10. Bad politics, local elections, and toxic debates

Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell work out a plan for improving the quality of debate in Westminster. They also wonder what it would take for the electorate to dump Boris Johnson from power. Plus how to make the perfect porridge. Go to Instagram and Twitter for our reading list. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Tony Pastor & Jack Davenport The Week: theweek.co.uk/rest Goalhanger Podcasts 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 Creef. 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  Well, hello there and welcome to the 10th episode, no less, of The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:50Alastair Campbell?

  And a lot to get through. Very, very, very important week, local elections. And we'll be talking about that and the significance for politics locally and nationally. I want to talk in relation to that about Ireland, where I was last week. We're also going to be talking about Ukraine. And I think we ought to do a little bit of reminiscing about the 25th anniversary of New Labour. And we'll also be trying to answer some of your many, many questions. We've got around 700 this week, Rory.

• 2:16Rory Stewart?

  700, it's unbelievable. And I hope you're going to answer all of them.

• 2:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we can't do all of them. We'd be here all day. But I want to start with one in particular from Simon O'Connor. As a politics teacher, he says, I've often advised students to consider a career in politics. I'm not sure I could anymore. Would you?

• 2:36Rory Stewart?

  So I think, look, I think this is fascinating. And I would say that the thing that maybe people don't understand about politics is what a very odd job it is in terms of power, in terms of getting things done. Because you, Alistair, were right there in Number 10, where the power was located, right next to the Prime Minister. And I think the Prime Minister in the British system still does have a lot of ability to get things done. But 99% of MPs never become Prime Minister. And many of them, probably half of them, spend their whole career on the back benches. Probably more if you take into account people who are on the opposition. And that is a very, very odd, frustrating job. Firstly,

• 3:17Rory Stewart?

  in the modern world, you are under extraordinary pressure and abuse from constituents, from media with very high expectations, but not necessarily with a very clear idea of what it is they really want you to do. But I think more dramatically than that, it's not like running a business, or working as a civil servant, or working in a school or a hospital. You don't have a budget. You don't have direct power as a constituency MP to actually change things locally. You don't have legal power. Instead of which, what you are is you're part of a strange system that every so often, every three to six months, can sort of rebel

• 3:55Rory Stewart?

  and change a leader or topple a bit of legislation. But it's a very odd, uneven life. So that would be my first answer to someone thinking of becoming an MP.

• 4:07Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting, though, you've gone straight into the idea of being an MP. When I read Simon's question, I was thinking of people, for example, like my, one of my daughter's best friends from school, Nina Parker, who's actually standing in the local elections this week in Southampton. And I think it's great that she's gone into politics in that way. And my answer to Simon is, I found his question incredibly depressing in a way, because I think that if we've now reached a state where in our politics... People who are teaching politics are no longer sure whether they can in all good faith and conscience say to their pupils, I think it'd be great if you'd go into politics. I think that's really, really depressing. In fact, you know, I'm working on a book at the moment about trying to encourage young

• 4:52Alastair Campbell?

  people to go into politics, because I think if they don't, if we all just give up because it's too hard and because all they hear about is negativity, and I agree with you, social media and all that stuff, it's become, it's become even more of a kind of cesspit. And then they look at the characters that we have in our politics at the moment and they think, well, they're not inspiring me, I don't really see that they're going to be the sort of people that I want to follow. So my message to young people, Simon, is we need them going into politics now more than ever. And yes, it's in a horrible phase at the moment, but I think it's up to the next generation to come up and, and help us change it.

• 5:27Rory Stewart?

  So, so one of the challenges is to the public itself, because the public is, in a sense, the employers of the politicians. And they're very, very bad employers. They're incredibly abusive employers. So as, as an MP, I felt I worked for the public, but the public was like a boss who spent every day saying, you're useless, you're incompetent, you're idle, you're dishonest. Right? It's a deeply, deeply dispiriting life, right? You, you want to go into a profession where you feel that you've got some honour, you've got some credibility, you've got some respect. And actually, what it is, is a career of perpetual humiliation. And, and I know, you know, we, we've disagreed about Rishi Sunak a few weeks ago, and as

• 6:10Rory Stewart?

  I say, I'm not particularly fond of him as an individual, but thinking about what that guy has gone through in the space of the last three weeks in his life, gone from being, you know, what seemed like a relatively respected distinguished figure, people were quite proud that we had a very young, talented Chancellor of the Exchequer, his family were presumably quite proud of him, to a situation where he just wakes up one morning and is suddenly made out to be a crook and a liar, and his wife's picture is splashed all over the front page of the newspapers, and he's having to make these very, very rapid, immense financial decisions on the future of his family. At some point, he's going to scratch his head and think.

• 6:55Rory Stewart?

  Why am I doing this? And of course, people will not be very sympathetic. They'll say, you're thin-skinned. This is pathetic. You know, why don't you go back to being a banker? But there's a problem here. If talented, thoughtful people don't want to stay in politics, and look at it, David Miliband doesn't want to come back. Tristram Hunt took the first opportunity to go off and be director of the V and A. A lot of the people in the centre of it, William Hague, for example, who was at the top of his game, was in his 40s, had been Foreign Secretary. Normally, those people would have stayed until they were in their 70s. That's what Victorian members of parliament would have done. But we've created, we've created an environment so unpleasant that if you can do something else, almost everybody else is going to do something else. And a lot of the people who stay are people who

• 7:41Rory Stewart?

  frankly don't have many options back out there in the real world.

• 7:43Alastair Campbell?

  But that's why you need the better people to go in. I mean, I've, I've, my difficulty that I've had with Rishi Sunak, you said to him, he's going to wake up one day and say, why am I, why am I in this? I have the sense of Rishi Sunak, I'm not sure why he's in it anyway, because, and the, and the fact is, the choi, he made choices that he didn't think through. I mean, to, to honestly, I think you're being way, way too sympathetic here, Roy. I'm, listen, I'm the one who's trying to speak up for politics here. I'm trying to say to people going into politics, but just sit down in the real world. You're going in at public expense to live in Downing Street because you're the Chancellor of Exchequer, and you're married to a non-dom. I mean, just for the public, they can't get beyond

• 8:26Alastair Campbell?

  that. And then, at the moment, you talk about the difficult choices he's making his family. He's just spent 12,500 pounds putting a new swimming pool into his house.

• 8:34Rory Stewart?

  So, I'll say, he's, he's, I mean, I, I'm not in the business particularly of defending him, as I say, but the, the truth of the matter is, he's a very wealthy guy. He had a very successful career. And by coming into politics, he's had to make very significant financial sacrifices. That's fine. And, and you would say that's absolutely straightforward. But you, you, there is a contradiction, I think, a little bit, because you yourself are one of the people who are particularly brutal towards these politicians. And you're out there on Twitter almost every day attacking these people. When they read your Twitter posts, they must kind of blanch and think, ah! You know, why am I doing this? So it's I I'm trying to I'm I'm being unfair to you because I'm using you as an example of the public. But on the one hand, you want good people to

• 9:16Rory Stewart?

  go into politics. On the other hand, you're part of an environment that makes it unbelievably unpleasant to be a politician. So it's not very surprising. People don't want to be politicians.

• 9:24Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, um, no, I tell you that I get that. Um, I would say, and I think, to be honest, Rory, I think you spend far too much time looking at Twitter. I spent I spent too too much time tweeting. You spend too much time looking at Twitter. Um, but look, I I attack the politicians, and in particular Johnson at the moment, because I think he is, you know, you agree with me here, he's such a bad prime minister and such a bad human being. And if you feel you talked about me having been very, very close to power, and I can walk out and about now, and people still think I have a power and an influence, which I don't feel at all. So I don't feel I have any power whatsoever. I feel powerless.

• 10:05Alastair Campbell?

  And that's maybe why I rant and rave and rage on social media. And whether we like it or not, I mean, I I wrote a book a few years ago, and I wrote about Lincoln, who's now revered as one of the greatest political figures in history. If you go and read some of the things that were said and written about Lincoln when he was president, I mean, these guys have gotten when Rishi Sunak whinges about the criticism and the attacks, Lincoln had everything thrown at him. So I think it's always been part of politics. Yes, social media has made it worse. And I accept that you've got to have a thick skin to be able to go into it. But when I do see young people like Georgia Gould, who's the daughter of my best friend, Philip Gould, um, she's now the leader of Camden Council.

• 10:49Alastair Campbell?

  She's young, she's energetic, she's vibrant, and she's bringing more young people in. And that's what we need. And I think if we all just sit around saying, it's all terrible, and they're all terrible. And by the way, I don't attack every single Tory. Um, I, you know, I've been pretty, I the ones that I think are terrible, like Nadine Dorries, like Liz Truss, like, you know, um, I I think that Dominique Raab, James

• 11:16Rory Stewart?

  Is there anyone in the current Tory cabinet that you don't attack?

• 11:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I haven't really attacked Ben Wallace much. I I do have a massive disrespect for anybody who can sit at that cabinet table and not call out what's happening. I think I find that very, very difficult. You know, if you think about it, Johnson gets done on Partygate. Only one minister from the House of Lords has actually said, I can't, I can't possibly support somebody who breaks the law like this.

• 11:44Rory Stewart?

  I couldn't agree with you more. I couldn't agree with you more. I couldn't agree with you. I mean, obviously, I, I, I wouldn't serve in his cabinet. I wouldn't contemplate serving his cabinet because you have to go out there and defend him in a very weird way on television and on radio when he's doing outrageous things. And it's humiliating.

• 12:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:01Rory Stewart?

  And I, I think there's something else, though, which ties into where we are now, which is the local elections. You were talking about Georgia Gould in Camden and how much satisfaction and energy she's getting out of that.

• 12:11Alastair Campbell?

  No, it's actually, it's actually the satisfaction, the energy she's giving. I think she finds it very tough. I think anybody in local government finds it tough, but it's actually that she's giving. And I think that's the thing we've got to communicate.

• 12:22Rory Stewart?

  I, I also think there's something about local government, and that's why the local government election is quite interesting, which is healthier than national politics. The great thing about running as a local council leader or local mayor is that you're responsible for the things that your constituents really care about. A lot of their priorities day to day. So I would find when I was a constituency MP that people would come up to me and they would want to talk to me about police and crime in the area, or they want to talk to me about transport in the area, or they want to talk to me about planning in the area. And these are things that I had no control over.

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, no, I get it.

• 12:59Rory Stewart?

  Whereas if you were the mayor of London, you run the police, you run transport for London, you run planning. So the things that they are stopping you in the street about, poking you in the chest about in the supermarket are things that you can fix and you can say, okay, I'm going to take responsibility for that and I'm going to try and sort that out, which is a much more honest, healthy relationship than what happens with a, a, a member of parliament. Because member of parliaments are in a slightly false relationship with their constituents. They're campaigning on the doorstep pretending that they're going to sort out your pothole and they never actually admit that they have no control over your pothole. They're not local councillors, they don't have a budget, they don't have any legal power over any of that.

• 13:37Alastair Campbell?

  I know, and one, one of the other things I, I find really frustrating about. The way our political debate is conducted. So we've got these local elections going on, you know, in different parts of the country on Thursday. And yet you know that we're going to wake up on Friday morning and the news is going to be about what this says about Boris Johnson's future and what it says about the next general election. And that's incre- that must be so frustrating for Tories in particular at the moment, who are going around trying to campaign on local issues. But know that all that hard work that they're doing is just going to get wrapped up into this kind of bigger story. And the thing of, there's one question I wanted to ask you. What do you think of this one from Mark Dingman? Would a significant loss for the Tories on May the 5th rid me of this turbulent Premier?

• 14:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it would, but we have to be cautious there. And I think this is something you've been pointing out, Alistair, which is that Downing Street is having a lot of fun briefing out that it's going to be a disastrous showing in the elections.

• 14:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Rory Stewart?

  In fact, the likelihood is that the Tory party isn't going to suffer very much in these elections.

• 14:37Alastair Campbell?

  Because they're such a low base.

• 14:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, partly because in many cases, they're actually going up against the 2019 baseline. They're going to be measured against the 2019 baseline. And 2019 was disastrous from the Tory party. I think they lost 1,500 local council seats. That was right at the heart of Theresa May at the end of her premiership, failing to get Brexit through, huge sort of rebellion against the Conservative Party in those local elections. So it's likely that the figures will seem quite good historically. They won't have many losses. And Boris will then be able to use this, Boris Johnson will be able to use this to say, there we are. You thought that I was going to be a disaster in local elections. We've done much better than everybody predicted. Just give me another three years.

• 15:17Alastair Campbell?

  This goes back to my point as well about how the local elections. I remember when Ken Baker was Conservative Party Chairman, and that these local elections were, the Tories did really, really badly. But he made the, went around the whole time saying, oh my God, I think we're going to lose Westminster and Wandsworth. And they knew that they weren't. But they kept going, oh my God, we're going to lose Westminster and Wandsworth. And of course, the media who, you know, tend to be a bit kind of short sighted and don't really think things through often, that that became the story. Tories have held on to Westminster and Wandsworth. And they're doing exactly the same. I think it would be impossible for the Tories to lose 800 seats in the, on Thursday. But that's what they're sort of briefing out there. So Mark, I fear not. I fear it won't because they're playing the expectations game and as ever, the media are helping it. I want to talk a little bit about Ireland. I was there.

• 16:01Alastair Campbell?

  Last week, it was really interesting because down in Dublin, they were talking about how Sinn Féin are getting stronger. And of course, the local, the Stormont elections in Northern Ireland, which happened on Thursday, Sinn Féin are leading in the polls. And every single interview that every DUP leader has been doing, they are refusing to say whether if Sinn Féin win, and therefore Michelle O'Neill becomes the First Minister, whether the DUP would appoint a Deputy First Minister. And this is incredibly, because that's the basis of the system, and the Good Friday Agreement, the whole thing is about power sharing, and therefore, you know, the two sides have to sort of, in a sense, form the

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  government together. And I think the cavalier lack of attention to this from the government, and indeed from the, from the public as well, I don't think we really understand just how kind of difficult this could be, and just how significant it could be if we head into yet another period of instability, possibly direct rule, continuing and so forth. And so it was just extraordinary to have both North and South this sense that Sinn Féin are in the lead, and both North and South, this is causing an awful lot of concern without anybody really understanding where it's going to go.

• 17:27Rory Stewart?

  And it is, it is strange, isn't it? I mean, I feel this, and you and I, I guess, the Scots feel this, who spend most of our time in England, how little consciousness there often is of what's going on in other parts of the United Kingdom. I mean, I'm really struck by how few people in, in England in particular are really focused on Northern Ireland, or really understand it at all. And that, you know, even what you've just explained, which you've explained very clearly, will not make much sense to many listeners who don't really keep up with this, right? Don't really understand that Sinn Féin is committed to a united Ireland very, very clearly. And that the first thing they will try to do, if they win this election and get that chief minister position,

• 18:09Rory Stewart?

  is they will try to make sure that they have a border poll, give people an opportunity to vote to reunify, which will effectively lop off a bit, if that happened, would lop off a bit of the United Kingdom. But also how raw and fragile the whole situation is, and how recent the troubles were. And how, if you go to Derry, London Derry, for example, you get a sense still of walls, of communities, of a very, very fragile settlement, all of which, of course, makes what Boris Johnson did. And this, I suppose, is the thing that is the most disturbing bit of his Brexit deal. The thing that make it much, much worse than what Theresa May was trying to do, is that by drawing this border down the Irish Sea and then try to deny that he's done so.

• 18:53Rory Stewart?

  So he's whipping up the unionists, making one promise to the Republic of Ireland, another promise to the unionists.

• 18:59Alastair Campbell?

  It's disgusting, it's disgusting. When I was in Dublin, I picked up the Irish Times, and I've got to say that I'm not a big, I don't read many newspapers, but if I am in Dublin, I always pick up the Irish Times. And Fintan O'Toole, who is a great man and a great writer, but he had an absolutely fantastic column. I'm just going to read you one. The headline was "Unionists Should See Through the Tories' Cynical Protocol Gambit", but he says, this is how he concluded it. "When the serial betrayer Johnson and his absurdist acolyte Rees-Mogg are wrapping themselves in the union flag, it is only to cover the increasingly exposed nakedness of their English nationalist project. Even the DUP can see that now. The sugar rush of Brexit is spent.

• 19:43Alastair Campbell?

  What remains are the chances who served it to power and who will risk anything, the stability of Northern Ireland, even the unity of the democracies in the face of Putin's aggression, to try to hold on to it." Absolutely searing and true.

• 19:56Rory Stewart?

  And true, and I also think that it was something that I felt very much during the Scottish independence referendum, which was suddenly realising for the first time, having taken it for granted, that everybody in the United Kingdom would feel a very strong sense of solidarity and that the English would be desperate for the Scots in particular in that case to remain. Realising that actually English nationalism is a very serious force, that there are many, many people in England who really don't care at all.

• 20:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:22Rory Stewart?

  About Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales, and can't really be bothered. And actually, I remember during the Brexit debate, when I would talk to members of the ERG, so the more hard Brexit faction in the House of Commons, and say, what you're doing is really going to threaten the Union, there was a sense of real indifference. In a real sense, if they want to leave, they can leave, right? We don't really care. And I think the other thing is, let's just, just, I'm, I'm still speaking to you from Scotland, I'm still in Scotland, and it's very striking going into the local elections here, how very, very strange Scottish politics is, and how quickly that's changed too, in ways that we can't imagine. I mean, it's almost impossible to remember that Scotland was the great Labour heartland.

• 21:01Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 21:02Rory Stewart?

  That Scot, you know, people used to say, very recently, you know, up to 2010, anyone studying politics at school would have been told that an independent Scotland would be the end of the Labour Party, because the only reason Labour Party had any chance, chance in British politics was because of their seats in Scotland. They had, so, and so as recently as 2015, they had forty-one seats in Scotland.

• 21:21Alastair Campbell?

  I know.

• 21:22Rory Stewart?

  And then, in a single day, they dropped to one.

• 21:25Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, let me tell you, when, when we, you know, twenty-five years on from New Labour, when we were first, I can remember a meeting with Donald Dure, who was the Scottish Secretary, became Scotland's first Minister, and Pat McFadden, who's now an MP and at the time was Tony's advisor on Scotland. And I can remember we had this meeting in the Cabinet Room, where we're talking about the Scotland Act and the, what electoral systems would be in play. And I can remember, the, the argument was basically, well, we're seen as so all-powerful in the UK Parliament, because we had that massive majority, we're seen as so all-powerful in Scotland, because we had virtually wiped out Scotland in terms of the electoral success,

• 22:10Alastair Campbell?

  that there has to be an electoral system where, in a sense, we, we, we, we can't have a situation where a single party has total power. That was us saying that. And of course, here we are, a generation later, and the SNP's got it and has had it for a while. Nobody would have believed that was possible back then.

• 22:26Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing, isn't it? But of course, for somebody like me who wants to create room for new parties and that wants to make sure that the Conservative and Labour parties don't have the stranglehold on politics and the space to come through, Scotland is a real example of how that happens. If you create an electoral system which has a bit of a proportional representation system in it, these smaller parties can establish themselves, get a foothold, and really, as you say in the case of Scotland, take off. Which is why I'm so sad that they've been going around, we're talking about this in local elections, but with the local mayor elections, taking away the possibility for these French-style electoral systems. London, I thought, was the most fascinating example of this. In London, if you were able to make it to, well, there'd be a runoff. If you

• 23:08Rory Stewart?

  didn't get 50%, that nobody got 50% of the vote in the first round, it meant there could be a runoff where the top two candidates could come through. That's what gave Macron his chance. That would have meant, in summer like London, that an independent candidate could come through. And yet, we've just had a situation, as we were complaining about a couple of weeks ago, that Conservative and Labour, members of the House of Lords, put through a bill back to a first-past-the-post system, closing down all the space for new parties to emerge.

• 23:33Alastair Campbell?

  Are you worried about this vote in Bristol, where they're actually going to vote on whether to keep the mayor?

• 23:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think it's heartbreaking. I mean, actually Bristol was one of the better examples. And Bristol's an amazing city. I mean, incredible success story, actually, Bristol, the way that it's turned turned itself around and it's become, I mean, and we've also, I think, discovered, one of the reasons we love Bristol is we've discovered the second-largest number of podcast listeners.

• 23:55Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, it's Edinburgh. Edinburgh. It's London, Edinburgh. And I think Bristol's about a fourth, but it's doing pretty well.

• 24:01Rory Stewart?

  All right, okay. Anyway, we love Bristol.

• 24:03Alastair Campbell?

  We love Bristol. We also love Aruba. We've got four listeners in Aruba.

• 24:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's Mogadishu. We've got a listener in Mogadishu. I'm very pleased with Mogadishu. No, I think local mayors are the secret. And I think one of the reasons why, at some level, French democracy can be more healthy at a local level is that you do have the mayor.

• 24:23Alastair Campbell?

  And they have power.

• 24:24Rory Stewart?

  Right down at the local town level, that you can go up to in the supermarket, poke in the chest. And there's that relationship, that direct accountability. That's one of the things that I think is partly the fault to the mayors themselves. One of the things that infuriated me equally about Boris Johnson and Sadiq Khan in London is they approach these jobs as though they're ceremonial jobs. One of their tricks is to go around saying, I don't really have any power. I remember. When I was campaigning against Sadiq Khan, I was in a big meeting with a bunch of students in a London university campus out in the East End. I said to them, what do you think about policing in London? And they're very depressed, said, do you feel safer than you did four years ago? No. Is your commute better than it was four years ago? No. Is your housing more affordable than it was four years ago? No, right? So I said, so you're going to vote for me, right? And they said, no, no, no, I'm going to vote for Sadiq Khan. So I said, why?

• 25:09Rory Stewart?

  And they said, well, he doesn't really have any power over these things, does he? You know, so you realise that actually these mayors, one of the problems is that they're getting a pass because people are voting for them as sort of symbolic mascots. They're not really holding them accountable for have you sorted out the signalling on the Piccadilly Line or not? And unless we get that, local democracy doesn't make any sense.

• 25:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that's why I, I, I, I hope, and I think actually the Bristol vote will be okay. Because I think enough people realise that actually it has done, it has served them pretty well. But we haven't, we, we were talking last week about, you know, real, real effective politics is when, when it's cemented for the future. And I remember Tony was obsessed with this idea about, you know, elected mayors in the big regions and the big cities, and then getting it to smaller communities as well. And it hasn't, despite London, despite Manchester, despite Liverpool, despite Andy Street in Birmingham, it hasn't really taken on that whole, on the consciousness. And, and, and I, I agree with you. I think until it does, we're stuck with this idea that Westminster is where all the power is, full of all these people that, that we don't really respect.

• 26:14Rory Stewart?

  And, and the one exception, again, to keep coming back to it, I guess because I'm in Scotland at the moment, is Scotland. In the local elections in Scotland, we've had turnouts up above forty percent. Whereas in elections for local mayors in many parts of the country, you're down in the twenties.

• 26:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 26:31Rory Stewart?

  So Scotland is one of the few places where really a very strong sense of regional identity, local government, even local council elections is still functioning. And I, I wonder why that is. I wonder why somehow in Scotland you can get turnouts twice as high.

• 26:45Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know what it's been historically, but I've always felt that, that, for example, when you go to Scotland, I find myself. Much plunging much more readily with complete strangers into fairly deep political conversation straight away in a way that you get less so. There's still, I think, in parts of England, a bit of, oh, you don't talk about religion, you don't talk about politics. Whereas I think the Scots maybe avoid the religion not enough sometimes, but the politics, they're straight in.

• 27:14Rory Stewart?

  Final one on Scotland, because obviously people are going to get fed up with us getting focused on it all the time. But I'm very interested, as we go into these local elections, I can see people campaigning, obviously, up and down the streets around here. And it's very interesting, the fact that there is a huge gaping space in Scottish politics, and I would say in British politics too, for what I would call a liberal unionist party. I think you could eat the SNP up for breakfast if you were able to present yourself as a liberal unionist.

• 27:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, go on then.

• 27:45Rory Stewart?

  The Conservative.

• 27:46Alastair Campbell?

  That's your new party, Rory. Get on with it. Get these young people that Simon wants to persuade and get them, form it.

• 27:53Rory Stewart?

  Because I think there's really something in it. Because I think that people in Scotland vote for the Conservatives, slightly holding their nose. They don't want to vote for a right wing Conservative party, but they don't want another independence referendum. They're fed up with what the SNP is doing by perpetually playing the nationalist card. But if you could provide a party that was genuinely felt liberal and progressive as well as unionist, I think you'd do very well. I also think you could pick up an enormous number of votes in southern England. I think there's a huge space. And that's partly because Labour is much too focused on trying to take back the Red Wall, much too focused on trying to beat Boris Johnson up in the north of England. The whole debate has focused on those communities.

• 28:38Rory Stewart?

  The space now.

• 28:40Alastair Campbell?

  I also think, I mean, I didn't hear Keir Starmer on the Today Programme because I was waiting for Boris Johnson to be late on Good Morning Britain. He was 15 minutes late and. Susanna Reid gave him a pretty good going over. But I think Labour underestimate how much in the by being so vocal about saying we're going after these seats in the North without fully understanding, I think, you know, what that means is actually I meet so many people in the South who are sort of saying, well, I would vote for Labour, but I just can't buy this idea that they're saying, oh, the Brexit debate is over, or I can't buy this idea that they're saying it's all about the North, or I can't buy this idea that there's, you know, there's no sense that there are real massive economic and social challenges in the South as well.

• 29:26Rory Stewart?

  Can I challenge you just before we go to the break? Look, you and I both feel very, very strongly about Brexit, and I know you were passionately involved in that campaign. But one listener got in touch with me and said, could you ask Alastair, honestly speaking, if he was Keir Starmer's director of communications, whether he wouldn't advise him to say the Brexit debate is over and let's move on?

• 29:48Alastair Campbell?

  I wouldn't, and I'll tell you why. I wouldn't advise him to say, we're going back into the European Union. I wouldn't advise that, even though that's what I might want. But I think in the way they're handling it is they're sort of parking an elephant in the corner of the room. What they should at the very least be doing is calling out vociferously where we talked about Northern Ireland. What's happening in Northern Ireland is a direct consequence of the lies that Johnson told over the Brexit deal. Okay. What's happening in Kent at the moment? I was talking to somebody who's campaigning in Kent at the moment and who was saying that the anger that there is amongst Kent farmers and amongst Kent business over the fact that this is now happening on their doorstep.

• 30:32Alastair Campbell?

  And yes, some of them voted for it, but that's because they were told a pack of lies. Likewise, some of the stuff that we're seeing about the impact upon our trade from Brexit, now Labour should be calling that out. And I think they're not calling it out because they're worried that the Tories are going to say all they care about is going back in the European Union. The Tories are saying that anyway. They said that in that ridiculous Oliver Dowden letter that he wrote to Keir Starmer, demanding an explanation for standing down certain candidates in Liberal Democrat areas. They're going to lie about it anyway. So tell the truth about what is happening on Brexit. That's what I would say to Keir, and I do say that.

• 31:09Rory Stewart?

  Right, off to the break.

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• 33:00Rory Stewart?

  So, welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. And one of the things that's happening is that we are bizarrely at the 25th anniversary of New Labour coming in. At this extraordinary moment. And I remember, actually, for that whole period from 97 onwards. I'm sorry, I apologise. I'm now back in Scotland with some strange banging clock.

• 33:26Alastair Campbell?

  I like your clock.

• 33:27Rory Stewart?

  Maybe it's there to show the 25th anniversary of Labour coming in. But I was thinking that throughout that period, that Labour is now permanently in. The majorities that Labour had achieved then were so enormous that the Conservative Party seriously believed through the late 90s, early 2000s, that it would be almost impossible for them to come back in. And you remember, David Cameron, even in 2010, barely scraped it. He only just got in with this coalition with the Lib Dems and it was still touch and go whether he'd be able to do it. And now, of course, we're back in a world where, instead of it feeling as though Labour's the natural party of government, we're now back in a world where we feel that Tony Blair in that whole period was a sort of strange exception and that somehow we live in a country which is very dominated by Conservative government.

• 34:10Rory Stewart?

  So how do you feel, thinking back 25 years? Because you were such a central part of that whole success.

• 34:15Alastair Campbell?

  I feel incredibly proud of what we did, but really, really sad that we're in the state that we're in now, where a government that I think is so rank and so useless and so corrupt and all the things that we know, and yet, as you say, is not automatically being written off in a way that I think it should be. Because the Labour Party has gone through this sort of long journey of opposition and we're not seen yet as the kind of the obvious, natural thing to happen to the country. Now, I think it can come, but I don't think they're there yet. And I think one of the things that I was quite pleased about this week, and it's ridiculous in a way,

• 34:57Alastair Campbell?

  that it should even have been a thing, but the fact that the Labour Party asked Tony Blair to front a video for the Labour Party, for the local elections campaign, to remind people what the sort of things that Labour empowered do. Because we've now had a generation grow up, knowing a Labour government and then knowing the sort of denigration of the Labour government by, not just by the media and the Tories, but by large parts of the Labour Party as well.

• 35:22Rory Stewart?

  How did it feel, Alastair, in, let's say, 87, when people were beginning to think about how do we rebuild the Labour Party? How do we take out the Conservatives? A moment when Mrs Thatcher presumably felt very, very dominant, when the Tories had big majorities in power. What was your analysis then, if you were sitting down with friends and think, okay, in the next 10 years, we want to get in a position, we've got to win, what were your main conclusions on what you needed to do to beat the Conservatives?

• 35:48Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, to modernise a lot faster and to change a lot faster than was happening. But I'll tell you, I can remember when you said that, what did it feel like back then? I can remember on the morning after the 92 election, I was a journalist on The Mirror, I'd been covering Neil Kinnock's campaign, John Major wins, and I can remember being on the College Green, being interviewed by BBC Breakfast News, and I was with Peter Jenkins, the, who's now dead, the commentator on The Guardian and The Independent. He said, I'll never forget this, he said, if Labour cannot win in these circumstances, then I think we may have to reach the conclusion that Labour will never be in power again.

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  Never forget that. And of course, five years ago, five years later, we were elected with this massive landslide. Now, that says, that's always given me a little bit of hope, but I think if you look at what we did in that period, Neil Kinnock had laid the foundations, John Smith sort of, you know, carried it on, but then I think Tony becoming leader really accelerated the process. And basically, it was quite simple, it was saying, look, you're not electing us because you don't think that we're fit for power, we've got to show you by changing the party that we are, and then we'll set out the plans to change the country. And that was the strategy.

• 37:08Rory Stewart?

  And what were the changes that the public needed to see before they were ready to vote for Labour? I mean, we talk about modernisation in very generally, but specifically, what was it that was putting off voters about Labour in 92?

• 37:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think they had to, they had to, I think they did see immediately in Tony, somebody that they could sort of identify with, and they could say, that guy looks like he could be Prime Minister, and he's saying the things that I want to hear about the state of the country. So he was very optimistic, he was very optimistic about the future. Yes, we were attacking the Tories, yes, we were saying they were spent, et cetera, but there was always This is why there's an alternative. Then I think the the the kind of patriotic message, the strong on defence, the that was incredibly important. And I think that was something that Jeremy Corbyn never got over as leader of the Labour Party. I think people talk about the Red Wall and Brexit. A lot of it in places up in the north of England was really about thinking, I'm not sure this guy's really on Britain's side.

• 38:00Rory Stewart?

  But am I right in saying, I said, that that one of the reasons why that was tough, and why maybe Michael Foot wasn't very good at that, and Jeremy Corbyn wasn't very good at that, is that the Labour Party itself is quite a complicated beast and is quite split on this. There are people within the Labour Party who are not very comfortable with, you know, big patriotic, strong on defence messages. And then there's another part of the Labour Party vote that really want to hear that stuff, and that there's a culture war even within the Labour Party around these issues.

• 38:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, there is certainly that those those different debates going on. And we had the same on the economy. I think Gordon's approach on the economy and, you know, saying that we're going to stick to these tough spending rules and taxes no longer to be worn as a kind of left wing virtue badge. These were really important changes. I think also don't underestimate tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. We were seen as being all about the causes of crime, but tough on crime was an important message. These were all, but what they spoke to and what they built was a picture of this is what Labour in government would look like. And then, of course, to win a second and a third election, you have to follow through on that. That's why I think Johnson is in such a weak position, because he hasn't actually delivered a lot of the things he said he would.

• 39:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's one of the amazing things, isn't it? I caught myself making a mistake. I said he would come out of the may election saying, you know, another three years. Of course, it's only another two years.

• 39:16Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly.

• 39:17Rory Stewart?

  And it's incredible to think that he's been in three years.

• 39:20Alastair Campbell?

  When they had the thousand day, we had a thousand days of Johnson.

• 39:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Alastair Campbell?

  And all the kind of the renter quotes were sent out to give the big, the big what he's done. And it was, we've got Brexit done, arguable. We're leading the world on Ukraine, arguable. And we've got the fastest rollout of the vaccine in the world. Not true. Okay? If I go back to what we did in the first thousand days, Bank of England dependence, minimum wage, sure start, big spending on schools and hospitals, Northern Ireland, Good Friday Agreement, war in Kosovo, I could go on and on and on and on. There's no comparison.

• 39:53Rory Stewart?

  It's so amazing, isn't it? I mean, the big, I mean, one of the things that's interesting about local elections, of course, is that people are talking more about politics here. I had a fascinating conversation with a lady about Boris Johnson, and I was on my normal rant against him. And I suddenly saw what his, a lot of what his trick is. This was a very moderate, thoughtful, intelligent woman. But what she said about Boris Johnson completely appalled me. She began by saying, "Well, you see, Rory, you know, we all, we all slightly broke the Covid rules, didn't we? And, you know, so we've got to be forgiving about that." And I said, "No, the guy's the Prime Minister. He made a formal statement in Parliament. He lied. He broke the ministerial code. It's not just about the cake, right?

• 40:36Rory Stewart?

  It's about the lies he told, right?" That didn't really work with her. Then she said, "Well, you've got to be Christian. You've got to forgive people. You know, we all have flaws." And anyway, he did pretty well in Covid, didn't he? And I said, "No, it's catastrophic, you know, one of the worst death rates, one of the worst combinations of death rate and poor economic performance anywhere in the world around Covid." She said, "Well, yeah, okay, but I mean, he got Brexit done, didn't he?" And I said, "Well, only by, you know, putting a border down the Irish Sea." So eventually I say, "What are the conditions under which you actually would get rid of this guy? What are the conditions under which you'd imagine he'd resign?" And she said, "Well, not on the basis of his personal morality, but just, you know, if he wasn't very competent, if he wasn't doing a good job as a Prime

• 41:19Rory Stewart?

  Minister." And I said, "But he's not competent. He's not doing a good job as a Prime Minister." And part of that is, as you say, that over three years, he's had the immense power of Downing Street. I mean, not just the immense power, the immense power of an incredible majority. I mean, when I was in government with David Cameron, Theresa May, we would have killed for a majority of eighty.

• 41:40Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 41:41Rory Stewart?

  Right, half the things we were trying to do, we couldn't do. Initially, we were in coalition and then we had these tiny, thin majorities and obviously under Theresa May, a minority.

• 41:50Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, don't underestimate, do not underestimate how much it helps him to have newspapers like the Daily Mail, which when the Partygate stuff was raging, were saying, don't they know there's a war on? Why are we talking about this? And now has gone six days on a row, in a row, talking about Keir Starmer having a beer in Durham. Or the Daily Express, which is honestly, it's not even a pamphlet for the Tory party anymore. It's just like, whatever the line of the day is from number ten, that's what they stick on the front, Boris this and Boris that. And don't underestimate either the impact of that on the way that our broadcast media shapes the debate. And don't underestimate the impact of that on a Labour Party that I think has just become too cowed by it.

• 42:32Alastair Campbell?

  They should be out there the whole time. Brexit's gone badly, his Covid handling was useless. Don't talk to me about Ukraine when you can't get Ukrainian refugees to come in. And what's more, Putin's mates has bought your bloody party for you. But there's, the messaging is, and, and, you know, I had a message just before we, we, we started recording, I had a message from, I won't drop him in it, but it's quite a prominent BBC journalist who said to me that he'd just listened to Keir Starmer on the Today Programme and says, you know, what was the main point?

• 43:03Rory Stewart?

  I know.

• 43:04Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I didn't listen to the interview, so I don't know whether that's unfair or not.

• 43:07Rory Stewart?

  No, but I, I couldn't agree more. And I was talking to a Conservative MP recently who's just astonished that Labour is not landing more blows. He said that if he'd been in their position, he would have just been saying, again and again and again, you have completely screwed up this question of the Northern Irish border by putting this border on the Irish Sea. You have totally screwed up Brexit, you screwed up Covid. Why are you not saying this week in, week out? Right. Okay. We had, we, we had over 700 questions and we haven't even begun on them. So let me.

• 43:38Alastair Campbell?

  I know. Well, I've asked a couple, I've tried to weave a couple in Rory, but you've just been, you know, dragging us back to the past. I mean, you know, I don't want to talk about the future.

• 43:44Rory Stewart?

  Gone, gone. All right. Let's, let's, let's, let's try this. Ian Andrews, with Parliament broken and a den of iniquity, what three things would we do to change it?

• 43:52Alastair Campbell?

  Wow. Well, there was another one. I saw a question, which was whether whether we thought that we should you should ban alcohol in the House of Commons. Um. Now, I don't know about that. And and there were quite a few questions as well about the whole. Somebody sent me the the. They'd been in the stranger's bar and they sent me the menu and were asking why was it so cheap? And of course, it's not subsidised, but it's allowed to run at a loss. So MPs and their staff do get cheaper booze. I don't know. I mean, I look, there was a drinking culture when I was there as a journalist, but I didn't notice it. Later. So I don't know whether it had changed. It was Lynn. Why does Parliament have a bar? It has lots of bars, Lynn. And is it time to call last orders once and for all? So I don't know about I I think I actually think the biggest change you could make.

• 44:36Alastair Campbell?

  You don't need to make a change because it's already there in the ministerial code. It's the thing about. Not telling the truth. I think that's the first thing you've got to fix. I think the second thing that that maybe we should do. Uh, I'm going to get on to hobby horse here. There was another great question, Rory. If we can have quotas for women candidates, why can't we have quotas for state school candidates? That would be a great one. Particularly in your former party. Um. Anyway, you you've been in Parliament. I haven't as an MP, so you give give me your three.

• 45:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, I I think first one is the debate in the chambers is a disgrace. I mean, obviously, it was awful that Neil Parish was looking at porn in the chamber. But actually, it's also pretty awful that they spend their whole time looking at their phones and iPads anyway, when they're supposed to be listening to the debate. And what on earth do they think they're doing? It's incredibly rude. It's incredibly disrespectful.

• 45:28Alastair Campbell?

  They will tweet. They will tweet their own contributions as soon as they made them.

• 45:31Rory Stewart?

  That it's extraordinary. They it's not a debate at all. I mean, the centre of the whole thing is a debating chamber that doesn't work as a debating chamber. People stand up, they're increasingly reading their speeches. And as soon as they've done that a little bit, they sit down and start tweeting out what they said and ignore everything that everybody else said. There's no real cut and thrust. There's no real debate.

• 45:51Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think this Scottish Parliament works better by dint of its design? Where all of the parties are actually facing the chair as opposed to facing each other?

• 45:59Rory Stewart?

  No, I quite like the standoff if it produced a debate. I quite like the, I mean, I think there's something quite interesting about the British system because it's in our law courts too, isn't it? Where we have defence and prosecution and you give the public a chance to hear both sides of the argument. I quite like that.

• 46:14Alastair Campbell?

  But you're facing the judge, you're not facing each other. The parliament, our parliament is set up with the dispatch boxes two swords lengths to stop people from fighting. The symbolic is about not fighting, it's about using words. But have we not moved beyond it? Is that what these questions are about?

• 46:30Rory Stewart?

  No, I think we should, I think we're in a sense in the worst of all worlds. I think Scottish Parliament's pretty boring too, but the fundamental problem is that people are not putting the energy in. I remember when I first turned up as an MP, I'd put days into writing my speeches. I'd stand up thinking this is my great opportunity and of course, the whole place is completely empty. Could be an enormous subject, right? Afghanistan, for example. And there would be sort of 20 or 30 people in the chamber and the only person who's watching it is your mum. So pretty soon you begin to lose the energy and then you look at Prime Minister's questions. What are the actual questions that people ask the Prime Minister? They're usually things like, you know, will the Prime Minister congratulate, yeah, or congratulate Burnley Football Club on their amazing result last weekend, right? So it's, it's

• 47:14Alastair Campbell?

  It was amazing, by the way, right? It was one of the great comebacks in history.

• 47:21Rory Stewart?

  So I think first thing I'd do is I'd really say this is a debating chamber of a serious country and we're going to have serious debates and that's going to mean probably less time in the chamber, but when you're in the chamber, you're going to do it properly. I think the second thing that I sort out is I think the relationship between backbench MPs and ministers is completely bewildering. Nobody understands it. How can it be true that being a backbench MP is a full-time job if you're then made a minister and you're given another full-time job on top of it? Can't be true, can it?

• 47:50Alastair Campbell?

  Would you take, would you take, would you take more ministers from outside, like the French and the Americans?

• 47:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, all the Americans, yeah, yeah. I think it's a completely bizarre that when the Americans have Defence Secretaries who are distinguished Defence Academics and generals, we are putting out people like Gavin Williamson, who were the best one in the world, was not a Defence Expert. And it's, it's pretty strange that, right? Why, why do we have this culture of amateurism? And I don't, I don't want to be, don't want to be mean, but there was some Labour Defence Ministers too, who were not great, great experts on Defence. It's something that all these parties are doing all the time and they're doing it to manage different factions of parties. They're not choosing people. On the basis of their skills. Right, let's get on to another question, because I can rant about this forever. What are your thoughts? Ah, that's a good one for you, Alastair. What are your thoughts on Wimbledon's decision not to invite Russian and Belarusian players to

• 48:35Rory Stewart?

  championships this year? Is it fair? And do you think it will be an effective sanction? From Liz. Sorry, that was from Liz.

• 48:42Alastair Campbell?

  I saw Andy Murray was against it, although he did recognise that he could sort of see both sides of the argument. I actually think we're in a situation with regard to Russia. I felt this right from the word go, for example, about the World Cup, that if we are talking about using every lever at our disposal to signal the isolation of Russia, then I think I'm afraid that this sort of thing has to happen. I think it's more, this one's more difficult because they're, you talk about individuals, I think it's easier to ban federations and teams, but you're talking about individuals here. And the thing I didn't like about the way it was done was that Wimbledon were basically saying, I think I'm right on this, that they

• 49:23Alastair Campbell?

  were saying that they'd allow them in if they made a statement condemning the Russian aggression. Well, that puts them at a certain risk, I think. And I say that having just watched the Navalny film, which I recommend to everybody because it's an extraordinary film. And I mean, my God, you know, not just him, but the people who work with him as well, you know, I'd love to think I would have that level of courage if we did carry on on the road that we're on to a sort of, you know, elective dictatorship.

• 49:49Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing, isn't it? Extraordinary man. So actually, one of the things we've been doing is we've been answering questions without giving people credit. So the voting system and anachronistic design of the House of Commons, two swords lengths apart from the enemy, was a question from Ian Hawkins, which we dealt with. So thank you, Ian, for that question. We've had some good questions from Heather on the potential consequence to vote in Northern Ireland, although we didn't give Heather enough credit. So let's give Gareth Williams some credit for the question for you, Alastair. If you could swap Johnson out for any other current world leader, who would it be and why?

• 50:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I wrote about this in the New European last week, Jürgen Klopp.

• 50:28Rory Stewart?

  That is not a current world leader.

• 50:29Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he sort of is, but no, I think, oh God, that's quite tricky. I mean, possibly Jacinda Ardern.

• 50:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 50:38Alastair Campbell?

  I think she's now, I know New Zealand is a much smaller country and it's a much, it's the other end of the world, but I, I do think she's got something remarkable about her as, as a leader. And you know, she worked for us in number 10. She, she was part of the, was she in the policy unit or the delivery unit? I can't remember, but she was, she was around in number 10 for a while.

• 50:58Rory Stewart?

  Wow.

• 50:58Alastair Campbell?

  So I'd go, I'd go for Jacinda, what about you?

• 51:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I, obviously you're going to tell me this is not a current world leader. I really admired Angela Merkel. I thought she was extraordinary. I thought she represented a complete alternative to populist politics that I hadn't seen anywhere else in the world, and she did it with such grace and such intelligence and actually with such immense success.

• 51:21Alastair Campbell?

  And do you, do you, you don't feel that the, where we are with Russia and particularly the approach that she took to Nord Stream two and trying to manage Putin rather than challenge him, you don't think that's kind of marked her down irreparably?

• 51:35Rory Stewart?

  I think it probably has marked her down. It was a strategic call that she got wrong. It's a big call. And it's, it's always the same call, isn't it? The call is, do you try to create links with these countries? Do you try to create the incentives for peace? Or do you take the pessimistic view and confront them? And there's never actually an answer to that. I mean, we, we, when we think back to the Second World War, obviously it seems very straightforward. There were the bad guys called the appeasers and then there was this good guy called Churchill who called it out. But of course, it's, it's very, very difficult, right? In all these things to get this balance right. And I think if we had a bit more time on Ukraine, even today, there was quite a, an

• 52:17Rory Stewart?

  interesting article, I thought, which, which I know you've read too, by Matthew Paris, where he is in the Times just two days ago, where he is saying that he's worried that Ben Wallace and Liz Truss are, for the sake of their own leadership ambitions, bidding up the rhetoric against Putin to a very dangerous unsustainable level. And he suspects, I mean, admittedly, Matthew's a bit of a peacenak at the best of times. And I, I, I'm not sure I always trust his instincts on this stuff, but his instincts are, we're beginning to settle into more of a stalemate that Putin is going to be hunkering down in eastern Ukraine. He's not going anywhere. Soon he's not likely now to be advancing on Kiev. And so the question is, how does one get towards thinking about what the next

• 53:02Rory Stewart?

  three, five, seven years looks like with Putin sitting in eastern Ukraine? And what what's the point of keeping ratcheting up the rhetoric? What are people actually trying to achieve apart from feeling good about themselves?

• 53:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think I think that I've worried right from the word go that we have very short attention spans, people get bored and moved on. So the only thing I could say in their defence is that they're trying to keep this front of mind and keep people engaged and so forth. But I I do agree that it was a, I think we're seeing, this is what happens when you have a fundamentally weakened prime minister, is that with Sunak pretty much knocked out the game, the others are starting to use everything as a kind of shadow leadership election, and it's pretty, it's pretty nauseating. I think Johnson's doing the same. I mean, let's be frank, you know, I don't know what talks went on with Zelensky to get Johnson to be addressing the Ukrainian parliament two days before our local elections, but I'm sure it was a very big part of Johnson's thinking. It won't just have been about Ukraine.

• 54:00Alastair Campbell?

  And that's what happens. I mean, the one thing I'll say about when Tony Blair was in charge is that even with all the difficulties with Gordon from time to time, Tony was in charge and that that that gave you a strength and it gave the government a strength. There's the minute that you have a prime minister who is seen to be weakened and where people are starting to think beyond his tenure, which the Tories are, every Tory I talked to says it's a matter of of when, not if. Now, Johnson doesn't believe that, but once all the Tories do, then that becomes, that becomes true. There was another question, by the way, which leader in history, Rory, would you like to work for?

• 54:35Rory Stewart?

  I would have liked to work for Gladstone. I'm a, I'm a huge admirer of Gladstone. I, I love his kind of grim, humorless, lengthy speeches. I love the fact that he became more radical as he got older. You remember when he was the-

• 54:48Alastair Campbell?

  Would you have drafted his grim, humorless speeches for him?

• 54:51Rory Stewart?

  I maybe tried to lighten them up a bit, but the thing I love about Gladstone, I don't know whether people remember, he started as a very rigid Tory. He started defending slavery in the House of Commons back as a young man, came in in his early twenties. Very embarrassing. He'd, um, his dad was a big slave owner out of Liverpool. And he kept saying, you know, conditions in these, um, in the Caribbean are very, very good and people are looked after very well. And he kept writing to his dad saying, you know, I keep saying this in the House of Commons and you keep telling me how great conditions are. So I, I'd like to just pay a little trip to the Caribbean. So I can, you know, report back with a little bit more. At which point his father and all his father's friends start saying, I, I wouldn't really suggest, you know, you really visit the Caribbean.

• 55:35Rory Stewart?

  And it becomes more and more clear, obviously, that conditions are horrifying and that Gladstone has been defending, you know, one of the great crimes of all time. But very unusually, whereas most people get more conservative as they get older, he gets more and more radical. So that by the time he's, he's in his seventies, early eighties, he is pushing for home rule in Ireland. And had he got that through, I think there's a pretty good chance that all the horror of the 20th century in Ireland could have been avoided.

• 56:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you've got somebody, that is a view, I think, that is shared by Tony Blair, because he read obsessively about Gladstone and Northern Ireland when we were doing the Good Friday Agreement. And that was from Tim Jones, that question.

• 56:14Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And what's, what's your answer on that? Is there a historical leader that you would mind?

• 56:18Alastair Campbell?

  It would be Lincoln, I think. I think it would be Lincoln. He was also made grim speeches and, uh, but I think, I think Lincoln is one of the most extraordinary human beings. And I also love the fact that he was a, he was a major depressive. One of the, one of the, my favorite books in any book ever written about Lincoln was from his legal partner, who was a guy called William Harndon. And he's, he started a chapter with these words, melancholy dripped from him with every step that he took.

• 56:46Rory Stewart?

  I'm not sure that's, not sure that's necessarily true of you. I don't know.

• 56:49Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, I, I'm not always like that. But apparently Lincoln was always very, very but, but so I think, I think it'd be, um, I think it would be Lincoln.

• 56:58Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Well, here's, here's a last one for you, just to, just in case people are listening to, to this late at night. And thank you for over 700 questions. And I'm glad we've got through quite a lot of them. Rachel here. Um, she says to me, Rory, I was interested to hear about your Boris dreams during the Brexit debates. I dreamt about David Gork, but he had a wooden leg like Long John Silver, Alastair, she says. What has been your strangest political dream or nightmare?

• 57:25Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. I, well, look, I had a period when I was seeing my. Psychiatrist more regularly than I am at the moment, because I'm in quite good shape at the moment. There was a period when I used to record my dreams as soon as I woke up and send them to him.

• 57:39Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 57:40Alastair Campbell?

  And I I've so I've got, I promised the world I will not publish this, but I've got about 300,000 words worth of my dreams locked away. And anyway, all I can say is that I had this this dream where it's very hard to describe, but David, my psychiatrist, he started our session by saying, well, I've seen some interesting dreams of my time, but this one is the first I've ever had. A serving prime minister, which was which was Tony Blair, a serving chancellor, which was Gordon Brown, Nelson Mandela, the Queen and Arsène Wenger.

• 58:19Alastair Campbell?

  And what happened was that I was trying to stop Tony and Blair, Tony and Gordon attack each other with axes.

• 58:28Rory Stewart?

  I wonder where that was coming from.

• 58:30Alastair Campbell?

  And I was and as I was doing so, I was finding that my own limbs were being cut. And I said, I don't know what Arsène Wenger was doing there, but he was sort of, he was helping me.

• 58:42Rory Stewart?

  I'm terrified that we're getting to the 10 o'clock when my horrible Scottish clock is going to hit its 10 10 beats. But I I I want to, yeah, understand finally on that dream. Why are you running Jürgen Klopp to be a great politician and not Arsène Wenger, who is, I think, obviously the man who should be going at high political office?

• 59:02Alastair Campbell?

  Because Arsène Wenger, who I actually know Arsène Wenger much better. I've never met Klopp. I know Wenger. I guess it's age, really. Klopp's still reasonably young. I think, listen, I think Wenger, by the way, is very interested in politics and I think would be an extraordinary. And in a way, he is doing politics because he's now working for FIFA, which is one of the most political organisations in the world. There's one question you Rory, and by the way, I think next week we should try and get through more questions by having very, very, very short answers. And there's a very short answer you can give to this one. It's from Apple and Bramble at Apple and Bramble. Rory talked about porridge last week. How does he take his porridge?

• 59:41Rory Stewart?

  So I have my porridge with salt. I have it every morning. And the secret, it's not a very short answer. Secret is to boil the water first, put in the porridge clockwise. And then when you've when you've got it to the stage you want, put a lid on it, leave it for two minutes before you take it off and eat it. And on that. Thank you very much for listening to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell, and there's the clock.

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