213. Question Time: Standing up to Netanyahu, why Starmer would work with Trump, and the differences between Sunni and Shia

Will the West come to terms with the idea that Netanyahu is not interested in a two state solution? Is 'populism' patronising? Would Starmer tread a fine line or stand up to Donald Trump? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more on today's episode of Question Time. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Click here to buy tickets to the PolEconUK conference for A Level politics students on 11th March 2024. Please be advised that this is a strictly educational event and only teachers can book, on behalf of their students so teachers, get on with it and students, tell your teachers about it! 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. 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 Creve and of course the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

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• 1:58Rory Stewart?

  Hello and welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:02Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And a quick announcement before we get going Rory, about a special event that you and I have got coming up. We are going to be at the Poll Econ UK Conference for A Level Politics students on March the 11th this year. We'll be talking and taking questions from an audience of about 2,000 A Level students. There will be major politicians and political commentators, including West Streeting and Jess Phillips and the popular Conservative, or PopCon as he now calls himself, Jacob Rees-Mogg and more.

• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  And you can book now, but please note, this is a strictly educational event. Only teachers can book on behalf of their students. So teachers, get on with it and students, tell your teachers about it. Tickets are available at www.poll, as in politics, econ, as in economics, uk.org. That's polliconuk.org/trip. And I think book pretty quickly.

• 3:00Alastair Campbell?

  Hopefully see lots and lots of you there. And our first question this week is on something we briefly touched upon in the main podcast, that's India. Gabe Sutcliffe, what do you think about Modi building a Hindu temple on the site of a demolished mosque in India?

• 3:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's, let's just sort of quickly give the background on this. So there was a very, very famous mosque called the Babur Masjid, which was built by the Emperor Babur, who was the first Mughal emperor of India. So it's the late 15th century, late 1400s, early 1500s, he took over in India. And it was believed by a particular group of Hindu nationalists to have been built on the site of the birthplace of Rama, the hero of the Ramayana. And

• 3:47Rory Stewart?

  In the early 90s, it was torn down. This mosque was torn down by a Hindu nationalist mob. And then a huge amount of money has been ploughed in, some of it coming from Narendra Modi's government, into building a vast Hindu temple on the site. And Narendra Modi has spent much of the last 40 days fasting, sleeping on the floor of a temple, been involved in religious purification rites, and has presided over an extraordinary, star-studded reopening of this temple in Iodia with Bollywood stars and business people there as a very, very aggressive attack, basically, on Muslim identity and the Muslim community in India.

• 4:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that's, I suspect, how a lot of them will, will take it. I watched the coverage yesterday. It was enormous, the coverage, as well as the temple. And just to wind back on the 1992 situation, when the mosque was kind of, you know, razed to the ground, that led to riots in which around 2,000 people, even more than 2,000 people, I think, were killed. And then a decade or so later, riots in Gujarat, where the then regional prime minister Narendra Modi was felt to be very, very biased towards one side, unfair to the Muslim community. I think there was a point where he couldn't travel to many parts of the world because

• 5:13Alastair Campbell?

  he was essentially seen as, as being quite extreme. He's now heading for another election. India is one, in this great election year, India is one of the elections, it'll be in a few months' time. He gets to choose the date. And this is, this is a country that is supposedly secular. State and politics and religion are meant to be separate. And yet, that was as powerful a political event as I think I've seen in a very, very long time.

• 5:40Alastair Campbell?

  He is shaping a new India, and he's, he's making no bones about that. He's shaping a new India, up to and including possibly changing the name at some point. And the whole event really was a way of signalling, I'm your man, I'm the, I'm for the Hindus. And that, of course, is 80% of the population. You talk about, I mean, the Bollywood stars were there, Sachin Tendulkar is one of the greatest cricketers of all time, he was there. They built a new airport to go along with the town, they built a new railway station. It's a sort of, he's bringing together religion, massive investment in infrastructure, and him as this kind of man of the people, which is an act which the Indians seem to like.

• 6:19Rory Stewart?

  And to take it back to the real fundamentals, India, under the British, had a huge mixed Hindu-Muslim population, along obviously with Parsi, Buddhists, Christians and others, but predominantly Hindu and with a very large Muslim minority. And the partition that split India apart after independence in 1947 was essentially about the creation of a Muslim state in Pakistan, and India resisted that. India, in its constitution and under Nehru, remained defiantly secular. We're very, very proud of the fact that when Pakistan decided to create a state around Muslim identity, India was not doing that. And under Congress, and Indira Gandhi, who was the daughter

• 7:02Rory Stewart?

  of Nehru, they kept this secular vision alive, and in fact were frequently very, very firm against Hindu nationalists and others who tried to stir up Hindu-Muslim hatred. But the Babi Masjid and then the riots that followed, and then the Gujarat riots, made Muslims feel in India really as though they were becoming a marginalised persecuted minority. The Gujarat riots produced footage of pregnant women being attacked and rape happening, and a lot of images in fact which are very, very reminiscent of the images that came out of the October 7th Hamas attack on Gaza, and had the same impact, I think, on the Muslim community, or many

• 7:47Rory Stewart?

  people Muslim community in India, that the attacks on October 7th had on many Israelis and Jews, which is that it led to a strong sense that Islamophobia in India was now state-backed. And Modi famously, when asked whether he regretted what happened when he was chief minister, all this happening under his nose, said his only regret was he hadn't managed the media better. So it's terrifying. There's a book by K S Komareddy called Malevolent Republic, which really makes the case against Modi's Hindu nationalism very, very strongly. I mean, it's a bit of a polemic. So but if you want to hear the case, the worst case made against what's happening now

• 8:30Rory Stewart?

  in India, Komrade's book is incredibly readable and he's pretty brutal actually on Congress and on the Gandhism as well.

• 8:37Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it's, he's a formidable politician, there's no doubt about that. And his, you know, the way he, his demeanor, he comes across as being so calm and quite gentle character, but he's a very, very, very tough politician. I think I said before, I really dodged a bullet not long after he was elected because I was asked if I would go and write his biography.

• 9:01Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my goodness. Oh, I do remember you saying this, you were going to be his biographer.

• 9:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I was quite tempted. I can't remember what else I was doing at the time, but I was reasonably tempted. I thought, because I'd written about him in the book I wrote Winners, I think this is what drew their attention to me as a possibility. I'd written at some length about his campaign. You know how I love the Abba voyage?

• 9:23Rory Stewart?

  Yes, the abatars.

• 9:24Alastair Campbell?

  But Modi was ahead of the game. Modi was doing rallies all around the country where he would be live in a, say Delhi, and then around the country on the, what was just the back of a lorry, the fake Modi would come out and he was gathering huge crowds, he's a great showman. But I think this is, you know, if you're, and 20% of the population, roughly 20% Muslim, that's a lot of people who are currently feeling a bit scared. And there was a guy, I don't know if you ever watched some of the Indian television, but I was sort of channel hopping through a couple of them yesterday and they, you know, they get very, very enervated and very, very excited. And there was one guy who was on the news saying, you know, now we've got to take this to every town and every city and tear down the mosques.

• 10:07Alastair Campbell?

  And then he was sort of waving a flag and saying, including the Taj Mahal, the Taj Mahal must go. And you're thinking, this is quite scary stuff. And it's an election year, I think there's no doubting the timing of this.

• 10:18Rory Stewart?

  And as we discussed in the podcast yesterday, it's easy to be complacent about this stuff because the Indian economy is going very well and business people like Modi and he's cleared up corruption and he sorted out the currency. And of course, India is very popular at the moment with the West because it's seen as the counter. Balance to China.

• 10:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:36Rory Stewart?

  And of course Modi is very, very popular with diaspora community. People are reluctant to criticize him. So people will say, oh, yeah, he's talking that stuff. And yes, he was involved in this Hindu extremist militia group in his youth. But really, this is just chat and it's difficult to predict the future. But what we do know from Russia, particularly at the moment, that you can go down a pretty fast slippery slope from starting to get all this ethno nationalist, or in this case religious nationalist language going can lead to some very, very sinister.

• 11:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Rory Stewart?

  Results pretty, pretty quickly. And it gets out of control of the leaders. I mean, you get the sense with Putin that it's, as you were talking about with that, that book by J. McGlynn, it's not just Putin. It's the whole lot surrounding him. And again, it's true with Modi. I mean, Modi, of course, himself now has his own even more ultra nationalist Hindu right, saying he's not going far enough.

• 11:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. Now Cameron Stocker, tactical voting. Considering Labour's massive poll lead, do you think tactical voting campaigns such as getvoting.org will still be important in the upcoming general election? In marginal seats, could the UK's broken first past the post electoral system allow the Tories to cling on? On that same sort of theme, Rory, I want to give a shout out to something called South Devon Primary.

• 11:52Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 11:53Alastair Campbell?

  All I've done is sort of see it on social media and had a look at the odd website and stuff. But basically, they seem to be saying that, so they're in an area, South Devon, that is traditionally, you know, fairly Tory. They say there's a clear majority that want the Tories out. And so what they're doing is going through this sort of primary process where they're having hustings with all the different opposition candidates and hoping eventually to end up with one. And this is spreading to a few other seats as well. So I don't know whether that will, that will catch on, whether that will work, whether some people will feel, no, I have to vote for the party I want, even if I think they're going to, they're going to lose. But I think tactical voting will, I think there will be a lot of tactical voting.

• 12:31Rory Stewart?

  And, and it's, and it's now enabled by technology much more, isn't it? That's what this, this website getvoting.org does, isn't it? It helps you understand how you should be voting tactically.

• 12:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and where, just on this similar theme. What did you make, we had a couple of questions on this as well. But what did you make of Humza Yousaf, who we'll be interviewing quite soon on leading? What did you make of him? Coming out to the weekend and the message he seemed to be trying to put across was Keir Starmer is definitely going to be the next prime minister, therefore I'd quite like to talk to him before that happens and we can sort of, you know, work out whether we can work together.

• 13:04Rory Stewart?

  Well, is that not, I mean, presumably his main objective is to make sure he wins as many seats as possible in the next election. So is it possible that he thinks that if people think that Keir Starmer's a shoo-in and the way that they thought Theresa May was a shoo-in in 2017, maybe people will vote SNP because they'll think they don't need the Labour votes in Scotland? Is that his hope?

• 13:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I think it probably is, but I just found it quite confusing because at various points, they've had all these different lines of approach as to why you should vote SNP. At one point, it was to say it's because there's going to be a Tory government, the Tories are going to win unless you vote SNP. Then it was going to be there's a hung parliament. Then they run this line that there's no difference between Tory and Labour. Then they ran the line that the election is going to be referendum and independence again. And so I'm just a bit, I was just a little bit confused. I'm guessing you're right. Maybe the Tories and the SNP both have a vested interest in people thinking that the election's a foregone conclusion because that is then.

• 14:03Rory Stewart?

  In Scotland, yeah.

• 14:05Alastair Campbell?

  Well, no, but in, but in, but England as well, you might have this sort of sense that there's no point, we're going to lose, there's no point voting, just, you know, vote for us, but don't bother. We're going to lose anyway. I mean, it's a sort of, I think it used to be called the Queensland Strategy where you basically, and the reason for that was because the, a party ran that as a strategy, saying that, you know, we're going to lose, there's no point really getting involved. And of course, you know, to quote your predecessor, Willie Whiteley, in your old seat, they went around the country stirring up apathy and it worked. So I think that's what he's up to, but we'll be able, we'll be able to ask him when, when we see him.

• 14:40Rory Stewart?

  Very good. So, question from James Mool. Gosh, muscles. Which three current world leaders would you most want Britain's next prime minister to look to for inspiration? Which three current world leaders? Well, I'm not going with Narendra Modi, notwithstanding your book Winners.

• 14:58Alastair Campbell?

  No, definitely not. I wrote about him as a winning campaigner, not as a winning prime minister. Oh my God, that's a hard question. I think my friends, I think, I think my friend Eddie Rahm is good, heading up for a fourth term and his country moving in the right direction.

• 15:13Rory Stewart?

  And that's quite a thing to look at, they look at the Prime Minister Albania as the inspiration.

• 15:17Alastair Campbell?

  I did, I did, I did preface it with my friend. I think the Prime Minister of Singapore, who's in his last year, I think he's a very, very impressive guy. But of course, Singaporean politics is very different to ours.

• 15:28Rory Stewart?

  Now, normally, normally you and I'd be talking about Macron. Wouldn't we be talking about Macron? Why are we not talking about Macron at the moment?

• 15:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, Macron, I think Macron has been good. But, you know, he's, he's also, I think we have to say, he's very, very unpopular in France at the moment. But yeah, I think Macron, yeah, Macron is a sort of leader who's definitely kind of got a sense of vision and good at building teams. And they may break up teams as well, but he builds them again.

• 15:53Rory Stewart?

  Incidentally, the New Zealand Prime Minister wants to come on. We interviewed the last New Zealand Prime Minister. We've got to remember to do that. Let's see whether we think he could be a model for anyone.

• 16:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I, but I, you know, it is, it is one of those periods in history where, oh yeah, there aren't that many, are there? I asked this question actually of one of the congresspeople that we saw recently. I said, which other world leaders do you admire then? And she said, Milley in Argentina. So, oh, Donald Tusk, I think a shout out for Donald Tusk, who's, we've got some questions on Poland, but I think we should revisit Poland in some depth because he's come in and it's proving very, very hard to unpick and undo a lot of the damage that's been done by the, the PIS in recent years. But I would definitely say Donald Tusk.

• 16:35Rory Stewart?

  For Catholic, because there are still parts of the Law and Justice Party, including the president, sitting there with their, their hands on important bits of power, right?

• 16:42Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, absolutely. Another one I would point to, I think has shown incredible courage, is the president of Moldova, Maya Sandu. I think she's, you know, a very small country. Very, very, very dangerously placed right now with Russia breathing down their necks. And I think she's a very, very impressive woman. So there's somebody else maybe we should look to.

• 17:04Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Why isn't rejoining the EU front and centre of Labour's campaign? What can say, well, given Alistair Schadenfreude on Brexit, why does he think Labour will not put rejoining the EU in their manifesto for the next election?

• 17:17Alastair Campbell?

  Because they don't want to revisit the whole Brexit debate at this time when they're trying to win the election on other issues. I might not welcome that or even think that it's the right thing to do, but I think that's the answer to the question.

• 17:29Rory Stewart?

  Lewis Sneddon, how are the Lib Dems going to do in the election? They never seem to be discussed. Well, they are in a pretty sad situation. I mean, the Conservatives are terrible situation. The latest polls put Labour, you know, pushing towards 50%, the Tories in the low twenties. But at the moment, the Lib Dems are neck and neck with the ex Brexit UKIP party. And I don't think, you know, we've been discussing Ed Davey, he's not cutting through. I know you liked him when we interviewed him on the, on leading, and I know we've got a lot of Lib Dem listeners. But boy, oh, boy, I think would people struggle to work out what on earth his platform is. He's been the leader of that party for a surprisingly long time, and I am not seeing energy there.

• 18:10Rory Stewart?

  And the obvious thing they should be doing, relating to your last question, is coming out for customs union or coming out for the single market, putting the EU at the centre of the agenda. That at least will make them distinctive. Can you think of anything they're saying that Labour's not saying or the Tories aren't saying?

• 18:25Alastair Campbell?

  What he would say, I imagine, is that they have a very, very targeted strategy aimed at a number of constituencies that they are going for, most of which are currently held by the Tories. But I agree that they're not really cutting through. In fact, you know, I think that the way that he got placed at the centre of the post office scandal, for a lot of people would have been their kind of first sense of him. As a sort of national figure politician. And it is always harder for the third party, but it's even harder for him at the moment because he doesn't get the automatic platform in Parliament because he's not the third party anymore.

• 19:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. You remember, I thought he'd been in that position for a long time. And when I asked him on leading, go on, tell us what you're about. I thought you were surprisingly slow to come up with a line.

• 19:11Alastair Campbell?

  And I said, if you remember, I said, I bet they'll go away from that now and they'll, they'll really work it out and we'll start to see it. But I agree with you, we haven't really, we haven't really seen it. By the way, I should, as you know, Rory, if we get our facts wrong, we always apologize, unlike most of our newspapers. I said last week in the Q and A, that the Ed Davey interview where he was asked the same question 10 times was with Dan Hewitt. It was with Paul Brand.

• 19:35Rory Stewart?

  Oh, Paul must have been pretty cross about that.

• 19:37Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think he was very cross, but it was actually some of his colleagues told me I'd messed it up. So I'd sent him a message to apologize. We said he wasn't that bothered. And he said he loves the podcast. So it's all fine.

• 19:45Rory Stewart?

  So question from Catherine. Which plays, which films have we been seeing and enjoying recently? We've been seeing any films, TV recently?

• 19:52Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. We went to see Priscilla the other night.

• 19:55Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And that's not Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, I understand. It's your friend Elvis again.

• 19:59Alastair Campbell?

  It's Priscilla, wife of Elvis. As a sort of massive Elvis fan, which I am, it's slightly troubling.

• 20:07Rory Stewart?

  Oh, he wasn't very nice to her. It's the revelation, isn't it?

• 20:09Alastair Campbell?

  At times he wasn't nice, but he was very, very nice to her when, when they first met. But at the time she was only 14. And then he got a sort of flown out to his, to Graceland. And but it's a very kind of nice portrait of her. It's the relationship from her perspective. We also watched Killers of the Flower Moon. Now, we cheated a bit because we didn't watch in the cinema, because I couldn't quite face three and a half hours sitting near people who are eating popcorn and doing other things that should be banned in cinemas. So we watched, so we watched it in two, in two goes on television. And my God.

• 20:42Rory Stewart?

  You liked it? You'd recommend it?

• 20:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I mean, do you know what? Because Leonardo DiCaprio is sort of seen as this kind of. You know, a bit of a sex symbol and all that stuff. He's an incredible actor.

• 20:53Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 20:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think as a, as a, as a slice of a very interesting and much misunderstood period of American history, I thought it was pretty impressive.

• 21:01Rory Stewart?

  Good. So my, my thing is I've just been to see Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, which is Playhouse Theatre next to Embankment in London. Just incredible. I hugely recommend it to you. So, I mean, I think it totally reverses the old complaint about popcorn, which is that it really embraces the idea that the whole audience is turned into a cabaret audience with tables and drinks on them and nibbles on them. Rebecca Lucy Taylor, who plays Sally Bowles, is just extraordinary. And the singing, I mean, I know you love music, the singing is phenomenal. But they set the mood right from the moment you enter. It's worth turning up, if you go to see it, worth turning up 15 minutes, half an hour in advance to just

• 21:44Rory Stewart?

  catch the ambiance because they've created the sense of a 1930s German bar from the beginning. And of course, as people know the story, it's, it's both incredible music, but also a very, very interesting lesson about the way in which you can feel like a frog in boiling water and convince yourself nothing's going to go wrong. The, the central character who, or one of the central characters who's Jewish says, when the American says, look, shouldn't you be getting out of Germany? He says, no, no, no. I understand the Germans. I am German. Don't worry about it. There's, there's nothing to worry about here.

• 22:17Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Very good. Very good. Well, that was what we call a massive plug. Well done.

• 22:22Rory Stewart?

  Massive plug, massive plug. Yeah.

• 22:24Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one for you, for, well, for both of us, really. Sam Dyson. How should Keir Starmer handle a potential Trump presidency? Does he take the May Johnson approach, knowing it will hurt him domestically? Or does he give Donald the cold shoulder, which could damage the special relationship, but would be very popular here in the UK?

• 22:42Rory Stewart?

  Oh, what should he do? Should he be polite to him? Or should he make it clear that he despises him?

• 22:46Alastair Campbell?

  I think the former. I think it has to be the former. I mean, it's not impossible that these elections are going to happen at the same time. Look, the temptation, this is the whole Love Actually thing, when that scene in the Love Actually, when Hugh Grant as Prime Minister sort of does the amazing, stands up to the Americans. And of course, it's great cinema, but I think it would be very, very, very dangerous politics. But it is tricky. I think, I think basically, both the main parties, in a sense, have to, have to stay out of the politics.

• 23:15Rory Stewart?

  Oh, God, it's so tricky. So in my, my sort of catastrophic attempt to be leader of the Conservative Party in that debate against Boris Johnson, I was asked what, what I thought about the latest offensive comment by Donald Trump. And I sort of said, well, I think, you know, British prime ministers have to be quite careful getting involved in slagging off other world leaders. And we can do things in private, not public. And there were headlines afterwards saying, what is the point of Rory Stewart if he isn't even prepared to come out and attack Donald Trump? So I feel for Keir Starmer here. And, you know, one of the, to add to my list of fury at Boris Johnson, he's just written a Daily Mail article suggesting that, his least headline seemed to suggest that Trump wouldn't be too bad a thing. And Jacob Rees-Mogg's now come out saying nice things about Trump.

• 23:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And Andrea, Andrea Jenkin said, we need to get Boris and Trump back. I, that's why, the other reason, Rory, why I feel that Johnson's commitment to Ukraine was all about him and not about Ukraine. Anybody who really cares about the future of Ukraine does not want Donald Trump back in the White House.

• 24:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:16Alastair Campbell?

  So Boris Johnson can go stuff himself with that one. I think, look, I think Keir Starmer will just play it very, very down the line and very, very proper. I actually thought his, I, before we started recording, I, I caught his response to, to Rishi Sunni. And I, I think he actually is emerging with a bit of a foreign policy defence position, which I, I would like to see more of. I'd like to see more of foreign, because I think the, the connecting of foreign policy to domestic policy. And if you think about what we've talked about on the main podcast and on the Q and A this week. So much of what the British people are talking about actually relates to things that are happening outside this country.

• 24:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I mean, Brendan May's got a question on this, which I guess applies to Rishi Sunni and to Keir Starmer. Why should Western governments continue to prop up Netanyahu when he's confirmed on record that he will reject the only possible path to peace in his region, namely an independent and sovereign Palestinian state and one that doesn't require forced migration of millions?

• 25:10Alastair Campbell?

  It's a very good, very good question.

• 25:11Rory Stewart?

  And I am astonished that Keir Starmer hasn't come out yet unambiguous and completely for a ceasefire. I mean, I think that the time for holding off on that has passed so long ago now.

• 25:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think he has. I mean, he did in the comments, in the comments that I mentioned, he, I think he used the same language as David Cameron does, the sustainable ceasefire.

• 25:31Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but the sustainable ceasefire, the sustainable bit, when you look into the small print, basically means, you know, it's sustainable when Hamas has disappeared and the hostages have all been returned and this and the other. So essentially, it's, it's language that works for the Israeli government. It's not really stopping the bombing of Gaza.

• 25:46Alastair Campbell?

  I certainly think that Netanyahu is, this is something we suggested might happen, but I think it's happened to a degree that is worse than either of us expected. Netanyahu is basically pocketing the support that he gets wherever it comes from. But then in terms of his own approach to this war, he is not budging an inch, I don't think, from the strategy he fixed upon right at the start. That I mentioned in the main podcast, this dispute that's going on between him and Benny Gantz and other, and some of the observers at the, at the war cabinet. And the guy who, who gave this rather tricky interview for Netanyahu, Heisenkot, he was asked whether he thought that Netanyahu might just be trying to make this war sort of last as long as he can to stay in power.

• 26:28Alastair Campbell?

  And, you know, you'd have thought, you'd have thought a member of his close, the guy who tends all these war cabinet meetings, he thought of his answer would have been, no, of course not, he's just representing the national interest and pursuing the strategy that we've got. Instead of which, he just said, I hope not.

• 26:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I guess, I mean, I guess Heisenkot's not, not on his side, is he? Let's take a break.

• 26:49Speaker 03

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• 27:04Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom. Nordstrom, big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still ahead. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

• 27:34Speaker 05

  Mr. President, my company for me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 27:45Speaker 06

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

• 27:51Speaker 07

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

• 27:55Speaker 06

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 27:58Speaker 07

  I'm not the first then.

• 27:59Speaker 06

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.

• 28:09Rory Stewart?

  Aman Perak, is populism condescending? Is the word populism condescending to the average voter? I have sometimes felt this. I remember going to a big meeting with one of these grisly international conferences, not Davos this time, back in 2016 and seeing all the great luminaries of Europe. You know, Herman von Rompuy, Marion Monty, Jean-Claude Trichet, all lamenting populism. And thinking, really, wait a sec. What's the difference between populism and what voters in a democracy really want? And the best answer I've come up with is that populism isn't really a way of describing doing things that voters want. It's a way of describing the leaders, not the voters.

• 28:50Rory Stewart?

  It's a way of describing an unbelievable act of cynicism and dishonesty, which is essentially involved in pitting one group against another and offering very simplistic solutions to complex problems.

• 29:00Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly, that's what I've always thought populism is. Where he's got a point is that once you're having to explain at that kind of length what we define populism as, then you've sort of lost it a little bit. And I think that because populism starts with this first five letters that you have for popular. When populism first started to be discussed universally as a part of our politics, it really won the debate in terms of, well, we're doing what the people want. And what's wrong with what the people want? And that's what allowed the populists then to say, this is about us, the people against the elite. Listen, it's something that I don't think, I don't think we, the, whatever you want to call us, the sort of, you know, anti-populists, I don't think we've ever really found the right language to deal with this. Now, here's one, Rory.

• 29:44Alastair Campbell?

  Keith Thomas, who I'm guessing for the surname might be Welsh. Carwyn Jones, ex First Minister of Wales, not unreasonably has asked the question as to why, if net zero is a major contributing factor to the decision of Tata Steel to close Port Talbot, the same is not happening at their plant in the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe. What are your thoughts? I should commend on this a short film, I think that may be where Keith's question come from, because Carwyn Jones was interviewed for this short film by Byline Times, which was analysing the media coverage, BBC, Sky, ITV, GB News, the papers, of the closure of the steel plant.

• 30:24Alastair Campbell?

  And the fact that nobody was really trying to analyse why this was being shut and the ease with which the populists write managed to make it an issue about net zero. What Carwyn Jones said was actually the real problem here and the reason why it wasn't being shut down in Holland is Brexit. And that was the gigantic elephant in the room on the steel industry.

• 30:48Rory Stewart?

  It's so sad this though, isn't it? Because there's a big story here, because I remember this, when Sajid Javid was on the hook for this years ago, trying to bring in more emergency support measures and support to try to deal with the British steel industry. I mean, it keeps coming back again and again, isn't it? I mean, and presumably this was something you saw in your time in office, that the whole industrial base of Britain struggles and the government comes in with rescue packages and industrial strategies, but it's never fully working. I mean, it doesn't matter whether you're talking about the DL aluminium plant in Glasgow or whether you're talking about Tata Steel or a lot of the North East, we're just losing stuff again and again and again. And it just feels as though. It's very difficult to keep these kind of industries going in Britain.

• 31:28Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I, I do think it was incredible. There were lots and lots and lots of words devoted to this. It was on the news all day. It was all across the newspapers. But the, the success that the sort of pro Brexit people have had in keeping Brexit out of the debate on massive issues like this. And you had Farage, they're the guy who was on record as saying, if we stay in the European Union, Britain's steel industry will die. Johnson said the same. And Farage, you know, straight onto GB News saying, this is all about net zero, these crazy plans on net zero. There were interviews with the steelworkers who were saying, you know, we understand we have to transition, but it's how we do the transition. But in the meantime, I, I, we should put in the, in the newsletter, the interview, the, the report on Byline Times,

• 32:11Alastair Campbell?

  because it really did, it gave you a completely different perspective. But it was one that I think is closer to the truth than a lot of the reports that we saw.

• 32:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I mean, one of the things the British right, the populist right are not doing, which would be the natural move in the US, is protectionism. I mean, the real way that you keep your steel industry alive is you do what Trump did, which is you put massive tariffs on import of other people's steel. What's interesting about the British right is it remains much more free trade than almost any other populist right wing movement anywhere in the world.

• 32:42Alastair Campbell?

  That's true.

• 32:43Rory Stewart?

  And that makes it very, very difficult, oddly, to, to, to support an industrial base. Hence the sort of Singaporean attempts. Final question from me, which is a bit self-serving because it's directed against me. Matt Lucas, in previous discussions around people with backgrounds in highly local politics being thrust into foreign policy, Rory's mentioned the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam being one of the common knowledge gaps. As someone with minimal knowledge, broadly looks like the global sides of Muslims are splitting along this line, with broadly Shia Iran on one side and broadly Sunni Saudi Arabia on the other. Western biases, as you make me think of Catholics and Protestants through history, no idea how bad that comparison truly is.

• 33:16Alastair Campbell?

  But it's not bad. It's not bad.

• 33:18Rory Stewart?

  Not bad is the answer. And actually, for more details, and Barnaby Rogerson's written a book that's just come out called House Divided, goes right back to the very, very early days of Islam and a split in leadership between the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad and his children.

• 33:39Rory Stewart?

  Who were killed in the Battle of Karbala.

• 33:41Alastair Campbell?

  Ali bin Abu Taleeb.

• 33:43Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And Imam Hussain, his son. And on the other side, Yazid and the Sunni line that took over.

• 33:50Alastair Campbell?

  It was Abu Bakr.

• 33:52Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 33:52Alastair Campbell?

  I've been looking it up too, Rory.

• 33:54Rory Stewart?

  Very good. I haven't had to look it up for once in my life.

• 33:59Rory Stewart?

  Not something I have to look up. But it's, and of course, as you've pointed out, when you say broadly speaking in the question, I mean, it's, it's, it is more complicated because there's a huge Shia population in Saudi Arabia. There's a very significant Sunni population in Iran. And of course, in Afghanistan, the centre of the country is dominated by Shia who, in the first time the Taliban were in the 90s, faced almost kind of genocidal attacks from the Sunni Taliban against the Shia Hazara.

• 34:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think the comparison with Catholic Protestant shouldn't be overdone. But I think where there's, where you can see is they essentially, on the sort of, you know, the big picture of who their god is and believing in that god, that they believe the same things. There are five pillars of Islam and both Sunni and Shia follow them. And essentially, it was, it was a debate about who should follow Muhammad when he died in 630 something. And the Sunnis believe that the successor should come from people, as it were, who were capable of doing the job. And that's why Abu Bakr, who was a friend and a close advisor, he became the first caliph. And then the Shias, they believe that it should stay in the family of those who've been appointed at the time they wanted, as you say, the cousin and the son-in-law.

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  And they've developed very different sorts of theology. So obviously, in Iran, as people will know, listening to the show, the Ayatollahs, and particularly the Ayatollah Khomeini, who's the supreme leader, have a very particular position of authority. And maybe in that way, it might remind people a bit of the Catholic Church with more authorities for popes and. And bishops.

• 35:33Alastair Campbell?

  He is, as it were, he is in a sense a greater authority than the state because he is seen as infallible, in the same way as the Pope is infallible.

• 35:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, yes, although there's also a great tradition of debate in Shiite, I mean, they sit there and come endlessly debating everything. There's a lovely book, if people want to go a bit deeper, called The Mantle of the Prophet by Roy Motahade, which is an amazing account of, I guess, political history in Islam in Shia Iran. But it's a really, really great question. And it was critical to Iraq because in Iraq Saddam Hussein, who was Sunni, essentially oppressed the Shia, who were the majority, the Shia have now come back in. And that's one of the reasons why we now have a much more Iranian friendly Iraq.

• 36:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Rory Stewart?

  But anyway, read Barnaby Rogerson's book. And anybody wants to learn even more, he's actually interviewed on our sister podcast Empire, where you can hear even more about the difference between Sunni and Shia and what it meant for Iran in particular.

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  If I can add a word about Empire, if I hear Fiona Miller, my partner, say one more time, God, I love Willie Dillrimple on the Middle East.

• 36:43Alastair Campbell?

  I think she's committing pedultery.

• 36:45Rory Stewart?

  Pedultery, that's what it is. That's it.

• 36:47Alastair Campbell?

  My final question, Rory.

• 36:49Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 36:49Alastair Campbell?

  I think, because I think we've been agreeing far too much. Haley Savage, what does this government have to do that will stop Rory Stewart becoming dewy eyed when asked who he would vote for in the election? I was shocked that last week he struggled to get past not voting Conservative. Surely he has to want them out if only to save them from themselves. Thank you.

• 37:10Rory Stewart?

  There we are. What a great question. What a great question.

• 37:13Alastair Campbell?

  It's your answer.

• 37:13Rory Stewart?

  I'm sort of envious. Well, I'm always envious of people like Seb Coe, who come on the show and then slag off the Conservative Party and then say they're going to vote Conservative and they're loyal Tories all the way.

• 37:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he's all right. He can't vote, he's in the Lords.

• 37:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I'm a recovering Conservative and I'm still struggling to navigate my way through all of this stuff.

• 37:31Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think you're not dewy eyed about the Tories though, are you? I think that's a bit harsh.

• 37:35Rory Stewart?

  No, I think that's a bit unfair. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think my colleagues would describe me as being dewy eyed.

• 37:40Alastair Campbell?

  No, no. What, what do you think you're going to vote though?

• 37:44Rory Stewart?

  Oh, I don't know. I don't know. I'm staying out of that at the moment.

• 37:47Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you can't stay out of it. You're a political figure.

• 37:50Rory Stewart?

  Secrecy of the ballot.

• 37:51Alastair Campbell?

  This major platform. Oh my God.

• 37:55Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my, well, on that note of this great, open-minded political figure who wants to change the way we do politics.

• 38:05Rory Stewart?

  And just avoiding the question and refusing to give you the headline you want of me endorsing Keir Starmer.

• 38:10Alastair Campbell?

  I think I'm going to vote Labour.

• 38:12Rory Stewart?

  You might, might just, might just, you might, might still be supporting Burnley next year, you never know.

• 38:17Alastair Campbell?

  I'll definitely be doing that, I'll definitely be doing that.

• 38:19Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 38:21Alastair Campbell?

  All right, Rory, lovely to talk as ever, all the best.

• 38:23Rory Stewart?

  Thank you very much, bye.