131. Erdoğan fights on, 'Clause IV on steroids', and the fall of military rule

What next for Turkey? How does Starmer aim to reform Labour? Why should we be paying attention to events in Thailand? Tune in to hear Rory and Alastair discuss all this and more on today's episode of The Rest Is Politics. LEADING - George Osborne: pod.link/1665265193 TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, 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. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:33Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to another episode of The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:36Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart. And we're sitting in a very strange bar stool on a round table, looking at each other in Harrogate.

• 1:45Alastair Campbell?

  Through two very large microphones.

• 1:47Rory Stewart?

  Through two very large microphones. You're fortunately tall enough for me to be able to see you over the top. You can't see me.

• 1:51Alastair Campbell?

  Can't see you very well, no. And we're going to... Later today, doing a live show in Harrogate.

• 1:57Rory Stewart?

  Very exciting. This, of course, is a place which was the home of the Gilbert and Sullivan seasons here.

• 2:04Alastair Campbell?

  You're not doing Max Miller again, are you?

• 2:05Rory Stewart?

  No, I'm doing Max Miller, no.

• 2:06Alastair Campbell?

  Promise, no, you should, you could do Max Miller. We have actually had a request for tonight for me to play Happy Birthday on the back pipes.

• 2:12Rory Stewart?

  That's very good.

• 2:12Alastair Campbell?

  I might do that. Now, there's a lot to get through. We had a, I think, quite a significant speech by Keir Starmer at the weekend. We've had these, frankly, bizarre conferences by groups, factions associated with the Conservative Party. We'll talk about the Turkish elections. I actually found the elections in Thailand more interesting. I've seen next to no coverage in the UK media of it, but we should talk about that as well.

• 2:36Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 2:37Alastair Campbell?

  But let's start with Keir Starmer. I don't know if you've had time to read his speech, but he actually talked about how he felt the Conservative Party is no longer conservative.

• 2:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, I like all that stuff. I couldn't agree more with him on that. I thought that was very strong. So, the centre of his speech, he says, as he said, that they've given up on family, they've given up on their international reputation. And he said, if people call me a conservative, I'm not going to be ashamed if being a conservative means those kind of things. So, it was a nice push at that part of the speech towards the kind of conservatism I care about. However, what do you think about the speech as a whole?

• 3:10Alastair Campbell?

  I thought it, it did a lot of things that I want him to do. It set out, it was much more rounded about the kind of state of the world and the state of politics than he's been up to now. It's still, I think, deliberately short on the, the big ticket policy stuff. But I think this line that he used about you're going to get clause four on steroids, clause four, the big thing that Tony Blair did in 1994, changing the Labour Party constitution. I think what he's doing there is setting up the next stages. And he's going to have to be held to that now. I think once you start to say things like that, you've got to come up with the big policy ideas.

• 3:40Rory Stewart?

  That's the tricky thing, isn't it? Just tell us, where was it? Who was he speaking to? What was this?

• 3:44Alastair Campbell?

  So, it's a conference organised by a relatively new group called Progressive Britain, who are on the progressive side of the Labour Party, probably do want to push more on the, on the big, bold, radical side of things rather than the Ming Vars. But I, I thought it was one of, I really did think it was one of his better speeches. And I quite liked that boldness of, of saying, we're coming on, we're bringing tanks on to your lawn. And do you know the other thing I think? This thing about the conservatives, like, if I think about you being a conservative, I think your conservatism is very much rooted in history, culture, tradition, not-

• 4:16Alastair Campbell?

  Changing things unless you really need to. And they come along, they want to change the sort of wreck the health service, change the BBC, pollute our seas and rivers with unimaginable quantities of human wastage. And it's not very conservative. And I thought that was a that was a smart place to be. But then the next bit of his kind of journey of leadership, I think, is going to be about taking three or four big areas where the big policy ideas come.

• 4:42Rory Stewart?

  And that's what we have to see. Because as you say, if you're going to talk about clause four on steroids, I mean, clause four was huge, probably the biggest thing that Labour Party had done. So clause four on steroids, I don't quite understand what that can be that's going to be bigger than clause four.

• 4:55Alastair Campbell?

  Clause twelve.

• 4:57Rory Stewart?

  Really big clause twelve. I mean, I think this is another problem, isn't it, for all these politicians, that they have in their minds these radical moves. So the Conservatives, obviously, completely obsessed with Margaret Thatcher. And one of their problems is that they keep working out how they can outdo Margaret Thatcher. But of course, the thing she's done can't be done twice. Privatization, selling off council houses, the restructuring of the economy, they're not going to be able to do them again. He's not going to be able to get rid of clause four twice. What's what's the big reform that he's going to bring to the Labour Party equivalent to clause four?

• 5:27Alastair Campbell?

  What he's talking about, the reform of public services.

• 5:29Rory Stewart?

  But clause four was a was a reckoning with the party, right?

• 5:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, it was. But that's what, you know, we've talked a lot about how leadership is about telling the party things it doesn't want to hear. People go on about clause clause four, I think, much more because of the symbolism symbolism of that change. It wasn't, it didn't really indicate.

• 5:46Rory Stewart?

  Remind us what clause four was.

• 5:47Alastair Campbell?

  What did it say? Oh, God, the ownership, common ownership of means of distribution and supply, I can't remember, production, distribution and supply.

• 5:52Rory Stewart?

  But it was a sort of faintly Marxist sounding force.

• 5:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And it was something which the Labour Party no longer believed. Even Dennis Skinner didn't really believe in that as a kind of, you know, economic policy. So it was symbolic. And then the policy change followed from that. And I think with these missions, I did an event last night with Beth Rigby from Sky, the How To Academy. And so about five or 600 people there, obviously, coming out on a Tuesday night to listen to me and Beth Rigby talk about a book about politics, they're interested in politics. Somebody asked a question about the missions, the five Labour missions. And I and I asked for a show of hands in the audience, who has heard of the five Labour missions? It was a minority. So my point on that is that they've still got to communicate the basic big picture that they're trying to get over.

• 6:36Rory Stewart?

  There is a messaging problem. I'm not sure he's quite tightened his language enough.

• 6:43Rory Stewart?

  There were three big words that he was selling the speech. Do you remember what those words were? I mean, I can tell you.

• 6:48Alastair Campbell?

  Respect.

• 6:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I don't want to put you on the spot, but it's service, respect and stability. But even when you said service, respect, but I mean, obviously I love that stuff. It sounds very conservative. I love service, respect, stability. But it doesn't exactly trip off the tongue, does it? Service, respect, stability. There's a lot of S's going on.

• 7:07Alastair Campbell?

  It's kind of him, though. I think this this respect thing I know goes very deep with him.

• 7:13Rory Stewart?

  Sibilance, service.

• 7:14Alastair Campbell?

  No, okay, okay. That's that's a that's a minor linguistic point as opposed to major political strategic point. This respect thing is massive for him.

• 7:22Rory Stewart?

  They're also not action words. That's another thing, maybe, as a communications expert. If I came to you and said my three big words, and I run a campaign on service, respect and stability, it doesn't it's not call to action, exactly, as it.

• 7:33Alastair Campbell?

  But Gordon, listen, Gordon ran on stability and did very, very well. But as a chancellor, rather than as the leader of the party.

• 7:38Rory Stewart?

  You would want to say stability, and this is what Gordon Brown did, if you are the government, because as George Osborne was saying in our, just to plug it, our leading interview, which is which is out this week, just just go to your podcast feed, search for leading.

• 7:53Alastair Campbell?

  Leading George Osborne.

• 7:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. In that, he pointed out that basically you've got two strategies. Either you're in opposition, which case you say things have got to change, or you're in government, in which case you have to say stability, basically.

• 8:06Alastair Campbell?

  But Gordon, Gordon, Gordon, in opposition.

• 8:09Rory Stewart?

  You had a good phrase for it, though, didn't you? You said, lot done.

• 8:13Alastair Campbell?

  Lots done.

• 8:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Alastair Campbell?

  Lots to do, lots to lose.

• 8:16Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 8:17Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, my friend Eddie Rahma in Albania has just had the best election, local election results ever.

• 8:24Rory Stewart?

  Amazing.

• 8:24Alastair Campbell?

  Fifty five municipalities to six on the lots done, lots to do, lots to lose.

• 8:31Rory Stewart?

  Obviously, Keir Starmer is not going to be particularly listening to me, but I think I do represent a certain kind of floating voter. And when I saw that speech, I felt there was still not enough optimism, vision and hope. There was quite a lot of.

• 8:47Rory Stewart?

  I mean, he did quite a lot on how dare they bail out the bankers and make poor people pay to bail out the banks. Now, as far as I know, Labour Party policy at the time was to provide state support for those banks. He's not laying out what the alternative is there. That's a grudge from 2008, nine? Well, who's he playing to there? Where's the constituency for that stuff?

• 9:14Alastair Campbell?

  I think that's the sort of a Labour, a sort of strong tribal Labour base that really wants to hear the Tories getting the boot put in, put into them.

• 9:23Rory Stewart?

  And did Tony Blair do that? Did you feel you had to do that in 95, 96?

• 9:27Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, Tony didn't like doing the sort of nasty negative stuff, but he could do it. I remember when he once, do you remember when he did John May drove the dispatch box? Weak, weak, weak. And you could feel the blow landing with each word. I remember he came out and said, I didn't like doing that. I said, yeah, but he did it.

• 9:44Rory Stewart?

  And I guess he did it on the ERM. He would have done it on the bailing out of the European exchange trade unions and all that sort of stuff.

• 9:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think, I think a little bit of iron has entered Keir's soul post-Sunak. I think he's been quite taken aback by how quite nasty Sunak can be, all this lefty lawyer stuff and and constant misrepresentation. He did it again the other day about the police numbers and the crime figures and so I think, I don't know. I feel Keir's moved into a different gear, but I still, I agree, where I agree with you, I still want more in that speech that says this is what Britain's going to be like if you have 10 years of a Labour government.

• 10:15Rory Stewart?

  And we like, I think there's a lovely phrase that John McCain loved, which is that people like voting for a politician who's a happy warrior. They like the sense of the confident, happy optimism.

• 10:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that was Johnson's strength.

• 10:28Rory Stewart?

  That was Johnson's strength, unfortunately.

• 10:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Rory Stewart?

  But it would be nice to see a little bit of that from Keir.

• 10:32Alastair Campbell?

  Now, shall we talk about the Tories? Your lot?

• 10:34Rory Stewart?

  I mean, horrifying. So I'm looking at the list. So this is, this is something that you've, you've raised with us here and called the National Conservatism Conference in London, May 15th to 17th, led in the confirmed speakers, Suella Braverman, Douglas Murray, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Senator JD Vance from the US, Lee Anderson, Theodore Dalrymple, who writes these articles in The Spectator, grumbling about, generally grumbling about people on benefits as far as I can remember, David Frost, John Hayes, Melanie Phillips, Nigel Biggar, who's this theologian at Oxford, who's been doing revisionist history on the British Empire, Darren Grimes. It's a pretty, pretty astonishing group of people, isn't it?

• 11:14Alastair Campbell?

  Horrific, horrific. Also, I mean, Suella Braverman, she's the Home Secretary in a government led by Rishi Sunak, who yesterday was meeting Zelensky, the leader of Ukraine, to talk about the next stages in an incredibly important military confrontation with Russia. And his Home Secretary is topping the bill at an organisation, an event organised essentially to tell Rishi Sunak that his domestic political strategy is all to cock. And some of the speeches, Douglas Murray, who you mentioned, said, was talking about the, you know, there's nothing wrong with, she had this thing about there's nothing racist about wanting to stop immigrants coming into the country. I always have a problem with people who start their sentences with there's nothing racist about. It usually means they're going to go and exploit racism if they can.

• 11:57Alastair Campbell?

  She, he, Douglas Murray made this speech where he said that just because the Germans mucked up a couple of times in the last century, which doesn't mean we should stop feeling proud about our nationality. I mean, that is a pretty amazing historical analogy. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who sat in the Cabinet when the Voter ID Registration Bill was being put through, attacked Sunak for doing it and said it was gerrymandering. And Braverman, I mean, this, this law, honestly, if this was the left wing equivalent, the right wing papers would be going insane with this stuff. Braverman made this joke about Keir Starmer, who doesn't know the difference between a man and a woman, maybe he'll be, end up being the first woman leader of the Labour Party. I mean, they're just, it's pathetic stuff.

• 12:39Rory Stewart?

  And then Danny Kruger had a big speech on the centrality of family and how.

• 12:45Alastair Campbell?

  Stick together when you hate each other.

• 12:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 12:47Alastair Campbell?

  For the kids.

• 12:48Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's, it's pretty odd because it feels, and including the inclusion of a US Republican Senator in this.

• 12:56Alastair Campbell?

  And also funded by an American think tank, it's all this sort of, you know, where's the money coming from stuff, which never gets asked of the right.

• 13:01Rory Stewart?

  But very much this is people leaning into American cultural issues. And of course, Lee Anderson, very central to all of that, who's, who's the Vice Chairman of the Party.

• 13:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's the guy who said, he said out loud, you know, the last election, we had Boris, Brexit and Corbyn, we've got none of those at the next, we've got to have culture wars and trans.

• 13:19Rory Stewart?

  But this is why, I was talking to a Conservative Cabinet Minister yesterday, who was saying that it seems likely, of course, that the Conservatives will lose the next election.

• 13:28Alastair Campbell?

  Is that what they think now?

• 13:28Rory Stewart?

  It's not, not exactly that's what they think, that's not a big revelation to anyone. But what was striking is how completely confident he was that when they lose, the leading candidates will be from the right and the party will lurch to the right in response to the loss and that Suella Braverman and Camille Badenoch are the leaders to take over the party.

• 13:46Alastair Campbell?

  Which, you know what, if Labour do get in, even with a small majority, it could be good for Labour. I think if the Tory party lurches into some sort of post-Faragist UKIPery of culture war nonsense.

• 13:56Rory Stewart?

  I think it's very, very bad for the country.

• 13:58Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I agree with that, I agree with that, I agree it's bad for the country. So I did that Politics Live programme and Danny Krueger was on the panel and so was Shami Chakrabarti and Shami and I didn't always agree about stuck in the corner.

• 14:08Rory Stewart?

  Danny Krueger was a big supporter of Boris Johnson, was one of his private secretaries before he was elected, was one of the key members of his administration. I wonder how he reconciles his very strong Christian views on marriage with being a strong supporter of Boris Johnson.

• 14:22Alastair Campbell?

  Heaven knows. But what was really fascinating was Shami and I at one point were looking at each other because Danny Krueger was coming out with this stuff about, he was looking at us and pointing at us and saying that this leftist, I think he said something like morally transformative agendaism, what the hell is he talking about? And then he comes up with this speech about, you know, couples should stay together for the kids and I just thought, the whole thing felt weird. I'll tell you the other thing that really made me laugh, you know the other organisation, we've talked about the NAP cons as they call themselves, but the day before you had the other one, the Bannerman, Cruddas, Lord Cruddas Boris Johnson Fan Club, what's he called? Organisation of Democratic something like that.

• 15:00Alastair Campbell?

  And somebody sent me the clips of Priti Patel, Nadine Dorries, Andrea Jenkins and Cruddas speaking, you know that thing they have in the corner of the screen which tells you how many people are watching online live? The highest was 66.

• 15:15Rory Stewart?

  And you were one of them?

• 15:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I wasn't one of them, somebody sent to me, I reckon 25 of them were Tory MPs who've now got shows on GB News where they talked about this amazing conference that they were all at. But we do give them, we're probably doing it the same now, we're giving them far too much attention. But on Braverman. What, so when Rees-Mogg came out and said to that conference yesterday, he said, we will be toast, we'll be finished if we try and change the leader again. I wonder if actually he was trying to signal in a very misleading way to Sunak that his position is safe when actually it's not safe at all.

• 15:45Rory Stewart?

  Well, and of course, one of the extraordinary things is that Tory MPs always say that and then often go on and change leaders. I mean, it's a knee-jerk reaction. They said it will be toast if we get rid of Boris Johnson, will be toast if we get rid of Liz Truss. I think Rishi Sunak did something which was brave and correct, which was to get rid of this bill, which was going to rip up EU legislation. But it's a very, very risky, dangerous thing he did within his party because he got elected on a manifesto. You remember he had a

• 16:13Alastair Campbell?

  Video of a shredder.

• 16:14Rory Stewart?

  Video of a shredder. And that has really wound up the Brexit right, who feel profoundly betrayed. And actually, in this extremely bad-tempered exchange you had on Newsnight, you had, you had, was it on Newsnight?

• 16:27Alastair Campbell?

  What bad-tempered exchange?

• 16:28Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, with that lady on, it was Newsnight, right?

• 16:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 16:30Rory Stewart?

  Yes, sorry. In that, I noticed she was also laying into Rishi Sunak and questioning whether he was really a Brexiteer and saying, you know, that he had betrayed his promises. He didn't really believe in the whole project. So he's got a very, very difficult job trying to hold that coalition together.

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  We should probably talk a little bit about the Newsnight thing, but did that not damage Badenoch as well? Because she's the one who had to present the whole thing to the Commons as being pinned.

• 16:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think it must be difficult for her.

• 16:56Alastair Campbell?

  So that helps Braverman.

• 16:57Rory Stewart?

  It probably does, yeah, probably does, although it might make, can be bad not, paradoxically, there are still probably a hundred Tory MPs who see themselves more on the centre left of the party.

• 17:07Alastair Campbell?

  So do you think I strayed from the disagree-agreeably path of enlightenment in the Rory Stewart era of my life?

• 17:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't know, I occasionally do it myself. What I notice, being a sinner myself, is that, is that certainly Shishana watching it doesn't like seeing either of us getting shouty. She didn't, I mean, when she was watching with me, she didn't particularly blame you for it, but she thought the whole tone of the thing as a, as a watcher, you ceased to take in the, the arguments and you began to focus on it.

• 17:36Alastair Campbell?

  I'm just very glad that Fiona was in bed and didn't see it. And when She saw I was trending on Twitter the next morning. She said, what have you done? I said, I just on Newsnight last night, it was a bit of a bit of a problem and got a bit aerated. She didn't watch it. So explain, tell us a bit about it, for people who didn't watch it. So I had put out a speech, as I was doing that night, about Europe, which I wanted to be about my desire that Labour become a bit bolder on calling out the Brexit disaster. And because the Sunak had announced that they were scrapping the retained EU law bill, they asked me if I would go on. I thought I was going to be go on with a Jacob Rees-Mogg or a Farage or something like that. Maybe I don't follow these things as closely as I should, but I actually, I didn't even know who she was. I couldn't quite believe.

• 18:20Alastair Campbell?

  And she was an MEP.

• 18:21Alastair Campbell?

  She's a former MEP who's now an advisor to Richard Tice, the Reform Party. A UKIP MEP? Yeah, yeah, or the Brexit Party, Brexit Party. And before this, before we went in there, the Israeli MP was about to go on after us with the Palestinian ambassador. I was talking to the Palestinian ambassador about Middle East peace process and such like. And she she got into the conversation and started to try to tell the Palestinian ambassador that people in working class areas in Britain, their cost of living was rising because of Brexit, to which he looked and said, do you know anything about inflation and how the economy works on inflation? So that I just thought this is not going. So it wasn't going well in the green room?

• 19:04Alastair Campbell?

  It wasn't going badly, but it wasn't going great. And then in the interview, she just came out with stuff that was just utter bilge and factually inaccurate and you just get sick of it after a while. What I didn't like myself for doing was turning on Victoria Derbyshire. I think I probably did that because. And Victoria Barbour, BBC interview. Yeah, who actually, I do think there's been a problem with the BBC not calling out these Brexiters. I mean, you know, the fact that Nigel Farage has been on Question Time more than any other politician in history is ridiculous. They very rarely get pinned to their wall. Well, even last night, Farage was on Newsnight last night saying Brexit is a disaster. He's now just commenting on it, despite having been one of the great creators of it. So I got very aerated with Victoria. But to be absolutely honest, it's one of those things, end of a long day.

• 19:50Rory Stewart?

  And do you find the process of publishing your book and the reviews and the interviews and all this stuff, is it stressful? Because sometimes what's happening is people are kind of dredging up your past, chucking the Iraq war at you, chucking your time and downings at you. Is that unpleasant for you? Do you have quite a thick skin? Do you worry about it?

• 20:08Alastair Campbell?

  I don't. No, I don't. I quite enjoy. Look, there will come a point, probably in a couple of weeks, where I'll think, right, I've done the book and I'll move on to the next thing. So on the way here, I went to a school just down the road and I really enjoyed it. Young kids, really engaged in politics, all of them getting a book for the, asking a question, all that sort of stuff. And it was, so that sort of stuff I enjoy. I should, I don't know if you're aware Rory, but I did invent another new word yesterday, podultery.

• 20:38Rory Stewart?

  Podultery?

• 20:38Alastair Campbell?

  Podultery. I committed podultery yesterday.

• 20:41Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes. I was invited on that show. I was supposed to be asking a surprise question to you on that show. You went on news age.

• 20:46Alastair Campbell?

  I did. Yeah. So you have to do certain things. You will find out when Politics on the Edge is published in September, you have to do all sorts of things.

• 20:55Rory Stewart?

  A bit of podultery.

• 20:56Alastair Campbell?

  So I did a bit of podultery. And what I, what was interesting, you mentioned Iraq, they actually talked a lot about the exchanges that we had around. They were singing your praises as an interviewer. And they were saying they thought that you got more out of me on Iraq than anybody else ever had.

• 21:12Rory Stewart?

  That's very kind of you.

• 21:13Alastair Campbell?

  I don't agree with that, but you know, that's what they thought.

• 21:15Rory Stewart?

  Listen, just, just a

• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, I don't find it that difficult. I just, I know when I'll have reached the end of

• 21:19Rory Stewart?

  But, but it's not been too painful.

• 21:21Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 21:21Rory Stewart?

  I was in Paris yesterday and I was in a square outside the Senate where for five months Catholic protesters were protesting a change on surrogate mothers. And I was reminded how very different the culture wars are in places like France from the culture wars here. In France and the United States, so much of it is driven by religion. And whatever's happening in the National Conservatism Conference and the culture wars that Lee Anderson and Suella Bravman are stoking up here, it feels to me as though Britain is still a much, much more secular society. And so despite the fact you get, you know, J D Vance, who's a US senator, wanting to talk about keeping the family together and all that stuff, it's got a completely different resonance in the US, or even, I think, in Catholic countries

• 22:06Rory Stewart?

  in Europe.

• 22:07Alastair Campbell?

  So what's the issue in France?

• 22:10Rory Stewart?

  So that was, I'm just reminded of it again and again. I keep forgetting that one of the things that is a continual challenge is that there is still a conservative religious Catholic element in in in French politics that doesn't like liberal progressive reforms brought in by Francois, your friend Francois Land on things like surrogate mothers. And I was just reminded that for five months, they'd sat in the square outside the Senate protesting it.

• 22:34Alastair Campbell?

  What about the assisted dying thing? Is that not seen as a religious thing? Because Macron's moving the dard on that pretty fast.

• 22:39Rory Stewart?

  I think it's a huge thing. And I think we underestimate how much in all these countries, when you and I naturally applaud progress in Ireland or France on all these issues, how there is often forty percent of the population that remains very, very uncomfortable about these things and probably very resentful of the politicians that introduce them.

• 23:00Alastair Campbell?

  Right, on that, I will take a break.

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• 25:23Rory Stewart?

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

• 25:26Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 25:28Rory Stewart?

  And Alistair looking extremely sort of fresh, notwithstanding the middle of his book tour.

• 25:32Alastair Campbell?

  Looking fresh?

• 25:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think you're looking pretty fresh.

• 25:34Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, had a good swim this morning.

• 25:35Rory Stewart?

  Doing well. You went for another one of your cold swims?

• 25:37Alastair Campbell?

  I did.

• 25:38Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 25:38Alastair Campbell?

  It's not very cold at the moment, 16 degrees.

• 25:40Rory Stewart?

  Was that in London or here in Yorkshire where we're recording?

• 25:42Alastair Campbell?

  It was in Lido. I might find somewhere in West Yorkshire tomorrow. Now, what's the population of Turkey?

• 25:48Rory Stewart?

  Population of Turkey? I don't know, what's the population?

• 25:50Alastair Campbell?

  Eighty-five point two million.

• 25:52Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 25:52Alastair Campbell?

  Thailand, seventy-one point six.

• 25:54Rory Stewart?

  Which is roughly the same as the United Kingdom.

• 25:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yep. And how much have you heard on the British media about the elections in Thailand?

• 26:00Rory Stewart?

  Very little. Are you going to tell us about them?

• 26:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think they're fascinating because the party that's been running the place, which is very pro-military.

• 26:10Rory Stewart?

  And pro-king.

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  And very pro-king, have been absolutely battered. A party that's clearly taken a lot of lessons from Emmanuel Macron, calling itself the Move Forward Party, you could always say en marche, progressive, youth-led. Actually, at the heart of their campaign, something that could be seen as a crime, because they're actually calling for reform of the monarchy, and they have the whole "les majestés" thing that you're not allowed to, it's 15 years, top sentence, for criticizing the monarchy.

• 26:41Rory Stewart?

  Or indeed their pets.

• 26:42Alastair Campbell?

  Or indeed their pets, exactly, or anything they wear. They have campaigned on reducing the power of the military, ending conscription, new constitution, and they've done incredibly well.

• 26:53Rory Stewart?

  One way I saw it described is that what made them different from the party that came second, which is the traditional populist party, is, as you say, their focus is on institutional reform. People didn't really think they were going to get anywhere. Institutional reform's not usually a sexy subject. People argued that the reform to the constitution and the election rules made it very difficult for this party to come through. And despite new types of electoral system, which is a parallel system, but first past the post, but PR, they've managed to come romping through, over 30% of the vote.

• 27:23Alastair Campbell?

  And then the parties with which the former Prime Minister, Prayat Chonucha, is associated, between them, he's got two parties, one that he used to run and one that he now has 76 seats between them, so they're finished. But what's terrible about this whole system is that the Prime Minister now has to be chosen by 250 members of the Senate, who have been appointed by the military. So even though these guys have won, it's not clear how they're going to put together a coalition. But it is an absolute, we go on about populism, we'll obviously talk about Erdogan, this is a total defeat of the populists.

• 27:54Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's extraordinary. It's a defeat for the populists and it's a defeat for the crusty military conservatives, who are sort of two different bits in Thailand, for a new progressive movement that's very exciting and took credible numbers of seats in Bangkok, took a lot of seats in Chiang Mai, which is the second largest city. Led by this charismatic graduate from actually the Harvard Kennedy School where I used to teach a bit. He was there when I was there. I didn't think he took my classes.

• 28:21Alastair Campbell?

  This is Peter Lim Jaroi Nat. And then the other guy, the one of the candidates who led the youth movement and the protests against the government in 2020, he's still in his twenties and he won one of these seats in Bangkok. And I think they won all but one of the constituencies in Bangkok. So it's a pretty big story. And then you've now got this, whether they'll be able to form a government on the basis that they're going to deliver on some of these promises of reforming the military and reforming the monarchy, we'll wait and see.

• 28:54Rory Stewart?

  So a little posse history of Thailand. So Thailand was ruled for more than 70 years by the current king's father, who ruled at the kind of length that Queen Elizabeth II or the Emperor Hirohito ruled, all the way from just after the Second World War through the 2000s. Was very much caught up in US Cold War politics because you remember the dominoes theory and the whole idea was that if Vietnam fell, Thailand was going to be the next to fall. So the US really invested in the 50s and 60s in trying to back generally quite right-wing anti-communist governments in Thailand. In 92, it had its breakthrough into democracy, which the old king was incredibly important for, a bit like, I think, the King of Spain coming in after Franco.

• 29:37Rory Stewart?

  It was a very famous image where the general and the main opposition leader knelt in front of the king and the king basically told them to get on with the elections. And this vision of these two people kneeling in front of him was incredibly important. And it was, of course, one of the real economic miracles. This is a country which in 1980 had a GDP per capita of about $1,500 and is now up at $10,000 per capita in, not even in purchasing power parity terms, in absolute dollar terms. Was hit very hard by this financial crisis in 97, bounced back by about 2004, 5. And even with all these changes, because there were these horrible military coups,

• 30:19Rory Stewart?

  which have happened now twice since 2000, at a time when you felt the world was ever more democratizing, Thailand was the exception to the rule, military coups happening, but still hasn't basically thrown it off the course of very, very impressive economic growth, slightly reduced by the military, but still one of the great miracles of the world. Its poverty, extreme poverty rate in Thailand now Something like zero point zero three percent.

• 30:44Alastair Campbell?

  Do you give directly what they're.

• 30:46Rory Stewart?

  Living under two dollars. No, we don't because it's much too wealthy. Now, given that we want to be prosecuted under the Thai Lessey Majestate rules, um let me just tell people a little bit about the King of Thailand.

• 30:56Alastair Campbell?

  Ah.

• 30:56Rory Stewart?

  Which nobody's allowed to talk about.

• 30:58Alastair Campbell?

  We don't want to be prosecuted.

• 30:59Rory Stewart?

  We don't want to prosecute.

• 31:00Alastair Campbell?

  We like the fact that we can criticize our own king, though very, very few people do, especially you. Have you ever criticized our king?

• 31:05Rory Stewart?

  Uh, no.

• 31:07Alastair Campbell?

  And is that a point of principle?

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  Well, I do really admire him. I do think he's wonderful. King Vajira Longkong, who's the current king, do you know where he lives?

• 31:17Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 31:17Rory Stewart?

  Munich, lives in Bavaria.

• 31:19Alastair Campbell?

  Right, why?

• 31:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's it's actually a sort of family tradition. His his father largely, until he became king, lived in Switzerland. But it appears that um he has a lady love and he has been spending most of his time living in Bavaria. And this is one of the large objections of the Thai people that their king.

• 31:39Alastair Campbell?

  Do they look, do they all know that?

• 31:41Rory Stewart?

  Yes, everyone knows.

• 31:41Alastair Campbell?

  How do they know that if you can't criticize them?

• 31:44Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's it's difficult to get the news out, but occasionally it comes out. I mean, some of it comes out from things like WikiLeaks. So the US ambassador wrote this wonderful report about Air Chief Marshal Foo Foo, uh who was the poodle belonging to the king, who turned up at a diplomatic reception dressed in a full evening gear, including diamante little um shoes that covered, I guess, his pores and was allowed to dance over the tables, drinking from the US ambassador's drink. Also in WikiLeaks uh was a famous video of Foo Foo's birthday hosted by the king and the queen who appeared topless for the for the birthday party.

• 32:25Rory Stewart?

  So anyway, the king's reputation as a party boy, he's now seventy years old.

• 32:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, living in Munich.

• 32:31Rory Stewart?

  Living in Munich, uh and the relationships with Foo Foo and what's called his profound moments of eccentricity compared to the very, very revered status of his father, who for seventy years was seen as an extraordinary sort of force for for good and religious propriety in Thailand is is at the heart of some of these demands.

• 32:47Alastair Campbell?

  But does the king not have to do stuff in Thailand? Does he keep having to flip back to Thailand to do ceremonial stuff?

• 32:52Rory Stewart?

  No, he he doesn't do very much of that, no. And in fact, there was a tradition in the Thai royal house of not doing very much of that. Quite a lot of them in the twenties and thirties were ruling from Europe.

• 33:03Alastair Campbell?

  Turkey?

• 33:04Rory Stewart?

  Turkey.

• 33:05Alastair Campbell?

  Erdogan's gonna win.

• 33:06Rory Stewart?

  Erdogan's gonna win because he, so it's gone to a runoff. May twenty sixth, I think.

• 33:10Alastair Campbell?

  Twenty eighth.

• 33:11Rory Stewart?

  May twenty eighth, very good, but he almost got it forty nine percent of the vote. So it's going to be very, very difficult for him not to make it through.

• 33:16Alastair Campbell?

  Also, the guy who's taken the five percent, the third guy, he's even further to the right than Erdogan. So it's very hard to see that five percent going back to the opposition.

• 33:24Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely, and the opposition leader, to add to his problems, had support from the Kurdish party. And Erdogan's whipping up the fact he had support from the Kurdish party to turn up the conservative vote. I mean, there's a small hope that now people see Erdogan as vulnerable. They may change their minds in the election, so I wouldn't completely write it off, but it looks like he's going to be able to win.

• 33:45Alastair Campbell?

  The other thing is that's interesting, we talked a bit about the, I mean, I think we have been consistent about saying that we think that Erdogan probably would end up winning. But he actually did incredibly well in the earthquake zones where there'd been an assumption that they'd handle it so badly.

• 33:59Rory Stewart?

  So I, I, you remember, we did a podcast when I was in the earthquake zones. And I was actually quite struck by how much the Turkish state had mobilized. He'd moved governors who were like French prefects, they're sort of appointed people, down. And I was in a room with one of these Turkish governors running the response near Gaziantec. And it was pretty impressive, he had all the military and the police and they lined up, they had the maps out, they were, and trucks were pouring in. So I, I can see that working, in a sense, that's what he made his reputation, he made his reputation, Erdogan made his reputation, Istanbul in the nineties. As a guy who got things done, he was, and even when he was president, it was all about the fact he doubled the number of roads in the country.

• 34:41Rory Stewart?

  He massively increased water supply, bridges, he loves big public infrastructure.

• 34:47Alastair Campbell?

  He also did a huge public sector pay deal just before the election. Uh, I mean, like huge, for raising the minimum wage, big civil service pay rises. And I guess the other thing, I mean. Jonathan Powell's brother, Chris, who's quite involved in politics in different parts of the world, and he was involved with the Istanbul mayor, İmamoglu, who we've talked about before, who I think would have been a much better opposition leader, but of course they had managed to get him stuck away in jail for a bit because he criticised the election authorities, which are entirely appointed by Erdogan. And also, it was strange watching, I watched the, I actually took a leaf out of your book and I watched the live coverage on Al Jazeera, which was pretty good to be fair.

• 35:26Rory Stewart?

  They are good, aren't they?

• 35:27Alastair Campbell?

  I was chatting between them and CNN. But what was, when you saw the numbers, all being announced by the official Turkish news agency, which is pretty much controlled by Erdogan, and it was clearly designed to try to make the opposition people who were watching the vote counting just give up. And so they held in and they're going to, they're still there, they're still in the fight, but I find it very, very hard unless, because the turnout was so high, it was something about eighty-eight point two percent.

• 35:56Rory Stewart?

  Unbelievable, yeah.

• 35:57Alastair Campbell?

  Eighty-eight point nine two percent. And so it's very hard to see where those people who might think, oh my god, yeah, maybe we could beat him, given that the polls were saying that was going to happen anyway. So he's sort of...

• 36:06Rory Stewart?

  Those turnout figures are unbelievable, aren't they? I mean, I don't think anyone gets those kind of turnout figures.

• 36:09Alastair Campbell?

  No, well, unless you have compulsory voting. The other thing I looked into, a lot of Turks, obviously, living around the European Union, the vote for Erdogan in the 1.5 million Turks living in Germany, sixty-five point four percent.

• 36:23Rory Stewart?

  So, very, very struck by how much German politicians are interacting with this, partly because, I mean, as you say, you had a figure of just over a million, but in fact, three million Germans, I think, were born in Turkey and seven million have Turkish ancestry.

• 36:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and because the Germans have been quite tight on giving them German passports, a lot of them will still be Turkish citizens, even born there. And it was even higher in the Netherlands, sixty-eight percent in the Netherlands, sixty-four percent in France, and seventy-one percent of Turks living in Austria.

• 36:53Rory Stewart?

  Voting for Erdogan.

• 36:54Alastair Campbell?

  Voting for Erdogan. And a lot of them, I read a thing in Bild Zeitung where they were saying that the reason is because they really resent the way that European politicians talk about Turkey and talk about Erdogan.

• 37:04Rory Stewart?

  I was thinking about his career. I was sort of thinking about the similarities with İmamoglu. Both of them went to quite conservative Islamist backgrounds. Erdogan grew up as a teenager, literally on the streets, selling water bottles, selling simit, which is like a big pretzel. Then didn't probably go to university, he claims he did, but there's no real record of that, was a footballer, so you'd relate to that. And Erdogan was also actually a semi-professional footballer, goalkeeper.

• 37:32Alastair Campbell?

  He's got a very, Erdogan's got a very kind of athletic build. Well, he never smiles, does he? It's very strange for a politician.

• 37:39Rory Stewart?

  But then he became, I remember from the nineties through to about 2014, was such a kind of hopeful figure. When he came in in the early 2000s, he very, very quickly did these amazing reforms. He said very progressive things about gay rights, he got rid of the death penalty, he tried to run a peace process with the Kurds, but a lot of this was about EU accession. And when that began going sour, in about 2014, and we talk about 2014 as the beginning of the age of populism in a sense, because that's when Modi comes in in India, that's when ISIS take Mosul, and that's the point at which things change with Erdogan, that's the point at which he becomes president.

• 38:21Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting you say that, because I hadn't really thought about it, because I've forgotten it, but when, we've talked before about the first time with Tony that we met Putin, similar with Erdogan, he was seen as a kind of reformist, west-leaning, pro-Atlanticist. And this campaign, I mean Biden has been a big part of this campaign, is essentially he's been saying, you know, vote for me to put Biden in his place. It's almost a complete reversal of where he was.

• 38:46Rory Stewart?

  Obama's first international trip and first big speech was made in Turkey in 2009, because Turkey was seen as this fantastic example of moderate Islamists, Western-friendly, NATO members, trying to join the European Union, and a model for what Syria could be, Iraq could be, all these other countries could be, without an invasion, without an intervention, a sort of positive, locally-led move. And then suddenly from 2014 onwards, it all begins to go pretty horribly wrong. There's this coup, which there are still lots of questions about, was it a real coup against him, was it a coup he himself staged? He then drove this crackdown, which ended up with 91,000 people being arrested, whole

• 39:31Rory Stewart?

  areas of self-service cleaned out. Then he brought through a new constitution that he got through on a 52-48 referendum, you remember that kind of stuff, which basically strengthened the power of the presidency against judiciary, built a $300 million presidential powers.

• 39:46Rory Stewart?

  Started flirting with the Russians, bought their air defence systems, started getting very, very aggressively involved in Somalia, in Libya, and this kind of Ottoman expansion muscle stuff.

• 39:59Rory Stewart?

  And then went full on eccentric on his economic policy in 2018.

• 40:05Alastair Campbell?

  And still there.

• 40:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, where he wiped out half the value of his currency in a year, drove incredible numbers of companies to bankruptcy with an absolute, and we talk about this, but it's the opposite of austerity. He was a great believer in borrow, borrow, borrow, and putting the interest rates as low as possible.

• 40:22Alastair Campbell?

  And he's still doing it with inflation, well, it's coming down a little bit now, but it's way, way, way beyond what most countries do. I mean, you've taken us neatly into that part, another thing happening in that part of the world that you've been talking about, which is Syria, back in the Arab League. Is this another string to the bow of David Miliband talking about the age of impunity?

• 40:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's extraordinary, isn't it? So that is an announcement that's just come out, and it's been led by Saudi Arabia and UAE, and opposed by Jordan and Qatar. Yeah, it's absolutely astonishing, I mean heartbreaking for the Syrian opposition, because they famously gave speeches in the Arab League 10 years ago.

• 40:59Alastair Campbell?

  They were given the Syrian seat, weren't they?

• 41:01Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely.

• 41:01Alastair Campbell?

  And said that, yeah.

• 41:03Rory Stewart?

  And now find themselves absolutely out in the cold. Meanwhile, the Syrian economy, we've been talking a lot about Thailand, Turkey, Syria. I just had some figures that I was looking at about how these different countries have fared since 1980. So Thailand, GDP per capita, $700 in 1980, $8,000 today, 11 times richer. Turkey, $2,000 in 1980, $10,000 today, five times richer, very, very, you know, impressive stuff. South Korea, 15 times growth. But Syria, Syria has gone from a situation in which they were at $2,000 in 1980, reached $10,000 in 2007, and are now down at $1,200 per capita. They have.

• 41:48Rory Stewart?

  Basically pushed thirty percent of their population to extreme poverty, seventy percent now unemployed, and they've gone from being an upper-middle income country to being one of the poorest countries in the world.

• 42:00Alastair Campbell?

  Well, three hundred thousand of them are dead in the current situation. The other thing I didn't realise was the extent to which, one of the reasons why the Saudis are so keen to get this thing sorted is because they, Mohammed bin Salman, as he goes towards his vision twenty thirty, doesn't want his neighbours, kind of, you know, with all this trouble going on. But I hadn't realised that this drug, Captagon, an amphetamine, is now Syria's largest export. It's effectively become a mafia state, and members of his family, Assad's family, are sanctioned because of their trade in this drug.

• 42:38Rory Stewart?

  And the British have put out a paper saying that eighty percent of the world trade in Captagon. So Captagon is, as you say, it's an amphetamine related to phenylephrine, which some of us get in our cold medication, but obviously this is.

• 42:51Alastair Campbell?

  You're the drugs expert on this podcast, having taken opium. What does this one do to you, this Captagon?

• 42:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, so originally developed in the nineteen sixties to deal with attention deficit disorder and narcolepsy, and then by the early seventies, people began cutting down on its use because of its psychotic effects. And by the middle of the eighties, almost nobody was producing it anymore. And then a Bulgarian gang began shipping it through with Balkan traders into the Middle East, developed a huge market for it in places like UAE and Saudi. They then moved their production facilities, the Bulgarians, the Turks, cracked down on this in the early two thousands. Production facilities started again in Syria, and according to the British, the Syrian regime and Assad is currently making three times the volume of trade of the Mexican drug

• 43:41Rory Stewart?

  cartels, this thing called Captagon.

• 43:44Alastair Campbell?

  It's incredible, but I mean, personally, everything in the world knows about the Mexican drug cartels, but I didn't even know about this until recently.

• 43:52Rory Stewart?

  It's extraordinary. And and the Saudis just found, I think, four point six million pills hidden in flour. The UAE's just found pills hidden in green bean shipments, and it's all coming through from Syria.

• 44:03Alastair Campbell?

  So the Jordanians, there's a new committee being set up with Saudis, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, who are looking at all of these issues: amnesties, return of refugees, drug smuggling, and how to rein in Russian and Iranian influence. That's quite a big agenda.

• 44:23Rory Stewart?

  And and it seems to me they'll achieve none of those things. I think another thing that is difficult here is it's another sign of the way in which the Saudi-US relationship is breaking apart.

• 44:36Rory Stewart?

  Because the US has been very, very clear that they do not like the idea of normalizing relationships, as Bashar al-Assad. And there's a pattern now of Saudi deliberately poking the United States in the eye, partly because they feel humiliated, partly Biden called them a prior state. Trump refused to support Saudi when there were these attacks from Houthis, Iranian-backed terrorists against oil terminals. But since Mohammed bin Salman's come in, there's been a lot of this stuff. Do you remember when the US made requests on their oil production because of sanctions against Ukraine, Russia, they completely ignored it and basically helped the Russians with their move on oil quotas? We talked about the theatricality of Biden's visit to Northern Ireland and who greets him at the airport and how people behave.

• 45:21Rory Stewart?

  When he landed in Saudi Arabia, there was a very deliberate snap. They sent a very junior prince to meet him at the airport. Whereas when Xi Jinping arrived, there was, everybody was there, Mohammed bin Salman, huge state ceremony. And this is another sign of the Saudis, again and again, saying, we're not going to be told what to do by the United States anymore, we want to be treated entirely as an equal partner. And actually, we care much more about getting our relationships right with Israel, Iran, Syria than worrying about what the US strategy is.

• 45:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the Americans put out a very, very strong statement, saying they didn't believe Syria merited readmission, all sanctions remain.

• 46:01Rory Stewart?

  On that rather complicated note, maybe we're going to bring it to an end. We'll chat again at question time.

• 46:06Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. See you soon.

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