217. Question Time: How to cover Israel-Gaza, Labour’s £28bn green investment, and Taylor Swift vs Donald Trump

Why is Labour rolling back its pledge on green investment? What does Biden’s sanction against Israeli settlers mean in reality? Who is our one listener in Tuvalu? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. 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 Crete. 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?

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

• 2:01Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. So where do you want to start Rory?

• 2:04Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'll start with a big one from Ben Stora. Why is Labour rolling back its pledge on green investment? This is one of the policies that got me really actually excited for a Labour government and it's also pretty popular from what I can tell. Surely this makes Labour seem weak and less serious about the future of this country. So just context on this. Labour famously pledged that it were going to be investing £28 billion every year in the green economy. Then they sort of take that back a bit and said maybe they do it halfway through the term. And now it slightly looks as though they're not really committing to when they're going to do it at all. And that's presumably because they're worried about the fiscal position. But anyway, over to you.

• 2:43Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I was at an event at the Union Chapel last night, launching the paperback of my book Rory, which as you know is called.

• 2:51Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good. But what can I do?

• 2:54Alastair Campbell?

  Where I did reveal to them that your book.

• 2:57Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 2:57Alastair Campbell?

  Politics on the Edge has outsold mine.

• 3:00Rory Stewart?

  That's very generous of you.

• 3:01Alastair Campbell?

  Well done on that. But what was interesting was how many people were asking that very question or questions related to it. And there's a couple of things I'd say on this. The first is, I don't quite know how they've got themselves into this. Will they, won't they, around a number that if I'm right, I think Rachel Reeves first used in a Labour Party conference speech. And since when, there's been this sort of never ending, feels like a tug of war, but I can't quite work out who's on either side of the rope. But you know, my very, very strong advice is particularly given that after the Uxbridge by-election, Rishi Sunak signaled himself trying to move away from the kind of, you know, green credentials agenda.

• 3:43Alastair Campbell?

  I think Labour has to hold on very, very firm to being the party that's going to deliver a carbon free future. I get why they want, you know, they might worry about the numbers and they might worry about being attacked. But equally, you know, we've talked before about this thing about the so-called small target. If you don't get attacked for policy, people don't know what your policies are. And that is. One of the questions I kept getting last night is that it was people basically said, look, they're coming out to hear me and, you know, get a copy of the book and have a natter and all that stuff. They basically wanted to vote Labour, I would have said. Most of them wanted to vote Labour, I think. And I actually made the point that in most elections that I've lived through, you have a feeling often that when a government's got the power of incumbency,

• 4:27Alastair Campbell?

  but people are a bit fed up with them, they're moving away, but then people are looking for reasons not to vote for the opposition. I think at the moment, the mood is that people are desperately looking for reasons to vote for the opposition as part of the whole sort of time for a change thing and fed up with the Tories. So I think Labour has got to stop worrying so much about being attacked and actually start giving people more positive reasons so that people say that is why I'm voting Labour.

• 4:53Rory Stewart?

  And there's a very fundamental thing here, isn't there, which is that they are a party that wants to position themselves as anti austerity, pro-growth. So their whole story is that the Tories cut too much unnecessarily and it damaged the economy. And that the way to get the economy going again is to make some smart investments, in this case in green energy. And their story is this is going to create jobs, it's going to be the industries of the future. So they're talking about investing, for example, in batteries for electric vehicles, changing the power setup in Britain. So it's a powerful story which has a lot of appeal to many economists, particularly economists who are more on the left,

• 5:35Rory Stewart?

  who think that Britain has been starved of investment. There's a big, big story that keeps coming up, you know, even in the right wing press about how Britain doesn't invest as much as other European countries in its infrastructure and its skills and all this kind of stuff. So it's a pretty straightforward, if we asked an audience, what is Labour's economic policy? This is the real flagship. Well, what they're going to do is they're going to massively increase investment and they're going to invest heavily in the industries of the future, which is going to give Britain a cutting edge. Now, whether that's, whether that's right or not, and I can imagine some right wing economists listening to that saying, boo rubbish, that's the wrong way to go. But I would have thought it's a, it's a clear, strong message that, that a lot of people support and they should hold to.

• 6:19Alastair Campbell?

  And just to give you a sense of the debate that is going on, so Phil Collins, who Used to work with us in government and now writes a column in The Times and he had a column the other day, I'm just gonna give you the headline, it said Labour must ditch the £28 billion pledge to be heard. And the point that he was making is that on the day that Labour had this really big conference with business and there were 400 business leaders all paying to be there and desperate to hear what Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves had to say. And he said that as the ministers were doing, the shadow ministers were doing the media rounds, all they got was this, will they, won't they? And you know they're in trouble. I always think this with the Tory ministers, whenever they're onto that line, we've been very clear that, you know that they're basically, they're not being

• 7:03Alastair Campbell?

  very clear. And so on this, this specific issue, they have to sit around a table, resolve it once and for all, and then, as you say, have a much bigger message that is rooted in what's going to be in the manifesto about how they're going to invest in the industry of the future. And I get the complications. So for example, we were out for dinner the other night with a local government leader who was telling us about some really interesting plans that they had, not just her council but other councils as well.

• 7:32Rory Stewart?

  Is this Miss Gould?

• 7:33Alastair Campbell?

  It is Miss Gould, it is Miss Gould in Camden, yeah. But she's, she's sort of, you know, part of the whole infrastructure of councils working together. So they're working on all sorts of different projects and they're talking to government and they're talking to business. And by the way, I'd been surprised at how many business people who you might think some of them, some of them are actually defected to Labour, like that guy from Iceland and that guy Ian Anderson the other day, but people who are probably still basically on the right, but who are desperate for Labour to do this because they believe this thing about, you know, a pound of public sector investment can lead to three pounds of a private sector investment. What Georgia was saying is that actually, there aren't necessarily

• 8:13Alastair Campbell?

  all the projects there that will justify up to £28 billion per year as it goes forward. But anyway, the fact is, Phil Collins, in my view, is both right and wrong. I'm being both right and wrong. I just think they've got to resolve it.

• 8:27Rory Stewart?

  One way or another.

• 8:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and stop being on the back foot about it and then have a bigger message.

• 8:32Rory Stewart?

  Isn't that the basic rule in politics, that sometimes more important than which side of the fence you come down on, you've got to get off the fence, you've got to have a clear view that it's often the worst of all worlds to end up in a kind of muddled, indistinct position?

• 8:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and if you don't have lots of other policies that people are talking about, then in every soup they're going to focus on those that... Now, Labour will say we have lots of policies, and it's true, if you read the last policy document, there are tons of policy in there. But I'm talking about policy that is, if you like, is connecting with the public. And if you're in opposition, it only connects with the public. If you are very clear about what it is and you campaign on it relentlessly, you only get heard in the campaign if actually you are being attacked by the media and by your opponents, in this case, the Tories.

• 9:15Rory Stewart?

  Infrastructure is the obvious one, isn't it? Raul Ruparel, who was very much at the centre of Theresa May's attempt to get her soft Brexit through, has produced a report now on Britain's infrastructure with BCG, the consultancy group. And he points out that Britain is spending over eight million for every kilometre of road compared to about... France spends about half of that. In other words, France can build twice as many roads for the same price. Now, there are reasons for that. France is a less densely populated country, maybe different planning rules. But there is so much potential there. If Labour could get right a train line between Leeds and Manchester, for example, or really

• 9:56Rory Stewart?

  sort out the bus systems, it sounds like a small thing, but getting buses right in cities in the north will make a huge difference.

• 10:03Alastair Campbell?

  Especially now I've got my freedom passport, right?

• 10:05Rory Stewart?

  No, especially now you've got freedom passport. And I was on the Elizabeth Line off to get my passport done with a kind of shout out to the passport office. Not just me, it wasn't some weird special treatment thing. Everybody who's been to get a new passport recently has been very impressed by that. It's a bit of government that's working. But it's also an example of how a bit of infrastructure, that new Elizabeth Line, has suddenly opened up completely. Whole new areas of the city. And you can imagine, suddenly, housing, businesses and everything are going to be promoted. If we could do that in Northern England, you've really got something possible. But the question, as we keep talking about, is not just can Labour put the money into it, but can they produce a good story about how they're going to be able to build it more quickly and more cheaply than governments have been able to for the last 20 years?

• 10:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, here's a related question, Sandra Foy. How easy would it be for Keir Starmer, if elected, to dismantle the free ports being set up by Rishi Sunak and his cronies? If so, do you think he will? I don't know the answer. I don't know how easy it would be. But I do feel there is a growing stench around this. A shout out to a few journalists, a very small number of journalists have really been working on this. Richard Brooks at Private Eye. Jen Williams, who's at the FT, there's a couple of sites up in the north that have been really, really good. Yorkshire Post has been very good. But I actually think this whole thing about Teasworks, we talked about it briefly, but I think at some point we should actually do a big number on this really, because I sort of feel very, very

• 11:30Alastair Campbell?

  uneasy. And it relates to this point that I talked about many, many times about the William Rees-Mogg vision of the sovereign individual. This is about people carving out parts of the country which will not necessarily be governed in the way that we think our country is meant to be governed, and the systems that we've all signed up to.

• 11:50Rory Stewart?

  And I think the traditional Treasury response to this, which I really support, is to say that if the things you're doing in the free ports make sense and are justifiable, you should do them across the whole country. There's no point just creating these kind of tiny little pockets of economic activity. If you believe in the particular regulations you're getting rid of, or the tax incentives you're offering, do it more broadly. Don't just sort of pick off little bits. The reason they did it in places like China was because it was almost structurally impossible to imagine those reforms outside Shenzhen and these other special economic zones. But in Britain, it shouldn't be necessary to do it. Here's a question for you from Alex Reed. I'm putting my hand up as your one download

• 12:32Rory Stewart?

  in Tuvalu. I was working there in January on a visit to prepare support for new MPs after the election. I listened during a morning run in the one open space for exercise in Funafuti, the airport runway. I'm sure new MPs would be very happy if you both came to Tuvalu to speak to them. My question is, what advice would you give to MPs in a small and geographically isolated country, so to remind people the population of Tuvalu is about 10,000 people, to project their voice on the world stage, especially on issues such as the impact of climate change? In other words, the population of Tuvalu is about half the population of my local town of Creve?

• 13:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And just to those who didn't listen last week, I insisted last week that we talk, because this is elections year, that we talk about the elections in Tuvalu. And I I said there was a sort of geostrategic significance because the outgoing prime minister was very, as it were, on the American side of things and the new, his replacement is reckoned to be a bit more pro-China. I think I've got that right. But Rory, if we do give advice to Tuvalu's new MPs, it will have to be through other than the podcast because so excited was I about the fact that we had that one listener in Tuvalu.

• 13:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:42Alastair Campbell?

  I assumed we'd get more because we were talking about Tuvalu, but I've just checked last week's listenership in Tuvalu was zero.

• 13:51Rory Stewart?

  It's very sad and that's because presumably Alex Reid got on that plane from Funafuti and left after his thing and so he's no longer there. Sorry, can I just clarify, I'm being stupid, it's half the population of Penrith and it's about, it's just larger than the population of my town, Creve, but it's, it would register as a pretty small market town in Britain.

• 14:13Alastair Campbell?

  I should also, I think he also pointed out in his very kind email to out himself as our Tuvalu listener. And this goes back to the, the point about, you know, how these, so many of these issues are connected, that Australia has said it will take people in Tuvalu if, as it were, their entire location and existence becomes threatened by climate change.

• 14:34Rory Stewart?

  And, and I mean, Tuvalu is very much on the front line of that, isn't it?

• 14:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:37Rory Stewart?

  Um, Orban, Stat Laval, what did Viktor Orban get out of dragging his heels on support package for Ukraine? Was Tusk involved? Brighter political times that part of Europe, which up until recently would have had you in a state of despair. So this is a good news story and I think it's good because it keeps listeners up to date on stories that we raise and sometimes I'm worried we don't always complete, so.

• 14:58Alastair Campbell?

  Are you saying, Rory, that we don't conduct this podcast with journalistic rigor?

• 15:01Rory Stewart?

  Total journalistic rigor, but sometimes we don't always finish a story that we've begun. So the story that we began was that Orban was delaying the approval of the EU budgetary support to Ukraine. And the update is that the EU has taken that support through and Orban didn't in the end hold it up.

• 15:19Alastair Campbell?

  He didn't, he didn't even put up a fight really. Um, he, there's a very good picture that was circulating last week. Of him around this table. And let me just get this right. He was there. Schultz was there. Maloney was there. Macron was there. Charles Michel was there and Ursula von der Leyen was there. And it really was a sort of picture of the the big guys getting in the room and picking on the little guy. And I think what was going on there was saying, look, you know, we let you get away with this once, but you're not going to do it twice. And I think they were probably making clear that if he if he did it again, there were all sorts of measures that they could take against Hungary. So he backed down pretty quickly, I would say. I think that is a good thing for the European Union because he's been, you know, he's been playing his games far too long. He'll be back, though. He'll be back.

• 16:04Rory Stewart?

  Question on Tusk. I mean, we've talked about Tusk and what's happening in Poland a bit, but it continues to be the case, of course, that the president is who's from the Law and Justice Party, the populist right party, and is in there for at least another year, is continuing to block stuff that Tusk is trying to do, you know, delaying legislation, trying to stop a budget, stopping Tusk's attempt to get rid of judges from the court. So that that remains difficult. Although, of course, Tusk has, I think, a majority in both houses, which should help them through with some of the stuff.

• 16:35Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, loads more questions to come. Take a quick break.

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• 18:00Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, here's one that's sort of aimed at me, but I think is interesting for you to have a think about as well. Nick Daniels, "Alistair often interjects or responds to Rory's points with the words 'no, but', which can appear very negative, argumentative and hostile. 'May I suggest,' says Nick Daniels, 'the more constructive 'yes, and' as a better communication technique for building conversation in disagree agreeably.' So first of all Rory, do you feel that I say 'no, but'?

• 18:29Rory Stewart?

  I don't think you do that very much, actually. I don't recognize it that much.

• 18:34Alastair Campbell?

  Good, good.

• 18:35Rory Stewart?

  I don't recognize that much, but I like the idea of 'yes, and', yeah.

• 18:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, and.

• 18:40Rory Stewart?

  Although it might be a bit annoying if I thought you were doing it in a completely fake way when you obviously meant 'no, but'.

• 18:44Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly, exactly. So I think I'm going to stick with 'no, but', even though, as you say, I don't say it very much.

• 18:50Rory Stewart?

  Now, yes, Alistair, and the question of Biden's sanctions. Harriet Mackay, what does Biden's sanction against Israeli settlers mean in reality? And Patrick Walker, what do you think a Cameron suggests in the UK would recognize Palestine as a state? And what effect would this actually have? Over to you on those two.

• 19:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, on the sanctions, essentially what it means is that those people who are named will not be able to travel to the United States. I think that's what it means. And I thought the Cameron thing, I can't, I still can't work out whether that was a very deliberate act of foreign policy. Or whether number 10 were a bit angrier with him for going a bit freelance. But it was greeted with considerable favour in the Palestinian community for obvious reasons.

• 19:33Rory Stewart?

  It's an amazing thing that he did there. So just again for listeners, David Cameron, the UK Foreign Secretary and ex Prime Minister, said in a meeting that he thought that Britain should consider recognizing the Palestinian state early. And this is a big, big change in policy because traditionally, full recognition of Palestinian statehood was something that was supposed to be held back till the end of the peace process as one of the kind of rewards for the peace process. I think it's symbolically hugely important because along with Biden's emphasis on the two-state solution, it makes it very clear now that even amongst Israel's strongest supporters,

• 20:14Rory Stewart?

  and the UK and the US are clearly right up there, it is non-negotiable for them, this two-state solution. And that puts them absolutely at odds with the position now that Netanyahu and his government are in, where they're very much openly rejecting a two-state solution. I was also very struck, we got a very, very angry email from an Israeli listener who felt strongly that we weren't remotely empathizing with what happened on October the 7th, or with what he described as the care that Israeli soldiers were taking. And in it also, he suggested that the next step would be for Israel to go after Hezbollah in Lebanon.

• 20:55Rory Stewart?

  And now I don't know how seriously to take all that, but it was a real reminder of how incredibly painful this is and how polarized this is and how very difficult it is to get a common conversation. I mean, I've got friends who are living in North London who saying to me they can't bear to listen to the podcast anymore because they feel that when we talk about what's happening in Gaza, we're encouraging antisemitism and that we're not speaking enough about threats to Jewish communities and antisemitism in Britain. And I had another Meeting with some of the Church of England, some people that you'd know in fact last week, including your friend, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who's known you, Crane.

• 21:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 21:37Rory Stewart?

  And who suggested that he would be willing to come on the podcast, which would be interesting.

• 21:42Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, he's been saying it for a year and then he keeps telling me these press officers are the block. So, you know, come on, Justin, let's get a move on.

• 21:50Rory Stewart?

  Let's get him on. Anyway, one of the things that was said, not by him, but somebody else who's working in interfaith dialogue, is that they feel that in Britain at the moment, interaction between Jewish communities, Muslim communities, and in fact, Christian communities have never been so bad in their memory. And that the word they would use is to say the Jewish community is primarily defined by an emotion of fear, and Muslim communities by an emotion of anger, and that it's very, very difficult for them to try to bring communities together at the moment.

• 22:16Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I mean, look, I sent you the email. I didn't send it more widely, but I was also quite shaken by it because it was pretty brutal in what it was saying about us, about what he assessed as to be our views. And yet, this is what's been so difficult about the whole thing. So on the day that he sent that email, or maybe we should come back to it, we should ask his permission and come back and say, well, could we go through it maybe line by line and talk about why we think what we think, why we say what we say. But on that very day, I was at an event in Croydon, where I had to be, as I said last week, I had to be sort of dragged out by the police because I was surrounded by protesters

• 22:58Alastair Campbell?

  who basically saw me as a kind of Zionist war criminal. Because in their eyes, we're far too sympathetic to Israel, and we haven't, neither of us have said the words, there should be an immediate ceasefire. And we've both explained why we think that us saying that doesn't really add much to the sum total of human debate or knowledge.

• 23:18Rory Stewart?

  And I actually, I'm surprised I haven't said it. I do think there should be an immediate ceasefire.

• 23:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, so do I. So do I. But I think the fact of being, we've been trying. What we said when this whole thing happened on October 7, if you remember, we had a discussion where we said that we should try to explore the complexities of all of the issues involved. So we got For example, for having the Palestinian ambassador on, but I thought it was a very interesting perspective from the Palestinian view. We had various people from the other side and we've we've continued to try to do both sides. But what the difficulty is, those people who were throwing things at me in Croydon, they will only listen if we are saying the things that they agree with. And likewise, the guy who sent us that email, unless we're saying completely what he thinks.

• 24:03Alastair Campbell?

  And I I can't sit here and say that I agree with Benjamin Netanyahu's strategy in this, I can't. I can't say that I think he's a good prime minister. I can't say that there hasn't been horror and brutality on both sides because there has. And then you get into the whole what about tree. And what I all I think we've been trying to do is to say to people, it surely should be possible in a mature democracy like ours to feel horror and revulsion at what's happening to the people in Gaza, whilst also trying to keep ourselves in the minds of people, the hostages, the families of the hostages and the people who were killed and their families on October 7th. But it's almost like you can't do that, you have to be absolutely fixated on one side. And that's what I find very, very troubling and alarming and polarizing about the whole thing.

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  And of course, it it is also a lens on to other world events. I mean, it it is the same, I'm afraid, on issues like Kashmir.

• 24:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:57Rory Stewart?

  You know, if I talk to educated, very liberal, progressive Indian friends in India about Kashmir, I get an absolutely sort of determined view on one side, obviously in Pakistan on the other side.

• 25:09Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 25:10Rory Stewart?

  I mean, there are, you know, again with Serbs, we've been talked about the threat with Serbs in relation to Kosovo and Republika Srpska. Uh, the incredible difference between Russia, way Russians perceive Ukraine and the way Ukrainians perceive it. Um, I mean, it, yeah, I'm I'm currently banned from Russia by the Russian government for what I've said on this podcast.

• 25:28Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, if you think about what we said on the main podcast in relation to those speeches at the weekend in Northern Ireland, I don't think that 20 years ago, either of those two politicians could have made the speeches that they made. So that maybe that there is a Palestinian politician today, whose name we don't even know, an Israeli politician as well, who hopefully in five, 10, 15, 20 years, may be able to say those sorts of things. Because we have managed somehow to get through this current mess into a place where the two-state solution starts to mean something again, and then a process that takes us towards that. So if we all get sort of locked into our tribes where we we aren't even willing

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  to receive the other person's opinion. I mean, the guy who sent us that email, I know this because you and I have talked about it. He has really made us think about things and that's why we're talking about them now. But, you know, I'd also like him to think about what limited role we are trying to play by having the conversations that we're having about this.

• 26:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Well, I think connected to this, maybe Rachel Hughes lobbying, thinking of lobbying, do you get lobbied to cover or not cover specific topics on the pod? So obviously, that was an example of an angry person trying to get us to put that side. In fact, I mean, I think it's good to be transparent about this, how these things work. I've just received a text from the Israeli embassy that's obviously worried that we're not putting the Israeli point of view. Would I come and have breakfast with the Israeli ambassador? Can they put an Israeli government spokesman on? I was at a drinks party up in North London where I was lobbied to cover old people more. It's accused the fact we don't cover aging enough on the podcast.

• 27:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, even though we've got an old person as one of the presenters.

• 27:14Rory Stewart?

  I don't think you're going to get away with that. I don't think you get away with that, no. And of course, you know, many of the issues are drawn to our attention by people reaching out.

• 27:24Alastair Campbell?

  The reason that we led the Q and A today on the Labour £28 billion green investment plan is because that was the subject this week on which we got the most questions.

• 27:33Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 27:34Alastair Campbell?

  We also get, we shouldn't sort of name too many names, Rory, but we do get all sorts of people desperate to come on leading.

• 27:40Rory Stewart?

  That is true. And we would like to apologize to many of those people who have been suggested. Often, it's maybe not their fault. I think it's their book publishers have suggested that maybe if they know Rory and Alice, they could come on leading and sell lots of their books. But unfortunately, we are not able to have everybody on leading.

• 27:58Alastair Campbell?

  Hamza Youssef, who's the latest leading, and I know you liked him a lot. We got a lot of coverage for what he said about his own mental health, which I thought he'd talked about that lots before, but it seemed that people were. Interested in him going into the detail that he did and being very open about the fact that he thinks he should probably do it again, go and get counselling because of the stresses and strains of politics and life.

• 28:22Rory Stewart?

  Did people cover it sympathetically or were political opponents trying to do it? It wasn't it wasn't an attack on him?

• 28:28Alastair Campbell?

  No, in the main, very, very sympathetically, basically just taking what he said. I didn't see anybody being terribly critical. I saw, you know, loads of sort of criticism online stuff, but no, in terms of the, you know, I saw about 10, 11 newspaper articles online and, and in fact, after this podcast, you're going to see a serving prime minister. I'm going to be doing an interview with BBC Scotland about the interview and about mental health and politics. So I thought it was a very good interview and if people haven't listened to it, I strongly recommend it. Fiona thought I was a bit harsh on him in our sum up, but I think I was, I think I was probably trying to balance up your utter fanboydom.

• 29:06Rory Stewart?

  My fanboydom, yeah, which, which cause I had maybe many friends for Scottish Unionists.

• 29:10Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, what a shame, what a shame.

• 29:11Rory Stewart?

  Exactly, there we are. Murray Hardy, do you think celebrity endorsements of politicians have been helpful in the past? And how big an impact could they have nowadays? Should Labour chase them to appear more exciting? I'm very sceptical about this. I've got two data points on this, though. One was, of course, that Stormzy came out strongly for Jeremy Corbyn and it didn't actually win Jeremy Corbyn the election, but maybe that's not a good data point. A stronger data point was, I was talking to someone who, posh spice, Victoria Beckham, had read their book and had posted on Twitter and she has millions of followers on Twitter, how much she liked the book. And he rushed to Amazon to see what had happened and it turned out that as a result of this

• 29:52Rory Stewart?

  post, which was seen by millions of people, exactly three of his books were bought. So that made me think that maybe people don't follow celebrities for their views on things which are out. So maybe if you admire Stormzy's music, it doesn't necessarily mean you follow his politics. You may really admire Victoria Beckham's fashion line, but you're not particularly interested in her recommendations on books. Anyway, what do you think about that?

• 30:17Alastair Campbell?

  I, I've never thought it's that big a deal, but I think they're kind of quite Good to have as part of a sort of general positive mood music. And there is a, you know, I briefly mentioned in the main podcast, the Taylor Swift Trump stuff. This is becoming a huge story in the States because she's now involved with this American football star Travis Kelsey. And because she is an open avowed, not just a supporter of Biden, but a very, very strong opponent of Trump. She's now become the sort of victim of these massive conspiracy theories that the whole relationship is, has been sort of put together by the Democrats and by the, the psy ops team in the Pentagon.

• 31:00Alastair Campbell?

  And, and that guy, the one who dropped out, Ramaswamy.

• 31:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 31:05Alastair Campbell?

  He's basically said that the Super Bowl next weekend is going to be rigged so that Kelsey's team wins. And then there's going to be the endorsement of Biden between the two of them. And the whole thing is utterly insane. But what's interesting is that the, the.

• 31:19Rory Stewart?

  It's really Vivek Ramaswamy thinks they're going to rig the Super Bowl.

• 31:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So, so that Kelsey can, can come out with Taylor Swift. And the thing is that they're all going, if you turn on these kind of right wing shock drop people, they're all sort of, you know, filled with hate for Taylor Swift. Now, the thing about Taylor Swift, Donald Trump has a very big loyal, devoted, dedicated fan base. Right. But so does she. And I thought the other thing that was interesting last week, I don't know who it was, but some kind of heavy metal guy. And I guess there's quite a lot of kind of, you know, Trumpian mood music around that. And he stood up in front of this huge, huge crowd and basically said, any of you go after Taylor Swift, you're going after me. And so this sort of, I don't think it necessarily shifts votes, but I think it can be a very important part of the mood.

• 32:04Rory Stewart?

  One of the big things for us to look for is what Arnold Schwarzenegger does because he refused when we interviewed him on leading to come out clearly against Trump. He kept saying, well, it's just hypothetical. He's never going to make it. He's got all these law cases against him. He's not going to be president. But he is somebody who a lot of the Trump base does take seriously. And it'll be interesting to see whether, if he comes out against Trump in the last days, whether he has the credibility and weight to carry people with him, or whether, as he presumably fears, he's just going to be thrown aside and that takes Trump's side against him. So, Alice, a final question from both of us, tip for everybody. On an ancient recording, this is Keith Pollard of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Alice's wife Fiona mentions that he's a creative genius when it comes to Valentine's Day gifts. What's the secret?

• 32:47Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, you've seen the clip of me on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. That is like, I had a shiver down my spine when you mentioned it because it was without doubt one of the worst television appearances of my life. I'm not going to relive it now, but fair to say it wasn't a good day for the charity that I was representing.

• 33:09Rory Stewart?

  With Valentine's Day coming up, you might want for next week, tell us a little bit about Valentine's Day gifts.

• 33:15Alastair Campbell?

  What I do is, what I do with gifts generally, I'm not, I'm not big on gifts for lots of people, but I do try to get things that are very, very original. Often made, might be something that's painted, might be something that's sculpted, might be something that's just, I'll give you one very good example. I sometimes write music and then get the music frame, stuff like that. So just schmaltzy, romantic kind of bullshit stuff that, you know. And then Fiona sort of, Fiona looks at it and says, yeah, thanks.

• 33:48Rory Stewart?

  Too high, higher bar for the rest of us. Rory, goodbye. Happy Valentine's for next week.

• 33:53Alastair Campbell?

  No Rory, please don't say happy Valentine's Day. I mean, Fiona's the only person. I mean, people really will begin to talk if you start saying, Eddie, have a lovely rest of week.

• 34:02Rory Stewart?

  Have a lovely rest of week. Bye bye, Alice.

• 34:04Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.