, but he's dead, Lee Kuan Yew.

• 37:34Rory Stewart?

  Lee Kuan Yew, be great.

• 37:35Alastair Campbell

  I'd love, I'd have loved Lee Kuan Yew for three hours.

• 37:37Rory Stewart?

  I thought for some horrible section, you're going to mention some football manager or something.

• 37:41Alastair Campbell

  I'm sure Dyche, sure, sure, three hours, I think so. Okay, Carl, we'll, we'll leave that with us. We'll have, we'll have a think about it. Here's a great question, Rory. Dylan, would you rather be a master of languages or instruments?

• 37:54Rory Stewart?

  Well, this is really a question for you, Alistair.

• 37:55Alastair Campbell

  No, it's not, because you're a.

• 37:57Rory Stewart?

  Come on, come on then, would you, go on, would I, languages in my case, how about you?

• 38:01Alastair Campbell

  I think languages, but I'll tell you what, if I could play, I mean, I, I only play the bagpipes. I think if you could play the piano really, really, really, really beautifully, I think that would be quite a cool thing.

• 38:11Rory Stewart?

  Be an amazing thing, wouldn't it?

• 38:12Alastair Campbell

  Yeah.

• 38:12Rory Stewart?

  Be a really, really amazing thing. Just a little plug for Perseverance, a lovely moment in it where you reveal that one of the reasons your German got so good is that Fiona pushed you back to focus on German during Covid.

• 38:22Alastair Campbell

  Yeah, because she knew that I would be impossible to live with, imprisoned without being able to live my normal life. No, no, it's one of the best things ever. I actually love being able to speak. When I go to Italy, I can, I can understand a lot was going on, but I, I, I feel it really, I find it really stressful. I can't, I can't engage properly.

• 38:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 38:44Alastair Campbell

  So I think languages, but I've got to say, my bagpipes have given me an awful lot of pleasure over my life.

• 38:49Rory Stewart?

  Okay, here's a serious one for you, Alistair. Julia, your thoughts on the attacks on the RNLI, Royal National Lifeboat?

• 38:56Alastair Campbell

  Just disgusting, horrible.

• 38:58Rory Stewart?

  We'll remind people what's been going on. So the point is the RNLI have actually been saving migrants' lives, so often escorting them across the channel. And one of the things that I think really struck people was imagery of the French escorting these boats essentially out of French waters and then them being met by British boats and then escort them all the way to Britain. And I can see why the public would be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're told these guys are illegal migrants, that we don't want them crossing from France. And here's these visions of basically they set off in their rubber dinghy and the French escort them and then hand them over to the English and the English escort them through.

• 39:31Alastair Campbell

  The RNLI are an extraordinary organisation and they exist around our coastline, mainly volunteers to go out and rescue people at sea, which is incredibly dangerous. And so I think that as a result of this hard right protests and these guys in balaclavas, putting online the names, the faces, and in some cases, the addresses of people who are working with the RNLI, it is utterly disgusting. Even worse, in a way, well, it's all bad, there was actually an RNIB, Royal National Institute for the Blind, that came under attack because some of these idiots didn't realise that the RNIB was different to the RNLI.

• 40:16Alastair Campbell

  And now you've had in Portsmouth, seaside, sea, the RNLI actually saying they've had to shut down their RNLI base because of all the attacks they've been getting. And this is what gets me, so it gets my goat about, I'd love to talk to Nigel Farage about this when he comes in for his three hour interview. The way that he will light a fire and then go away. So he at one point described the RNLI as being like a migrant taxi service. Okay. Now, I get that as a piece of rhetoric, but you can't then divorce that from this kind of thing happening when people that you will then say are more extreme than you go out and put these people under pressure.

• 40:54Rory Stewart?

  The reason, obviously, to explain this strange phenomenon is the RNLI would say they're not political, their major objective is to stop people dying. And the fact is, it's unbelievably dangerous crossing the channel in a small boat and people have died. And so they feel they need to save their lives. Now, the answer to this, keep coming back to, is we need to have a proper agreement in place with France, Belgium, Europe.

• 41:18Alastair Campbell

  But while we don't, while we don't, you need charities like this who will do the work that nobody else appears to want to do. And let's just think, what are they actually saying? What are they saying in saying that this organisation, which exists to rescue people at sea? Are they saying that actually if anybody gets into distress while trying to cross the channel, that actually they should just die? That's what they're saying.

• 41:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, they're saying that the possibility of death might deter people from crossing. It doesn't actually deter people from crossing. People will just cross anyway.

• 41:49Alastair Campbell

  No, it's worse than that. It's not even about the deterrence, it's the fact they say, well, they deserve to die.

• 41:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 41:54Alastair Campbell

  And nobody should help them. And if they help them, we should attack them. Anyway, I hope I'm not the only person who as a result of these people protesting as they did, made a reasonably sized donation to the RNLI last week. I hope lots of people do the same. A great organisation. One of my formative experiences as a journalist was the Penley lifeboat disaster. A long, long time ago, back in the early eighties, and it was just a lifeboat that went out and was lost.

• 42:21Rory Stewart?

  These organisations are amazing. I mean, mountain rescue teams, Rory, extraordinary cave rescue teams, I mean, air ambulances, a lot of these things driven by voluntary donations.

• 42:30Alastair Campbell

  When we talk about, talking to Gordon Brown about what was his twin thing, that, you know, we've got breakdown of the world order, but then we also have breakdown of community and civic cohesion.

• 42:39Rory Stewart?

  Trade unions.

• 42:40Alastair Campbell

  People wanting to volunteer to support things in their locality. So for these people, then to sort of turn this into a campaign for their racist, you know, right, far right stuff, disgusting. So Rory, there's me complaining that I'm too busy. It's not very good for my brand of saying that I'm too busy, that you add something else to your portfolio. This is from Kate. Could Rory talk a bit about his new position at the LSE? Thanks. Francis, what LSE module are you teaching Rory?

• 43:12Rory Stewart?

  Well, this has been a big change. I'm very, very grateful to London School of Economics. As you know, I was teaching at Yale and.

• 43:19Alastair Campbell

  You're no longer doing that?

• 43:20Rory Stewart?

  I'm doing a little bit.

• 43:21Alastair Campbell

  Oh, I see.

• 43:22Rory Stewart?

  But this is basically replacing, because I suddenly thought, I love teaching students. And then I thought, it can't be that the only students in the world are in America and I have to keep flying back and forth across the Atlantic. Surely I can find some students in Britain who might be prepared to put up with me.

• 43:35Alastair Campbell

  Yeah.

• 43:36Rory Stewart?

  And London School of Economics looks like they might be able to do that. Um, yes, I want to talk about the difficulty of politics and the reality of it. So I'm about to give a lecture in a course taught by somebody called Johnny Hall on British diplomacy and international development, talk about what it's like being a minister. But I also want to talk about hope. I want to talk about what we do about a world where the old world has collapsed and a new world is being built in the most difficult circumstances of an American president like Trump and AI and the way it accelerates everything and how we do talk about things like middle powers and how we construct values and a better future. So I'm really looking forward to it. I'll do it with some public lectures. I'm also, not this year, but next year, we'll be doing some seminars where I'll be sitting with smaller groups of students,

• 44:22Rory Stewart?

  going through readings together, discussing, and it's lovely. I love teaching.

• 44:26Alastair Campbell

  Good. Excellent. Well, you mentioned hope there. On the way to the studio this morning, I was stopped by a guy just around the corner who said he came to our show at the festival hall. And he said that when we brought on Miles Inon and Aziz Abu Sarah, the Israeli and the Palestinian who now who lost the members of their family in the violence and who now campaigned together on peace, he said that he took his young son and they left watching them talk to us with hope. This week, podcast, I'm so glad you talked about hope in the context with the LSE. Because you remember that every year now, there's this campaign, Be Hope, trying to get podcasts to be more hopeful. And we've been pretty gloomy on lots of things this week.

• 45:08Alastair Campbell

  But let's just end with this question from Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, et cetera. When we look back at history, major technological shifts from the nuclear age to the birth of the internet have forced humanity to invent new models of global cooperation. In an era marked by geopolitical friction, competing interests, what gives you hope that governments, industry and civil society can still come together to tackle new challenges for the common good rather than letting them deepen our divisions?

• 45:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And then he mentions AI. Well, look, it couldn't be a better question, could it? He's been driving on trying to set up a CERN for AI. We're doing this at the time of the UN General Assembly, we're doing it when we're talking about Carney. Um, I think interestingly, I'm much less gloomy than I used to be because I think people like Carney and to some extent Tim Berners-Lee are suggesting what the shape of things could be. Even with AI, you're beginning to see things like the King's Summit actually with details. This is how verification is going to work. This is how international cooperation could work. So I think we can develop quite a hopeful vision. Local level could be devolution, civil society, international level, alliance of middle powers,

• 46:19Rory Stewart?

  and then work out what the missing components are. You know, we talked about a UN Secretary General who could really begin intervening directly in state conflicts and peace building in a way they haven't done again. Technologies that are being ignored. And also the ways in which the challenges we see today may not be the challenges in five years' time. Five years ago, we wouldn't have been talking about AI. Now AI is absolutely central to everything Burnham's saying at the UN, right? So who knows what demography will do, what climate will do, what poverty will do, flooding will do. But we need the structures to do that, which is why it would be such a pity if Burnham didn't rise the challenge, if Merz became more and more domestically focused in Germany rather than taking Germany's leadership role in the world.

• 47:01Rory Stewart?

  We desperately need everyone, Japan, South Korea, Australia, to be following that Canadian lead. And that's what gives me hope. Over to you.

• 47:08Alastair Campbell

  I actually found Gordon Brown's interview hopeful. He's over at the UN now, sort of, you know, banging the drum for the things that he believes in. I think what Tim is saying and what we're saying and what you're saying about your cause and what this whole Be Hope campaign is about, is it's so easy to just feel completely downcast by all the stuff that we hear, all the stuff that we see. And we shouldn't sugarcoat problems. There are massive problems out there. But I thought it was interesting at the festival hall when we asked them, asked for a show of hands on who was pretty happy with their own lives. And most people said yes. Now, lots of people, some people aren't happy with their own lives, but I think there is a dissonate. We talk about the dissonate between politics and people. I think sometimes there's a dissonate

• 47:52Alastair Campbell

  with people's sense of the world as a whole and the sense of their place within it. And the latter tending to be more positive than the former. And so that's what keeps me hope. And also, as I keep telling you, if you do the students, I I love talking to school kids because they give me hope. Some of them are a complete nightmare, but a lot of them are not. And they've got a better take on the world that we give them credit for.

• 48:12Rory Stewart?

  Brilliant. Well, let's, let's finish on that. Thank you very much, Alison.

• 48:16Alastair Campbell

  See you soon.

• 48:16Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.