Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 13. Rupert Murdoch, Taiwan, and Burnley About this episode Partygate photos, Teals in Australia, why Rory ran as an independent in London, Anthony Albanese, Mhairi Black, Bill Cash, Rupert Murdoch, China, Taiwan, PR, and Nigel Farage. This week's pod has got it all.
Join Rory and Alastair as they drill down into the political talking points from at home and abroad, plus plenty of listener questions.
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Transcript 7,975 words · 11 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair 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.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.
0:42 Alastair 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?
0:49 Rory Stewart? I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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1:43 Rory Stewart? Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
1:47 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alastair Campbell.
1:49 Rory Stewart? Today, we're going to be discussing the Australian election results, their wider international impact. And I'm going to try to see if there's any connection between the teal party in Australia and what we've been trying to do with independents in London. We're going to talk about Joe Biden's worries about island nations looking to China. And huge thank you to everyone who sent in a question this week, another 600 questions on Twitter and email. So we'll work our way through as many of those as we can in the second half. Right then, Alison, I don't really want to raise it, but Burnley.
2:20 Alastair Campbell? No, you don't want to raise it, Rory. And also, you so don't care, and you so don't know, and it's only a matter of pain to me. So let's just move on. And let's start where we ended last week, which was you saying that lying has to become more central to our political debate. And lo and behold, here we are, recording this on the morning when Boris Johnson, pictures have emerged of him clearly having a party at an event for which he was not fined by the Metropolitan Police. And there was a brilliant question from Jason Moore, which was, why is it a crime to lie in the places
3:04 Alastair Campbell? where laws are enforced, our courts, but not a crime to lie in the place where our laws are made? I think we now just accept, do we all accept that Johnson has lied in Parliament?
3:15 Rory Stewart? 100%. He said clearly, again and again, that he didn't go to a party, said clearly that no rules were broken. And clearly, the Metropolitan Police has confirmed that rules were broken. And clearly, there is evidence that he went to parties.
3:28 Alastair Campbell? So he's got to resign?
3:29 Rory Stewart? He's got to resign? Yeah. And the problem is that this goes to the core of why this matters, and why does it matter? It matters, just as it does in a law court, because there's no way that the public can come to a decision when they vote, unless they have the correct information. And if people are lying to them in Parliament, it's really impossible to have a democracy functioning.
3:54 Alastair Campbell? So we're ending up with the absolute erosion of what holds our democracy together. And it's all down to your colleagues, it's your former colleagues on the Tory back benches, who it seems to me are still not facing up to that reality that you've just outlined. And that is horrific.
4:11 Rory Stewart? And it's extraordinary, isn't it? And it's odd also how even people like Charles Walker, who initially said he was going to go, has now changed his mind and decided that he's come through. Charles Walker did this extraordinary interview, I think it was with Newsnight, where he said, He's like some amazing improbable heroic cricketer who suddenly comes in at the last moment and takes five wickets or scores an extraordinary number of runs, as though somehow Boris Johnson has presented himself to the public, as though not only the rules don't apply to him, not only that he can lie when other people can't, but that somehow it's all forgiven, as though he's some sort of magic exception to the way that everybody else has to behave.
4:52 Alastair Campbell? But that's, I think he's running out of road on that, because, I mean, admittedly, going around the place, I'm assuming that the sort of people who come up and talk to me probably either want to abuse me about Iraq, or they agree with me about everything that I say, and that tends to be the flow. But, you know, you mentioned Burnley, up at Burnley at the weekend, which the Tories sort of view as a homogenous red wall, et cetera, et cetera. Every single person who, with whom I had a discussion about politics and Johnson was just disgusted by him. And I think that's going deeper and deeper and deeper. And I think the Charles Walkers of this world were probably thinking, oh, well, if he goes, at least we've got Sunak lined up. And of course, Sunak has been utterly
5:36 Alastair Campbell? torpedoed. So now they're thinking, do we really want Liz Truss as Prime Minister, which would be a complete disaster, I think we all know that. So it is literally better the devil you know, and he happens to be pretty close to being the devil.
5:48 Rory Stewart? Yeah, it's, well, there's a brilliant article by Hugo Rifkin in The Times, which completely summed up my sense of dealing with him. Hugo Rifkin says, we're all kind of married to him now.
6:01 Alastair Campbell? Oh, I'm not. No, I'm not.
6:03 Rory Stewart? Let me push the metaphor through. So he sits at the breakfast table, he's sort of smirking at you about his latest infidelity. And either you ignore it, in which case he's won, or you screech at him about it, in which case he's also won, because then all his mates are like, yeah, I know, but of course he behaves like that, because you're always screeching at him. And one of the tricks is he trivialises everything.
6:26 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
6:27 Rory Stewart? And, and, and he does it, Rifkin said, he does it partly sort of bending time. I'd be interested in whether you thought this made sense as a communications expert, because Rifkin points out that what he does is he kind of stretches stories out, and usually that would be damaging, but in his case.
6:44 Rory Stewart? You start a debate going, did Sue Gray set the meeting or did Downing Street set the meeting? You stretch it out over three, four days. You force Sophie Ridge on Sky to spend 10 minutes trying to ask Nadiem Zahawi, who set the calendar in the meeting? And after four days, when the truth finding comes out, the people asking the questions are made to seem a little bit petty, as though they're pushing after a trivial issue, because they've had to keep repeating, who set the calendar in the diary for four days, until the public's like, why are you asking about the calendar in the diary? And that's, and then we don't even remember the Northern Ireland Protocol. I mean, the whole thing is just stretched out so that everything he does.
7:22 Alastair Campbell? There's a clip of him when he was not the Tory leader, but I think he was mayor, and he was at some event where he actually said, my strategy is to put so much stuff out there, make so many gaffs that nobody knows which gaff to focus on. And of course, he was doing it as part of his after dinner funny guy shtick. But there's something in that. But I do think people have started to see through it. And if we take your marriage analogy a bit further, let's go to another marriage. And that's between the relationship between the people of Australia and Scott Morrison. Because if there's one thing that happened this week that should worry Johnson, it is that. Because basically, in that marriage, the Australian people have said, listen, mate, we're not having you anymore, and we're
8:06 Alastair Campbell? going to look around. And what's incredible, what happened in Australia already, is that Labour won, and we now have a Labour Prime Minister, but their share of the vote went down. And the reason for that was, I'm glad that I educated you last week about Teals, because they became absolutely key in the outcome of this election. And we honestly, of all the questions, you mentioned the 600 and so questions, we had dozens about Australia. Let me just run through a few, and then we can maybe pick up, pick up the debate. There's quite a few about whether we should have compulsory voting. There was a few about whether we should change the electoral system to have it more like Australia. Uh, there were quite a few. Ian Winter, does the political pendulum always swing back?
8:47 Alastair Campbell? My answer to that is no. Uh, what David Williams, what can Labour learn from this? Uh, Rachel Kelly, Morrison, Murdoch, Crosby, did they fail to remember that women exist? Which I thought was a very, very good, uh, very good question. And Andrew Ketching, how does the UK-Australia relationship evolve? And of course, quite a few as well about, about China. So thanks to all those who sent in questions about Australia. But where do you want to pick up on the?
9:13 Rory Stewart? Well, let's, let's start with the Teals. So you, you raised them last week. And I think what you pointed out last week is that they're called Teals because they are basically blue or conservative on fiscal policy. But they're green on environmental policy.
9:28 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
9:29 Rory Stewart? And they're real independents. I mean, the, the teal is just sort of summing up a whole series of independent campaigns. Almost all of them, uh, the successful campaigns, women. Uh, I was struck by the fact a surprising number of them were doctors.
9:42 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
9:43 Rory Stewart? And many of them have been backed by a particular philanthropist who essentially has three requirements. He wants candidates who care about the environment. He wants candidates with political integrity. And he wants candidates who care about gender equality.
9:58 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
9:59 Rory Stewart? And they set up quite small teams, quite small campaigning teams.
10:02 Alastair Campbell? All things, by the way, Roy, that Morrison and the populists would deride and dismiss as woke. So that's the other, that's the other good thing out of this.
10:11 Rory Stewart? One of the things that I'm mesmerized by is that, of course, they ran as independents. And I was, it made me think again about running to be Mayor of London as an independent.
10:19 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
10:20 Rory Stewart? And I think it, it's easy to say firstly that it's difficult for independents to come through against big parties. Cause big parties have a lot of money. They have the organisation already on the ground. But the other thing that I think I remembered is just how difficult it is setting up a party from scratch and how expensive it is. We, we had to, running in London, set up field teams in thirty two different boroughs, which meant recruiting thirty two field organisers in thirty two boroughs. We needed to set up full Facebook campaigns. We needed to work out what our advertising strategy was. Each one of those thirty two boroughs then needed field teams going down to the street level.
11:00 Rory Stewart? We needed to develop apps in order to register what people's priorities were, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, the reason I'm saying that is that. In order to get these independent campaigns going is a lot of time and a lot of patience. And some of these teal campaigners have been at it for a surprisingly long time.
11:17 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
11:17 Rory Stewart? And I think that's how we would do it in Britain. I think the lesson I'd probably take from London is that it's probably not something that you do in one election. It's something where if you're really going to win, you have to build it up over two or three.
11:31 Alastair Campbell? So does that mean you're going to go again?
11:33 Rory Stewart? Well, I think, I don't know, I don't know.
11:36 Alastair Campbell? The other thing though, Rory, is they're not, you call them at the start of the teal party, they're not a party, they are, they are genuine independents. Do you just happen to be operating with some principles and structures that they can share?
11:48 Rory Stewart? Exactly. They're not a party at all. They're, they're all independents. And that was something I also picked up in London. I, when I started talking to parties, we looked at a, a possible alliance with the Lib Dems and discovered, at least in, in our polling, that I would have dropped from almost twenty percent in the polls down to about five percent in the polls if I'd branded myself as a Lib Dem at that stage.
12:08 Alastair Campbell? Wow.
12:09 Rory Stewart? That people preferred, preferred independent to Lib Dem. Now, that may not still be true.
12:13 Alastair Campbell? This is probably why you keep pushing back on these questions that we get every single week about why you want, just, don't just join the Lib Dems and get over with it. I tell you, the other big lesson in this is, is actually in the character of Anthony Albanese, the, the, the, the new prime minister. I mean, it is basically, just keep going. That guy has been around forever. And, and he was always seen as a kind of John Prescott type figure, not least because he was pretty big and pretty punchy. He lost a lot of weight. He, he kind of toned down some of the rougher edges. He had an amazing backstory. You know, his mum was an Australian who went to a tour of Europe, uh, met a guy in Italy, got pregnant,
12:56 Alastair Campbell? went back to Australia. Albanese didn't actually meet his dad until I think he was in his thirties. Um. So a very kind of working class, tough working class background, uh but just kept going. I can, I was actually in Australia. Have you ever seen The Killing Season, by the way?
13:13 Rory Stewart? No.
13:14 Alastair Campbell? The Killing Season, you've got to see The Killing Season. It's a series of documentaries by Australian television about the history of the Rudd-Gillard relationship and the constant spills and the Labour leadership fights. It is one of the most gripping, compelling political documentary series you'll ever see. But Albanese is in there and about there. And I was actually in Australia. I saw Julia Gillard on the day that Rudd finally made his move and absolutely knifed her and was gone. Now, but Albanese seems to have used all that experience to project himself in a way that, I don't know, it's very hard to explain because it's not really how he's always come across in the past.
13:59 Alastair Campbell? And so I now, of course, what he does is going to dictate whether he's a a success or not, but he's, he's starting with an incredible amount of goodwill. And the other lesson, I think, for Labour in this, that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I watched the Australian leaders debate, which was horrific. It was just two men in suits shouting at each other with a poor woman in the middle trying to keep some sort of order. In his acceptance speech, Albanese just did a completely different tone. He didn't mention Morrison. He wasn't at all negative. It was all about positive future. And I think Labour need to get a lot more of that going at the moment. We can be so much better than this.
14:39 Rory Stewart? So Albanese's interesting model, isn't he? Because he suggests that there are two very different models in Western politics. One of them is the sort of fresh-faced, young person becoming the leader, the sort of Blair, Cameron, Obama.
14:55 Alastair Campbell? Macron.
14:56 Rory Stewart? Macron. The other is.
14:58 Alastair Campbell? Rory Stewart.
14:59 Rory Stewart? Exactly. The other is, uh, the, um, Joe Biden model, isn't it? I mean, Albanese is almost the Joe Biden model, which is that Biden was written off again and again and again. You know, was running to be president for almost thirty years and finally makes it through. And I think there's a that there's a question also when we look at British politics. I mean, there was this amazing speech from Mary Black that I think you wa- you watched and I watched too.
15:26 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
15:26 Rory Stewart? And of course, she came into the House of Commons. At an incredibly young age.
15:30 Alastair Campbell? Early twenties.
15:31 Rory Stewart? Twenty one, twenty two or something. And at a time when the SNP barely thought they could take those seats and they had candidates like Mary who hadn't really been in the system for a long time.
15:43 Alastair Campbell? Rory, I happen to know that Douglas Alexander is a regular listener to our podcast. This will be a very, very, very painful exchange for us to have, so just bear that in mind.
15:51 Rory Stewart? It's a pretty painful exchange and it's painful for me too because actually she was a very non-collegial colleague. I mean, she was one of the only people in the House of Commons I could never get to meet my eye or smile at me or recognise. Whereas Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems and actually people like Alex Salmon would always stop for a chat and be cheerful. You very much got the sense with her that she wouldn't look at me because she basically thought we were all completely evil and she wasn't going to acknowledge us for this day. So I, I come with a bit of prejudice, but I must say that was the most extraordinary speech. It's called, for anyone who hasn't watched it, watch on Twitter, it's called the F-word speech. And the F-word turns out to be.
16:30 Alastair Campbell? Fascism. And the reason for that was because she was basically saying, and I've been arguing this for some time as well, that fascism doesn't sort of come with Holocausts and concentration camps and all the rest. It's about the undermining of institutions that hold people to account. It's about the debasing of truth. It's about the control of media. It's about the use of symbols. It's about policy being less important, messaging. And, you know, we're seeing a lot of it and, you know, you and I have talked about this before. I, I've been reading far too many books about the 1930s for my good and there's just too many parallels going on.
17:12 Alastair Campbell? And I, but I thought, you know, and back to the point we talked about so many times that. Parliamentary speeches just are not covered. You only know about that speech if you're on social media and you're sharing it, if somebody's shared it with you. I sent it to you, other people have sent it to me, and it's had several million views, which is a lot for a speech. But it hasn't really entered the mainstream political debate.
17:36 Rory Stewart? That's amazing. And of course, the chamber's completely empty. If you look around, there's nobody there listening to it. And that's one of the sad things. I mean, obviously, parliament, literally in French, means a talking shop. And the whole core of our democracy was meant to be those debates in the chamber. But now, everybody's looking at their phones, nobody really attends. And so the days when you were able to stand up with a speech like that and really move public opinion, or bring down prime ministers, so those great 19th century moments where Disraeli will stand up and finish Peel's career with a great speech. Well, I suppose we saw a little bit of that with Robin Cook's.
18:14 Alastair Campbell? We saw it with Geoffrey Howe.
18:16 Rory Stewart? Geoffrey Howe, yep.
18:17 Alastair Campbell? Geoffrey Howe.
18:18 Rory Stewart? Hillary Ben's speech on Syria.
18:20 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
18:20 Rory Stewart? But there's not much of it. And a lot of the time, some of the really great speeches, and this was one of the frustrating things about being an MP, you'd have your great speech that you thought was going to be the great moment, and you'd spend days preparing it, and you'd turn up in the chamber and there's nobody there.
18:35 Alastair Campbell? Well, back in the day before podcasts, Rory, and before I left journalism, I had a midnight radio show on Radio Five Live in the early days, and the two politicians who I could always persuade to come on were Tessa Jal, because she was a great friend, and Bill Cash. And I remember Bill Cash saying, if ever you've got something you want to keep secret, the best thing to do is to wrap it up in a House of Commons speech.
19:03 Rory Stewart? So I've been thinking a lot about Bill Cash. This is going to be even more irritating and traumatizing to you. But I was thinking about those guys who were basically my main adversaries in the House of Commons. So the hard Brexiteers, the ERG group.
19:18 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
19:18 Rory Stewart? Which stretched from Bill Cash right through to Marc-François Steve Baker. And I remember turning up in the House of Commons in 2010. And I realise now that they were completely underestimated. That David Cameron and his whole new government thought we don't need to think about these guys at all. Now, that may be a bit like the way that Labour would have thought about Jeremy Corbyn and his group in 2010. And that these people were fanatics, that Bill Cash gave these speeches that that nobody listened to.
19:45 Alastair Campbell? Cameron called them, what was it, fruitcakes and loonies is what Cameron.
19:48 Rory Stewart? That's right, yeah, fruitcakes and loonies. And because they weren't ever going to become ministers, because they gave these long speeches that nobody listened to, because they were talking about Europe, which Cameron felt was sort of number 10 on anybody's priorities. The whole culture of the House of Commons sort of turned against them. People didn't really sit with them in the tea room. They didn't seem to be going anywhere. Someone like Bill Cash, who'd been in the House of Commons for decades, will have felt that young people like me coming in, arranged around Cameron, were kind of sneering at them and underestimating all the dedication they'd put in. And they got a real fuel from it. I've been reading this book by Marc Francois called Spartan Victory. And it was a very uncomfortable book for me because obviously Marc Francois sees me as a sort of Antichrist.
20:32 Rory Stewart? But what I take from it is how, at a period where everything had become non-ideological, where Cameron didn't really seem to take ideas too seriously, where everything was sort of about promotion and about communication, this group of people who for better or for worse had created a sort of crusade around the European Union. For some of them, it was because they had strangely connected it, in the case of Marc Francois, to the Second World War, in the case of Steve Baker, his religious beliefs seemed to come into it. But whatever the motivations were, we massively underestimated them. And I think there was a real lesson that
21:14 Rory Stewart? we sort of misunderstood what Parliament was, and you underestimate these people at your peril.
21:19 Alastair Campbell? Well, Fiona and I were out for dinner last night with a wonderful woman called Milan Vavir, who worked for the Clintons. And she's still very kind of active in Democratic Party circles. And she was outlining these people on the radical religious right who.
21:38 Alastair Campbell? Similarly, we're basically just seen as kind of wacko weirdo extremists. But she says they've been organising and organising and organising for years and years and years and years and years. And now, you know, they've got what they're, they're getting what they want on abortion. The Republican Party has become a completely different party to what it was. And the radical right is in charge and they could come back and win again. But let's not, let's not go into the break on a depressing. Just try to get something, something positive. I do, I do think, Rory, that one of the best things that's come out of the um Australia election is this mythology around Linton Crosby. Uh, it's, I think, gone.
22:21 Alastair Campbell? But to be honest, I've never quite understood it because he, we, we were up against him in two thousand and five when he ran Michael Howard's campaign, which is one of the worst campaigns I've ever seen in my life. But the other mythology is this idea that Murdoch always backs winners. Murdoch threw absolutely everything at Albanese, worse than anything that, you know, we've had here. Um, and I think I should probably, just for the sake of full openness and transparency, acknowledge there were quite a few questions aimed at me. Uh, Alistair, if Keir Starmer was invited to see Murdoch on the other side of the world, should he go? Mr. Pinfield, you're very critical of Murdoch these days, Alistair, but do you now regret cosing up to him? Um, and the answer is that I think I can justify our approach because the media has,
23:04 Alastair Campbell? I'd worked out as a journalist that if you do not neutralise and tame the media as the Labour Party, you had a massive problem. So I can justify the fact that we went out and tried to kind of tame Murdoch. But at the same time, I don't think that's inconsistent with saying that he has been a very malign force in British and world politics. And therefore, I think one of the best things about Australia is that despite him throwing ta- tons of barrels of ink at Albanese, Albanese won.
23:33 Rory Stewart? Firstly, I suppose, first question is, did it, did it help you in ninety seven, having, having the endorsement of Murdoch?
23:39 Alastair Campbell? I don't think the endorsement mattered that much. I think what mattered and did help was the fact that they didn't.
23:47 Alastair Campbell? Even try to do to us what they'd done to Neil Kinnock, what they did to Michael Foot, what the Mail are currently, et cetera, currently trying to do to Keir Starmer.
23:58 Alastair Campbell? And that helped. I actually think that Murdoch backed us in ninety seven because he knew we were going to win. And he wanted to maintain the myth that, you know, he always backs the winner and thereby give the sense that he creates the winner.
24:10 Rory Stewart? And Alison, was there something more in retrospect that you could have done with your enormous majority after ninety seven to change the way the British press worked?
24:21 Alastair Campbell? I don't think we could have done it in the first term because we hadn't even engaged in that as a debating issue in the run up to the election. But if you, I know you're an avid reader of my diaries, Rory, if, you know, one of the things that Tony and I argued about in the second term in particular, after the media really turned, was that I was identifying them as a massive cultural problem, which I think they are. I really think they've done incredible damage to our standing in the world, to our level of our democracy and our debate, et cetera. And Tony's view, which I completely understand because he's the guy in the end who was, you know, the prime target of all this. His view in the end was he had so many fights to fight that sort of taking on
25:03 Alastair Campbell? in the way that I was sometimes suggesting, that the media would have, would have just been a kind of, you know, a big mistake. I also think that Cameron in being pushed into calling the Leveson inquiry and then not implementing the findings was another massive mistake, which I think we're paying a price for.
25:23 Rory Stewart? Should he have implemented the findings?
25:25 Alastair Campbell? Definitely, definitely. And also, here we are again, talking yet again about the relationship between police and politicians and police and media. And that whole part of Leveson Part Two wasn't even carried out. So yeah, I think we have a, you know, and as you know, I've just been in Germany and honestly, reading the German press, it's just, it's so refreshing to sort of read stuff that's just full of information and then you get to the comment pages and it's full of comment.
25:53 Rory Stewart? Well, let's take that optimism into the break and return for that. You've been listening to The Rest of Politics with me, Rory Stewart.
26:00 Alastair Campbell? And me, Alastair Campbell.
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28:05 Rory Stewart? So, welcome back to The Rest of This Politics with me Rory Stewart.
28:08 Alastair Campbell? And me Alastair Campbell.
28:09 Rory Stewart? Now, Alistair, one of the things that you've been interested in is island nations and the way in which countries like Solomon Islands are developing their relations with China. Want to tell us a bit about that?
28:19 Alastair Campbell? Well, this relates to what we were talking about just before the break. I didn't even know about this until I picked up Die Welt and the Frankfurter Algemeinerzeitung in Germany last week. And there were these massive articles, I mean, like literally pages on the Solomon Islands. And now you say, well, who cares about the Solomon Islands? Well, it's, here's a question for you Rory. Do you know what Iron Bottom Sound is?
28:46 Rory Stewart? No, what is Iron Bottom?
28:48 Alastair Campbell? Iron Bottom Sound is a stretch of water off the Solomon Islands. And the reason it's called Iron Bottom Sound is there are 50 warships at the bottom of it, both American and Japanese from World War Two battles. And it's always been quite an important kind of strategic place. And out of the Second World War, it became very much part of the American Australian sphere of influence, and that's never been questioned. They've now signed this rather significant security deal with China. And of course, China, who are also persuaded them to end diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, for example, they've been building airfields in, they built a new port in Vanuatu, there's
29:33 Alastair Campbell? a new airfield now planned in Kiribati. And they're just, we've talked about this before, but it's just the expansion of their orbit. And, you know, Albanese, one of his first, I think his first big event really as Australian Prime Minister is going to be the so-called Quad, him, Biden, India and Japan, talking about Asian security. And of course, then you have Biden the other day, giving yet another heart attack to the State Department when they have an official policy of strategic ambiguity on Taiwan. And Joe Biden came straight out and said that if they're going to Taiwan, we're going after them, which is. Big news, people.
30:13 Rory Stewart? Well, this this this thing about China winning over the support of small nations is fascinating. I mean, that iron bottom sound sounds like a really big strategic deal, but it's also true in terms of the way in which all these international bodies work, which is why Taiwan has been fighting this rearguard action for years. Taiwan has or tried to keep embassies and representations in these tiny South Sea Islands, which hardly made sense for a small country because it desperately needed their votes in the UN and elsewhere, and China has been chipping away at them one by one. If you look at the graph of those countries.
30:45 Alastair Campbell? There's only thirteen left.
30:47 Rory Stewart? Yeah, as the decades go on, the number of people supporting Taiwan decreases again and again and again.
30:51 Alastair Campbell? They've still got the Holy See.
30:52 Rory Stewart? Still got the Holy See.
30:53 Alastair Campbell? They've got the Vatican. They've got the Vatican.
30:55 Rory Stewart? Um. But that also means that when you're doing things like I I was very involved in trying to get involved in the election of the Director General of the World Health Organisation, which was quite important. That's Ebola, that's Covid, all this kind of stuff.
31:06 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
31:07 Rory Stewart? And there it was very striking how Britain and the United States had lost control of small nations and votes, how we couldn't really get our candidates through. We had a fantastic candidate, David Nabarro, very, very distinguished British development medical expert who'd been very involved in Ebola, running against um a Ethiopian minister with a slightly patchy track record. But my goodness, I noticed that Europe, the United States, Britain were not able to get their candidate through and how easy it was either for African countries relying or in fact for China.
31:44 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
31:44 Rory Stewart? Pushing on small levers to make sure that they're dominating these international organisations again and again. And part of the secret is getting small countries on site.
31:51 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely. There's a very um, I don't know if you're aware of this, but you know Boris Johnson is currently working against Patricia Scotland, trying to end her tenure as the head of the Commonwealth, which is pretty extraordinary for for a British prime minister, which is trying to do in a Brit.
32:07 Rory Stewart? And who's he trying to bring in?
32:08 Alastair Campbell? Uh. Somebody in Jamaica that apparently is not even very popular in Jamaica. Um. It's all very, very, very, very odd. Um. So, yeah, so that's, that's the, the, the Solomon Islands and, and but, but I think that it goes back to your point last week about, you know, we were talking about um the New York Times. Uh. I did not even know about this Solomon Island deal with the Chinese until I picked up these German newspapers.
32:30 Rory Stewart? And, and it's partly structural, isn't it? I mean, we keep talking about these newspapers, but I think we got quite a good question coming in last week from somebody who was involved in newspapers, pointing out how much their circulation was falling, how much their revenue is falling.
32:44 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
32:44 Rory Stewart? And, and I've noticed this myself. When I um, you know, started working abroad in the mid nineties, every country I worked in was full of foreign correspondents.
32:54 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
32:54 Rory Stewart? And, and now there are just so few, there are
32:57 Alastair Campbell? They don't have the money.
32:58 Rory Stewart? Tiny stringers.
32:59 Alastair Campbell? They don't have the money. They don't have the money. And that's why you need these kind of big broadsheets and the broadcasters to have the kind of level of funding that they've got to be able to send people to do stuff on the ground. I did a little bit of mayor corpora on the Murdoch thing and I, I had a very challenging question this week, Rory, from Nick Siegler, who reminded me, I didn't need reminding because I remember it very, very well, but he was the Labour Party, the guy in the Labour Party, he used to deal with all our sister parties and deal with foreign media. And he was always badgering me in nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety seven to sit Tony down with lots of foreign journalists. And I would say, listen, Nick, it's low votes TV, I'm not doing it. And he says that you and Rory talk all the time about foreign affairs and
33:44 Alastair Campbell? you know, you're working here and you're working there. So he asked me, do you regret having that attitude to foreign media? And again, yes is the answer. I think it was, I think I was tactically correct, but strategically possibly wrong.
33:59 Rory Stewart? Yes, that's good, okay. I think there's quite a lot of that, actually. And I think one of the things that's now coming out with people thinking about New Labour is that I noticed with a lot of the questions. So people asking, why didn't you regulate Murdoch? Why didn't you introduce proportional representation?
34:15 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
34:16 Rory Stewart? Is that people now that the Conservatives have been in for so long, see that period from ninety seven as the sort of last great hope for reorganising some of the structural, big structural features of British politics.
34:28 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
34:29 Rory Stewart? And feel a sense of disappointment that, that that didn't happen.
34:32 Alastair Campbell? I mean, PR, we get questions about PR every week and it's probably worth the discussion all of its own, but. Where are you currently on changing our electoral system? I presume you're massively in favour but can't see it being done while we keep electing Tory governments under the old system.
34:46 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, and of course, you know, we keep talking about how we change our views. I was very much in favour of first past the post. I loved the connection to my constituency. I thought these list systems were very, very odd because it meant you didn't have a direct connection to constituency. But of course, as I've become more and more worried about the way that these main parties operate, more and more convinced, basically, that you need freshness in the system. You need a route to get new ideas and new people coming through.
35:13 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
35:14 Rory Stewart? I've become more and more, yeah, excited by the idea of different systems. And that's why I like the London system.
35:20 Alastair Campbell? Do you think Labour should, and would it be to their benefit, to come out and say that if we get elected, whether as a majority government or in coalition, that we would legislate to change the voting system and bring in a fairer voting system?
35:36 Rory Stewart? Yes, but only if you worked out how you communicate that. You don't communicate it by talking about the mechanism. You communicate it by talking about the benefit it'll bring. And that'll all be about integrity, freshness in politics, new ideas, breaking up the big old parties. I think it's the way you'd describe it, you wouldn't get down to the details of the mechanism.
35:54 Alastair Campbell? Interestingly, just last point on Australia. I keep going back to Australia because it's the one thing in the last few months that's given me any sort of hope. Mind you, there was Bulgaria and there was Slovenia and there was France and there was Germany, where, you know, decent people were being elected. But Australia really has been good. But one of Albanese's big policies was to take the oversight of politics away from Parliament and have a national anti-corruption commission. My God, we need that in Britain.
36:20 Rory Stewart? Yeah, it'd be great. On the other hand, to produce, as usual, my old role of producing some kind of defence of this government, one of the things that is striking in comparison to Australia is, my goodness, Britain has done far, far better on climate change and carbon emissions than Australia. I mean, it's absolutely shocking. I mean, even Albanese's. Targets that he's set for 2030 are so far behind what Europe and the UK and even the United States are doing.
36:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but I I I think I think he will move fast on climate change. I think he got slightly spooked by the sense that part of Morrison's appeal was his climate denial. But in fact, I think it really damaged him. And the fact that those teals campaigned particularly on climate and integrity, that should worry Johnson, I think.
37:09 Rory Stewart? But it is the one thing, I think, that Boris Johnson has been less bad on than other things. He hasn't gone, he hasn't followed the populist route of Trump and Morrison on climate and the environment. And I think we should give him credit for that.
37:22 Alastair Campbell? Okay, if you insist, if you insist. I'm not giving, I just want, I want him gone. He's the worst prime minister this country's ever had. He's absolutely awful. He's damaging the country phenomenally. And so feel free to give him credit and feel free to say Nick Clegg is your hero. Nick Clegg was thrilled, by the way, last week. He was thrilled that you read his book and that he's your hero. And he sent me a message saying, Campbell, you're next. And I'm sorry, but no, I've got other heroes who are not in politics.
37:54 Rory Stewart? A question from David, one for Alastair. I've recently read Michael Crick's excellent book on Nigel Farage. Do you agree with the premise of the book, Alastair, that Nigel Farage is one of the most important figures in politics in the past 20 years?
38:06 Alastair Campbell? Yes, I do. I do. And I think what's extraordinary about it, and this goes back to the point you've been making about how where political influence comes from, Nigel Farage has had an impact on the political landscape without ever being an MP. He was an MEP. But so, yeah, I think, I don't think anybody can dispute that Nigel Farage has been a significant political figure.
38:28 Rory Stewart? And part of it is this story about, for better or worse, about people who have a very strong position and just stick at it and keep going. I mean, what's interesting about his career and a lot of these people's careers is that At any moment, there are extraordinary humiliations, extraordinary defeats, extraordinary embarrassments, but they just keep pushing.
38:50 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
38:50 Rory Stewart? And it's remarkable how they turn minority positions into majority positions. And that's what should give hope for independents and progressives.
38:59 Alastair Campbell? Well, that's also why I I will not uh give up calling out Brexit as being a complete disaster, which at some stage a sensible grown up country will revisit. And the other thing about Farage, though, he gets, you know, Farage was a bit like the the loonies and fruitcakes that you were talking about in the E R O G earlier. That was in quotes, by the way, David Cameron's phrase, not mine. Uh, but he also is somebody who has benefited from never being properly scrutinized as a politician. I mean, the fact that he has had more appearances on BBC Question Time because he was kind of clickbait and box office in their terms. The fact that he's now going on to this, the whole carbon zero campaign without ever being held to account on all the lies he told about Brexit. He just moves on to the next thing.
39:44 Alastair Campbell? And that is, that is a big advantage, whereas if you're in power, you tend to get scrutinized on what you've said and done in the past. By the way, Rory, my favorite question this week was from somebody called Shy Bald Buddha. This, this question has to make you laugh, okay?
39:58 Rory Stewart? Okay.
39:59 Alastair Campbell? Can we have a medley of Rory Stewart laughing because he's got the best laugh in politics?
40:04 Rory Stewart? Oh, that's very sweet, but I can't laugh to order. I've only got the best laugh in politics because I can't laugh to order, but that's very sweet.
40:10 Alastair Campbell? Okay, you can't laugh to order. I'm, I'm, this question is definitely going to make you laugh. I can't find, I can't find the name of the guy who, who said to me, says, this question must be directed only at Rory. Were Burnley right to get rid of Sean Dyche?
40:25 Rory Stewart? That's very good. Okay, that's good. I like it. That's very good. Oh, well, and I, I can't believe that you've cheered up enough over the last forty five minutes to be able to read a question about Burnley. Now, on that, unfortunately, though, we've run out of time, but I've got very good news. From next week, we will be adding a second podcast in which we will only answer your questions. We're going to call it The Rest Is Politics Question Time.
40:49 Alastair Campbell? That is a wonderfully original title. And I think it's because we both feel a little bit guilty that we, we, we talk so much and we get so into stuff that we don't, we don't get through nearly enough of your questions. I'm going to save some of the questions from this week, though, for the, for the live events that we're doing on Wednesday. Because I think some of them are really quite good, not to be lost.
41:13 Rory Stewart? And people who haven't been following this closely, Alistair is so competitive that when he discovered that we'd sold out one theatre on Wednesday night, I'm staggering exhausted off a plane from Jordan to come and join him. He's then insisted we do a second show immediately afterwards, which will be at about midnight my time.
41:27 Alastair Campbell? Both of us have been having moderately difficult technological issues today, so we've got through as best we can. And it's been a pleasure, as always, talking to you, Rory. I shall see you on Wednesday evening and we'll be back with another pod next week.
41:42 Rory Stewart? Thank you all very much and thank you, Alistair. See you on Wednesday.
41:45 Alastair Campbell? Bye bye.
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