323. Question Time: How it feels to become “the story”

Why are so many young men supporting the AFD in Germany? Would Trump be welcome on TRIP? And who, out of the pair, has the best Dame Maggie Smith story? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all of these questions and more. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win a signed copy of Rory and Alastair's books with personalised messages. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win tickets to the TRIP O2 Arena show in October. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Nicole Maslen and Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in 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/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 2:08Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:12Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And Rory, I'm going to start with Liam Moran. Did anyone pick up on the fact that Rory did not say that he was rereading Alistair's diaries last week? Now, as you know, Conservatives never read books, they reread books. But you did say you were reading. So is that the first time you've looked at my diaries?

• 2:30Rory Stewart?

  No, it's not. No, I've mentioned them as a serious listeners, the podcast will have picked up. I mention your diaries quite a lot. I think that we should use them more. I think they're really fascinating because they're a wonderful way of getting comparisons with new governments coming in. And it's exactly what allows me to say, wait a sec, this is where you were at this stage, the government.

• 2:49Alastair Campbell?

  I'm thinking that when we open our tour, the Rest is Politics tour, which the first event is going to be in Brighton, I wonder whether we shouldn't get you to read out the bit where Peter Mandelson and I get into a punch up over whether Tony should wear a tie.

• 3:07Alastair Campbell?

  It's one of the most embarrassing, but I'm awfully embarrassing, but it's being read out.

• 3:13Rory Stewart?

  Being read out. Paul James, just connecting with what you just said, I'm looking forward to attending the Rest is Politics Live at Birmingham in a couple of weeks' time. However, I'm a little disappointed that Anthony Scaramucci and Katie Kay are not going to be at the Birmingham. But my question to Rory and Alistair, have they considered having Anthony and Katie attend those holograms akin to the ABBA Voyage live shows? Joking aside, really looking forward to the show. We could also, of course, famously get Narendra Modi turning up as a hologram.

• 3:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 3:39Rory Stewart?

  He has lots of holograms, doesn't he?

• 3:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that was when I first was aware of the hologram as a political device. I think I'm right in saying that the overall cost of the ABBA Voyage is, when you take into account all the technology and all the sort of bits that go with it, is something like a million pounds a minute, something like that. I mean, I could be way off. So I don't know how much you're hoping to make from this tour Rory, but that's one very good way of making sure

• 4:04Rory Stewart?

  That might reduce by a million pounds a minute.

• 4:06Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, I think I'm right in saying that Birmingham is the only one of these venues where, you know, there's still quite a few tickets to go. So come, Birmingham, wake up.

• 4:14Rory Stewart?

  Which makes me incredibly bitter because we went to Birmingham because everybody from Birmingham said we had to come to Birmingham.

• 4:20Alastair Campbell?

  Said, come to Birmingham. Exactly, yeah. Maybe, maybe all those Tories are at the conference in Birmingham now. Now Rory, let me ask you this one. Georgia Mallory. If I was a Tory, brackets I'm not, who should I vote for in the Tory leadership election?

• 4:34Rory Stewart?

  Well, we're going to do a lot more about this on the live tour, says he continuing to plug, and reassuring people that actually there's a lot of exclusive fun when you see us sitting there like boxers in the ring of the O2. So we will do a lot more on the Tory leadership and keep quite a lot of that exclusive. I guess I'm between Tom Tugendhat and James Cleverly. And inevitably, being me, it looks like neither of them might make it through to the last two.

• 5:00Alastair Campbell?

  I think there's quite a lot of shenanigans going on to stop Kemi Badenoch making her way through. I watched, call me sad Rory, but I watched Trevor Phillips' show yesterday because I knew that all the four candidates were going to be on. If I had to give a very brief summary, I thought James Cleverly, I'm afraid, was a bit lame. He came over more as a sort of commentator than a politician. I thought Tom Tugendhat, who I've gone off because of his ridiculous stance on the ECHR, I nonetheless thought he spoke very, very well and he had a sort of sense of a message. I think the thing about Kemi Badenoch is she's very good at creating noise and headlines and drama, but I didn't leave it any clearer about what she really fundamentally stood for.

• 5:41Alastair Campbell?

  And then Jenrick, can I just find, Ian Dale, funny enough, was on the panel and he said afterwards, he and Katie Balls and Andy Street, they were all basically saying that they didn't know whether this journey that Jenrick had been on from being a sort of Cameroonian to this sort of, sort of sub farage figure that he's trying to become, they couldn't quite work out where the real Jenrick was. So all in all, pretty uninspiring, I have to say.

• 6:08Rory Stewart?

  We will get into that, we'll get into that and we'll talk about Tory leadership contest.

• 6:11Alastair Campbell?

  Right Rory, your friend Eric Adams, the New York mayor, has got himself into more trouble, more headlines, and we've got a question from Lynda Johnson. Eric Adams has told the public to withhold judgment until he's made his defence, pleading not guilty. I'd like to hear your views.

• 6:28Rory Stewart?

  Eric Adams, this is a big story and probably something worth spending a little bit of time on. So this is the mayor of New York and we discussed it a couple of weeks ago, when the beginnings of allegations were coming, police commissioners resigning, allegations against friends and aides of him's. But now finally, we've had the big case and he's going to be arraigned. And he's refusing to resign. He's saying he's going to keep doing his job, but he's accused of corruption. And actually, it's an interesting type of corruption because it's not a million miles away from some of the stuff that we've had in Britain. Basically, what he seems to have done is he's accepted freebies, he's accepted plane flights and upgrades on planes,

• 7:09Rory Stewart?

  and he's accepted hotel rooms. But the problem is that he took those things from Turkish Airlines, partly because there's a big Turkish community in Brooklyn where he was the Borough President before he was mayor. And he then, his phone, which has been seized, they found in text messages that when the Turks wanted to open a 32-story consulate in time for Erdogan's visit to New York, and it had been blocked by the New York Fire Department that said it had failed more than a dozen different sort of fire regulations. Eric Adams was contacted by the Turkish consulate that said, you know, we've done a lot for you in the past. Could you please help us with the consulate? And he said, sure, I'll get on to it. Sorted

• 7:53Rory Stewart?

  it out and put pressure on the Fire Department. And he then gets a text from the Turkish consulate saying, you are a great friend of Turkey. And Eric Adams writes back cheerfully saying, more than that, I'm a great friend of you. Anytime. Happy to help. It's interesting. I mean, and the whole thing amounts to about $100,000. So it's not quite some of these American scandals where senators are sticking gold bars under their beds. It's more freebies and favors, isn't it?

• 8:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think where I would think you're being a bit harsh and a bit unfair to Labour is that what he's ended up being charged with relates straightforwardly to bribery and also fraud charges related to the manner in which he solicited some of these. So listen, it's a terrible story for him. He's fighting it. I mean, there's no, he was pretty, he was pretty Trumpian in his fight against it.

• 8:48Rory Stewart?

  And it's not a great look because it means that we have a democratic Politician from Democratic Party, who's now been indicted, refusing to step down. At the time at which it's a very important part of the Democratic campaign against Trump. To say this is an indicted felon and it's convicted felon, actually, in the case of Trump. So, and nobody really knows what happens if he doesn't step down and he actually appears in court. Because the governor won't fire him.

• 9:13Alastair Campbell?

  The governor could just say, sorry, you've got to go.

• 9:15Rory Stewart?

  She's reluctant to do it. He's quite a character. He was a big, big party guy. And he's also played a bit fast and loose with the truth. It seems as though he may not have actually lived in New York, but instead lived with his partner in New Jersey. And sort of faked up an apartment in New York to make it look like he was eligible to stand. And then a New York Times journalist, he'd always talked about the fact that he carried in his wallet a picture of an NYPD police officer, he used to be a police officer, who was killed. And, you know, it meant so much to him. He had it carried over in his wallet. And this journalist said, can I see the photograph? So she was invited over to the mayor's office and she was given this photograph from his wallet.

• 9:56Rory Stewart?

  But it later turned out that Eric Adams's team had taken it off the internet and then dropped tea on it to make it look older, to fake it as being in his wallet. So this, I don't know, I mean, these are not big things, but this is sort of a bit of a, bit of a pattern going on here.

• 10:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, just so that you understand though, the wire fraud count that he's charged with carries a maximum sentence of 20 years. The soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals, you can get, and he's got two counts of those. They can get five years each. The bribery charge, maximum charge 10 years. And the conspiracy to commit wire fraud, federal program bribery, and receiving campaign contribution by foreign nationals, maximum five years. So you top those up, I'm not suggesting either that he's guilty, because I don't know, or that he's going to go to jail, but in their system, this is what's so amazing about watching what Trump gets up to.

• 10:53Rory Stewart?

  I wonder whether we might not be getting to a stage in the States and in Britain and elsewhere, where we just make a very clear rule that you just can't take flights, you can't take upgrades, you can't take anything. And if you're a government minister, the government can jolly well pay for those things if you want to go and see it.

• 11:09Alastair Campbell?

  But what about if you're an MP? Um. Let's say you're a Rory Stewart style MP, you doesn't like freebies and just takes things very, very seriously. And let's say that you are the on a select committee and a government offers to take you out to take a look at their country.

• 11:27Rory Stewart?

  I refused, actually. I I refused.

• 11:29Alastair Campbell?

  Did you?

• 11:29Rory Stewart?

  I refused. My colleagues all did it, but I I never did that. I hated it. I mean, Conservative Friends of Israel would do it, Conservative Friends of the Middle East would do it, Azerbaijan would do. I mean, they were always paying for MPs to visit their countries. But the problem is that if you take that money, you go on a tour organised by their government, showing you the most kind of crazy propaganda. No, I think it would be much more straightforward if we just banned it. And then the MPs could start putting pressure on Parliament or the government to say it's important for us to do this. So give us a budget to do it. Or, you know, as Education Secretary, for some reason, I've got to go to this show. So could the government pay for me to go to the show? Because I I just think otherwise you just get in a mess.

• 12:13Alastair Campbell?

  But I also think if you think about opposition, when you're in opposition, I think one of the, I've just had a meeting today with Chris Hipkins, who we interviewed on leading, he was the former New Zealand Prime Minister, now back in opposition.

• 12:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Alastair Campbell?

  And we were just talking about, you know, how in opposition, at least you do have a bit of time to think and to travel. And I just, I just think if you have an absolute hard rule, nobody can take anything from anyone. I think there's, I don't know, I think it's tricky.

• 12:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, I I just wonder what it might, I know it sounds a bit extreme, but I wonder what it wouldn't drive change, whether if you really made a hard, then people would provide the budgets.

• 12:48Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, Rory, as you know, we have a lot of MPs who listen to us. John Slinger, who is the MP for rugby, Labour MP, do you agree with me that the gambling industry is pernicious, given that it targets young people through sports advertising and mobile phone apps? Do you agree that we need to get gambling ads out of football and all sport, given the hard cause?

• 13:10Rory Stewart?

  Blimey. I mean, I don't know enough about this. My instinct is yes, but you know, you're much more of a guy who understands sport.

• 13:16Alastair Campbell?

  I think he's got a real point here. I mean, just to give you an example, some of the people who present football on Sky and Sky Sport, listen, I find it very hard to live without Sky Sport. Okay, it's a very, it's quite a big part of my life. But I think when some of the presenters are also presenting adverts for Sky's betting business, I just think that is all wrong. And I don't know the numbers now, but if you look at, if you, I asked you to this, Roy, I mean, I don't ask you to do much, just watch one episode of Match of the Day, okay? And watch an episode where all 20 teams are on there and count

• 13:57Alastair Campbell?

  for me how many of the shirts have betting companies on them and how much of the perimeter advertising is gambling. Now, the point is, they will say, oh, well, but people can make a judgment. But the fact is, they don't do it other than by knowing that they're getting people into gambling, and it's addictive.

• 14:16Rory Stewart?

  So Alistair, one for you from Dom Lee. With Sue Gray hitting the headlines. So Sue Gray is the Chief of Staff, new Chief of Staff in Downing Street. What does Alistair remember about when he first became the story? And any reflections on the infamous Channel 4 interview? So in context for listeners, I reckon almost everybody will know this, but Alistair was Tony Blair's communications director, but very, very rapidly became a very central part of the story and appeared in photographs and cartoons and people wrote about him, probably more than they wrote about, and definitely more than they wrote about many Cabinet ministers. How do you think that happened? And what's this infamous Channel 4 interview?

• 14:56Alastair Campbell?

  Ah, so the Channel 4 interview, this was at the height of my row with the BBC over Iraq. Richard Sandbrook, I think it was, was the head of news, put out an absolutely disingenuous reply to a complaint that I'd made. And I then phoned John Reed, who was one of our absolute safe pair of hands, and said, John, are you able to go on the telly and sort of take this nonsense apart? And I'll brief you on the way. He said, yeah, absolutely no problem. Meanwhile, Channel 4 had asked me to go on. I, as you know, didn't do interviews, despite being the story. And I just felt that this was the point at which this Iraq story had got so, the

• 15:39Alastair Campbell?

  round with the BBC had got so kind of dominant in the media, so sort of, you know, and I was absolutely central to it. So I thought, you know, maybe I should do, maybe I should do it myself.

• 15:50Rory Stewart?

  So up to that point, you'd not been doing interviews and suddenly you decide to do a Channel Four interview?

• 15:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, correct. Now, first of all, I spoke to my boss, Tony Blair. What do you think? I spoke to one or two other people. And Tony said, yeah, on balance, yeah, okay, but make sure you stay calm. Anyway, I recommend that you Google the interview. I actually think it's one of those interviews where when I listened back to it, which I did when I was preparing for the Iraq inquiry, and also I get lots of students send it to me to sort of say, I'm writing an essay about this and what should I say? And I actually, I stand by every single word that I said. It was slightly unfortunate.

• 16:29Rory Stewart?

  Yes. What would a critic say, Alastair?

• 16:31Alastair Campbell?

  A critic would say.

• 16:32Rory Stewart?

  Somebody who was less well disposed towards you say about this interview?

• 16:35Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Fiona Miller, for example, my partner, she would say that it was a ridiculous thing to do. I should have stayed out of it. But I had a pen in my hand. And John Stowe was doing the interview. And so I was doing my hand gestures, but it did look like I was sort of on the point of stabbing him. So yeah, I still think it was the right thing to do because, I'll tell you why, because there comes a point in some of these stories when you just think, fuck it, I've got to show the public what is going on here. And I think actually I exposed it perfectly well. Anyway, that was that. What do you do when you become the story? You probably don't go on television. But how did it happen to me? It was very different to what's happened to Sue Gray, because with me, you have to

• 17:18Alastair Campbell?

  remember, I was seeing the media all the time. They were utterly obsessed with our media operation, this whole spin thing that sort of became.

• 17:26Rory Stewart?

  And where did it come from? Because Margaret Thatcher had had Bernard Ingham, hadn't she? So it wasn't a new thing that people had, people trying to depress and consti-

• 17:34Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Harold Wilson had Joe Haines and, you know.

• 17:35Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 17:36Alastair Campbell?

  No, what was new, I think, was that they I don't know, really. Maybe it was because I was a former journalist. Maybe it was because I'd come from a place of being absolutely clear with the media. I was not going to take a backward step, that we were going to, we were determined to set the agenda. And also, I mean, Andrew Rawls, there are moments that The Observer once said to me, he says, the trouble is that most of the media find you more interesting than most of the politicians. But it was also the fact that I was there in their face every day. So they saw more of me than anybody else.

• 18:09Rory Stewart?

  You did the lobby briefing. So they came to you at number 10, yeah.

• 18:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And by the way, I started to become the story in opposition. When we won the election, either the first day or the second day, The Independent, which, you know, not a paper totally hostile to us, but the front page was a picture of me, Sally Morgan and Jonathan Powell. And it was basically saying, you know, it was essentially saying, these are the people in charge now, sort of thing. So I, and I think part of the thing was that people wanted to sort of project Tony as being not wholly in charge and having these other people around him. And I was this sort of, you know, black arts person. So was Peter Mandelson. But I just think it was a nonsense. And but the thing with Sue Gray is different, because Sue Gray

• 18:51Alastair Campbell?

  was a, a long-serving civil servant who absolutely hated being in the public eye at the time of the Boris Johnson. And I think it felt that the government really treated her badly, the Tory government in saying, right, Sue Gray is going to decide what's the rights and wrongs of this. And you remember how we had that wait for Sue Gray, wait for Sue Gray, wait for Sue Gray. She then goes and decides to leave the civil service, go and work for Labour, and is now back in, and I think has been, you know, done in by quite a few people, some in the civil service, some maybe in the Labour Party. But this point about becoming the story,

• 19:32Alastair Campbell?

  I was at an event the other day at BAFTA with some business people, and Sue Gray was mentioned. And I said, well, first of all, let me check with the audience, does anybody here not know who Sue Gray is? And not a single hand went up.

• 19:45Rory Stewart?

  So everybody had heard of her.

• 19:46Alastair Campbell?

  Everybody had heard of her. I then sort of said, well, has everybody here heard of Morgan McSweeney? Quite a lot of hands went up. Has anybody here heard of Matthew Doyle, who's the press guy? A lot of hands went up. So there's no doubt that Sue Gray has become a very, very, very well-known, probably not recognised, people don't necessarily know what she looks like, because she's talked about rather than she's not on the telly. And of course, that is, that is difficult. But I think I've said to you before that with Tony, his view was that even though I was attracting all this stuff, one, I was doing it partly as a lightning conductor for him. Two, he understood that they were doing it as a way of undermining him. And as long as I had his trust and confidence, there wasn't a problem there.

• 20:31Alastair Campbell?

  But it's not pleasant. It's really not pleasant. And I think I was, I was ready for it. I knew that it was going to happen to some extent. The day I was announced in 1994, from day one, there were stories that started to appear. I can remember, I can remember, I told Tony, all the skeletons in my cupboard, right? And I suppose, you know, there was the drink, there was bouts of violence from time to time, there was the whole thing about-

• 21:02Rory Stewart?

  You'd been hospitalised.

• 21:04Alastair Campbell?

  I'd been hospitalised for a breakdown. There was all that stuff. There was stories I'd written, sex magazines, writing for sex magazines. So all this stuff, right? So I remember sitting around after I'd started the job, thinking, right, you know, talking to my team and saying, I wonder when they'll do this story, when they'll do this story. News of the World did a lot first weekend. But I think you become the political story when within the political world, people start to think that you're a problem. Now, some people will defend Sue Gray to the hilt, others will say this is difficult or whatever. But it's not pleasant and it will be particularly unpleasant for her because by background, she's a civil servant. She doesn't want to be in the public eye.

• 21:44Rory Stewart?

  Okay, Anister, quick break and then back for more questions.

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• 23:48Rory Stewart?

  Let's move you on to international. Fatine Sherif. Brandenburg election results show that AFD has outperformed remarkably well with 16- to 24-year-old voters compared to others. There's growing data from around the world that younger voters, men in particular, are voting for these parties without citing immigration as the top issue for their vote. What do you think's happening here? Is this mainly an anti-establishment reaction to the current economic situation? Or is this a never-seen-before-in-decades cultural event?

• 24:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think it's a great question. I think it's very interesting. I said in my last book, What Can I Do? I wrote about this survey that had been done. We're in every continent in the world now, the decile of the population most open to the idea of military and authoritarian rule is not the old, it's the young, and it's young men. And we're seeing this in Trump in America, where young men, by and large, broadly in favour of Trump, young women massively in favour of Kamala Harris. I think part of it is this whole thing about masculinity. I think the way that Andrew Tate has become this, you know, quite influential figure for a lot of young men in schools. I think pornography has had an impact.

• 25:06Rory Stewart?

  And obviously, one of the things, I mean, an older woman said to me recently that she felt, I mean, she's admittedly in her eighties, but she felt that young men felt that society was becoming more feminized, that the values, the dominant values of culture were values that she, as a woman in her eighties, saw as more feminine values. And she said there were more female teachers in schools, more female doctors, and that increasingly the way that men in their late teens behave is seen as being sort of unacceptable, and that they don't really feel they have space to be themselves. But maybe you don't buy into that.

• 25:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I buy into it partly, but only, I think, as an excuse. I mean, there's nothing wrong with having lots of female teachers. There's nothing wrong with having lots of female doctors. It was interesting, I feel that where there is a thing, I think, about young men trying to work out what young men are for. And I'm not saying they sit around thinking about it all the time. But if you go back to, you know, say, when I was growing up, the role of men was kind of clearer. You were the person who worked, you were the person who fathered children, and then you went off and you carried on working. And it was all quite, sort of, pretty straightforward. I think now, women are, you know, a lot of women not wanting to have children till a lot later, quite a lot of women actually not wanting to have children at all. A lot of young men who, I think, worry

• 26:26Alastair Campbell?

  that their their career paths are less certain than they were. Now, it's the same for women. It's just that the women are now competing with the men. And maybe it is just a sort of a desire to.

• 26:39Alastair Campbell?

  I think to maybe reimpose some of the inequalities that most developed countries have actually got rid of. And so, and I think that's being politicised and being exploited. I mentioned Tate, I think Farage does it to some extent.

• 26:51Rory Stewart?

  And I guess Kiklin in Austria. I mean, he's got this extraordinary thing in the last podcast that you quoted where he talks about head teachers as in part of this sort of huge rant of various hate figures.

• 27:04Alastair Campbell?

  This thing about, he talks about drag queens as though like, you know, drag queens have got some sort of power. And, and so I think this, this is where it's been exploited, weaponised, toxified.

• 27:16Rory Stewart?

  And meanwhile, young women are more progressive and left wing than they were historically. So there's been a real sort of gender bifurcation, hasn't there? I mean, politics used to be this, this generational split, didn't it? You were meant to be left wing when you were young and right wing when you were old, but now increasingly it's, it's gendered.

• 27:31Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I hope it doesn't stay that way because that's just going to further polarise, isn't it?

• 27:34Rory Stewart?

  It's unbelievable in the US election. If you look at Pennsylvania, I think Trump is leading by a very long way among young men and Kamala Harris is leading by a very long way among young women. I mean, something like fifteen, eighteen points in some of the polls. I mean, you know, chalk and cheese there.

• 27:49Alastair Campbell?

  Actually, talking of Trump, Rory, we've got a question here from Rom Somia. Would you be prepared to have Donald Trump on the podcast? How would you deal with him? Would you be concerned about giving him publicity? Well, I don't think he worries. He gets publicity, well, everybody does. Where would you draw the line? Would you do Putin, Farage?

• 28:06Rory Stewart?

  No, so you're absolutely right. I mean, I think it's very weird. We can see obviously what the problem is if you're too soft on politicians. If you let monsters get away with things. In fact, famously, people did polite interviews with Adolf Hitler and didn't challenge him. On the other hand, you've got Aaron Clayton asking us a question, saying, do you think the way in which the media currently interviews politicians up to standard, UK media love asking questions and interrupting the politicians running the letter of the month. So the interviewer's always pushing for that gotcha moment. And I think there sometimes, I mean, it's a bit like when I, I remember when I first interviewed you, when I first interviewed Tony Blair. There's a sort of rather kind of, maybe boring is a bit unfair, but very, very predictable view.

• 28:47Rory Stewart?

  That, you know, we have to pin you down and ask you solemn questions about Iraq, despite the fact that we know that you've been asked those questions 300 times before. I'm not going to get anything new out of Tony Blair. It's just going to be.

• 28:58Alastair Campbell?

  Three, three hundred is a very, very low end. Estimate of a, I think once you put a couple of lauds on it.

• 29:05Rory Stewart?

  But you know what I mean, that somehow every journalist going into that interview feels it's their moral obligation.

• 29:11Alastair Campbell?

  To be fair to you, I remember that interview, we did it at your house, and to be fair to you, you basically said you were you were most interested in how the decision was made to go to war in Iraq. So it wasn't as if I wasn't expecting lots of questions by the way. No, the ones that really annoy me are when you're doing an interview where they'll talk about this, that and then they must say, you know, and obviously I have to ask you about Iraq. Well, the obviously means I'm worried what other journalists will think if I don't ask you about Iraq. But as you say, there's no question I haven't been asked and there's no, there's no answer that I'm likely to give that that I haven't given many, many times before.

• 29:45Rory Stewart?

  Well, we had an interesting one, didn't we, with Kwasi Kourou, where we were criticised by somebody who I admire a great deal on Twitter, Henry Porter, who said that we'd been too soft on him. And I actually thought that that two-part interview gave him space to talk and got much more out of him. That was your judgement, you were correct on getting him on. I was reluctant to interview Kwasi Kourou because I thought I had such a negative view about that. I thought I'm going to find this very difficult to do a decent interview. And I definitely think that I'm a bit worried about what would happen if we did interview Trump or Farage or even this trust, to be honest. Because I don't know how you'd actually bring out their character, bring out their stories, bring out their life, because you wouldn't really be able to get past trying to land what you thought was wrong with them.

• 30:30Alastair Campbell?

  I wouldn't have any worries about being able to do a proper interview with Nigel Farage. I think this is the difference is between, you know, by and large, you and I, when we're interviewing people, we tend not to interrupt. And we give people time, we give people space, and I think it's about asking very, very direct questions in a sort of clear, fair, consistent way. So for example, if Donald Trump said something that was blatantly untrue, I for one would just say, can we just go back to what you just said about such and such? That's not true. Why do you think that it's okay to lie in the way that you do? Now, he would then argue that it wasn't a lie and he'd go on to something else. And then I think I'd just keep coming back like that.

• 31:12Alastair Campbell?

  But also, I think you try with somebody like him to, you talk about sort of getting his story. I think there are all sorts of things in his past that aren't actually really covered that much. I'd be fascinated, do you know this story about, I think I've told you before about this, I'm fascinated by the fact that if it wasn't for the sinking of a boat. In the Hebrides, he would never even have been born because because his his mother left because this boat sank, killing lots of of young men. And because there were so few young men after the war, that's why she went to America. It's a sort of Alastair Campbell connection, isn't it? You've both got connections to to Gallic speaking Hebrides, yeah. Exactly, exactly. There's another one here on Trump. Andrew, I accept there was

• 31:54Alastair Campbell?

  a realpolitik aspect to Starmer's recent meeting with Trump, but I wonder what the real world consequences would be for the UK if he, Keir Starmer, decided not to indulge the petulant narcissism of a re-elected Trump. How damaging would it be and how would it play out? This is somebody who's obviously seen Love Actually, where Hugh Grant as the president sort of, you know, dances around number 10 and basically slags off the American president like nobody's business. Which, of course, was the fantasy of many, many people that they wanted Tony Blair to do to George Bush. I think a lot of Labour supporters and members of the public as well would have felt uncomfortable about Keir Starmer seeing Donald Trump. But I think it was it was realpolitik.

• 32:39Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, if the guy becomes president, the chances of actually forming a a proper sensible grown-up relationship aren't very strong. But I think you have to try. I think Theresa May tried, and I think she was right to. I mean, you know, all that people remember was him grabbing her by the hand and, you know, and then at Chequers kind of dominating and talking over at a press conference. All people remember of that relationship. But ultimately, I think you do have to try. So, no, I think it would be, I think as own goals go, I think actually deciding that Trump is a petulant narcissist and treating him like that would be bigger than.

• 33:21Alastair Campbell?

  Free box at Arsenal, zone goals go, I'd say.

• 33:25Rory Stewart?

  It was fascinating that Trump's big thing after the interview was to say how incredibly popular Keir Starmer was.

• 33:31Alastair Campbell?

  No, he said that before the meeting, that was what was funny about it. I've not heard anything after the meeting. He did say he's very, very popular, he's a nice guy and he's very, very popular.

• 33:40Rory Stewart?

  That's lovely. Daniel McManus, I happened to listen to David Davis' episode today, that this interview we did on leading Conservative politician, really felt sorry for him. He's so clear at the start that logical consistency is at the heart of his beliefs. Then he goes on to time himself in knots because he seems afraid to acknowledge that he's been wrong in the past. Can each of you think of an example when you were proven wrong? What were your emotions and how did you manage through it intellectually? So I've been wrong on a lot of things. I initially supported the Iraq war and then I got onto the ground in Iraq and decided it was a horrible mess and a disaster and we shouldn't be there.

• 34:19Rory Stewart?

  I think as a politician, it's particularly tricky because even though, you know, we are wrong about those things, have to be wrong about those things. I mean, we don't really get the future, we can't really predict the future. But boy, your opponents like to use it. If you admit that you were wrong or something and say, you know, why should I ever trust you in the future if you got your judgment wrong on that? Trying to think, maybe, I mean, this is a harsh thing to say, but I tell you one thing I was wrong on. I like Theresa May so much as a person and was so impressed by the warm reaction that we were getting in a by-election in Canberra in 2017, that I was one of the people that thought that her trigger in the election in 2017 would go well.

• 35:04Rory Stewart?

  And of course, it went terribly badly. That was very poor political judgment on my part.

• 35:08Alastair Campbell?

  The thing that pops into my head, and this will infuriate many of the sort of Iraq haters who might listen, but when you said that question, the first thing that popped into my head was actually, this is going to sound quite weird, but it was about how the fact that I sort of couldn't really see the internet taking off. In a way that was going to affect my life very much. So I remember, I remember a guy called Nick Assender, who he worked in the lobby and he worked on one of the papers and he came to see me and he said, oh, by the way, I'm leaving, I'm going to the BBC. Oh, I said, that's interesting. Yeah, I'm doing the, I'm doing all the kind of

• 35:51Alastair Campbell?

  online news reporting. And I was, what do you mean? He said, well, I'm, you know, the sort of internet thing, I'm going to be like doing a website and all that stuff and the news on the website. I said, what are you doing that for? Stay in papers, mate, stay in papers. So I think I was, I think I underestimated the technological revolution.

• 36:10Rory Stewart?

  It was actually interesting coming together there, wasn't it? Because David Davis revealed to us that he wanted to buy the Mirror and make you the editor. He wanted, that both of you were going to bet heavy on the, on the print media.

• 36:21Alastair Campbell?

  That question about David Davis, I think underlines what you said earlier. I think he did slightly tie himself in knots and he didn't tie himself in knots by us tying him in knots. He tied himself in knots by us just coming back with questions that leant into his ability to tie himself in knots. And I think he did.

• 36:41Rory Stewart?

  I also think that he, and to some extent, Rachel Reeves, are an example of the fact that getting aggressive with the interviewer is, is never good. I mean, I've always been struck by this. I remember William Hague coming in to testify when I was on the, I was on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. And he was just so charming and unflappable and never, ever lost his temper with us. And as a result, he was able to waltz through these hearings. I basically learnt that if you're polite to a select committee, they basically can't touch you. As soon as you start saying, you know, Rachel Reeves was like, I'm not having that coming from a Tory or, you know, David Davis saying, you know, you're the establishment, then suddenly.

• 37:23Alastair Campbell?

  There's, it's funny, going back to the Channel Four thing, around the same time, I did lose my temper at a select committee. Not lose my temper, but I got very, very, very angry and agitated. And the clip. That made it on the news. We should probably dig it out. And I basically I started, I was punching the tail and I was saying, and I will not stop banging on about this until the BBC acknowledged they've made a mistake, apologised, and da da da da da da. And I, again, I'm sure Fiona wouldn't agree, but I thought it was a pretty effective piece of communication. I think sometimes temper's okay.

• 38:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's well, it depends what you're trying to do. But if your objective is to make it through an interview without riling the other person, then disarming with charm is a

• 38:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, listen, don't get me wrong, charm is charm is definitely worth having. Here's one that I'm very keen to do. And this, I'm afraid I'll have to mention Fiona again. Anne McCarthy, did either of you ever meet Maggie Smith? I met Maggie Smith.

• 38:22Rory Stewart?

  Go on, tell us your Maggie Smith story. Maybe we'll finish with your Maggie Smith story.

• 38:25Alastair Campbell?

  The reason I met Maggie Smith is because her secretary was a guy called Christopher Downs, who was the partner of Ilted Harrington. This is a political angle here. He was the former chair of the GLC in the old days, and they were

• 38:41Rory Stewart?

  Greater London Council of People. He's like an early sort of mayor of London type.

• 38:44Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. And they were a couple that, you know, gay couple that were together for many, many, many, many years. And of course, through the whole kind of homophobic period, they were very, very, when I first got together with Fiona, they were family friends of Fiona's family. And in fact, I met, this has just popped into my head, the very first time I met Peter Mandelson was actually at their at their flat.

• 39:11Rory Stewart?

  You've got to be careful this, so we're getting too much, too much.

• 39:14Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay, sorry, sorry.

• 39:15Rory Stewart?

  We're worried you're gonna, you're gonna end up like some, one of these kind of anecdotalists.

• 39:21Alastair Campbell?

  But and Chris just had these wonderful stories about Maggie Smith, because he was like, he was her secretary, he was her kind of confidant, he was her, he used to be her dresser, he just looked after her. And the sense you got of her was just of somebody who's incredibly, quite highly strung, incredibly witty, very spiky.

• 39:46Alastair Campbell?

  Fiona actually spoke at Chris's funeral and Maggie arrived after the funeral had already started. So the funeral's already underway and the church doors opened and Maggie's there and Chris would have absolutely loved the fact that even at his funeral she stole the show.

• 40:02Rory Stewart?

  So I was at the National Theatre and watching a play called Coriolanus, which for political geeks is a great thing to go and see if you're interested in politics and compromise. And the director of the National Theatre appeared on stage Rufus Norris because it was the day that Maggie Smith had died. And I was really struck by the professionalism and the pride of Rufus Norris and National Theatre there. Seven thirty at night, could have been at home. He turned up just in order to walk on that stage and say, I'd like all of us to remember Maggie Smith tonight. She was an amazing institution. And I just thought there was something really cheered me up about Britain, cheered me up about institutions, cheered me up about his professionalism and the sense of, yeah, sense of people's legacy.

• 40:47Rory Stewart?

  So Maggie Smith.

• 40:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think that's a lovely story and I think that's a good place to end, just remembering the wonderful Maggie Smith. See you soon.

• 40:55Rory Stewart?

  See you soon. Good night.

• 41:39Speaker 07

  The Great Game, Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 41:41Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 41:43Speaker 08

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

• 41:52Speaker 09

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 41:56Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 41:58Speaker 09

  New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 42:03Alastair Campbell?

  You're my soldier, are you?

• 42:05Speaker 10

  Sergeant Tom MacDuff, Duffy!

• 42:07Speaker 09

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 42:09Speaker 10

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 42:13Speaker 09

  Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. We have two types of friendly KIA. Where Britain plays its strongest arm. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.