99. Question Time: Missing refugees, the best type of MPs, and are universities left wing?

Are academics generally left-leaning? Should the theatrical nature of PMQs be reformed? What makes an MP 'talented'? Listen to hear these questions answered, plus positive stories about politicians, cultural recommendations, what makes an MP 'talented', and the relevance of vocational education. Leading: Have you heard this week's episode of Leading, where Alastair and Rory speak to one of Rory's political heroes, New Labour politician Alan Milburn, on how to save the NHS. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen 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 Creve, and of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alastair Campbell. Very good. Where do you want to start? Well, okay, I think this is a good one to start with Kevin Montgomery, because this is something I think you've been tweeting about. Babas, the ex-prime minister of the Czech Republic, has played a nasty and populist campaign. But it looks as though he's been beaten by Pavel, an ex-NATO general. Is this a good result for Europe, Alastair? I think it is. We talked about this.

• 2:10Alastair Campbell?

  A few weeks ago, he's won and he's won convincingly. And I think it is, um, Babas is the arch populist. Pavel, we shall see, but certainly he was the one projecting himself as a, you know, serious, understanding the challenges, pretty sound on Ukraine, uh, pretty sound on Europe. So yeah, good, good result, I would say.

• 2:30Rory Stewart?

  It's terrific, isn't it? And, and Roma, we, we raised it in the podcast a few weeks ago because the key question had been initially around the prime minister position where Babas had been kicked out. And then he tried to do a, a fight back for this president position. He's been beaten there too. So that definitely, definitely a good, good direction.

• 2:45Alastair Campbell?

  Here's a historical, historical question. Well, historical related today. Claire Muller, in nineteen twenty-three.

• 2:52Rory Stewart?

  Pliney, yeah.

• 2:53Alastair Campbell?

  Shropshire woman, Eglantine Jebb, drafted the statement of children's human rights that evolved into the UN CRC.

• 3:02Rory Stewart?

  Pliney.

• 3:02Alastair Campbell?

  One hundred years later, two hundred unaccompanied asylum-seeking children have disappeared from Home Office-commissioned hotels here in Britain. Where is the outrage? What is being done? Have you been following this one?

• 3:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, no, I have. But firstly, I didn't know that a Shropshire woman had been at the heart of this. I'm afraid I have, from a very American perspective, always given the credit to Eleanor Roosevelt.

• 3:24Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Well, listen, if Claire Muller is telling us the truth, Eglantine Jebb is your man.

• 3:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, tell us a little bit about the story for this, as.

• 3:31Alastair Campbell?

  I, I first was aware of this, not through the media, not through anything really. I didn't have any sense of it until I saw a speech. We talk sometimes about you don't see any good speeches in parliament. Peter Kyle, Brighton MP, Labour MP, Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary.

• 3:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 3:48Alastair Campbell?

  He did a really, really powerful, passionate speech about this. And essentially was asking that same question from Claire, you know, what is being done? There is an inaction. So what's happened is that lots of asylum seekers have been. Put into hotels. And as you and I were discussing yesterday, Rory, a lot of the overseas development budget now is actually spent on housing people in hotels within the UK. And there appears to be a pretty major trafficking operation going on. So lots of these young men in particular, but they are minors, have literally disappeared.

• 4:25Rory Stewart?

  And presumably they've disappeared because they want to go and get work, or they, do we know what's happening?

• 4:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there appears to be very little action from the government side in terms of trying to find them or find out what's happened. But the assumption is that they've been, they've been sort of, you know, assumed into organised crime or into trafficking. So it's truly horrific. And the question there from Claire, where is the outrage? I do think it says something truly awful about us as a country, that we don't seem to care very much. And I must admit, when I watched Suella Braverman and that guy Gullis, I mean, he is an education minister, just beyond belief to me. He's the guy who, when this was raised in Parliament, shouted across the chamber, well, they shouldn't have come here in the first place, should they?

• 5:11Rory Stewart?

  And he's now had to issue a massive apology, hasn't he?

• 5:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you say, I don't think it is an apology. I think apparently that's a fake account, Rory.

• 5:17Rory Stewart?

  Oh, really?

• 5:18Alastair Campbell?

  Apparently it's a fake account apologising on his behalf.

• 5:22Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  I don't believe he has. But both of them, him and Braverman, both posing the other day in front of Holocaust Educational Trust posters, and looking all sort of pious and talking about, you know, we must never let this stain on humanity return. But, you know, I'm not remotely equating this with the Holocaust, but I am saying that there is something truly awful that we seem as a country, and certainly as a government, genuinely not to care about the fact that asylum seekers have been kidnapped from hotels that are meant to be under the control of the British government.

• 5:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 5:57Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, we get a lot of love, Rory, for our film and book recommendations. I don't know if you've seen The Swimmers, but I watched The Swimmers the other night.

• 6:06Rory Stewart?

  Oh, good. Tell us about that.

• 6:07Alastair Campbell?

  It's incredible. It's a true story about two Syrian young women who left Syria when it really, really, really got dangerous. The film of their journey across the sea, ending up in Lesbos and then eventually walking to Germany and going through some absolute horrors, and I won't do spoiler alert as I sometimes do, but the the young woman, the better of the two in terms of swimming, she ends up swimming in the Olympics. And it's a true story. But I really, really, really do hope that somebody puts it in front of Swallow Braverman and all those who demonize refugees. When you watch the film of the crossing that these girls went through, and

• 6:50Alastair Campbell?

  okay, it's a movie, but they've written books and they've told the story and this is, you know. So when we think about these people coming across in boats, I mean, I think this should be part of all of us, Home Secretaries and Prime Ministers included, who understand the humanity of those people. And by the way, listeners, if you want to get links to these wonderful cultural references that we make, we are sending out this weekly newsletter that seems to be going down well with our trip members.

• 7:18Rory Stewart?

  I've got a small cultural reference. I've been reading a book this week by someone called Thomas Ashbridge, and it's called The Greatest Knight. And it's about this incredible figure called William Marshall, who was the greatest knight in medieval England. His story is mind blowing. He essentially was the man who helped negotiate Magna Carta and published it and pushed it out there. He saved England from becoming a colony of France in the early 13th century. He put his life on the line defending four kings once one after another, and finally saved the nine year old Henry the Third. And he did it all with the most incredible kind of sense of loyalty, honour, chivalry. So I would recommend everybody, please, The Greatest Knight by Thomas Ashbridge.

• 8:00Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well, I don't know whether this is, I'm reading Michel Barnier's Secret Brexit Diary.

• 8:08Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good.

• 8:09Alastair Campbell?

  Call me obsessed.

• 8:10Rory Stewart?

  Do you think we could interview him, Alison?

• 8:12Alastair Campbell?

  I think I think that might might even be on the cards and might even be in the diary very, very soon, Rory. That's why I'm reading it.

• 8:18Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 8:19Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one for you. And this comes, did this come from Discord? That's the other thing members get is the Discord debate, which I've been, you haven't dipped in yet, have you? I've been Dipping in and out.

• 8:27Rory Stewart?

  I can see you in the Discord debate. I must get in there.

• 8:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So, Tim, when you leave government, does the work find you or do you have to look hard to find it? I assume it's the former. And if so, how do you decide what to take morally, partially, politically, et cetera?

• 8:42Rory Stewart?

  Well, the answer, I think, is that it's actually much tougher for ex-MPs to get jobs than people realise, partly because, well, there are a number of changes. One of them is that back in the day, in the sixties and seventies, they traditionally went on to run nationalised industries because the governments controlled those industries. They could easily push ex-conservative Labour MPs into run British Rail or run British Gas or whatever else they were doing, the Coal Board. But the second thing is, of course, the reputation of MPs has collapsed. So it's no longer a big thing for boards to want to have ex-MPs with their knighthoods on their board. That was a thing, I think, in the seventies and eighties. It's not really now. Doesn't help you if you're running a big company to have an MP on your board.

• 9:24Rory Stewart?

  So many of my former colleagues are actually in trouble. I remember the guy who I took over from in Defra making a joke, which wasn't really a joke, that he was going to be going back to stacking the shelves at Tesco's when he lost his job.

• 9:36Alastair Campbell?

  Who was that?

• 9:37Rory Stewart?

  He was called Dan and he was the Liberal MP down in Cornwall who'd lost his seat. I don't know whether he quite did that, but before he'd gone into politics, he'd been working in the Cornish Plasity Factory in Bodmin. So one of the things that many MPs end up being drawn into is lobbying and public affairs jobs, which is a bit depressing. You sit in, I remember this as an MP, you sit in the House of Commons pork colours coffee shop, which is a sort of strange thing that looks like a Norwegian airport terminal, where you get really horrible cappuccino. And you'd see your ex-colleagues very politely making their way from table to table with strange sort of packets of leaflets, saying, Rory, can I have a word with you? I'm now representing this company.

• 10:19Rory Stewart?

  And my assumption usually was that it was a pretty hopeless thing, that they weren't really hoping to get anywhere. They were just hoping to go back to their company and say, I spoke to four MPs and hope that the company somehow thought that that was going to make a difference to the world. But it was pretty sort of depressing, debilitating work. So there's the kind of superstars, people who are three or four MPs of each generation, the kind of William Hagues.

• 10:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, George Osborne makes a fortune, doesn't he?

• 10:42Rory Stewart?

  George Osborne, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer.

• 10:44Alastair Campbell?

  He's done pretty well for somebody who's, you know, smashed the economy with austerity, hasn't he, Rory?

• 10:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So I think if you're Prime Minister or Chancellor or Foreign Secretary.

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Rory Stewart?

  You can still go on to these amazing careers after. And obviously Tony Blair has made an incredible fortune after he's left being Prime Minister. But for most MPs, including many, many ministers, I think they really do struggle to get work.

• 11:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Here's one from Paul Smith, which relates to your point about the reputation of MPs. Is it time to get rid of the ridiculous labels of honourable and especially right honourable, given the litany of scandals showing so many MPs and ministers as being plainly anything but honourable?

• 11:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think the answer is that it's always been a joke there, hasn't it? And it's stuck into the language of the House of Commons, partly as part of all these traditions, which are about stopping people putting knives to each other's throats. So famously, there's a space between the two benches, which is meant to be a sword's length. So we can't actually stab our swords through each other. So we call each other honourable, partly to take some of the drama out of the debate. But I don't think MPs, even in the early 20th century, when they were doing Marconi scandals and all the horrors of the Lloyd George administration were ever particularly honourable. Okay, here's a question coming back at you. Actually, we've had some lovely questions this week. Here's one. Steve JT. On nearly every episode, Rory will say, we'll have to do an episode on that, in reference to a topic that's touched on, but there's never

• 12:04Rory Stewart?

  a follow up, stroke of deep dive. Would it be good, Alistair, to have an episode on one topic, perhaps with a guest or expert, and really pick something apart? What do you think about that?

• 12:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, possibly. But I think that particularly when we're doing the Q and A, I always feel really bad because we get thousands of questions and we only answer half a dozen, or sometimes 10 or 12. And yeah, look, I think we did a bit of a deep dive on Negordo Karabakh.

• 12:29Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 12:29Alastair Campbell?

  We're going to be interviewing Fiona Hill in the near future.

• 12:33Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 12:33Alastair Campbell?

  The wonderful working class woman from the north east of England who became a senior advisor in the White House. It's a great story anyway. But why don't we decide on a couple of foreign policy areas on that one and we do a bit of a deep dive? Russia, I suppose, would be a good one to do with her.

• 12:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Alastair Campbell?

  But then even as I say that, I think, no, but I also want to know what she thinks about Latin America and I want to know what she thinks about Asia. And so I'll tell you what I'll do, Rory.

• 12:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 12:57Alastair Campbell?

  You're always saying to me, you're always saying to me that you let me off too lightly about Iraq.

• 13:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Alastair Campbell?

  So why don't we do, at some point, we'll do a deep dive, just you and me on Iraq?

• 13:07Rory Stewart?

  Good. Let's do that because we're coming up to the 20th anniversary.

• 13:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, if you're going to throw, I'm going to throw this one at you, right?

• 13:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 13:15Alastair Campbell?

  This is somebody with the wonderful name Gibson Fender.

• 13:18Rory Stewart?

  Oh, right.

• 13:19Alastair Campbell?

  It sounds like a guitar, doesn't it?

• 13:21Rory Stewart?

  It does. It sounds like a beautiful guitar. Yeah.

• 13:23Alastair Campbell?

  He says this, and I think this is something that far more people think than the media or the political classes really understand. New Labour, Rory, under Tony Blair, was the best government in 50 years. It's massively underappreciated, even at times from its own members. Discuss.

• 13:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, after my love-in with Alan Milburn, I'm coming round to that view.

• 13:46Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. That's enough. That's all we need to say. That's all we need to say.

• 13:49Rory Stewart?

  Okay. I'll leave it at that then. On the other hand, here's somebody arguing the other view. So Johnny Sells, does Alastair see a parallel between the current government's plan to scrap the B-tex and Blair's disastrous target to get 50% of the country to go to university? When will the UK recognise the value of vocational education? What do you think about that?

• 14:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think that, I think we should recognise the value of vocational education, and I do, but I think Tony's, that goal and that aspiration, I think, was a really, really important message about what sort of country we want to become. I don't accept that was a disaster.

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 14:25Alastair Campbell?

  All right, let's go for a little break.

• 15:18Rory Stewart?

  And here we are back from the break. Alistair, here's Rob Hughes. This is quite niche, this question. You're going to have to make some sense of this for me.

• 15:25Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 15:25Rory Stewart?

  Did Alistair enjoy his visit to Portman Road? Looks like he was enjoying himself. Hopefully, next time he's there, it'll be for a premiership fixture. Come on, explain for those listeners what that means. What does that question mean?

• 15:40Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know what Portman Road is?

• 15:42Rory Stewart?

  It's the Ipswich Stadium or something.

• 15:44Alastair Campbell?

  That's it, that's it. So I suspect that's one of three people who was sitting in the row directly in front of the press box, which is where I was doing the commentary for the Burnley website, Clarits Plus.

• 15:58Rory Stewart?

  Wait a second. So you're like, when I watch Harry Potter and there's a guy doing the commentary on the Quidditch match, is your voice echoing around the stadium or it's just on, no, it's just on this website?

• 16:07Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, I can't believe you didn't say, when I'm watching Croatia against Brazil, you're the Gary Neville or you're the Roy Keane. I am the Gary Neville of the Burnley FC website, okay?

• 16:21Rory Stewart?

  Fantastic.

• 16:22Alastair Campbell?

  Phil Bird is the proper commentator who's brilliant and I'm the guy sitting next to him. It wasn't the greatest game, it was a 0-0 draw, but there was a bit of a disaster actually Rory. As I was doing the commentary, I didn't realise, and it's probably my fault because I'm such a technological idiot, but it transpires that Phil and I, for the second, the whole of the second half, were literally talking to ourselves. Because something had gone wrong with the machinery and somebody had, I don't know whether it was sabotage by an Ipswich fan, but somebody had unplugged something.

• 16:54Rory Stewart?

  Cheerfully chatting to each other.

• 16:55Alastair Campbell?

  And because we weren't looking at our phones, we didn't see any of the messages that were saying, can't hear you, can't hear you, can't hear you. Where's the commentary gone? So I didn't really enjoy that.

• 17:04Rory Stewart?

  Here's a question on PMQs, Prime Minister's Questions for people who are not in the UK. Chima from Discord asks, what was it like for me during Cameron versus Miliband, having to be forced to sit in Parliament and watch PMQs every week? And then I guess for Alistair for you, do you believe in any reforms to make PMQs better? Personally, give every MP a limit of one question, including the opposition leader giving more time for backbench questions. And the part of the opposition leader versus PM is pure political theatre, pre-scripted questions responded with pre-scripted answers. The public deserves better. What's your view on PMQs?

• 17:36Alastair Campbell?

  I watched PMQs recently with a classroom of 14-year-olds, most of whom had never seen it before. And it was really, really interesting to watch it with them because the first bit, they thought, oh, this is quite interesting. And by the end, they were like, oh, my God, this is awful. It really was quite instructive. I think I've been really disappointed that I thought Rishi Sunak, when he came in, would have tried to change it a bit and actually played into the fact that Keir Starmer tries to be a bit more serious and a bit more forensic. But he's very quickly gone into the sort of, you know, PMQs as theatricals and PMQs not really being about answering questions. I wish that the speaker, I don't know what the rules are for the speaker. I know the speaker's there to keep order and make sure

• 18:21Alastair Campbell?

  that the rules of the House are obeyed. But I do think the public feel that increasingly questions aren't answered. And I think that's a real problem.

• 18:28Rory Stewart?

  Well, one of the things that really irritated me, if I was looking for a big reform, the first thing that struck me when I came in is that there should be alternate sessions. One session, really domestic, focused on your constituency. And then the next week, or maybe once a month, a session that focused on big national and international issues. Because I got so fed up with going into PMQs when there was something really big happening. Horror in Afghanistan, big national scandal, and hearing MP after MP stand up and say, will the Prime Minister congratulate my local football club that just won this? Or will the Prime Minister please congratulate the students of Billington Primary School who just got to the second round of this, that and the other? And I can see why they're

• 19:13Rory Stewart?

  doing it. Many, many MPs on every side of the House are just interested in getting a little story in their local newspaper for what they said in PMQs. But it's a total waste of the session. It's a disgrace and they should feel ashamed of themselves. And if they won't stop doing it, I'd like to have one PMQs a month where you're not allowed to do that.

• 19:32Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Or I think, I don't agree with the question, by the way, that the leader of the opposition should be restricted to one question. I think it's really important that you see both Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition kind of go at each other over a Over a sustained period. And if you remember, when we came in in nineteen ninety seven, Betty Boothroyd was speaker. And at that point, there were two sessions of PMQs a week.

• 19:53Rory Stewart?

  Ah, yes. Yeah, yeah.

• 19:55Alastair Campbell?

  And they were fifteen minutes each. And I think the leader of the opposition got three questions. And we persuaded Betty to to agree to a change. And I think the Tories were sort of broadly up for it as well. Other parliaments, I mean, you know, I think I'm right that Jacinda Ardern and certainly the Australian Parliament, they have to do it every day that Parliament sits. I think the Irish Parliament is the same in the Doyle. I think the Taoiseach has to go there every day and answer questions.

• 20:19Rory Stewart?

  And contrast, of course, is the United States, where they are mesmerized by PMQs because they can't imagine a US president having to go through that every every week. I mean, there is a nice bit of sort of leveling there, of forcing a prime minister to stand there and take the abuse in a way that a US president wouldn't.

• 20:36Alastair Campbell?

  I can, when I was a journalist covering politics, that it was very, very rare that you didn't, out of PMQs, get something genuinely significant to go off and write about. I think these days it's it's less common. And I think that's because I do think Sunak has has followed in the sort of Johnson Truss tradition of really just sort of seeing it as something you've got to get through and not really answer the questions. And I think he's making a mistake. I think he should be engaging in the questions much more than he does.

• 21:04Rory Stewart?

  And here's a here's a question which I think will throw you off balance, but we'll be interested to see what you make of it. So it's from Siddharth Kari. And Siddharth asks, politics across academia, particularly Ivy League and elite Russell Group universities, is often taught from a predominantly left-leaning bias stroke presumption. Why is this and how could this be rectified? What do you make of that?

• 21:27Alastair Campbell?

  Isn't that true, though?

• 21:29Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's what I thought you were probably going to question the question. Yeah.

• 21:32Alastair Campbell?

  Am I doing a Reese Mogg here?

• 21:35Rory Stewart?

  It's probably true that broadly speaking, most academics tend to lie a bit to the left and most teachers tend to lie a bit to the left, no?

• 21:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, possibly, possibly, but I, but I think they, I think unless they're driven by their politics, I think an awful lot of them compensate for that. I think at the moment, everywhere you go, you get the feeling people don't like the government very much and, you know, we haven't talked about the teachers' strike, they're going on strike. But I don't know, I think maybe it's maybe more so in America, would that be the true? You know that better than I do.

• 22:04Rory Stewart?

  Definitely, that's the complaint of the, of the sort of right in America. I think it is true that when the Conservative government came in in 2010, we definitely had a feeling that Labour had been very, very successful in doing this trick, which was called the march through the institutions. We felt that a loss of the very senior jobs in non-governmental organisations, in, in cultural life, in educational life, were dominated by people who were broadly speaking sympathetic with the new Labour project. And one of the things the Conservatives tried to do when they came in was to try to replace them with people who were a little bit more to the right. And I think they've done a bit of that, but it was surprisingly difficult because it

• 22:46Rory Stewart?

  turned out that a loss of the candidates for these jobs, often very, very well qualified candidates for the jobs, tended to be more from the left than from the right.

• 22:55Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 22:56Rory Stewart?

  I remember when I joined the Conservative Party, a very senior diplomat saying to me, what on earth are you doing, Rory? The Tory party is the stupid party. That was, that was, that was his view on it.

• 23:06Alastair Campbell?

  No, I, I think, I, I guess the other thing is, I see quite a lot of, I think on balance, yes, the question is probably right, but I do see a lot of right wing academic treatises being pumped out. And I, and I actually think that when you talk about the march of the institutions, I mean, we didn't talk on the main podcast, I mean, this BBC chairman, head of the appointments commission, who's had to recuse himself because he seems that he's quite close to him, whose daughter works in Rishi Sunak's policy unit, that all feels very, very cosy and march of the institutions.

• 23:36Rory Stewart?

  That's pretty shocking. I absolutely agree. Thank goodness he recused himself because as soon as I saw that he'd been appointed, I thought, whoa.

• 23:43Alastair Campbell?

  Now, listen, we do, we do spend a lot of time. Of criticizing, right? So here's one from David Edmund. My MSP, says David, was a brilliant support to me last week. Her name is Shirley Anne Somerville. Her response time and action was on point. Should there not be a platform to shout about MP and MSP local successes? I feel like a few charlatans tar so many with the same brush.

• 24:08Rory Stewart?

  Oh, that's lovely. And I think that's right. I mean, I think. I think there are awful things about politics and I think there are many awful things that politics does to your brain. But there are also fantastic dedicated local constituency MPs and, and you know, I, I felt that. If I sort of reach across the. The board for different people, this will irritate different people in different ways, but you know, I was a huge admirer. Of various Labour MPs, I, I really liked Madeleine Moon, who was in. In Bridgewater, who was on the Defence Committee with me. I had huge admiration for Richard Benyon, who was a amazing, I mean, really relaxed, cheerful, honourable. Thoughtful, dedicated Conservative MP.

• 24:53Rory Stewart?

  Tim Farron, this will really irritate my ex-cumbering. Conservative Party colleagues because we're always trying to topple them from the seat, but. He was a man who lived them, had a really strong reputation in his local seat, took a marginal seat, turned it through hard work and to a personal seat. Through some pretty hard work. I remember one summer when I was trying to measure myself against him. He did something like forty two local surgeries during the summer holidays. So there was barely a day when he wasn't in a different village. I think it was in forty two different places up and down.

• 25:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, maybe we should encourage people to. Start a new chain on Discord where you can have new subjects that actually to say good things about your MP or MSP or. AM or whatever. I'm pretty sure that Shirley Anne Somerville, I'm pretty sure is SNP.

• 25:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I guess so, which is why I was giving shout outs to other parties.

• 25:43Alastair Campbell?

  Now, related, Sam Proctor. When you say a politician is talented, what do you mean by that? Good at mastering their brief, handling media, doing deals and arm twisting for support, making good decisions, I'd be keen to know. I think really talented politicians are very, very good at. Framing arguments, making decisions and communicating those decisions as they're made.

• 26:05Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so what were your three again then? Framing arguments, making decisions and communicating them as they're made.

• 26:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, when I say communicating, I mean, the decision is made and then you follow through.

• 26:14Rory Stewart?

  That's good. So I think that my ideal politician is somebody who's effective, but also has a sense of honour or honesty to them. And the risk is that politicians, the worst ministers, are either ineffectual and incompetent, or they're effective but pretty evil. And I think what I love about, you know, I talk about heroes, I've talked about Alan Milburn, my real hero is a man called David Gork, who was my boss when I was in Monsieur Justice. He was extraordinary because he was incredibly clear-thinking, very effective, brought some really strong reforms in, but did it with real modesty, no side, never really a sense. He was trying to promote himself, often didn't take the credit for these things.

• 26:55Rory Stewart?

  And I think as a result, got the civil service right behind him, so that I imagine even now years later, people really miss him.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm, well, apparently, I didn't see it, but apparently he was on Newsnight last night, and according to the Twitter sphere, was doing very, very well. So there you go. Now, here's one that I want to dismiss. Jay, I'm going to disagree agreeably with Jay Byers. Should the minimum age to be an MP be 40 plus? By that age, you should know who you are, have made most of your mistakes, be settled, have good judgment, et cetera. I'm hearing of 22-year-olds applying to be a candidate for Labour with Stockton North, and I just shake my head. I want more young people in politics.

• 27:33Rory Stewart?

  And I believe you've written a book about it, haven't you?

• 27:35Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Rory, stop plugging my book, But What Can I Do?, published May the 11th.

• 27:39Rory Stewart?

  Okay, look, we're coming to the end of our question time, but I'm going to finish with a final question from Jeffkeepsmiling from Discord. He says he would still love A and R to commit to a once-a-month podcast that concentrates on positive achievements from any politicians or impressive people they've come across in their lives. Think it would be good for mental health in these seemingly never-ending, dark and chaotic times. How about that, Alistair?

• 28:07Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, let's do it, let's do it.

• 28:08Rory Stewart?

  Good, all right.

• 28:09Alastair Campbell?

  So that basically means that I can talk about Tony Blair, you can talk about Alan Milburn, then I'll talk about Gordon Brown, that you could talk about...

• 28:19Rory Stewart?

  Alan Milburn again.

• 28:21Alastair Campbell?

  Brilliant. No, that'd be good. We could do, we could do. We could do Heroes of the New Labour Era. We could do Abraham Lincoln. We could do Mandela. We could do. William Marshall, The Great Knight, that I want everyone to concentrate on. Michel Bardier, The Secret Brexit Diary. Yeah, exactly. Right. Well, thank you, Alastair, very much for lovely Q and A. Thank you. See you soon. Bye bye.

• 28:47Speaker 02

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• 28:52Speaker 03

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• 28:56Speaker 02

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• 29:04Speaker 04

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• 29:08Speaker 02

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• 29:11Speaker 04

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• 29:12Speaker 02

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