232. Question Time: ISIS-K vs Russia, radical reform of the NHS, and the fight against child poverty

What is the wider significance of the terrorist attack in Moscow? Does the NHS need reform or spending increases? And why is the increase in child poverty not being discussed in the media? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP ELECTION TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Hey, Bose here. On your next track, listen for the decisions. Distortion on the bass, the vocal right up front. Every choice deliberate. With Bose, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves Bose.

• 1:21Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.

• 1:56Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:59Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 2:01Alastair Campbell?

  Now, one of the big stories that we didn't cover in the main podcast was the terrorist attack in Moscow. So let's start with that Rory. Erin Kay Wilson, what is your take on why ISIS-K attacked Russia? Tim Harries, how will the Moscow concert attack affect the war in Ukraine? Did you want to have a go at that one?

• 2:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, it's very interesting. I mean, I think one thing that maybe people haven't focused on enough is that the attackers were almost certainly Tajiks from Central Asia, so from a little country that's on the northern edge of Afghanistan. And it's complicated for a number of reasons. One is that Tajiks seem to be increasingly radicalised and involved in terrorist attacks around the world. There's a lot of activity, partly because ISIS is struggling to survive in Afghanistan. The Taliban have been pushing them back. They've been a kind of rival terrorist group. They've been recruiting a lot in Tajikistan. About 4,000 Tajiks went to join ISIS when it had this caliphate across the Iraqi Syrian border. And they seem to have been involved in a spate of recent attacks, including an

• 3:02Rory Stewart?

  attack that was filed to attack Cologne Cathedral, Germany, attack in Holland, and now most recently this attack in Moscow. It's really complicated. It's very complicated because on the one hand, there are very close economic connections between Russia and Tajikistan. The largest Russian non naval base in the world is in Tajikistan. There are well over a million Tajiks living in Russia, huge numbers of remittance payments going back, people sending cash back to their families from Russia to Tajikistan. But this is likely to lead to a big clampdown on Tajiks living in Russia. And on the other hand, of course, one of the things that may be driving this is because there is quite a large Tajik

• 3:46Rory Stewart?

  community and because they often feel that they're treated as second-class citizens in Russia. It's a potential breeding ground for terrorist attacks against Russia.

• 3:55Alastair Campbell?

  I suspect that's one of the reasons why they displayed yesterday, the four guys that they arrested, they displayed them yesterday in court, surrounded by dozens of cameras. And they had clearly been tortured, beaten up, call it what you want. There was one guy who had, he had a huge bandage where apparently his ear had been severed. There was another guy, I don't know if you saw it, Rory, couldn't open his eyes. There were sort of, you know, black eyes and bulging, bulging temples where, so I think that that was a deliberate message saying, okay, these guys got away with it in that they managed to kill a lot of people. But this is what happens if you decide to go down that route. And I guess, I guess

• 4:37Alastair Campbell?

  the other interesting element to this is the fact that Putin and the Kremlin so quickly tried to link the events to Ukraine without any seeming evidence at all. So I suppose that shows also the Putin, whatever happens, whatever is happening that he doesn't control, he tries to link it to the things that he think he can control.

• 5:02Rory Stewart?

  It's very complicated, isn't it? Because the, you're exactly right. When I first heard about it, I thought, well, maybe this is Ukraine connected. But it completely complicates the strategic narrative in Russia because everything was meant to be about Russia saving world civilization through its fight against Nazis in Ukraine. And suddenly now it's back to terrorism, Chechnya, the war in Syria and all this kind of stuff. And it's interesting, I mean, Putin used Chechen attacks in Moscow, paradoxically, to really drive his popularity up because it then led to this very brutal campaigns in Grozny. So it's going to be interesting to see whether people feel as they might that he's taken the eye off the ball and

• 5:46Rory Stewart?

  he's not doing his job properly, or whether he manages yet again to. Try to make his brutal response part of his sales pitch. Final thing, just before I let you come in again, I also think it's a reminder of the fact that we shouldn't be complacent at all about terrorist attacks in Europe now. Gaza is really radicalizing opinion. We've had a few years in which there's been less visible big terrorist attacks in Europe, but this Cologne Cathedral attack, the attempt in Holland, it's very likely that we will begin to see more attacks happening in Europe and people will attempt to mount attacks in the United States again. So one of the things that we were talking about in this great leading interview with

• 6:28Rory Stewart?

  the ex-head of MI6 and MI5, which is coming up quite soon, I was talking about the way that these intelligence agencies, particularly our foreign intelligence agencies, switched after 9/11 to put more and more emphasis on counter-terrorism instead of their traditional work. And then to some extent, they've sort of flipped back and they're focusing much more on things like Russia and Ukraine. I fear we're going to have to get back to a world where we're putting more resources into counter-terrorism.

• 6:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think people will be interested in just how frank John Soares, the ex-MI6 guy, and Eliza Manning and Buller, who ran MI5, just how frank they are about some of the issues we talk about. For example, Eliza, absolutely crystal clear that she sees what's happening in Gaza as catastrophic in terms of the radicalization of a generation and that we and every other country in the world will have to deal with that down the track. Also, very, very, very strong views about Trump as well, so that is one to look forward to. Now Rory, last week, we talked about free ports and special economic zones. And do you remember Anna Turley? Was she in Parliament at the same time as you?

• 7:31Rory Stewart?

  I know her, but I don't think in Parliament at the same time.

• 7:33Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well, she was MP for Redcar and she's standing again in Redcar. And she starts off very nicely, Rory, she says, "I'm a big fan of Rory's, okay, but..."

• 7:42Rory Stewart?

  The "but" is coming, yeah.

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  "...found myself disappointed in his uncharacteristic lack of intellectual curiosity on the free port in Teesside. He seems to dismiss the issue as a situation where the government's been ripped off and out-negotiated."

• 7:58Alastair Campbell?

  But what happened here is that a huge site in public ownership after compulsory purchase was turned into 50 50 joint venture project with a couple of businessmen with close links to the mayor after no procurement process, no tendering opportunities for any other businessmen. How can you assess value for money without a tendering process? This was then turned into a 90 10 joint venture with no publicity and no scrutiny. And there was a piece in the Financial Times about their profits, these business guys, absolutely soaring. So Anna goes on, contracts are going to family members, we see the developers buying stately homes worth three million, their sons swanning around Teesside in Rolls Royces, while we have some of the biggest child poverty rates in the country. And so I guess she's

• 8:43Alastair Campbell?

  making the point I was trying to make, that this isn't just about business, this is about a new system, new systems which are tipped towards this kind of, I'd call it kind of cronyism, as opposed to proper tendering anti-corruption processes.

• 9:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I, look, I'm not, I'm not in favour of these things. I think, you know, that this is where I follow my, my hero David Gork, that if there are good reforms that you need to make to get the economy going, and if there's too much red tape and there's too many regulations, too much planning getting away business, be brave and do it across the whole country. Don't create these little islands where you try to change the rules. But I guess what's going on behind it is this question of how you get the balance right, because as you point out, at the same time, it's absolutely true that there seems to be shocking examples here. We also know that Britain is unbelievably bad at launching anything, building any infrastructure, getting anything done. And that's partly because our processes, our planning rules, our tendering procedures are unbelievably slow and bureaucratic,

• 9:45Rory Stewart?

  which is why, you know, you often make jokes about the fact they were talking about the third runway when you came in in 97.

• 9:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. This guy Ben Houchen though, he's clearly, he's clearly an operator. He had, there was, I didn't see question time, but people were amused slash angered at the fact that there was a woman in the audience last week, he was talking about a wonderful man, Ben Houchen was. And it turned out that she's the wife of one of his colleagues who was also sitting in the audience.

• 10:12Rory Stewart?

  A bit like you being nice about Keir Starmer.

• 10:14Alastair Campbell?

  I beg your pardon.

• 10:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, presumably she's related to a colleague. It's like you being nice about Keir Starmer.

• 10:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I wouldn't go and pretend to be a sort of random member of the public in a Question Time audience.

• 10:27Rory Stewart?

  So the danger is, yeah, exactly. That's true. I get it. I get it. Right. Here, look, Tasmania election, something that you know a lot about. Erin, I've just turned 18, be voting for the first time in a state election, just over a month away. Tasmania is the only state in the country with a Liberal government still in power. So it'll be fascinating to see how this plays out. Tell us about what's happening in Tasmania.

• 10:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they've had the election and very interesting. So it is the only state in the country with a Liberal government, and that's their Tories, as it were, but they've not done very well. They've taken a bit of a hit. However, the Labor opposition weren't the main beneficiaries. The main beneficiaries were smaller parties and independents. So it's now going to be some sort of coalition that gets cobbled together. So I don't know how you voted, Erin, but that was a very, very, very interesting election. Had it gone to Labor, it would have meant that Australia was red, as in Labor, at the federal level and in every single state, which would have been quite a thing.

• 11:27Alastair Campbell?

  So Tasmania, probably still going to be Liberal Premier, but with a pretty shaky coalition. Now, Rory, what about this one? I don't want to be too hard on you, because, you know, but given you did give Rachel Reeves a bit of a kicking, I don't feel too bad about it. The other place where you were getting a lot of pushback last week is what you said about the health service. So now here's one. Jim Down, Rory seems convinced that investment is not the problem with the health service and that Reform Office is the solution, but in the new Labor years, we were ranked first by the Commonwealth Fund ahead of Europe, America, Australia, et cetera. Since then, our cumulative under spend, even including COVID spending uplift, is 322 billion.

• 12:10Alastair Campbell?

  Innovation, data, AI, et cetera, is vital, but changing the system will be expensive and exchange one set of problems for another. Aren't the big picture answers ultra-processed food taxes to reduce chronic illness and a more preventive approach? P.S. Healthcare does not meet the requirements for a successful marketplace, not even close.

• 12:31Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, I think he's absolutely right about the fact that even if you look around the world and you see systems that seem to be doing better, you know, sometimes people, for example, envious of France or envious of Australia, changing to one of those systems would be incredibly painful. And I can really see the argument to say that we're not starting from the same place and that trying to shift midway is almost impossible. He's also right that the NHS, the way it's currently run desperately needs more money and it runs much better when there's much more money given to it. I guess where we park company is about where the government's going to get that money from and at the expense of

• 13:13Rory Stewart?

  what, because I think that's where Satya Javed's point, that if you look at the the CDEL, which is the kind of flexible bit of government spending, we've gone up from 27% being spent on the NHS to 45%, about to get up to 50.

• 13:25Alastair Campbell?

  But isn't that though, because the NHS is one of the few budgets that was not frozen? So most of the other budgets during austerity were frozen?

• 13:32Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. So it's a higher and higher proportion. But of course, he's implying that we need to put much more money in. And it's true that was a big increase in real terms, which is what Osborne and Cameron were talking about, was nothing like enough because our health inflation is always a few percent above normal inflation because as we get older, there's more and more people needing treatment and drugs get more and more expensive. So I think there's no doubt that one way of solving it would be to try to do what Gordon Brown did, which is just put an enormous amount more money into the system, except that there would probably be quite a lot of waste, but also that that would tackle many of the problems. The question is where would that come from? I mean, here's somebody, Matt Morgan, Dr. Matt Morgan, in fact. Three ways to make a health service

• 14:13Rory Stewart?

  affordable is the question coming. Tax more like Denmark, ration like the French, or collaborate with industry like Australia. The UK seems to do all three, right? It does tax more, it does ration more, and it does collaborate with industry, but it isn't honest or transparent about it. Which path should we choose? And don't say improve efficiency. You've got all these debates, which which we've had. Philip Lee, who was a Conservative MP with me and then became a Lib Dem, he's a GP from, that was the MP for Bracknell, I think, unless I'm being unfair to him, was one of a number of MPs on the Health Committee and others who suggested that people should be charged a nominal amount for appointments with GPs because there are these very, very large

• 14:57Rory Stewart?

  numbers of people just not turning up to appointments. And I think that's true in some of the health systems around the world, which is that you do need to pay a small amount to access it. And I guess their assumption is psychologically that might make you think a bit more carefully before missing your appointment. Where are you on all this stuff at the moment?

• 15:15Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we, I mean, part of the problem with the UK is that we sort of, we want, if you like, the best European levels of public service, but we want an American approach to tax, as it were. And the truth is, you probably can't have both. So where I'm with you, and to a lesser extent with Sajid Javid, I do think that there has to be some kind, I think the base, I think Jim Down is right, the basic system is fine and the principle is fine. And by the way, I went to see, Fiona and I went to see Nye, the play about Nye Bevan at the National Theatre the other day, and my God, it is brilliant. Michael Sheen is an absolutely amazing actor. But it's a fantastic reminder of, you know, we talked

• 15:58Alastair Campbell?

  in the interview with Anthony Gormley, he was bemoaning the lack of imagination in politics and that it's the lack of imagination that leads us to downgrade the arts, it's the lack of imagination that leads to Brexit. The power of the imagination of the idea that that Labour government had of a health service, free at the point of need regardless of the ability to pay, and the drive and determination that it took to make it come about. It's a brilliant play, but it's also a fantastic story. And I think it's a reminder that we do need to keep those high levels of imagination of what is possible. But I think that, you know, I wouldn't have a problem with there being some kind of cross-party commission approach to review the workings of the health service with a view to improving

• 16:42Alastair Campbell?

  it and with a view properly to exploiting the advantages of technology. I was talking to a doctor the other day who said some of the stuff that they're seeing in relation to cancer care and AI and the development of technology is mind-blowingly brilliant. So I think there can be both of these things going on, but I'd be very, very loathe to dismiss the strength and the power of that founding principle of the health service.

• 17:05Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. Okay, Alastair, quick break. More questions in a minute.

• 17:09Speaker 02

  Hey, Bose here. On your next track, listen for the decisions. Distortion on the bass, the vocals right up front. Every choice deliberate. With Bose, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves Bose.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks. Now made with no artificial dyes.

• 17:53Speaker 04

  Payday bars have a bone to pick with the other candy bars. Enough with the toppings and layers and stuff, kay? Payday bars are just salty crunchy peanuts and sweet caramel. Delicious. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 18:14Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory.

• 18:15Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 18:15Alastair Campbell?

  Can I give you this? We talked very, very briefly about this in the main podcast in the context of the flag.

• 18:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 18:21Alastair Campbell?

  Bobby O'Malley. Last week, DWP released high record highs of children in poverty, but it's basically been ignored by most news media. Why is it that they've just got so used to it? Or are they just so far away from understanding the consequences of this that it doesn't seem that important? Polly Purvis quoted from the Joseph Roundtree Foundation, the number of people in households at risk of being unable to afford enough food has risen by 53% in a year from 4.7 million to 7.2 million. And I mean, we are talking there, we're talking about millions of people who are really, really, really struggling. And they, it seems to me they have no, next to no voice on the media at all. So why don't we cover that stuff?

• 19:03Rory Stewart?

  So two things on that. I'll come back to your thing in a second, but clearly the the main responsibility for this must lie with the Conservative government, right? They've been in government for 13 years. And a lot of these poverty indicators are going absolutely in the wrong direction and we should dig into that and look at the mistakes they've made. But the reason it's not getting in the news is partly that Labour has not decided to make this an issue. We talked in the main podcast about that speech given by Rachel Reeves and she barely mentions poverty. I think she mentions it three times, one in a historical context and one in a sort of much more abstract context. So before we get on to what can be done to sort it out and what the Tories are doing wrong, why has Labour given this shocking

• 19:47Rory Stewart?

  news and given that Labour is absolutely on the side of equality and progressive politics? Why has Labour not made more of this?

• 19:52Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's a very, very good question and I'm not sure I know the answer. Are they thinking that if they're just seen as the people who bang on about poor people, it loses that sense of aspiration? But I think you can do both. I think you can do both. I think you have to do both because the sort of economy that Rachel Reeves was talking about, you know, she did talk, for example, about the fact that post-COVID in particular, there's been this sort of huge surge of economically inactive people, people on disability benefits and so forth. And she's talked about the need to, you know, to reverse that trend. But the cost of poverty now is astronomical, even if it is the voluntary sector that's picking up a lot of the pieces. But I think Labour should make more of this,

• 20:35Alastair Campbell?

  I really do. I think that you can't have, I saw, it was, I mean, there was a thing on German television the other day on ARD, it was a long report about shoplifting in Leeds. And we should put it in the newsletter because there's a subtitle version that's doing the rounds. And it's stuff that honestly, it was the sort of stuff and the kind of interviews, you just, I just can't remember the last time I saw anything like that on British television. He was talking to these guys in a pub who were talking about, you know, they were saying that they know so many families who've been touched by suicide, they know so many families who literally can't afford to eat or heat at the same time. And then they were talking to these people who were shopkeepers who are losing

• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  so much to shoplifting every day. And it just seems to me that it's absent from our political debate. And I think you're right. I think I probably, I'm too quick to blame the media sometimes for not covering it. But they probably would cover it more if there was like a Labour Party. Campaign on this. Gordon Brown, to be fair to him, Gordon Brown bangs on about child poverty as he did in government. He bangs on about it all the time. He's right.

• 21:39Rory Stewart?

  And I think there's also this issue that everybody gets confused about differences between absolute poverty, measured one way, relative poverty, which is about the gaps between between people. But there are certain kinds of statistics that you could use to bring it home more. So I was talking to a man who is one of the senior people at Iceland Foods, and he talked about the fact that they can see moments in their statistics, a big uprising, people shoplifting milk powder, baby milk powder. And those are difficult to to explain away, except in terms of people in absolutely desperate situations. It's not a normal thing to to shoplift, and you can just see it in the figures in supermarkets.

• 22:18Alastair Campbell?

  That's very interesting, because that was one of the things that this report, this German report featured, was that was the was the rise in the theft of nappies and baby food.

• 22:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And this is, this is also goes to an issue that Labour's been, for some reason that I don't, well, I can understand why, but hasn't been prepared to challenge. So the Conservatives have imposed a two child limit on benefits. And the idea is that they're worried that people have more kids to get more benefits. The the problem with those limits is even if it's true that there are a few people who might have more kids to get benefits, the impact on large families who have more than two kids who are living in poverty is unbelievable. And it's brutal.

• 22:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Rory Stewart?

  And I think Labour traditionally would always have challenged that kind of policy, and they're not yet challenging it. And one would like to see them challenge it because, again, the answer to this, I'm afraid brutally, is cash. You need to give cash to poor people so that they can meet their immediate needs and priorities. And that extends to feeding their kids, clothing themselves, making sure that kids are in school. And again, we need to challenge this ludicrous idea, which is shown in all the data and research to be false. That giving cash to people just encourages dependency and idleness. In fact, there's such good evidence from randomized controlled trials across the developing world,

• 23:41Rory Stewart?

  across the developed world, that the most straightforward way to tackle poverty is, I'm afraid, to make people less poor.

• 23:48Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. There was a conference last week in Liverpool and there's a guy called David Taylor Robinson, who's a professor, expert in public health. And he was talking about children who were turning up to school with no shoes. He was talking about children who were sharing their only meal of the day with their brothers and sisters. And he was saying that in Liverpool, infant mortality is on the rise. So these are all signs of something far bigger than the political or media debate are prepared to countenance. And I just do not understand why. And it's all part of this sort of denial of the real world. We deny that Brexit's damaging the economy. We deny that we've got all

• 24:28Alastair Campbell?

  sorts of structural, social problems that have driven inequality. And if we don't admit them, we're never going to address them.

• 24:35Rory Stewart?

  And I think there's a bigger issue in the way that we think about politics, which is that we think a lot in terms of economic numbers. Your friend Tessa Giles said once in a speech, and it really stuck with me, that when she went into a hospital, she'd ask herself, you know, would I want my mother to be in this hospital? And I began thinking about it with prisons. You know, would I want my sister or brother to be in this prison? And it's true on poverty too, that we need to have a sense of just how shameful this is, how lacking in decency, that ask yourself, would you want to invite someone from another country? Would you be proud of Britain if you showed them the conditions in which the extreme poor in Britain are living, or the conditions in

• 25:17Rory Stewart?

  which prisoners are living? And the answer is absolutely not. And we need to get that sense of decency again.

• 25:24Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Now Rory, I'm sorry to keep throwing questions at you, but we did seem to get a lot of questions pointed at you this week. Jack Harback, Rory seems to think that we, brackets, the Lib Dems, are in trouble. Yet, if our strategy pays off, we could be looking at around 50 MPs at the next election. Why is he always so pessimistic about us? And we do want to return to the single market after all, says Jack. And that's one of your things.

• 25:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, why am I pessimistic? I'm pessimistic because I don't feel that they are defining anything interesting in terms of national policy at the moment. I mean, you're right that there's very little coming out of Labour because they've got a kind of Mingvar strategy. They're trying to be careful before an election. That should open huge space for the Lib Dems to talk about all these issues. Talk about poverty, be much more radical on rejoining the European Union. I mean, there's tens of millions of voters out there looking for ideas. And there's a real sense of a sort of stale establishment consensus that the Lib Dems could be blowing apart and they're not doing it.

• 26:25Alastair Campbell?

  All right, here's another one for you.

• 26:28Rory Stewart?

  Oh, bloody. Go on, I want one for you. Come on, before you come to me, here's one for you.

• 26:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, go on then. Throw one at me then.

• 26:33Rory Stewart?

  Paul Cowley MBE, in today's society with a labour shortage, cost of living crisis, public spending cuts, crime costing around 18 billion pounds a year, businesses struggling in so many ways. Why don't more UK businesses look at employing men and women from prisons? Statistics prove they're more loyal. Ex-prisoners are more loyal. Their retention figures are better and they take less time off work, but still it's a slow take-up. So he's writing for an organisation that's employed 130 prison leavers over the last 15 months. I think that's Iceland supermarkets. And that's, that's just the beginning. But why is more of this not going on?

• 27:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I agree with the premise, by the way. I think we still have a kind of view of people who've been to prison that that sort of marks them for life and that is wrong. We're just around the corner from where we live. There's a, this place Redemption Roasters, which is a cafe. And I think they're now developing into a chain and it's called Redemption Roasters because the people who work there are people who have, you know, come out of prison. We've talked before about the clink. And in fact, we've both met prison governors recently. Who are keen for us, because we both talk about prisons so much, to go and do a live podcast, either in a prison or at the clink, one of the restaurants, whatever it might be, which we would love to do. And I think the Department of Justice might have quibbles about it,

• 27:49Alastair Campbell?

  but if they do, we'd love it even more if we could do it with the Justice Secretary, Alex Chalk.

• 27:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, we'd love to interview the Justice Secretary. So there we are. Shout out to Alex Chalk, if you're listening to this on your run, and shout out to the Ministry of Justice. Can we please interview him in a prison and get on to the subject of prisons?

• 28:05Alastair Campbell?

  And I also think that the point about loyalty is incredibly important. I feel the same in this about about mental health. I think that people who've gone through mental health crises and mental illness, I think sometimes if they admit that in an interview or on a CV, it's held against them. But I think it should be held in their favour.

• 28:24Rory Stewart?

  Just quickly on that one, people may have heard of something called Ban the Box in this, which is that you, instead of getting people to tick a box whether they have a criminal conviction right before they even get an interview, which often means they never make it through, it takes that box out, infuse, and then later in the process, once you've had a chance to see someone and get sense of their strengths and weaknesses, then you find out whether or not they've had a criminal conviction.

• 28:44Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, interesting, interesting. I like that, I like that. Yeah, so, look, there's no doubt. And of course, what will happen is that, you know, you might get an isolated incident of somebody who employs somebody out of prison and they end up, you know, raiding the till or whatever, or beating somebody up. And people say, oh, this is terrible, this is why you should never... But that happens in real life anyway, and it happens with people who've not been to prison as well. But I just think we've got to, you talk about being a more civilised society. Part of being a civilised society is to give people second, even third, even fourth chances. And I think that it would also, if we had a business culture that thought about wanting to take people who are serving towards the end of their sentences,

• 29:28Alastair Campbell?

  it would also change the culture inside prisons as well. So there's a kind of, I think there's a win-win there. Now Rory, here's one for you. This is my last one. Theresa Macron, Rory, if you were London mayor, would you build housing on golf courses? London's golf courses add up to an area the size of Wandsworth and they're used by a tiny minority of people.

• 29:51Rory Stewart?

  Well, the problem with that, it's a lovely, lovely line.

• 29:53Alastair Campbell?

  Be brave Rory, be brave.

• 29:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, the challenge around it is, um, this is green belt stuff. A lot of those golf courses are on green belt. And I do think that it's going to be very, very dangerous if we start digging hard into the green belt. Because I think we will then end up with sprawling mega cities and you'll basically have, I'm afraid. I mean, you can see this already in bits of Hampshire, just a sense of urban sprawl going on and on and on. What London needs to do is build up and not, not skyscrapers. We talked about this before. Medium density, six, nine story buildings. We need to be much better at giving planning permission for that.

• 30:31Rory Stewart?

  I also would like to see, I mean, I'd like to get rid of the golf courses, absolutely get rid of all golf courses. But I'd like to replace them with forest.

• 30:39Alastair Campbell?

  You want to get rid of all golf courses?

• 30:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I'm going to go anti golf. Um, but what I'd like the green belt to become is the largest forest in England. I'd like hundreds of millions of trees planted in the green belt. I think it would transform our carbon targets. It would transform air quality in London. It would transform nature and access for young people, particularly the urban poor. And justify the green belt instead of what it is at the moment, which is a lot of wasteland and golf courses.

• 31:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Okay. Good.

• 31:06Rory Stewart?

  Last one for you. Um, Keith Lee Perkins, why do you think there's been such under reporting on the election of a new first minister in Wales? Especially compared to Scotland. Does it reflect the way Wales is seen by the rest of the UK? What are your predictions for the way Welsh Labour will go under Vaughan Gethin?

• 31:22Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think he's, I mean, I, I think he got a fair bit of coverage, did he not? I think that, you know, we talked about it last week. I think that I certainly saw his, his acceptance speech. I saw his first, I heard about his first presentation as first minister. I saw coverage of Mark Drakeford's very moving departure speech. So I, I don't think it was that low profile, but I think Scotland is a, is a bigger country. I think it's probably. Been more interesting in terms of the politics because in recent years it's been central to the UK debate because we had the independence referendum, salmon and sturgeon

• 32:03Alastair Campbell?

  in particular have been absolutely UK household names, not just in Scotland. Whereas I guess because Wales has been Labour, Labour, Labour, Labour, Labour, less kind of volatile. And that's probably explains why it doesn't get quite the same level of of coverage, isn't that right?

• 32:20Rory Stewart?

  Good. I'm also, I'm going to be dishonest past you. Tim Buckle, anything cheery this week? Other than the Labour landslide, I'm a regular listener. It's all been a bit doom and gloom recently. So just to give you a second, what do you think of something cheery? I had a really interesting dinner, says he name dropping massively.

• 32:38Alastair Campbell?

  Will I am?

• 32:39Rory Stewart?

  Will I am, exactly. In my house this week. And he's been doing a lot on AI, AI on music, AI on radio, AI on cars. He was showing me some of the new applications he's developed. And it really is incredible. If you get the prompts right, the designs right, the tools right, just how much AI is now able to do. And actually, you know, I talk a lot about chat GPT, despite grumbling about Gemini, which is the Google app, it's also doing some amazing things on creative writing at the moment. So, and you talked about health. I think the possible applications, again, I had a meeting three weeks ago in New York

• 33:19Rory Stewart?

  with a man who is designing new vaccines using AI, AI at four different stages in four different countries and then synthesizing them, you know, and this is happening right across the world. He's got stuff going in Canada, the US.

• 33:33Alastair Campbell?

  Right, right, right. Let's just get off vaccines. I think quite a lot of our listeners will be thinking, hold on a minute, Rory Stewart had Will I Am in his house. One, my first question is, did you know who he was? Two? Two, who did the cooking? And three, what did you have?

• 33:50Rory Stewart?

  We got Takeaway Indian, because he turned out to be a vegetarian. I got in a real muddle because I got it from a lovely Indian restaurant called Dashoon, but their biryani was so convincing that he and I convinced ourselves that maybe we'd been sent chicken instead of jackfruit. And I had to keep munching my way through it to work out what it was.

• 34:09Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay.

• 34:09Rory Stewart?

  That was the food. And did I really know who he was? Not, not, not really, no. But you of course, didn't know who he was.

• 34:19Alastair Campbell?

  I did, I did.

• 34:20Rory Stewart?

  Go on, give us your good news for the week.

• 34:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I had a fantastic day yesterday because I got approached out of the blue by a rock, an indie rock band from Wales, see, we talk about Wales all the time, called Cardinal Black. And I was the only person they knew who, or they'd heard of, who played the bagpipes. And so they asked, they asked me if I would do the play, they'd written this song which they felt needed, bagpipes in the background. So I spent the day in a recording studio. And particularly on the day that we had Anthony Gormley on leading, I just felt so sort of part of something wonderfully creative. And I, and I just, I do think, I'm really, I'm going to bang on about this, Britain as a cultural superpower until it happens, because I think

• 35:05Alastair Campbell?

  that, I think the arts are going to be, I love that thing Anthony Gormley said about, you know, if AI is going to take all our jobs away, then as Gormley said, we're all going to have to be artists. And so for a day, I felt like I was a bit of a, a bit of a rock star and I quite, quite enjoyed it.

• 35:20Rory Stewart?

  I think that's amazing. And of course, it's, it's a luxury for us, but it makes such a difference. My, my really good friend, Emma in Yale, I hope she doesn't mind me dropping her name in, but she's taken up ceramics and pottery classes. And I just think it's just bringing so much happiness to her life, making pots three hours a week. So there we are. Shout out for Anthony Gormley. Thank you, Asta.

• 35:40Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. See you soon.

• 35:42Rory Stewart?

  See you soon. Bye bye.

• 35:49Speaker 05

  Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended Blinds.com.

• 35:55Speaker 06

  With custom window treatments made to fit your style, space, and budget, customers who shop at Blinds.com experienced overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a fuller, deeper night's sleep and a sudden urge to host the watch party again. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Visit Blinds.com to order your free samples today.