228. Question Time: The legacy of Theresa May, abolishing National Insurance, and Sweden joins NATO

What will Theresa May be remembered for as PM? Who are the best and worst prime ministers of the post-war era? What is the significance of Sweden becoming the latest European country to join NATO? Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP ELECTION TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 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 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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• 1:34Speaker 03

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• 2:09Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:12Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 2:13Alastair Campbell?

  And before we get going Rory, we're about to go and talk to 1,200 A-level students. We're in Methodist Hall.

• 2:21Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 2:21Alastair Campbell?

  And there might be the odd bit of background noise. There won't be much, but if there's a little bit, please bear with us.

• 2:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, they're getting here. There are big signs outside calling for the abolition of the monarchy, to my slight anxiety.

• 2:32Alastair Campbell?

  How did you feel about that, walking through those?

• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  Initially, I couldn't, I couldn't, all I could see is abolish, abolish, abolish, the way the the flags were sticking. So I couldn't work out what it was at once. And of course, everybody's hypersensitive to demonstrations at the moment. So you're like, is this a Palestine demonstration? And then suddenly abolish, abolish, abolish. And then I discovered it's a massive Republican demonstration.

• 2:52Alastair Campbell?

  I can work out why the fact of you and I coming to talk to 1,200 schoolchildren should attract an abolish the monarchy. But apparently, apparently it's to do with the Supreme Court around the corner.

• 3:01Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 3:02Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, Lily Pobareschka.

• 3:05Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yes.

• 3:06Alastair Campbell?

  asks, when will you two start disagreeing agreeably again? You seem to be agreeing on everything which defeats the purpose of the podcast and makes it less dynamic. I don't think that's true, is it?

• 3:16Rory Stewart?

  I don't think that's true, no. Shall we get a disagreement going?

• 3:19Alastair Campbell?

  Shall we start with Theresa May's legacy? I mean, this was the issue on which we had more questions than anything else. I'll just give a few to give you the flavour. Main Man, which I promise is not me. With Theresa May stepping down, how would Rory and Alistair rank every prime minister since World War II? We could be here, we could be here forever on that one. Matthew Lockyer, Rory, explain your admiration for Theresa May, who proudly denaturalised Windrush migrants, leaving them socially destitute, who separated them from their families through deportation, who described people like me as citizens of nowhere just to score a point.

• 3:50Rory Stewart?

  Okay, can I, can I stop for a second then? Because I think this is, this is a really good example of where we might get some fruitful disagreement, but also some agreement.

• 3:57Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. So remember Lily wants us to disagree.

• 4:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, let's, well, let's, let's start with his claim that she proudly denaturalised Windrush migrants. I mean, we interviewed Theresa May at a real length, and we talked about Windrush a great deal. I simply don't think that's a fair characterisation of what she did.

• 4:14Alastair Campbell?

  Isn't it a rhetorical device to say he was angry about the way she handled Windrush?

• 4:18Rory Stewart?

  Well, yes, except, and I saw a lot of this on Twitter, obviously I tweeted out something saying I'm sorry she was stepping down and that she conducted herself with great dignity and principles.

• 4:27Alastair Campbell?

  Lots of questions on your tweets.

• 4:28Rory Stewart?

  Principles on the back benches and then proceeded to get over a thousand replies on Twitter, which is quite a lot of replies. And when you get that, there was literally, I don't think, probably 98% negative.

• 4:39Alastair Campbell?

  Really?

• 4:40Rory Stewart?

  98%, yeah.

• 4:41Alastair Campbell?

  Even if she was stepping down?

• 4:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, 98% with me tweeting out something praising that she stepped down, 90% was of that sort. And it was usually the same three things repeated again and again. So I think the first thing I'd say is if people are genuinely interested in Theresa May and her legacy and looking at it in a thoughtful way, I would encourage them to listen to The Rest is Politics leading, where we get a bit away from the sort of 140 characters and actually get into her reflections on Windrush. I think her citizens of nowhere phrase was very damaging and very alienating and did an enormous amount to injure the thing I cared deeply about, which was trying to prevent a hard Brexit because it made her seem like a hard Brexit.

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  And she was doing it at the time because she was overcompensating for the fact that she'd sort of vaguely been a Remainer and didn't campaign much with David Cameron, but she did vote Remain, people knew she'd voted Remain. And so she was kind of trying to lean in way too far to the sort of hard Brexit, Lee Anderson, Farage types. But just to give you some of the, you've got lots on Twitter, but these ones that came to the podcast. Andrew Jones, should I abandon listening to The Rest is Politics now that Rory Stewart is out complimenting Mrs May? She's the person who robbed us of our EU freedom of movement right, the right to live, study and work or retire in other EU countries, gone, all gone to satisfy the hatred of immigrants. Andrew H.

• 6:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, how can you possibly put May and morals in the same sentence? Have you no memory of Windrush and the hostile environment? Have you glossed over the despite the fact many have not been compensated, the deaths in destitution, unable to get NHS jobs, housed, lives ruined? I mean, it was, I've got to be honest, perhaps I was overly impressed by our interview with them, but I was surprised at the vehemence of some of the questions that we got.

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so, I mean, I think it's good to, it's good to get this disagreement out there. I think part of what we're trying to do on the show is to put people in context and get out of a world which particularly exists on Twitter, where everybody is either a hero or evil. Actually, there's not that many heroes left on Twitter, there's a lot of evil people. And it's strange, if you look at the rhetoric, not just to the ones you've read, but you can go, if people are interested, another 500 replies to me on Twitter, just how intense the demonisation is. I mean, it's, there isn't a on même temps going on. People are not saying, you know, she conducted herself with a lot of dignity on the back

• 7:13Rory Stewart?

  benches, she challenged Boris Johnson well, she decided to serve for another five years when she didn't need to, that she had pushed for a soft Brexit, she reached out to Labour, she embraced the customs union, and that in the end, the defeat of that is what led to Boris and the hard Brexit. It's absolutely, she is still, in a lot of this, in the same sort of sights of a rifle that she was in, right at the heart of the Brexit debate.

• 7:41Alastair Campbell?

  I feel, though, that during the Brexit debate, I thought she did get a lot of respect for, not for the conclusion, which was a disaster, but for the work rate, the commitment, dignity. Michel Barnier, who I saw when we were, Fiona and I were coming back through France, and we stopped off and saw Michel Barnier, and he was full of praise for Theresa May about the way she conducted herself, particularly in comparison with some of the other British politicians he'd had to, had to deal with. And I also wonder whether the vehemence which comes out, and I think I would, I would agree with some of the criticisms, but not necessarily the way they were put. I do think that the way the government handled Windrush was terrible, I do think her hostile

• 8:23Alastair Campbell?

  environment, and she admitted, she really regretted those vans going around saying, you know, go home, the go-home vans, she regretted doing that, she said that, but she did do it as Home Secretary. So I think on the one hand, you have that sense of she did get praised during the time she was doing the job from some unusual quarters at times. I think the other thing that happens in our the the sort of disjunct between social media, whereas you say it's all black and white, hate or love, good or evil. And then over here, on the kind of mainstream side of things, politician announces he or she is stepping down and everybody comes out and says they're wonderful.

• 9:00Rory Stewart?

  So there was a lot of praise, wasn't there?

• 9:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think if you looked at the papers, most of the papers, I think if you looked at the TV coverage that day, I think it was very, almost haggard graphic.

• 9:11Rory Stewart?

  Oh, I see.

• 9:11Alastair Campbell?

  And I think that's often the and it's usually the case when politicians die. And I think people understand that to some extent.

• 9:17Rory Stewart?

  And actually, it was also a reminder of 2017, 18, because along with people who were passionate remainers, very, very angry for her for triggering Article 50, there were in there hard Brexiteers, whose names I recognize because they regularly attack me, you know, defenders of Lee Anderson, et cetera, who see Theresa May as a kind of terrible, kind of quisling, soft Brexiteer, Brexit in name only. They produce this kind of brino phrase. And so then you've got the far right enjoying my discouragement, saying, you know, that went well, Rory. But to come back to Theresa May, just for a second, she is a very interesting character. I mean, obviously, we can't get into the strengths

• 10:00Rory Stewart?

  and weaknesses of us as well as we did in that in that interview, those two interviews. But I think her weaknesses are partly in something that's very central to politicians, which we'll come on to with the state that Biden's in now, which is really the kind of communications and the charisma. That I think her final position was the right one, which is she embraced basically a customs union, reached across to Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer, who was then the Labour shadow Brexit secretary, to try to get a compromise deal and stop a harder Brexit. But her political skills weren't quite there. Now, I don't know whether anyone would have been able to do it, but maybe what people are getting at with the citizens' nowhere thing is that she hadn't managed to become the kind of

• 10:45Rory Stewart?

  figure who could actually convincingly reach across and win Labour support on a sub Brexit.

• 10:50Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, it was a virtually impossible situation. She had Cameron gone, Johnson hovering, and I think she made a terrible mistake making him Foreign Secretary, but that was her judgment. He's hovering. She had these divisions inside the Conservative Party not going away. She had people like me on the People's Vote campaign who were genuinely hopeful that we could use that as a way to stop the whole damn thing. And she had these incredibly difficult, complicated negotiations to conduct with the European Commission and therefore more than two dozen countries. And I think you're right, I think she probably, I think she'd acknowledged that as a personality, she maybe lacked some of that bandwidth that you need when you're bringing different

• 11:33Alastair Campbell?

  people, you're trying to bring them into, inside your tent. I thought the sit-ins of nowhere was a terrible mistake. I also thought that, I think the way that she allowed the Daily Mail in particular to kind of project her, you know, crush the saboteurs, that was a relationship. I mean, she had a relationship going on there with, with Dacre and, and I think that was a mistake. So I think the legacy is very, very mixed. I think she's probably in the end going to be remembered as a short-term Prime Minister who couldn't get Brexit done. That's sad in a way, but then, and then she would point to modern slavery and some of the other things that she did.

• 12:13Rory Stewart?

  It makes me think that the one hope for a soft Brexit, if she wanted to do it, would have been astonishingly confident communication, really working out how you frame the argument morally, emotionally, intellectually, how you build a coalition from people who voted Remain, people who voted Brexit, make the argument for compromise and moving forward. And that's where I guess you really need your sort of Obama or your Clinton to be able to, if you, if you have to formulate something that tricky.

• 12:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, listen, do we want to go down the route of listing our Post-war prime ministers in order because that we could be here all day on that.

• 12:54Rory Stewart?

  We can do the bottom two, though.

• 12:56Alastair Campbell?

  I think the bottom two. Well, it's just what order do you want to do them in?

• 13:00Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's quite difficult. I mean, they're quite. It's quite a challenge. They're quite bad in different ways. I mean, they are, of course, Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. And I continue to be staggered by revelations about Liz Truss. I mean, I just.

• 13:13Alastair Campbell?

  Fifteen thousand pounds booze bill for a plane to Australia.

• 13:16Rory Stewart?

  Well, no, I just I just was reminded recently something I'd forgotten that one of her great visions about 10 years ago was that she was in favor of elected judges, which, again, many things are wrong in our country, but actually our judges, one of the things that sort of functions reasonably well. I mean, her capacity to take the wrong side on almost every single issue is just magnificent.

• 13:36Alastair Campbell?

  Those who listened to our interview with Sajid Javid, if you've only listened to it, I do suggest that you also watch it on YouTube because his face, when we asked him about why back Liz Truss was a real picture, and he went on to describe it as the biggest mistake of his life. I think Johnson just about nixed it. She did smash the economy, but also he smashed the economy, you know, five percent, the Brexit that was barely mentioned in the budget. And I think he did fundamental damage to standards in public life. So I think he will be talked about longer than than Liz Truss. So I'm going to give it to him. I haven't. I can't bring myself to watch this channel for documentary

• 14:19Alastair Campbell?

  series about him. Apparently, it is absolutely excoriating. But despite that, I'm going to resist the temptation to watch. Who've we got worst? I'm Johnson. Are you?

• 14:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I'll go. I'll go Johnson.

• 14:29Alastair Campbell?

  And Truss is the runner up. Who are you having as your best post-war prime minister?

• 14:33Rory Stewart?

  Best post-war prime minister? Gosh.

• 14:35Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going Atlee.

• 14:36Rory Stewart?

  You are going Atlee, aren't you?

• 14:37Alastair Campbell?

  And Tony's not far behind. I've got to tell you, with Northern Ireland alone.

• 14:41Rory Stewart?

  Okay, I'm going to make a big play for Harold Macmillan. The more I look at Macmillan, the more excited I get.

• 14:47Alastair Campbell?

  You're not even going to make a play for Churchill, are you?

• 14:49Rory Stewart?

  Three hundred. No, I think he was amazing, but not in the post-war.

• 14:52Alastair Campbell?

  Not in the post-war, no.

• 14:53Rory Stewart?

  Incredible, incredible figure. But I think he was not on top game in the post-war.

• 14:57Alastair Campbell?

  No, no.

• 14:58Rory Stewart?

  No, actually, the achievements of Macmillan's government are really, really striking. It was. And actually, that Wilson victory was quite a quite a tight one. But They did an incredible amount in housing. I think they built about 300,000 houses a year. It was a moment, this is the 60s, where British life changed so much. Your friend Peter Kelner, who obviously is more of the left, but makes a lovely case for Macmillan. He says from 51 to 64, which is that 13 years of Conservative government, an average growth rate of more than 3%, low inflation after the first year, unemployment averaging just half a million, more than 4 million new homes built. In 1951, few families had a car, television, telephone, fridge or washing machine.

• 15:41Rory Stewart?

  By 1964, all were commonplace. The incredible change during the Macmillan period in people's lives-

• 15:46Alastair Campbell?

  Is that why you tell us we've never had it so good?

• 15:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, in some ways, of course, he was right. And he's very interesting, because it's also 13 years. It's a good comparison with, you know, the end of Rishi Sunak or the end of the Labour government. It's a good route into it. And I think one of the things I took away from it is that one of the reasons why politics is in trouble today is that the kind of complete transformation in lives which was possible in the 50s and 60s, where people were coming from such a low base. A third of houses in my constituency had no indoor toilet in the 1950s. A quarter of them had no electricity. So by the end of the 60s, suddenly people had for the first time access to things, you know, health, dental care, housing, which they hadn't had before. Today-

• 16:33Alastair Campbell?

  All the things that they've lost in the last 13 years.

• 16:35Rory Stewart?

  Today, with the best will in the world, you know, the great, your great Labour government as it comes in, is not going to be able to change people's lives as fundamentally as was possible in the 50s and 60s.

• 16:43Alastair Campbell?

  No, because I think the big thing that really affects this generation is the insight that they're not going to be better off than the generation before, which every other generation prior to that has been able to say that. So I'm going Atlee and Blair, you're going Macmillan and-

• 16:57Rory Stewart?

  I think it was brave on decolonisation. The more I read about how badly things went for France, in Vietnam, in Algeria-

• 17:04Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not hearing a lot of love for Alec Douglas Hugh here.

• 17:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I'll make the argument for Alec Douglas Hugh as well. Now, the great Alec Douglas Hugh, my favourite Alec Douglas Hugh thing, right? He's walking down, just after he's been Prime Minister, he's walking down the embankment and a man comes up to him and says, "Alec, how are you? I haven't seen you since school. You know, I have always said to my wife, 'You ought to have been Prime Minister.'"

• 17:26Alastair Campbell?

  This is after he'd been Prime Minister.

• 17:29Rory Stewart?

  And he told it against himself. Alex Doherty's all telling us that it's nice, it's nice.

• 17:33Alastair Campbell?

  Right, I think we disagreed enough there.

• 17:34Rory Stewart?

  Hannah, what does Sweden joining NATO mean for the rest of Europe? Could it be possible for Ukraine to join? So, quick explainer on this. Sweden's neutrality is very old. It's nearly 200 years old. Goes back to the fact that their king in the Napoleonic Wars had a pretty disastrous confrontation and lost Finland. And pretty much from then onwards, with a few exceptions, Sweden has remained neutral. And in fact, it was a reason for Sweden initially holding off from joining the European Union. But that has begun to change. Sweden did join the EU and it's clear that from the 60s and 70s onwards, in practice, Sweden has been pretty much in the pro-Western camp, although it presented itself as neutral.

• 18:15Rory Stewart?

  And finally, this week, Sweden has done this extraordinary step of joining NATO, which, for those who want to see things in a more optimistic light this year, you could pitch as being actually the West coming together and Putin overreaching himself and Putin achieving exactly the reverse of what he wanted. He wanted to break NATO, wanted to... And what he's actually done is got Finland and Sweden, who up till now have very carefully stayed out of NATO, to say, actually, in the end, we're going to be clear about this. Putin poses a threat to security of Europe, we're joining NATO.

• 18:45Alastair Campbell?

  I guess the point about other countries, that there's definitely been a change in perspective in relation to defence in that whole region for obvious reasons, particularly the countries that border Russia, like the Finns. But with Sweden, they had to overcome some pretty big and difficult obstacles. Orban tried to stop it at various points. Erdogan in Turkey was very, very unkeen because he's got all sorts of Turkish exile issues that he's constantly getting very, very angry about. So they've just sort of persevered with it and got to the point. And, you know, we talked about Joe Biden's speech in the main episode. And, you know, the Swedish Prime Minister was there in the gallery, being feted. So they clearly saw that as quite a big historic moment.

• 19:27Alastair Campbell?

  And I think it will make other European countries that are proud of their neutrality want to stay out of it, saying, well, maybe if we were forced to choose between...

• 19:37Rory Stewart?

  East and West, we'd lean into Western NATO. It's also interesting that, as you've reminded us, that in the end Erdogan didn't fully veto. There was a lot of talk about how, as you say, because there had been anti-Turkish statements, there had been Koran burnings, there were various things that are very sensitive in Turkey, that he'd block it indefinitely. And that's a bit reminiscent of the point you made last week of the fact that Orban didn't, in the end, block the EU budgetary assistance. So somehow these players are not vetoing and disrupting quite in the way that they might. In the end, they're coming in behind the consensus. Yeah. Okay, Rory, quick break and then more questions.

• 20:18Speaker 02

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• 21:01Speaker 03

  When you think about Crocs, you think the classic clog. But did you know there's also a canvas clog? A vegan suede clog, a coastal-inspired style, a style with studs, straps, and lots of sass. Honestly, I could keep going with the surprises. You've got to see them for yourself because there is literally a style for every kind of girl. So do your thing and head to crocs.com or a store near you now.

• 21:35Alastair Campbell?

  Hi, Alistair here. Just to let you know, tickets going very, very well for our pre-election tour. We've also got very good news for people in Brighton. We announced last week it was sold out. We've managed to extend the place, so we've got a few more tickets there. And I'm sure we've got lots of listeners from Brighton this week because we had the wonderful Caroline Lucas on Rest is Politics leading. For all the other venues, just go to therestispolitics.com to find out where you can buy your tickets.

• 22:04Rory Stewart?

  Okay, Jack Slater, brilliant interview with Caroline Lucas this week, but I was struck by her comments on the whipping system. How very often MPs had no idea what they were voting for, and in fact, most were just following what their whip had told them. Can you explain what the whips do and why they are there? I understand the importance of following party lines, but I don't understand the whipping system. So obviously, those two things are connected. The justification for this system is that if you vote for your party, if you vote for Labour in the next election, and you're voting for them believing they're going to spend 23 billion on, I don't know, a new green deal, you expect the Labour MP you voted for in your constituency to deliver that for you. And you would be pretty angry, in fact, if they said, "Well, you know, on every vote,

• 22:47Rory Stewart?

  I'm going to use my independent conscience, and I've decided for whatever reason I don't agree with that policy." So we do really vote for parties, and our system is set up to allow MPs to only disagree with the party in very small, marginal situations, usually on issues of conscience. And when they do, pretty catastrophic. In my case, ultimately, I vote against the government, I get thrown out of the party. So what do the whips do? Well, the whips are the machine that pushes the loyalty in the voting, but they also are the wiring of the House of Commons. So they conduct these very complicated discussions with the Speaker on which amendments are coming, when bills are being presented, when the votes are going to be held. And they coordinate very closely, actually, with the other opposition parties. So the government whips, the opposition whips.

• 23:31Alastair Campbell?

  Usual channels, they're called.

• 23:32Rory Stewart?

  Usual channels, yeah. Working all this stuff through. And it's a weird job because you can't speak. In the House of Commons when you're a Whip normally, and you basically don't give interviews to the media, your constituents don't really see much of you. And you live this sort of slightly secretive life, generally in an office. And there are, I found there were three ways of being a Whip, certainly in the Conservative Party, maybe different in Labour. Either you were like a big kind of enforcer, a physically large guy.

• 23:59Alastair Campbell?

  David Lightbowne comes to mind.

• 24:02Rory Stewart?

  David Lightbowne, that's good, that's good.

• 24:03Alastair Campbell?

  He used to, he was a big lad. He used to pad around very slowly, looking menacing.

• 24:08Rory Stewart?

  That's good, that's good, okay. The second lot that we had was we had sort of people like Philip Dunn, who are these very kind of gentlemanly, smooth sort of gentleman assassin types, put their arm around you and say, now then, old chap, not sure you really want to block your career. And then the third lot, which was very striking, was kind of particularly in the Cameron and May government, very kind of down to earth, often women who take you out on the House of Commons terrace for a fag, and they'd say, come on, just be sensible, don't create trouble for your colleagues, be loyal, be a team player, and try to get you in that way. So it went all the way from threats to sort of trying to normalise. Anyway, how about Labour?

• 24:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it was interesting, the discussion that we had with Caroline Lucas, where you and she gave this terrible portrayal of MPs as these sort of boneheaded people who just did as they were told. I'd like to think that another role of the Whip was to engage in proper argument with some of the MPs about why the policy was such as it was. Does that not go on inside the Conservative Party?

• 25:09Rory Stewart?

  They try a little bit, but the problem with it is the government's then liable to change its mind three weeks later, in which case it's a bit of a problem for the Whip. They've just made the argument, they convince you, and then it's all changed.

• 25:18Alastair Campbell?

  I do think, I mean, maybe it's back to the fact that I wasn't an MP, and so I would be dealing a lot of the time with the chief Whip. Memorably Donald Duer, who was brilliant at sort of giving you a kind of overview of what the view of the PLP was, as opposed to maybe drilling down individual by individual or even region by region. Of course, that's the other thing that goes on, isn't it? You have Whips for issues, and you have Whips for localities. You have little, does it get covered by region in the Tory party?

• 25:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's usually done regionally, yeah.

• 25:48Alastair Campbell?

  Like a north, west, whatever. I mean, I think, you called it wiring, I think it'd be very hard for our system to function. If you didn't have something like the Whip system, I think they could actually liberate them a little bit more to be able to speak. I mean, let's be honest, the current Conservative government doesn't have that many people who are very good at communicating. They could probably find a couple in the Whip's office that could do it better. But I think unless we, I think, I think people listening to that interview with Caroline Lucas will, will think she was describing from somebody who was inside the system, but not of the system, a very, very dysfunctional political battlefield.

• 26:24Rory Stewart?

  And she, of course, came from Europe. So one of the interesting things is she's saying a lot of these things, not everything, but a lot of these things worked better in Europe.

• 26:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I thought it was fascinating. I didn't know that thing she said about if you put down an amendment in the European Parliament, you have to give a 50-word explainer as to what the change would mean. And when she tried to introduce that in Westminster, the usual channels and the usual suspects was an absolute uprising. And her assessment was that they don't actually want people to know what things mean.

• 26:52Rory Stewart?

  Well, my, my first great experience of this is I tried to rebel as a very new MP on VAT on mountain.

• 27:00Alastair Campbell?

  Hold on, hold on, let's just unpick it. I tried to rebel.

• 27:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I'll explain the story. It goes like this, right? So I say to Patrick McLaughlin, who's the chief whip.

• 27:07Alastair Campbell?

  He was, he was a big Berlin chap.

• 27:09Rory Stewart?

  Big chap, yeah, ex-miner. It was unusual in the Conservative Party. So, yeah, he'd been a coal miner. And I said to him, I cannot vote for putting VAT on mountain rescue because I represent the Lake District, so I've got more mountain rescue teams than anywhere else. So I'm going to vote against VAT for mountain rescue. And he then said, well, don't worry about it, Rory, because the amendment on VAT on mountain rescue has not been selected. So I thought, oh. So then I asked another MP, how do I know whether the amendment's been selected or not? And the first four MPs I spoke to said, I have no idea. Right, the fifth one, who was like an old parliamentarian, said, if you go and look at the back of the wooden bench which the Sergeant of Arms is sitting on, it's written there.

• 27:53Rory Stewart?

  So I went and found it and I looked at it and then I found, remember, you know, and I checked my order paper and I went back to Patrick McLaughlin, who was by now standing at the door of the lobby ushering everybody in.

• 28:03Alastair Campbell?

  He said it was that.

• 28:04Rory Stewart?

  And I said, I said, but, but Chief Whip, it's, it's there, it is being voted on. And he said, oh, bugger off then. So, so I went and hid.

• 28:13Alastair Campbell?

  He misled you, knowingly.

• 28:16Rory Stewart?

  I went and hid in the loo. So I, I sat in the loo and it was the most humiliating thing. I'm like sitting on the seat of this, the loo's down, all the way through the vote, feeling I've wrecked my career, this is completely humiliating.

• 28:28Alastair Campbell?

  You just sat it out, you didn't vote.

• 28:29Rory Stewart?

  I just sat it out, yeah.

• 28:30Alastair Campbell?

  But you didn't rebel?

• 28:31Rory Stewart?

  Well, I rebelled.

• 28:32Alastair Campbell?

  I suppose that was a form of rebellion.

• 28:33Rory Stewart?

  I abstained, I abstained from voting for the government.

• 28:35Alastair Campbell?

  You did, you did a courageous abstention.

• 28:37Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. So I came out of the loo feeling this is absolutely terrible, my whole career is ruined and, you know, I'm courage of my convictions and who on earth am I? And I got bullied by the whips and, and sure enough, nobody ever mentioned it again. I mean, normally if you don't vote for the government, you're dragged in by the whips and they berate you and they demand to know what you're doing.

• 28:53Alastair Campbell?

  Did they lose the vote? No.

• 28:55Rory Stewart?

  No, they won the vote.

• 28:56Alastair Campbell?

  That would help. I think if you'd lost the vote, you might have been in a bit of trouble. I wouldn't mess with Patrick McLaughlin.

• 29:00Rory Stewart?

  No, I don't want to mess.

• 29:01Alastair Campbell?

  But David Laubman, was he before your time?

• 29:02Rory Stewart?

  Before my time, yeah.

• 29:03Alastair Campbell?

  He was huge and he used to, he did, he used to pad around, he had this very odd way of walking. Because I used to, when I was a journalist, I used to stand in the members' lobby and just, and he just padded very, very slowly and you could see when he walked up to people that they were just a little bit worried about him.

• 29:19Rory Stewart?

  One of the problems with whips famously, I mean, they, they, in the past were accused of basically keeping books on MPs, blackmailing them, also having slush funds. So, you know, can help out an MP if they're in financial trouble, cover up for them. They now present themselves as the human resources department. So they say, well, you know, with a person, we're here to help you, you know, a header. But of course, as MPs discover, unfortunately, the whips talk quite a good game, but if you get in a real scandal where the press are coming after you, often MPs complain with the whips, drop you like a stone and all this HR and support collapses and that's one of the reasons you get people feeling very depressed, their mental health collapses, because they feel the party just hasn't got their back and they're under pressure.

• 30:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Chloé Scott saddened this International Women's Day to discover UNICEF report that FGM is up by 15% in the past eight years with all his knowledge of Africa and the Middle East and his warnings of imposing westernism. And not respecting local cultures, how does he think we should deal with this abhorrent practice?

• 30:20Rory Stewart?

  Well firstly, obviously for listeners, this is a practice which is generally imposed on young girls. It's incredibly scarring. It can be something that can actually be deadly. People get infections. It leaves you permanently wounded for life. It has no justification in the Quran. I mean, it's a very, very strange tribal practice and actually not only amongst Muslim communities. And it's a very, very clear sense of international human rights law coming to fruition. And you can now see actually in the United States, when you land, big posters encouraging people to come forward if they've been victims of it. So I think we've come a very long way.

• 31:03Rory Stewart?

  I mean, there was the time not very long ago where this was considered just a local cultural custom that people respected towards us now feeling that it is a very fundamental violent violation of women.

• 31:16Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know what the numbers are though, but up female genital mutilation up by 15% in the past eight years. Is that, do you think that's a reporting issue or a?

• 31:25Rory Stewart?

  I don't know, because a lot of it, of course, is happening in quite remote regions. So I'm not quite sure how that's counted.

• 31:31Alastair Campbell?

  Sunil Pinto, I'd love your definition of populism. It seems to encompass nationalism, protectionism and an element of anti-establishmentism. What irritates me, says Sunil, is it seems to be an umbrella term for regimes you don't like. I don't know whether that you is us or one. I also hate the term most of these, because most of these regimes I don't think are popular. My definition of populism is a form of politics which seeks to exploit rather than address problems and use them as a way of dividing rather than bringing people together. That's my rough definition.

• 32:10Rory Stewart?

  Very good. My definition of populism is it always involves inventing.

• 32:16Rory Stewart?

  A people against the elite and pretending that the people that you're speaking for, if you are a populist politician, are all the people, they are the nation. When in fact, usually they're nothing of the sort, right? They're barely a majority of the people. And by doing so, you characterize your opposition, people who oppose you, not as people with reasonable other views, but as traitors, not real people, almost not nationals of the country. It's a very, very dangerous.

• 32:47Alastair Campbell?

  Saboteurs.

• 32:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. And, you know, we saw it in the, very clearly in the Brexit debate, where.

• 32:53Alastair Campbell?

  Enemies of the people.

• 32:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but actually, I'm afraid both sides occasionally would say, we are the people and the other lot don't count. And the other lot's views are completely marginalized and corrupt and owned by bankers or whatever it has to be.

• 33:06Alastair Campbell?

  So when, so when the current government, which they do a lot, say what the British people want us to focus on, is that populism or is that just them trying to align themselves as the government with an objective that they've stated?

• 33:18Rory Stewart?

  I think that's a very longstanding political trick. But I think if they began saying, this is the British people and Labour does not represent the British people. And because they don't represent the British people, and this is what then happens, we're going to push the constitution aside, we're going to push the judges.

• 33:37Alastair Campbell?

  But that's what they do say on Rwanda. They say, we stand up, we stand up for the people and they stand up for the people smugglers.

• 33:42Rory Stewart?

  Right, exactly.

• 33:43Alastair Campbell?

  That's populism.

• 33:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's populism. But the real manifestation is Boris Johnson with proing in parliament. Because then he literally stands in parliament after the Supreme Court has ruled that it's illegal for him to lock parliament, saying, I am standing for the people against the elite. And then he attacks the Supreme Court. He suggests that anyone who is blocking the process is a traitor, that parliament itself is useless. I mean, that's the real populism.

• 34:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So Trump uber populist.

• 34:11Rory Stewart?

  Trump uber populist. And anybody, I think, who shows a contempt for all the kind of checks and balances of liberal democracy, who basically thinks that they can. Populism, whether from the left or the right, is always by its nature. Exclusionary and revolutionary.

• 34:29Alastair Campbell?

  Good. Your turn.

• 34:32Rory Stewart?

  Okay, this is one you might be interested in. Fauzi, big time listener from Brunei, still strong colonialism links and former British colonies protectorates in Asia, i.e. Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore. Bruneians still think the UK is best place for university, hotels run by the Deutsche Group, highest courts are British judges, British army has a Gurkha camp. Is the British Foreign Office or foreign policy still actively trying to maintain these intangible, soft, subliminal influences in this colony? And I'd be interested in the contrast with France and Francophone Africa and what's been happening to France recently.

• 35:02Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Are they really trying to maximize those? I don't think they are. I think they probably should be. They would, would they probably, you know better than I, would they probably say that they still are trying to maximize those?

• 35:13Rory Stewart?

  No, I think they've been pretty cautious then. And they might say that although it might have looked 15 years ago as though the French had done much better. Maybe now it's looking as though the French overplayed their hand and actually by emphasizing their links with former colonies, they actually created a real anti-French sentiment. I mean, what's the way the French newspapers have been reading this whole experience in the Sahel where out of seven countries, French troops are thrown out, military coups happen?

• 35:38Alastair Campbell?

  First thing to say, it's, it's had far, it's far more central in their media and political debate than it is here. And, and you know, not just for the obvious reason, but it's, it's a huge issue. I would say there's, that they are more open to the idea that there is fault historically on their side. Which I think sometimes we are less willing to engage in. But I think also that it is a symptom of the fracturing international order. And in a sense of the, the idea that a Western power being there would necessarily be guaranteed to, to maintain security.

• 36:19Rory Stewart?

  And it's also quite raw in France, isn't it? Because they came out of the Second World War feeling that they were no longer a great power. They'd been excluded from these kind of big conferences with Churchill and Stalin and Roosevelt.

• 36:30Alastair Campbell?

  They got, they got, they got their seat on the council.

• 36:32Rory Stewart?

  Got their seat in the council. But then in Vietnam, D M B M F U, and then in Algeria, they had these incredibly painful decolonization experiences. And the hope was, I think, from De Gaulle and others, that they could sort of keep the more positive elements. That they believed existed in their relationship with their former colonies through this Francophonie. And so in a lot of Africa, they kept far more troops than the British did. Their oil companies, their businesses, their civil servants were deeply invested. So it became quite an important part of kind of French identity. So the loss of that must be quite traumatic.

• 37:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I think it is seen, it's definitely seen as a loss. But I think the other thing that's happened is that as their troops withdraw from some of these places, I think all of the Western countries, you saw this in Joe Biden's State of the Union speech we talked about in the main podcast. He was very, very clear about the point for all his commitment to Ukraine, we are not sending any American soldiers. And I think there is, within Western countries, which you don't see necessarily, for example in Russia, there is this really powerful fear of the loss of life of your own troops. And I think that that is one of the reasons why perhaps when the French did start to withdraw or get expelled from some of these places, even when replaced by people like

• 37:49Alastair Campbell?

  the Wagner Group, almost a sense of relief. Now, I think that's a, I think that's a bad sign.

• 37:55Rory Stewart?

  So the sort of more kind of nationalist anxieties of the sixties and seventies have kind of faded in the French consciousness. There aren't sort of goalists who still think this is important.

• 38:05Alastair Campbell?

  I suspect there are. I suspect there are. But interestingly, Le Pen has not been pushing for sort of a more robust.

• 38:12Rory Stewart?

  Not been saying this is a national disgrace, humiliation.

• 38:15Alastair Campbell?

  No, no.

• 38:16Rory Stewart?

  No, no. Okay, good. Catherine, all this talk of Tories wanting to abolish NI completely, can you explain how we would then fund pensions in NHS, et cetera? Or is the plan to abolish those benefits too? Or am I misunderstanding MI in the first place? So unfortunately, Catherine, national insurance is a sort of lie. It was initially set up, as you imply in your question, as a basket that was supposed to put money in to pay for your pensions in the NHS. But it's just now part of the general fund. I mean, it's not treated separately at all, it's just another tax. And basically, it operates as a kind of additional income tax, and a very strange type of additional income tax, so that people think they're paying one tax rate, but what they're really paying is their income tax plus their national insurance.

• 39:01Rory Stewart?

  So most countries don't have this distinction at all, and it would definitely be much simpler in the British system if we merged income tax and national insurance. But it would have other types of implication, and because it would mean that people who are currently not paying the higher rate of tax would start paying a higher rate of tax.

• 39:18Alastair Campbell?

  But having cut it once and now cut it again and had this talk of abolition, given that the insurance cuts he's already announced are going to be very, very, very hard to fund in the medium and long term, I think abolition is just nonsensical.

• 39:32Rory Stewart?

  Abolition's mad. The respectable argument is for merging, and the reason you'd merge is that at the moment, if you're making income from property or income from shares, or you're not working, you pay a much lower rate of tax in practice than somebody who's working, because somebody who's working has to play income tax plus national insurance on top.

• 39:57Alastair Campbell?

  Although I just, I mentioned Paul Johnson, Institute of Fiscal Studies, who I always read up very closely after these fiscal events, and in his statement he said, "I do welcome the fact that Mr Hunt again chose to cut national insurance rather than income tax. It is better targeted on those of working age, and it reduces the wedge between taxes on different sorts of income. Note that this means that while many workers will be better off as a result of tax changes over this parliament, pensioners will be substantial net losers."

• 40:26Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think we, you know, we discussed this a bit in our, in our main podcast, but we were talking about figures in the national debate who managed to somehow not get into party politics. I do think this man, Paul Johnson, from the IFS, is really interesting, because, you know, you admire him greatly, I admire him greatly, and you don't get the sense that either Conservative or Labour politicians are really having a go at him. He seems to somehow be able to say some pretty challenging things.

• 40:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. It shows that even in the modern age, with the whole sort of Twitter sewer that we've talked about, you can build a trustful reputation by being kind of clear and straightforward. My final question from Quentin Colburn. Michelle Donnelly.

• 41:10Alastair Campbell?

  Why is Michelle Donlon still a minister? How do you think her recent conduct regarding her tweet that we're all now paying for stacks up against the Nolan principles?

• 41:21Rory Stewart?

  So, quick explainer on this. Michelle Donlon, who is the business secretary, posted on X a letter in which she said that she was, I'm going to get the language wrong, but basically that she was disgusted and horrified that two academics who were being appointed to a particular academic council had made what she implied were pro Hamas comments. And one of those academics, it turned out, had simply said something like, "This is awful," on a quote on a Guardian article. And she was then approached by the lawyers, I mean, I suppose sued by the lawyers of the academics. An investigation was conducted. She's issued an unconditional apology, saying in no way at all were they Hamas supporters.

• 42:04Rory Stewart?

  The post has been deleted and she's paid £15,000 compensation. But the point is, she hasn't paid it. The point is, her department has paid £15,000 compensation.

• 42:13Alastair Campbell?

  On our behalf.

• 42:14Rory Stewart?

  And presumably... And the argument there seems to be, reading between the lines, that the department was involved in preparing the advice which led her to do this. So, there's a statement in one of the newspapers that a particular senior civil servant or director general was involved in helping draft the letter.

• 42:30Alastair Campbell?

  But the whole thing was run out of our friends 55 Tufton Street.

• 42:33Rory Stewart?

  So, policy exchange, exactly, I don't know whether it's currently in Tufton Street, but I mean, policy exchange is broadly a right-wing Conservative think-tank, was the first people to air this story that these academics who were being appointed, and this is the sort of thing that particularly annoys Tufton Street, to a diversity, equity and inclusion panel, were pro Hamas.

• 42:52Alastair Campbell?

  So, the question was whether she should still be a minister and how it fits with Nolan. I would say it goes right through virtually all of the Nolan principles. Honesty, it was dishonest. Openness, they tried to keep the whole thing quiet. Objectivity, it wasn't objective. Selfless, if you were selfless, you'd pay for the damn mistake yourself. Integrity, totally lacking. Accountability, not happening. Leadership, bad. Sunak allowing it. Sunak as bad as Johnson, Rory.

• 43:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, there we are.

• 43:22Alastair Campbell?

  Do you agree?

• 43:24Rory Stewart?

  I don't think I'd go quite that far, but where I do agree with you is that I think ministers shouldn't be getting involved in these shouting matches on Twitter.

• 43:31Alastair Campbell?

  If you had, if you'd have done that as a minister and you'd been shown to be completely and totally wrong and defamed that person, would you have felt able to stay in office?

• 43:42Rory Stewart?

  It's very difficult to answer that question without sounding pompous.

• 43:45Alastair Campbell?

  It's a principle.

• 43:45Rory Stewart?

  Pompous and pleased with myself. I think what I would say is I hopefully wouldn't be in the game of issuing those kind of letters in the first place.

• 43:55Alastair Campbell?

  Jolly good. All right, Rory, that's our lot for today. See you soon.

• 43:59Rory Stewart?

  Thank you.

• 44:07Speaker 05

  Here we are getting a statement from Number Ten. On that flight, with 350 passengers on board.

• 44:16Speaker 06

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 44:24Speaker 07

  We assess, Prime Minister,

• 44:27Speaker 07

  with high confidence it was Russian.

• 44:30Speaker 04

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 44:32Speaker 08

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 44:35Speaker 06

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. Got to ask yourself: you want to play, or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done... NOTHING!

• 44:48Speaker 04

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 44:50Speaker 06

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

• 44:59Speaker 09

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 45:04Speaker 04

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