83. Question Time: Votes for prisoners, a united Ireland, and the meaning of 'liberal'

Join Alastair and Rory this week as they discuss whether prisoners should be able to vote, the chances of a united Ireland, and what liberalism actually means. Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, 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 + Callum Hill Exec Producer: 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. 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/risterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:48Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  And Alistair, I'm going to start you on high constitutional subjects. Tilly Bun, what are your views on prisoners' right to vote?

• 1:56Alastair Campbell?

  Broadly in favour.

• 1:58Rory Stewart?

  I'm very much in favour. I cannot understand why anyone shouldn't have the right to vote, whatever they've done. And with this, and this was one of the big fights, of course, that Cameron picked with the European Commission on Human Rights. He said that prisoners' right to vote, I think, made him sick. And it was a very uncomfortable bit for me as a Conservative MP in the early Cameron era, because I instinctively in favour of it.

• 2:21Alastair Campbell?

  We've talked about this before, our prison system doesn't operate as it should in terms of rehabilitation, and this would be part of that process, making people feel that even though they were locked up, or whatever they had done, that they could remain part of the democratic process and take an interest and so forth. So we're agreeing agreeably on that one, Rory.

• 2:41Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 2:42Alastair Campbell?

  Now, you, I'm sure, because I know how you Tory empire lovers love to celebrate the big dates in history, I'm sure you've remembered that we're in the week of the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the Free State of Ireland.

• 2:56Rory Stewart?

  Ah, my goodness, that's a big, it's a big date, isn't it?

• 3:00Alastair Campbell?

  So there we are. So a couple of questions on Ireland, I think. Jane Hearn, do you think there'll ever be a united Ireland? And Tommy Heatley, hi lads, you can tell he's Irish, hi lads. On December the 17th, here in Ireland, we'll be getting a new Taoiseach without an election, because this was in the programme for government when Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gáis and the Greens went into coalition two and a half years ago. So Michael Martin is going to hand over to Leo Varadkar. Do you think this is grown up politics? Now, I thought that was right up your strasser, Rory.

• 3:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, very good. Well, what do you reckon about a new Taoiseach without an election? I mean, I think in a representative system, that's fine, but you've often got a bit uncomfortable about that. You often suggest that you think that there should be elections if there's a new leader.

• 3:42Alastair Campbell?

  No, I've got uncomfortable with the fact that the Tories keep changing their Prime Minister and just allowing their members and their MPs to decide who it should be. But this was part of the, you know, they have a system which tends to coalition government. This was part of the deal that was done, that one leader gets to be Taoiseach for the first bit, and then the second leader, the other leader gets to be Taoiseach the second bit. And I think it has felt very grown up, and it's one of the reasons why I think Ireland is doing pretty well at the moment.

• 4:07Rory Stewart?

  What do you think on, what do you think on united Ireland?

• 4:10Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's more likely than Scotland leaving the UK right now.

• 4:15Rory Stewart?

  And how's it going to come about demographic change, more, more people who are naturally more nationalist, more republican, becoming the majority, or younger people not feeling the same identity politics they used to feel?

• 4:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, all of, all of that. And Ireland's, I think, growing since it's so in confidence. I think actually, one of the, the last time I was in Dublin, the sense I was getting actually, that I think the people of the republic are less sure than they were. It's a very interesting thing.

• 4:43Rory Stewart?

  Less, less certainly want to integrate Northern Ireland.

• 4:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. So I think, I think both are, both are unlikely. Now, Edna Rory has a great question. Why is Rory still a Tory? Nice, six word question. Let's have a six word answer.

• 4:59Rory Stewart?

  Tradition, prudence, history, landscape, small communities.

• 5:06Alastair Campbell?

  Right, that's six words. I wasn't a very great answer, wasn't very convincing that, Rory.

• 5:10Rory Stewart?

  Six, six words is pretty tough. Go on, give us six, six, six words on why you're Labour.

• 5:15Alastair Campbell?

  I believe in equality of opportunity.

• 5:19Rory Stewart?

  Very good, well done.

• 5:20Alastair Campbell?

  There you go. Steve Alexander, has it ever occurred to Rory that he's been a disastrously poor judge of character? In recent weeks, he's defended the appalling Hancock, Javid, Zahawi, Keegan and others. The list of offences committed by the above is too long to list, but they are all unfit for office.

• 5:38Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's, that's one that I think goes to the heart of something we were talking about in our recent main pod, which is trying to get a rounded picture of politicians. I think, I actually get very disturbed when I read these kind of things and see the kind of immense vitriol on Twitter. There's a kind of dehumanising, polarising attempt.

• 5:58Alastair Campbell?

  All he said, all he said is they're appalling.

• 6:00Rory Stewart?

  They're, they're all liars, unfit for office.

• 6:02Alastair Campbell?

  Oh yeah, that's true, he did say that.

• 6:04Rory Stewart?

  And this is part of a much, much bigger trend, which is basically to, and I think it's very dangerous because it'll come back and bite Labour too. If we get into the habit of dehumanising people and assuming that they're all cardboard cut out villains, and not trying to see them in the round. Now, within those people, I've got different views on many of them. I, I'm not particularly a fan of Matt Hancock, so I, I'm surprised he thinks I particularly defend Matt Hancock. In fact, I've told a number of anecdotes on the, on the show about why I don't really disapprove of Matt Hancock. Sajid Javid, again, is somebody who I think has got a wonderful life history, but he's not something I particularly praised. Adam Zahawi, I've talked about as being a good travel companion and somebody who was

• 6:46Rory Stewart?

  friendly and trustworthy in Parliament, but I agree with you, he's said things recently which worry me. And Gillian Keegan, I think, is a real star who had a difficult interview.

• 6:56Alastair Campbell?

  Can I say something about Gillian Keegan? I was at a conference of health service people in Liverpool last week, several hundred, and somebody asked me about Matt Hancock being in the jungle. And there was a sort of titter around the room and blah, blah, blah, blah. The question was whether I would ever do it, and I said no. And I then said, just to make a serious point, hands up anybody in this room who doesn't know that Matt Hancock was on Imus Celebrity. And nobody, every single person in the room knew that. I then said, hands up anybody who can tell me the name of the Education Secretary. And not one hand was raised.

• 7:30Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I'm sure that's right. I think that will often be the case.

• 7:34Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, you keep telling me she's great, but what is she doing as Education Secretary?

• 7:38Rory Stewart?

  So she's been Education Secretary for, I guess, four, five weeks. And I think people, even when Labour were in, I think people would have struggled to name Gordon Brown's Defence Secretary. Who was Gordon Brown's last Defence Secretary?

• 7:50Alastair Campbell?

  That's not the point. That's not the point. I'm asking what she does.

• 7:53Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think she's thoughtful. I think she's serious. And I think it's unrealistic to expect within four, five weeks, people to have heard of the Education Secretary's name.

• 8:02Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's not unrealistic to expect that the Education Secretary would have done something or said something that, for example, my partner Fiona, who spends all her time focused on education policy, might actually have said over breakfast or over dinner one day, oh, I see Gillian Keegan said so and so and so and so. What she just says to me is that she doesn't seem to do anything.

• 8:24Rory Stewart?

  Okay, here's a question coming. Liberal, this is some called twang, is a much-used word which seems to mean almost anything. How would you define it?

• 8:34Alastair Campbell?

  I suppose the broad definition is people who who believe in the freedom of others. But I agree with that. It's quite a good question that. I think it has become a sort of, you know, anybody who's vaguely progressive. For example, I remember Miriam Gonzalez Dorantes, who is comes from a very political family. Dad was a politician, obviously married to a politician, Nick Clegg, does politics herself. I remember her telling me that she, under no circumstances, that she considered me really to be a liberal. I don't know. What do you think of that?

• 9:04Rory Stewart?

  Well, so I I think liberalism is a really profound and important tradition, but it's not a tradition that finds much space either in the Labour Party or in the Conservative Party. I think liberalism is really exemplified by the Canadian Liberal Party, by the the current ruling party in Canada. And I think it's a very, very different tradition. It's a 19th century tradition, which didn't own much either to the socialist movement or to the conservative movement. And it's a particular progressive vision based on rights. I think it's based on the rights of the individual as opposed to other views of tradition or the state.

• 9:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, listen, Rory, I want to give you another critical one. This is this one's directed at both of us, actually. Ronald Young. Some of us, I love the way that people speak for lots of other people. He doesn't name them. Some of us are losing patience with your centrist predictability. I find it significant that neither of you care enough to show any concern for the further infringement of freedoms from the new policing act. This is, I put this one into the into that barrel of questions where people get angry if we don't talk about things. When we're getting thousands of questions asking us to talk about absolutely everything. But I am, I am, just because we haven't discussed it on the podcast, doesn't mean that I'm not deeply concerned about it. And in fact, I can tell Mr. Ronald Young

• 10:25Alastair Campbell?

  that when it was going through Parliament, I went down to Parliament to express my support for Mr. Steve Bray, the excellent anti-Brexit campaigner who stands outside Parliament and gives it to the Tories the whole time. Because I felt that part of the reason behind this bill was to get him off the streets. I also was very concerned to see that it was largely based, the bill, on the work of one of these right-wing think tanks that had taken a very large donation from Exxon. So we shouldn't be at all surprised that it's partly about going for the Stop the Oil people. Now, I think it's fair enough to sort of look at whether some protests caused too much inconvenience, but I agree with Ronald Young that I think this bill

• 11:10Alastair Campbell?

  is absolute overkill and, in many elements, profoundly anti-democratic.

• 11:15Rory Stewart?

  Just to sort of explore this, honestly, one of the things that you were quite famous for in the early Blair years is being actually more sort of hardcore and right-wing on security, tough-on-crime stuff than many traditional liberal critics. And you were reminding us, weren't you, that you brought forward this idea of taking somebody to a cash point to get their money and all this kind of stuff?

• 11:40Alastair Campbell?

  Sorry, please don't give that the time of day. Dismiss it from your thoughts.

• 11:44Rory Stewart?

  So what would you have done if the public were in a rage about this? And actually, Keir Starmer, who you're currently very, very fond of, has made very strong comments in favour of being tougher against climate protesters and objecting to them disrupting people's lives. So clearly, he thinks, as a Labour leader, that it's pretty fruitful to lean hard into this, that people are pretty fed up with this.

• 12:05Alastair Campbell?

  I do desperately want Keir Starmer to be Prime Minister, but actually, one of the things I don't particularly appreciate are these areas where I think sometimes Brexit being the most obvious example. In fact, I've written my column in The New European this week about Brexit murder. Both Sunak and Starmer don't want to call out the disaster that Brexit is wreaking upon the economy. They want to pretend that they can fix it somehow. And I think on this as well, I think that, I think you have to call things out as you see them. And yes, of course, it's incredibly disruptive, but do they really need all the new powers that are in this bill to deal with that? There have been protests before which the police have been able to deal with. So I think this is part of the,

• 12:49Alastair Campbell?

  we've talked about this so much, I think it's part of populism, I think it's part of polarisation. If people carry out criminal offences now, they can get done for it. I think this is, it's like the voter registration thing, you know, the voter ID. It's making, it's taking a problem, exaggerating it, then saying you need these draconian measures to deal with it.

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, there is one thing, I mean, I felt, so I was a justice minister and I had to deal with sentences and new laws as part of my role. And it was very striking how many Labour and Conservative MPs would come to me asking for new legislation, often to deal with a tragedy in their constituency. So there was, the MP from St Helens wanted Violet Grace's Law, which was to make sure that people who killed infants in traffic accidents would be prosecuted for murder, given a life sentence. Tom Tugendhat wanted something called Tony's Law, which was going to be because a young boy in his constituency had been so badly beaten by his parents that he'd been left disabled for life. And I, as

• 13:50Rory Stewart?

  a minister, tended to resist those things because I wanted to try to keep control of the number of people going to prison. I thought that difficult cases make bad law, and that there's a reason not to keep sending people to jail for life, even when there are horrific local constituency things. But this Conservative government have taken all these laws through, from Labour and Conservative. Laws often arranged around a single person's name. Was this a phenomenon in your time, that you'd have these things called Violet Grace's Law, or Tony's Law, or Sarah's Law?

• 14:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, there were, I mean, we had it recently, didn't we, with Sarah's Law, Sarah Everard, and then there was, was it Laura's Law, the Laura Payne? I actually was looking up this recently when writing the book, and I came across one. Do you know about Buster's Law?

• 14:38Rory Stewart?

  No, go on, Buster's Law? What's Buster's Law?

• 14:39Alastair Campbell?

  Buster's Law was in New York, and Buster was a cat, and Buster was set on fire by some young hoodlum, and there was such an outrage, they brought in Buster's Law, and it did actually make cruelty to animals a felony. So I'd say that was quite a good one. But there were, look, sometimes individual cases can reveal a bigger truth which has to be addressed. But I think you're right to be cautious about these. But I think on Ronald's point about, he seems to think that, you know, because we haven't talked about this, somehow we don't care about it. I do wish that, you know, I think most of our reasonable listeners would understand, we cannot cover every single issue every single week. But I do think that we have a very, very right wing government. And I think that

• 15:23Alastair Campbell?

  Suella Braverman, I think we've seen it on asylum and immigration, we've seen it on Rwanda, we've seen it on some of the things that she's said and done in relation to criminal justice. I think that the part of populism Is to see a problem and think, how do I exploit that politically as opposed to how do I address that problem? And I think in relation to protest, I think if we stop, you know, you can now be stopped from attending a protest because you've got form in turn, not necessarily even criminal form, in having caused disruption at a protest before. Protest is meant to be disruptive.

• 15:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, so what at the heart of this, isn't it, is again and again, what's happening is that politicians are hearing that they can't do something because of the law. And then they're trying to write new laws to give themselves new powers to do things which previously haven't been allowed to happen. On that, shall we, shall we take a break?

• 16:14Speaker 02

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

• 16:25Speaker 03

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

• 16:31Speaker 04

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

• 16:35Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 16:38Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 16:40Speaker 03

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

• 16:52Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 16:55Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 16:57Rory Stewart?

  Right, Simon M W. Why has Starmer decided to back himself into a corner with Brexit, the single market and freedom of movement, when all he had to do was stay quiet, sit back and allow the Tories to implode? He'd already had a polar explosion, so why did he decide to toss a large percentage of his supporters under a bus?

• 17:15Alastair Campbell?

  Well, this is what we've been talking about before. I think that Keir's decided he's somehow got to be more Catholic than the Pope on Brexit. I think all he needs to be saying about Brexit is that this is the Tories' deal, they've made a complete mess of it, is doing massive damage to the economy, our standing in the world. We're not revisiting the decision, but we are going to have to fix this deal. And there are certain areas that he could point to, we could start to sort of indicate the areas where that could be done. But instead of which, I think he feels he has to emphasize, and in this, for example, that you won't have heard this, this morning on the radio, he was asked whether Growth would be, would benefit from being in the single market. Now, he said no.

• 17:59Alastair Campbell?

  Now, it's fair enough to say we're not going back in the single market. That's what he thinks. Right. But as a matter of fact, there's not an economist in the world, apart from the two or three, you know, Brexit people who, who don't think the answer to that question is yes. So I think it's, it's very, very political, but I think he underestimates how many, the question says throwing people under a bus, that conference I mentioned in Liverpool, a woman came up to me and said, I can't vote for Labour when it's like this. So I think he's got to be a little bit careful on this.

• 18:27Rory Stewart?

  Elliot Grant Conlon, does Alastair still use the jam jar analogy when coping with periods of depression? After reading Living Better, I still think this is one of the best ways of coping with mental ill health. Will you tell us about your jam jar analogy?

• 18:40Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my God, it'll take me ages, Rory. That is my jam jar there. I never go anywhere without my jam jar. My jam jar is a tool that I use for depression. I should be talking about my jam jar in Glasgow University on Wednesday when I do a speech about mental health. I mean, I'll be here all day after talking about jam jars. Basically, it's there's your genes, there's your life, and you grow your jam jar with the things that help you to deal with depression based on experience, based on what you like doing in your life. And when we've got more time, I'll say it in more detail. But thank you very much for the book plug.

• 19:11Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 19:12Alastair Campbell?

  What about this one?

• 19:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Alastair Campbell?

  Does Alastair agree with Tony Blair, says Hannah Lakin, in his interview with the rival podcast newsagents, how dare he, that's a joke, I don't mind him doing them, they need a bit of help, in which he inexplicably describes Matt Hancock's decision to join I'm a Celebrity as courageous. We can deal with this one very, very straightforwardly. No, I don't. Okay, that's fairly straightforward. David, have Rory and Alastair ever considered doing ASMR? Do you know what ASMR is?

• 19:41Rory Stewart?

  No, what's ASMR?

• 19:42Alastair Campbell?

  It's a sleep, it's a falling asleep thing. But I often listen to the podcast in bed at the end of the day, so I usually fall asleep before the end of each episode.

• 19:51Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 19:51Alastair Campbell?

  Which means I then end up hearing Alastair and Rory talking about Brexit in my dreams. What could be happier than that?

• 19:58Rory Stewart?

  But it's, I think this is maybe in our early episodes where you put a bit of pipe music in at the end, maybe why some people were a little bit surprised. They may have been dozing off at the moment at which the, the bag started, the drone started off.

• 20:11Alastair Campbell?

  I bumped into a woman the other day who said, I love your podcast, she said, what I do is I wait till the, the episodes are all downloaded for the week. I see how long they are, I divide the time by seven so that I can listen to it every evening.

• 20:26Rory Stewart?

  Oh, it's lovely. So Peter Kendall, ready for this? What can we older men do to heal the rupture that has young males see their only future in gang-based criminality and the only way to gain respect and provoking fear? I feel we failed miserably to set an example to inspire younger people. What do you make of that?

• 20:46Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I think some young people there, I, I, look, there's no doubt the gang thing is, is a real problem in many, many parts of the, of the country, but I think we've got to be really careful with this. Most young people, in my experience, are not criminals, are not gangs, are not doing bad stuff. I think they're trying really, really hard to do well at school, do well at university, get on the job market, get on the housing ladder and all these things. So I do agree that role models for young people are incredibly important, but I, I, I just think if we sort of give the sense that every single young person out there is sort of rampaging around in gangs, I think that's a, a very false picture.

• 21:29Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Last question from you, and then I think we should wrap it up.

• 21:32Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, well, the last question in that case is from Cathy Fugue. Why is it always Rory who calls time on the podcast?

• 21:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'm afraid there's no time to answer that question, so I'm going to call time.

• 21:45Alastair Campbell?

  The reason there's no time is because this is, this is, it's actually the fourth part of this, because I must admit the third part, I had to interrupt it to go and take a phone call, and Rory's got 45 minutes to get from where he is. You're going to miss the national anthems, Rory, and I love the national anthems. And by the way, one thing I'll tell you, Rory, the Japanese fans are unbelievable on two counts. One, they have this song that they sing literally for 90 minutes. It will give you a headache, but you'll love it. And the second thing is they clear up all their litter when they leave the stadium.

• 22:17Rory Stewart?

  Looking forward to both those things. I will report back. Thank you, Aniston. Have a great day. Bye bye.

• 22:22Alastair Campbell?

  All the best. Bye bye.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 22:28Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  And Digger's gonna dig us out.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 22:42Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 22:46Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 22:49Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.