273. Question Time: Julian Assange, firing your friends, and why Labour should raise taxes

***TRIP post debate livestream - 9.30pm - Wednesday June 26th: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ya1K0WSvOAk*** How will history remember Julian Assange? Why is Britain’s tax burden so high? Does loyalty come back to bite you in politics? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all this and more on today’s episode of The Rest Is Politics: Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP UK TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter 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/risterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:07Speaker 02

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• 1:33Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:36Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And Rory, let's get right into the guts of this campaign. Couple of questions here. Alan Robinson, can you give us some thoughts about why the overall tax burden was lowest in the 80s and 90s, yet we were not in the current state? I.e. poor NHS, public services, et cetera. Was wealth just better distributed? And one definitely for you from Rob. How does Rory's Square's previous support? Of Cameron Osborne austerity with his current position that Labour aren't promising to spend enough.

• 2:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, these are wonderful, wonderful questions. Quick apology for everybody, which I've just come out of dental surgery. So if I seem slightly demented, it's that I'm all up on anaesthetics and strange stuff. But so these are the big, big questions in the campaign and I'm really pleased someone's asked them and nobody is really tackling them. So first question, we get this feeling that taxes were lower in the eighties, but public services were better. The truth of the matter is that actually we're spending four times as much on the NHS today in real terms, not including inflation as we were in 1979. And we're spending twice as much on the NHS as a proportion of our economy. So we're spending, you know, over 10% of our economy on health.

• 2:50Rory Stewart?

  So how come we're spending all this money and it doesn't feel like anything's getting better? One big change is obviously demography. So the number of people over 85 has doubled since 1979 and the number of people aged in 18 and 25 has fallen. But people over 85 cost, guess how much more they cost than someone between 18 and 25 to the taxpayer to look after if they go to hospital?

• 3:12Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going factor of six.

• 3:15Rory Stewart?

  10 times more.

• 3:16Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 3:17Rory Stewart?

  10 times more. So you're almost there. But yeah, they cost 10 times more. So as we all live longer, the costs get more and more and more. So that's the first thing. The second thing is this question around the tax burdens really interesting because everyone's going to the election saying tax burden's never been so high. And people are saying to me when I tweet out, you know, Labour needs to raise taxes. How dare you suggest we raise taxes because the tax burden's never been so high. The truth of the matter is that something very odd has happened. Again, wicked question to you, but who do you think is paying more tax? Do you think it's people on low and median incomes or wealthy people since 2010, since the evil Tories have been in?

• 3:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm kidding.

• 3:54Rory Stewart?

  Who's actually increased their level of tax they're paying?

• 3:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, in cash terms, people at the top.

• 3:59Rory Stewart?

  And not just in cash terms, in sort of absolute terms, yeah. What's actually happened since 2010 is really interesting. There's been a very reasonably dramatic drop in the amount of tax that people on lower and medium incomes pay in Britain. So over the last 50 years, obviously, the basic rates dropped from 35% down to 20%. We're now paying, if you're on £35,000, so let's say a median income, you're paying £2,000 a year less than you were in 2010, national insurance and income tax. If, on the other hand, you are in the top 1%, and again, people struggle to work out what the top 1% is, so I'm going to be mean to you, what do you think the top 1% is roughly of incomes in Britain?

• 4:40Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, is it 150?

• 4:44Rory Stewart?

  Good, good, good, yeah. 200,000, 200,000, top 1%. They are currently paying £10,000 a year more on average than they were in 2010. So oddly, this right wing Conservative government has reduced the tax, income tax, national insurance on median incomes and increased it on high pay people.

• 5:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 5:02Rory Stewart?

  This is because, obviously, in 2010, the top rate tax was 40%. It's now 45%. They've taken away a lot of the breaks on pensions.

• 5:09Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, Rory, you've somehow changed your backdrop. Have you got one of those fancy machines?

• 5:14Rory Stewart?

  This is, yeah, what with what?

• 5:16Alastair Campbell?

  Was this the drugs?

• 5:17Rory Stewart?

  My, the drugs, the internet's collapsed, I'm now sitting on top of my wifi. Okay, the British tax burden is still, in terms of developed economies, pretty much in the middle. I mean, it's obviously much above the US, but it's well below a place like France.

• 5:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. That 1%, would that include those very, very bad people who pay no tax at all? The ones who literally are sort of, you know?

• 5:38Rory Stewart?

  I wonder whether they're picked up in the figures.

• 5:41Alastair Campbell?

  I bet not, I bet that's 1% of taxpayers, isn't it?

• 5:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, obviously, there's criminals who don't declare their tax, there's people who evade their tax. I mean, there is something very odd going on because the number of people who declare incomes over a million pounds is very small indeed, I think in sort of tens of thousands, if that, right? And yet you walk around London, you see all these incredibly fancy cars, all these fancy houses. So most of the tax, not most tax, but a disproportionate amount of the tax that's coming in is coming from people in that over £200,000 bracket.

• 6:12Alastair Campbell?

  Right, so that's that's tax. Now, to go back to the beginning, Rob wants to know how you square your constant bleating that Labour aren't promising to spend enough with your defence of austerity, which created this mess in the first place.

• 6:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, I suppose the point that I'm trying to make is that actually the current Labour policy, which is to reduce the debt, not increase taxes and reduce spending by about 18 billion pounds, is a form of mini austerity. And I just think it's something that people need to focus on and it's going to be very, very painful because as Paul Johnson, from what I was about to call the IMF, but is in fact, as you're going to point out to me, the IFS, keeps pointing out that none of the parties, and I mean none of them, not Labour, not Conservative, not Lib Dems, not Greens, not SNP, not Plaid, none of them are being straight about the money.

• 7:09Rory Stewart?

  And it's a glimpse of the blinding obvious. Our public services are in bits. There is a huge amount of bills that we need to pay if we're to get our services up to scratch and there's not enough money coming in. In fact, on current track, Labour, which I believe is going to be the next government, is going to have to implement some spending cuts. And the reason I'm a bit worried in the long term is that I don't think that's a very attractive offer to voters, that this socially liberal, fiscally conservative model, which they seem to have adopted, which was sort of the model of Clinton and Blair, was particularly the kind of model of David Cameron, seems a bit out of step with a time when we all think we need much more spending, or people like me think we need more spending.

• 7:52Alastair Campbell?

  Very briefly, defend austerity. You still haven't done that. You keep avoiding the real question from Rob.

• 7:58Rory Stewart?

  Well, we've defended. We've through this a lot. I think the defence is that I think that Britain wasn't in the position to borrow significantly more and spend significantly more. And if we had, we would have been in real trouble when Covid hit.

• 8:09Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, other countries did and seemed to fine. Let's move on.

• 8:14Rory Stewart?

  Good. Now, Alistair, a question for you, much more jolly question for you, getting off the tough stuff of economics. We have a question on Harry Kane. Andrew, given Harry Kane's response to a question about ex-players criticizing the efforts of the current crop, was that your friend and my friend Gary Lineker criticizing?

• 8:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I'll do you an explainer in a minute.

• 8:35Rory Stewart?

  Do you have any misgivings about passing judgment on the performance of current politicians as they try to grapple with problems which may have perplexed you in the past, Alistair?

• 8:44Alastair Campbell?

  This relates to the fact that Gary Lineker, on a very, very good podcast called The Rest Is Football, which may well be related to The Rest Is Politics, used the S-word, which for Gary, S-H-I-T, to describe the performance of England.

• 9:00Rory Stewart?

  I thought you were going to say splendid or stupendous.

• 9:03Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, no, he said they were shit, which of course he wouldn't say on Match of the Day because that would have to be bleeped. And Harry Kane, England captain, was asked about this. I've got to say, I thought Harry Kane's response was very, very good. It was very measured. He said that a lot of the players did listen to pundits, and especially those pundits who were former players that they all respected. And he just said, you know, "I think they should bear in mind that there was a time when, you know, they were on the receiving end of criticism and it's not nice, etc." But it really, really was a big deal. When I was in Paris yesterday, I picked up a copy of Le Keep, the French sports paper, and there it was, you know, Kane répond à la critique de Lineker. It's become quite a big story.

• 9:47Rory Stewart?

  For international listeners, just help us here, I mean, was Gary Lineker actually right before we get into the details of the response?

• 9:54Alastair Campbell?

  The general view of England's performance was that they were not at their best, they were a long way off their best. The general view of the European media is that it is only because of our media that England gets talked up so much. So unless they beat everybody 8-0, it's kind of like it's all a terrible disappointment. But no, so I think Gary Lineker had a point, I also think Harry Kane had a point. But the question to us, I don't feel at all bad about passing judgment on the current government because it's like, it's like basically Diego Maradona passing judgment on players from Hartlepool United youth team, you know, it's like... This law is so bad. But you, this is more a question for you because of your book,

• 10:38Alastair Campbell?

  because of course you were very, very critical of people that you'd worked with.

• 10:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:42Alastair Campbell?

  Which I sort of try to avoid sometimes.

• 10:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And I noticed I was on a stage in Oxford on Sunday, being interviewed by a friend of ours called Tom Fletcher, who was a diplomat.

• 10:55Alastair Campbell?

  Very good diplomat.

• 10:57Rory Stewart?

  And he, to be cheeky, he texted you to ask for a question to ask me, and you asked me to name a player in the Burnley team. But he also texted David Cameron, and David Cameron immediately texted back saying, that's not one for me. And I think what's happened there is that I have really alienated David Cameron.

• 11:15Alastair Campbell?

  That's why, that's why I won't come on the podcast.

• 11:18Rory Stewart?

  By the way, I've written about him. Yeah, and he won't come on the podcast. By the way, I've written about him in the book. I mean, obviously, I think because politics matters to so much of our lives, because we're, you know, governments are spending a trillion pounds, they do our health, our education, and because it's democracy, people have a real right to actually know what's going on inside. But it's a difficult choice because they're also my colleagues and they will feel that I'm betraying confidences. And it's certainly true, this point, which you must have experienced a lot when you were in government, which is that it's very easy to criticize from the outside. I was speaking to a, you know, a really amazing guy who's had an incredible record and grew up in poverty, but he gave me 45 minutes on the phone about everything the government's doing wrong and everything

• 12:01Rory Stewart?

  Labour's doing wrong. And of course, it's very difficult for me not to bristle a bit and get a bit defensive and saying, well, you know, maybe it's not as easy as that. So he was like, you know, we need to completely abolish the treasury, we need to, you know, do, you know, if only you spent more money stopping poverty and childhood, then you wouldn't have to spend money later. And so it's that weird sense where someone's saying something which is true, but you're thinking it's much more difficult. And just to come back to Harry Kane for a second, I guess, what would be his, apart from the fact that he thinks Gary Lineker's being mean, he must also think that there's something that Gary Lineker doesn't quite get, and at some level that Gary Lineker wouldn't be able to do much better a job if he was managing the England team.

• 12:39Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he did, he did point out that the generation, Gary's generation, didn't win anything. But he did it very, very, very gently. No, I think what's happened, and friend of, I had a call yesterday from the Daily Telegraph, he said they were doing a, a big piece about how podcasts.

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  In sport seem to be where the kind of the mood is being created now almost as much as the papers. So like Gary and obviously Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, Micah Richards, they're big pundits anyway, their voice kind of carries some weight. But I was struck in Germany when I was out there, just how much when you're dealing, when you're talking to managers, whether they're managers, you know, who are currently involved or past managers, how many of the conversations sort of flow around what the pundits are saying? You know, Roy Keane, Roy Keane sort of says something and they all go, you know, do you see what Roy Keane said? He was, he played for Manchester United in the Republic of Ireland, by the way, Roy, just in case you'd never, you'd never heard of him. So I, I say, and I think that the other thing that happens, people always use this phrase about,

• 13:42Alastair Campbell?

  you know, inside the Westminster bubble. But those bubbles are the same in, in football squads as well. So they, they sort of take it very, very, very, very personally. But I, I, I find sometimes that I think in a way you are more outspoken about some of your colleagues than I am. I get, sometimes get criticised, not least by Fiona, saying you're far too soft on Labour. You get a question every week from somebody saying, do you still think Gillian Keegan's great? Because I think she's rubbish. And, and that, I guess, about friendship. And fun enough, we both got involved in a, in an interesting one. As, as you know, I've always had a pretty good relationship with Johnny Mercer, Veterans Minister. Last week, I really lost it with him and went from social media because he

• 14:26Alastair Campbell?

  did, I thought, a very, very unfair attack on his Labour opponent, Fred Thomas, frankly, casting doubt over his, I think, his integrity as a soldier. And I think if you're the Veterans Minister, that is a wrong thing to do. So I called it out and he sent me some very unpleasant messages.

• 14:41Rory Stewart?

  And then you, you asked me to support you on this. And I thought, okay, this is a tough one. But, you know, I agree with Alistair on this. And this is my, it's my friend and colleague, but I'll come out and say I passionately agree with Alistair on this. And Johnny was then unbelievably cross for me too.

• 14:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. So these things, these things are, you do weigh them up. But ultimately, I thought in our interview with Alex Chalk, which I really recommend to people, I was a bit dubious about Alex Chalk because, you know, he's not that well known and he's, as you said, he's a kind of bit of a kind of, you know, central casting sort of Tory politician. But I actually thought it was a really interesting interview. And I thought the thing he said, I was really surprised. I think my first question was, how many real friends do you have in politics? And he basically said maximum four or five.

• 15:24Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Alastair Campbell?

  And I thought that was very, very interesting. I think that, and it's true in politics, I think you, I think friendship, you have to be very, very careful. And, and ultimately, Johnny Mercer probably thinks that that is, that was unfair on him. But I think if, if I see, and obviously I am tribal and I am Labour, I see a Labour candidate being attacked unfairly, my instinct is to defend the Labour guy rather than the Tory guy.

• 15:46Rory Stewart?

  A lot of this is, is also because you're working very closely with people. I've seen Alex Chalk under pressure and I saw him take a very brave line on trying to fight for the EU Customs Union when the whole party was against that and working with me on that. I've seen Gillian Keegan under pressure and being forced to try to endorse Boris Johnson and holding off from that, sticking with me. So a lot of it is about, you know, what, what, what, you know, your experience with them and their integrity and do they hold the line? And, and I'm afraid often the people that I'm most brutal about, and this is part of the problem sadly with, with Johnny Mercer, who's got many, many virtues. But, you know, it was his decision to give a softball question to Boris Johnson at the

• 16:28Rory Stewart?

  key moment when Boris Johnson was about to fall first question in Primus's Questions, when I felt he should have been standing up and saying, you are a disgraced resign. He bowled him a softball question and was made the Veterans Minister. And I thought, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on a second. There's another thing going on though. I mean, you know, I don't, you know, given that Johnny's now decided he hates me and is going to start slagging me off, let me, let me start another thing that I think is a, a theme that has been raised. And this is, this is a question from Bob, which has come in, which is, do we think we should have more soldiers in politics? And this is a big issue in the US. There's huge political action campaigns, which are just about funding, getting more veterans into politics. And I'm a bit divided on this.

• 17:13Rory Stewart?

  There were 51, I think. Members of parliament in the Conservative Party when I was there, who had been in the army, even if they'd just been there for a very short period like me. We all turn up to Remembrance Day services together. But some of them, like Bob Stuart, was a full Colonel, who'd spent an entire career in the military. But I'm not sure that it's always the answer. And I think there's a risk that if you've been in the military and you've seen combat, you begin to think that's the most important thing in the world. And it's the thing that really makes you better than other people. And there's a risk that you end up, you know, kind of looking down on other people, purely on whether or not they happen to have been shot at or not. And I'm not sure that's a very good guarantee of how well you run the country.

• 17:58Alastair Campbell?

  No, there are, I think Bob Stuart is a very good example. He seems to have had a very good reputation in the military. But I don't think he does have a very good reputation in politics. Labour have 14 ex-military candidates at this election. And that's obviously part of Keir Starmer's sort of decorvification of the, of the party.

• 18:18Rory Stewart?

  Okay, Anna, so a quick break, then more questions.

• 18:23Speaker 02

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• 18:57Alastair Campbell?

  So here's a question from somebody whose name you may recognise, Rory, called Josh Whittaker. And it's about sleep. What time, what time does a new Prime Minister get to bed the next day after they've been elected? Presumably, they stay up all night for the count. And then the next day, are they not seeing the Queen, well, it's the King now, Josh, and taking calls from presidents? Do they stay up all the way through to the next night? Well, I suppose it depends on them. I remember in 97, I think 2001, I think Tony Blair tried to have a nap during the day. Pretty much failed. Yes, stayed up through the night, flew back to London, went to Festival Hall. I think he got home and had about two hours sleep.

• 19:42Alastair Campbell?

  And then the next day, probably got to bed about. About midnight. So yeah, it's a long, long, long night.

• 19:48Rory Stewart?

  Isn't there a famous anecdote? I know it's in your diaries of a rock star saying to Tony, you know, you stayed all the way through the night like me. And Tony saying, you remember that?

• 19:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it was Noel Gallagher. And it was, it was, it was saying, how do you stay up through the night? And Tony said, well, not using the same stuff that you do.

• 20:08Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we're going to be doing the same thing because we're going to be doing Channel Four. By the way, I see they've announced today that they're having, I hope this is, you're under our aesthetic, Rory, I don't want you to fall off your chair. Apparently Nadine Dorries is going to be one of our guests.

• 20:21Rory Stewart?

  This is going to be tough.

• 20:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it'll be tough. Maybe we should, maybe we should take a break.

• 20:25Rory Stewart?

  Maybe, maybe we should take our nap. Oh, it's sending somebody listening to program, you know, I was making a joke about ice baths. Somebody's actually offered to bring an ice bath into the Channel Four studio for you.

• 20:36Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, not a lie though.

• 20:38Rory Stewart?

  No, it's not a whole lie.

• 20:39Alastair Campbell?

  The only thing I say, Rory, because I worry about every time I go on the television programme, I worry about how down market are they going to try and take it, right? We are not taking our clothes off, okay?

• 20:50Rory Stewart?

  We're not taking our clothes off. Peter, I had to take my clothes off. I went on Saturday to go swimming in the Serpentine.

• 20:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 20:56Rory Stewart?

  And of course, when I went swimming in Serpentine, the Serpentine Swimming Club in Hyde Park, literally everybody came bubbling up to me and be like, oh, you're taking after Alice. It's wonderful. So there we are.

• 21:07Alastair Campbell?

  Now, listen, Nicky Robson, how can we shift the focus in our media so that we become better informed about policies, data and evidence, rather than the semi sensationalist gotcha gossip? Now, that does feel really like an invitation for me to plug my books for children, doesn't it?

• 21:22Rory Stewart?

  It does. Yeah. No, we were always looking for those opportunities.

• 21:24Alastair Campbell?

  We are looking at those. But also, while you were in the dentist chair.

• 21:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 21:28Alastair Campbell?

  I was talking to The New European, who I'm pleased to announce have bought shed loads of both of my books. And they have got a new subscription offer. Both books will be signed by me. They will be given free of charge to new subscribers. And you sign up for as little as a pound a week to The New European at theneweuropean.co.uk/trip. And if you use that as an opportunity to plug your bloody books, one of which is still at number one.

• 21:55Rory Stewart?

  And here we come. Okay. So it's, I talked about this new series of four. So this is Politics on the Edge.

• 22:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I read that one.

• 22:02Rory Stewart?

  Now, for the first time, you can get all four of them. Same cover, so that's the marches.

• 22:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that's nice.

• 22:08Rory Stewart?

  Occupational hazards, which my rock.

• 22:09Alastair Campbell?

  I like, I like the uniform, the uniform covers, I like.

• 22:12Rory Stewart?

  And the places in between. So it's now become a four volume series where if you want, you can go walk across Afghanistan.

• 22:20Alastair Campbell?

  Through Scotland.

• 22:21Rory Stewart?

  Do Scotland and Cumbria.

• 22:23Alastair Campbell?

  And then do, and then do politics. Excellent, excellent. That's great. I wish somebody would do all eight volumes of my diaries in that way, but the trouble is I've got two publishers.

• 22:30Rory Stewart?

  Are they all different? They all slightly different covers?

• 22:32Alastair Campbell?

  They're a bit different, yeah. But anyway, we've, we've, we've sort of, we've moved on from that. Shall we start plugging and get back to?

• 22:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, let's get back to that question about, we, we had a good, good question on facts and figures and politics. So I, I was really struck by the Green Party manifesto, which was the only one that really tried to concentrate on the media. So it's committed to the second stage of the Leveson report, which we've talked about a little bit. Maybe we can touch on that for a second. Those are reforms that came in after the phone hacking scandal.

• 23:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 23:02Rory Stewart?

  And they've also brought in quite an interesting idea in their manifesto of limiting the holdings of anyone to only 25%.

• 23:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 23:08Rory Stewart?

  Of a media company. So you can't have a controlling majority ownership.

• 23:12Alastair Campbell?

  As, as individual isolated policies, I'd be happy with both. However, Rory, you cannot get away from the fact that their economic policies do not stand up.

• 23:23Rory Stewart?

  Okay, but, but, but let's, let's just take those individual isolated policies. I think it would be a great help. We talk a lot about the media. Is, are there any other things that we can do? I mean, obviously we had a slightly, oh, I had a slightly long and boring bit at the beginning about the tax burden that he's posed for it. But I think it's quite interesting sometimes, facts and figures like that. The question is, how does one really make them come alive? How do you sell newspapers while also communicating some slightly nuanced stuff? Any, any thoughts on that?

• 23:50Alastair Campbell?

  You talked about Paul Johnson of the IFS and he did a speech the other day. It, it shows how weird the debate has become that a speech by Paul Johnson of the IFS about how the, the parties weren't telling the truth about the economy was kind of covered like big news on the television. And the parties didn't even really bother to respond. He's, oh, well, he's going to say that, but let's just ignore it because. And so they all kind of know that there's a bit of a game going on. But here's a great question, I thought, from James Merkin. Why is there no requirement in electoral law that requires all election material to be factual and auditable? I send you a thing where I don't know if you saw it, it was these adverts that the Tories are putting out on social media and sending to people on WhatsApp and so forth.

• 24:30Alastair Campbell?

  But they're a bit like your books, there's a set of four, and they're four Labour will, unless you vote Tory, Labour will. And then there are four statements which are factually untrue. Now, if they were advertising, if that was Coke advertising the product, you know, the consequences of buying Pepsi.

• 24:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Alastair Campbell?

  They would be subject to all sorts of punishment. If that was a car saying, you know, BMW, buy BMW because Volkswagen, you know, is unsafe. Why is politics exempt from this? And it only works, it only works if this freedom of speech thing is matched by people basically committing to tell the truth.

• 25:09Rory Stewart?

  You're absolutely right, we're gonna have to tighten this up. I guess the thing that you've got to guard against when you tighten it up, so I'm not disagreeing with you, but the thing you've got to guard against is that when countries start putting more and more laws around this, you then end up with parties using the law against each other. So that's why in Bangladesh, 1.2 million members of the opposition, as we said, are currently under judicial scrutiny.

• 25:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Rory Stewart?

  That's why, you know, Modi in India will go after his opponents judicial stuff, you can see it in Latin America. So in Britain, the disadvantage of our system is that people can get away with lies. The advantage of the system is that you don't end up in this world in which parties very, very quickly start weaponizing these laws against each other as a way of getting each other locked up or taking each other's campaign finances away or disqualifying each other in a election campaign. But you're right, many of the things in Britain, we don't have laws about because we tended to depend on what Simon Cooper in his latest book. Calls the good chap theory of politics, which is increasingly unattractive.

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, no, but I've been surprised that we all knew Johnson was a liar, we all knew Truss was useless, but I have been genuinely surprised at Rishi Sunak, who gets these lines and he just keeps going. So again, last night, the £2,000 tax thing, it's been refuted, rebutted, dismissed by experts, et cetera, but he just keeps going with it. And I think it's a problem. I think it's a real problem for our politics. I think it's one of the reasons that turnout probably is going to be low, that people just aren't trusting, that they're less trusting than they were about statements. And it goes back to this thing about shamelessness. People are not ashamed now. So let's just take Nigel Farage and his recent statements. He's trying to kind of finesse and rewrite things that he

• 26:54Alastair Campbell?

  said, because he realizes that this Putin Ukraine stuff has become politically damaging to him for the current circumstance. And I just think it's, unless you can base it, and let's face it, the thing that people say they like about, oh, says what he thinks and what have you. Well, no, I think sometimes he doesn't, because he's finessing. And Sunak, I've been genuinely surprised by how much he's willing to lie.

• 27:18Rory Stewart?

  And the terrible thing, of course, is that the worse that people behave, the more it becomes normalized.

• 27:24Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 27:24Rory Stewart?

  So I think this betting scandal, which has, of course, really shocked and angered people, but probably would have been even more shocking, kind of pre Boris Johnson.

• 27:34Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, here's another one. The other day, there was this story about how the Conservatives and lots of big name Conservatives, including Truss, I think, that they'd used public money to set up websites that were there to serve them as party candidates. And also, there's this stuff about where you get data through your role as an MP, which is then transferred into, and I know John Mann has been big on this. Now, that is just wrong.

• 27:58Rory Stewart?

  That is wrong. And actually, Conservatives may be poor offenders, but I've also seen other parties do it too. It was something that became obvious when we came in in 2010. So as an MP, you're in a very ambiguous relationship with your constituents. On the one hand, you're doing constituency surgeries, you're obviously receiving, I would receive, I think, 25,000 emails a year. So you've got everybody's email and their data and all this kind of stuff. And of course, you're given money to send letters to your constituents, correspond with them, ask them questions.

• 28:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 28:31Rory Stewart?

  But all these MPs, well, not all of them, many, many of them, start using that public money to do things which are pretty close.

• 28:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Rory Stewart?

  To campaigning and this line between, which you would have come across again and again when you were in government, what's the line between what you can do in the government?

• 28:47Alastair Campbell?

  And what's the party?

• 28:48Rory Stewart?

  And I remember, you know, this sort of stuff that you and Richard Wilson would go head to head on.

• 28:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and you know, but I was always very, very careful, but every now and again, I would probably cross the line. I remember once he came in and after I'd done a briefing and said, look, you said something there about Ken Livingston, which you shouldn't have said because that was a totally a party matter, it had nothing to do with the government. And I, you know, I corrected that and accepted I shouldn't have done that. But now it's almost like, well, the lines have become so blurred post-Johnson. Now Rory, we talked on the main podcast about this betting scandal, we've got a question literally about 10 minutes after we finished recording, and we'd been saying, Sunak, for heaven's sake, why hasn't he suspended these candidates? They then became suspended. So Mark has asked, can the Tories take the suspended candidates back into the party as MPs if they're elected? And this is the mess that Sunak's got himself into.

• 29:37Alastair Campbell?

  These people are on the ballot paper as Conservative Party candidates, they've had the whip withdrawn, whatever that means, because there's no Parliament sitting at the moment. If they win and they are proven to have done this betting stuff, which Sunak says he's absolutely furious about, then no, they'll have to sit as independents.

• 29:55Rory Stewart?

  Again, this is a really good question, because in Rochdale, by election, the same thing happened. The Labour candidate who was on the ballot paper and it was too late to remove him, made some very offensive comments. Keir Starmer then said, this person's no longer in the Labour Party and if he'd been elected, Keir Starmer would have had to work out what to do with him. But there's a, there's a sort of bigger question, which is, why, given that Rishi Sunak's now done it, didn't he do it sooner? And this is a mistake that both he and Keir Starmer have made in the past. Which is, you know, Keir Starmer's example was was pretty clear that he needed to let Diane Abbott run. But he tried for many days to say, there's a process here, there's a system here, I can't get involved. And then eventually he said, okay, Diane Abbott can run.

• 30:37Rory Stewart?

  And again, Rishi Sunak tried to say, there's a process here, there's a system here, I can't suspend them. And then eventually he has to spend. What is it that stops them kind of grabbing the net all quickly enough, rather than eventually doing what they should have done all along?

• 30:48Alastair Campbell?

  I think the Diane Abbott situation is slightly different. I think what was going on there was that Diane Abbott was in discussion with the Labour Party. And that somebody briefed something out that she took real offence to, and that created the row, which they then tried to calm. I think I think this one is just about Sunak doesn't have good political instincts. And, you know, let's be honest, the other thing I'd say for Labour, I think, listen, they fought a pretty good campaign and they haven't really dropped a ball badly. It's all gone pretty well. But the thing that happens when you get in, if you if Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister. I once remember saying that, you know, sometimes I would be sitting alongside Tony Blair.

• 31:26Alastair Campbell?

  And you feel like you're a batsman and you're facing like not one fast bowler, you're facing about 20 fast bowlers at the same time. Because so many things are coming at you and so many of them, you have to make a decision really, really quickly. To stop something which may not be that important, becoming a real issue. By the way, Rory, literally as we're talking.

• 31:45Rory Stewart?

  Example, sorry, just give us an example before we get to literally while we're talking.

• 31:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'll give you, I'll give you an example during the middle of a build up to a military conflict. When the big decision was about whether we were sending troops or not. We had the whole one of Peter Mandelson's resignation situations. And, you know, Peter, I think to this day thinks that we were too brutal.

• 32:10Alastair Campbell?

  But in a way, I think part of the thing is, one way or the other, this has got to get off Tony Blair's desk. So they can actually focus on the things that he really has to do.

• 32:18Rory Stewart?

  And also presumably, Alice, that you you would have had an instinct that he's going to have to go anyway. So we might as well get rid of him now, rather than letting it drag on for days as as the witch hunt builds and the new spectacles go after.

• 32:28Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it sort of went on a fair time anyway. But I think other times, you know, like, for example, you know, I can remember at European summits, when suddenly stuff would break at home. And you have to make a very quick decision, are we going to do this? By the way, as we're speaking, Rory, the BBC. I've just done breaking news, the Gambling Commission has told the Metropolitan Police five further police officers are alleged to have placed bets related to the time of the election.

• 32:53Rory Stewart?

  So it's not just Rishi Sunak's in a circle, it's also the Metropolitan Police have nothing to do with the Conservative Party and presumably it's the Diplomatic Protection Police who are the elite who are meant to be confident, but it's just such a sign, I mean, I don't care who's doing it, of just everything becoming kind of trivialised. Without being really kind of pompous about it, you cannot imagine this happening. I just got an email from someone in Japan saying you literally cannot imagine this happening in Japan. And if they did, people would be resigning immediately. I mean, people would feel it was so dishonorable.

• 33:24Alastair Campbell?

  Let's just get back to this betting theme though, because I was with you Rory, on the day that you were trying to place a bet with an entire railway carriage. And it's a bloody good job that you didn't.

• 33:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, because I was betting against this. I know I could, I would have lost, I would have lost big time.

• 33:39Alastair Campbell?

  You were trying to do some outsider trading.

• 33:41Rory Stewart?

  At least the fact that I lost would have suggested I didn't have insider trading. Yeah. Listen, I did just finally on the, on the Madison thing, because I think this may relate to what's happening with Rishi Sunak and Craig Williams. Probably if you were really brutal and an outsider, you would say, actually, you and Tony Blair held on to Peter Madison for longer than you should have done and let it play out in the Witch House Bill Press. And the reason you did it is that he was a close friend and you felt loyalty towards him. And if he hadn't been a close friend, you might have been able to see clearly and more objectively.

• 34:10Alastair Campbell?

  Possibly, that's possibly true.

• 34:11Rory Stewart?

  And I'm sure the same is true here, that this man Craig Williams has been Rishi Sunak's closest parliamentary aide. And therefore, I mean, it's very human, isn't it? Your loyalty, your friendships cloud things and you can be more objective and more brutal with people you know less well.

• 34:29Alastair Campbell?

  I think, I think, I think that's right. But, but this one, you know, you're in the middle of an election campaign. The minute this happened, Rishi Sunak actually said, sorry, this is under no circumstances going to happen. It's not going to be tolerated. I'm sorry, even at the risk of losing that seat to an independent, even at the risk of that seat going to another candidate, you are not representing the Conservative Party.

• 34:47Rory Stewart?

  And even, even at the risk that you might actually be innocent, because this is one of the things some of these people say, I didn't do it. Oh, that's not actually the case for Craig Williams. He actually admitted. But there's this great line that Julius Caesar produces where he distances himself from his wife and his wife says, you know, I didn't actually cheat on you. And he says, even the suspicion. You've done it is enough for me to distance myself.

• 35:09Alastair Campbell?

  I still think he was, he was the author of the greatest ever soundbite.

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  Go on, what's that?

• 35:14Alastair Campbell?

  Feeny, Vidi, Vichi.

• 35:17Rory Stewart?

  Do you use that a lot?

• 35:19Alastair Campbell?

  It's the best ever.

• 35:21Rory Stewart?

  It's the best.

• 35:23Alastair Campbell?

  It's better than education, education, education.

• 35:25Rory Stewart?

  European pal, what are your takes or actually, what is your take on the release of Julian Assange?

• 35:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I was on breakfast television this morning and, and obviously this, this came up and I was on Good Morning Britain and Kevin Maguire from the Mirror, Andrew Pearce of the Mail. And it was very interesting to watch because he got the two views. Andrew, Andrew Pearce, basically this guy's awful, he's a friend of terrorists, he's a hater of the West, he's a, he's not a real journalist, et cetera. And Kevin Maguire, much more, this guy exposed things that were wrong and that was, that was an act of public service and that he's been very, very unfairly treated. I am not a fan of Julian Assange.

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  I think that in, in dumping all the stuff that he did, uh, he, I think he did so without going through what I would, would call proper journalistic endeavour. I think some of the newspapers he was working with might well have done so, but I don't think that he did. And I also feel very uncomfortable that the sexual charges against him in relation to Sweden, one of which I believe was dropped because the time ran out, which he's always denied, I accept he's always denied it. But it wasn't just that he was avoiding justice in America, the fact that he was avoiding justice in Sweden as well. And I think that there's a deal has been done, he's now on his way to freedom, I guess, in Australia.

• 36:46Alastair Campbell?

  But I, I, I, I feel very, very uncomfortable, both with the fact that the, I accept Kevin Maguire made this point, that he did expose things that were very, very wrong, which might not otherwise have been exposed, that is true. And there is a public interest justification for that. There is not a public interest justification for some of the stuff that I think put people's lives at risk.

• 37:06Rory Stewart?

  Very good, okay.

• 37:08Alastair Campbell?

  What's your view, what's your view?

• 37:10Rory Stewart?

  I'm avoiding Julian Assange. I find the whole thing really weird, but I think your correct framing is good. I think there is a public interest defence in revealing stuff. I do believe in transparency in government, but I think that Assange seems to have been often reckless, often not really motivated by trying to bring truth to government, and appears to have sort of had an anarchic destructive tendency to him. But I don't know enough about Assange, and I feel a bit out on a limb saying that. Political cartoons, James Butler. Satirical cartoons. Have you or any members of your family kept any of yourselves? Have any particularly irked you?

• 37:46Alastair Campbell?

  I've got loads, and I wish I had more.

• 37:48Rory Stewart?

  You like them. I've got a lot and have been given a lot of me, and I hate them. I hide them. I don't really want people to see them because I don't know what to do with them. Because I think it's kind of, either they're flattering, in which case it looks like you've got a massive big head putting up in your lube, pictures yourself in a flattering cartoon. So there's one of me when I was running for the leadership, of me hopping over the heads of all the other candidates. There are others that are just sort of faintly humiliating. So there was one of me, again during the leadership, where I'm one of five tiny candidates on a desert island, with Boris Johnson as this huge fat pink balloon, ever-expanding, pushing us into the water. And then the one that really annoyed me when I was running for Mayor of London

• 38:29Rory Stewart?

  was me on a camel in ridiculous kind of Lawrence for Arabia garb. And Boris Johnson sitting there like a sort of enormous sort of cliched pasha with a hubble bubble pipe, saying something like, "I'm supposed to be the only entitled ridiculous old Etonian flouncing off as I rode off on my camel."

• 38:54Alastair Campbell?

  That's quite good. Well, I actually wish I had more. I've got about, I've got lots and lots stashed away. I've got about 20 that are hung in different parts of the house. Particularly bathrooms. People do like seeing them as they're sort of, you know, in the bathroom, having a pee or whatever. And they don't know me at all. I mean, there was a guy, the guy in the Daily Mirror always used to do me as Frankenstein with two bolts through my neck. There was, there was, there was another guy who used to do, used to do me as this kind of, you know, really evil, manipulative looking, rather haggard, gaunt character. I always found them quite funny. And there's another one, another one that

• 39:35Alastair Campbell?

  I've got downstairs where Tony, they always did, this was Griffin, Charles Griffin, and he did Tony like really ugly, massive bags under his eyes, his teeth were all kind of out of position and out of place. And he's standing at the top of the plane steps and he goes, here, and this was just after the Kosovo liberation. And he goes, here I am, landing in this benighted land, everything reduced to rubble, greeted as a hero. And I would, the background was Dracula saying, boss, this isn't Prestida, this is Middlesbrough.

• 40:13Rory Stewart?

  One of the great ones that against me was Matt, who's the Daily Telegraph cartoonist. At a time when I was being portrayed in the newspapers as a kind of sort of mini Messiah who was going to become Prime Minister, and my colleagues were beginning to think of me as a sort of massive narcissist. So it's, it's an image of the House of Commons terrace and the river Thames. And all my colleagues are on the terrace looking over and I'm walking on the water down the centre of the Thames with, look, it's Rory Stewart on his latest walkabout.

• 40:47Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Rory, I think on you as Jesus, we should call a halt to another question time. And just to remind listeners and viewers, we will be back later today after the Sunak Starmer debate. We will be doing one of our YouTube live streams and you just go to anywhere you find us on social media and we'll be there.

• 41:04Rory Stewart?

  And let's see if we manage to get more than the 7,000 people who tuned in to watch Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer in their debate.

• 41:11Alastair Campbell?

  I'll be very, that was on the Sun. I think we had, I think they had more on ITV, Rory.

• 41:15Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good. Lovely to see you and, and thank you, thank you for coming on.

• 41:19Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 41:20Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 41:41Speaker 04

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 41:47Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 41:49Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 41:52Speaker 03

  The Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself: Do you want to play? Or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done... Nothing!

• 42:06Speaker 05

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 42:08Speaker 03

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 42:17Speaker 07

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• 42:21Speaker 03

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