30. Keir Starmer on rebuilding Labour, Tory leadership, and Brexit

In a special episode recorded in Westminster as temperatures approached 40C in London, Rory and Alastair are joined by the Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer. They debate and discuss the Tory leadership race, Scotland, rebuilding Labour, economic policy, global recession, Brexit, Boris Johnson, the path to power, the Lib Dems, electoral reform, written constitutions, the British press and more. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Sign up for free to The Knowledge: www.theknowledge.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, and of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

  A BetterHelp ad. Imagine carrying a backpack every day. Every conversation, every mistake, every expectation. You probably wouldn't notice how heavy it was until someone asked if you wanted to put it down. Sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that. Better isn't one size fits all. Better is personal. It's therapy tailored to you to help lighten what you've been carrying. Match with a therapist who truly gets you. Visit betterhelp.com/restpolitics.

• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  So, welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell. And me, Rory Stewart. And we have a second.

• 1:52Alastair Campbell?

  Special guest. The first was a Labour Prime Minister by the name of Tony Blair and the current one. Would you like to introduce yourself, sir?

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Keir Starmer, hopefully the next Labour Prime Minister.

• 2:04Alastair Campbell?

  So let's start by asking you, how is that going to be brought about? What is the plan?

• 2:12Speaker 03

  Oh, well, look, there's always been three bits to the plan, a three-part plan. The first bit was to change the Labour Party. So I obviously took over two years and two months ago, and we'd just lost the worst election result since 1935. And I felt very strongly that when you lose that badly, you don't look at the electorate and say, what on earth were you doing? You look at your own party and say, we've got to change. So we did the change bit. We've done a huge amount of change in the last two years. Next bit is expose the Tories as not fit to govern. I've been ably assisted by Boris Johnson in that, including his departure. And then the next bit is, if not them, then why us? Which is the bit we're on at the moment. And I've just been setting out that we want

• 2:57Speaker 03

  to fight the next election on the economy. I think that's the single most important thing.

• 3:00Rory Stewart?

  What was this journey of changing Labour? What were the hard truths that you felt that you had to tell Labour?

• 3:06Speaker 03

  I think there were a number of them, Rory. The one that's obviously attracted the most attention is what we've done on antisemitism. When my very first words as Labour leader, albeit in lockdown, therefore those words were to an armchair in my front room rather than to an audience. But my first words were, I'm going to tear out antisemitism by the roots. And that was the thing that I think most people have recognised the most. But there've been other important things as well. When the conflict kicked off in Ukraine, I felt it was very important for us to make clear our unshakable commitment to NATO and reclaim that. Because after all, it was Labour that signed the original treaty

• 3:48Speaker 03

  that I went to see in Brussels just the other month. But there are other things as well, Rory, the whole change relationship with business, where, which is a mindset thing, not just words. The mindset is believing that business is a force for good. And that a partnership between an active Labour government that sets the mission and empowers business to actually, you know, achieve the mission is the right relationship. So there are a number of things. If I was to try to put an overarching framework around it, Rory, it would be to turn the Labour Party inside out. We had spent the best part of 10 years closing in, looking in on ourselves, and people genuinely thought the Labour Party, that winning a motion in the Labour Party was changing the world.

• 4:33Speaker 03

  And I had to, I had to turn the Labour Party and still doing this, of course, turn it to face the electorate rather than having a discussion with itself.

• 4:42Rory Stewart?

  So one last question for me, and then I'll hand back to Alastair, because this is very much stuff that he's been thinking about all his life. But what is a hard truth that you would still really want to communicate to the Labour Party? I mean, it's a challenge I'd put to the Conservative candidates to, you know, what hard truth should they be saying to the Conservative Party? I'd like them to say, for example, we've made a complete mess in all our protocol and it's a disgrace. What hard truth would you like to say to the Labour Party?

• 5:10Speaker 03

  Country first, party second. If I can get that hard truth across, then we will be a long way down the road to winning that general election. And that's hard because as a party, we have tended to put party first in recent years. And we've proven that that's not a winning formula. And so we have to, but I mean, Rory, I mean, you know, from when you were here, the best day of the week for me is always Wednesday when we've finished PMQs and I'm about to go out and about around the country and go to talk to people in their communities about what really matters to them. That is when it, politics really comes alive. The stuff in the chamber is usually a load of old nonsense.

• 5:53Speaker 03

  But actually, that's when it comes alive. And, and when I think about what we've got to do with the Labour Party, I have in my mind's eye. The people that I've met along the way, you know, I was talking to Alistair about a trip I did to Burnley, obviously a beloved place for Alistair a few months ago. And I was really, really struck, talking to community groups, business groups, local leaders there of all different sorts, the absolute ambition they had for their place. And this sense, deep sense, they had that they didn't have a government that matched their ambition. And I want a Labour government to match their ambition. I want that changed. Same in Blackpool. I went there, actually last summer, I think it was, for three days. And we, I went, I wanted to go to where

• 6:38Speaker 03

  people are. I didn't want them to come to me. So I don't sit in a room and say, come to my meeting. I go to where they are. So in Ipswich, we went to the bingo. In Blackpool, we went on the beach, on the pier, just wandering around, talking to people. But I went, what really struck me in Blackpool was I went to a sixth form college. And there must have been, I don't know, 20, 25, 16 and 17 year olds. And I said to them, how many of you are proud of Blackpool, where you grew up? And all their hands shot up. They loved the place. And then I said, how many of you think that you're going to have to leave Blackpool to get the job you want for your life? And all bar one hand went up. It was really, you know, such a strong indicator. And I obviously

• 7:21Speaker 03

  asked the guy who didn't put his hand up, what do you want to do? And he said, I want to be a teacher at this school. And so it's, so Rory, for me, this, because I came into politics late in life, as it were. And for me, this isn't about, you know, which slogan is the best slogan, etc. It's, I think, how does a Labour government change the lives of the people I'm meeting in and around the country? Can only do that if you face them, talk to them, understand what they are absolutely concerned about, and join with them and, and, and match their ambition.

• 7:53Alastair Campbell?

  So it's not about slogans. But if you had to have a slogan now for the next election, what would it be? And also, if you had to have a pledge card with five things on it, that you were going to communicate to the country, five things you want to do, what would they be?

• 8:06Speaker 03

  I think the slogan. Just at the moment would be a fresh start for Britain. Because we're in this frankly ridiculous situation where the Tories are changing the manager for the fourth time in 12 years and they believe that the change we need is somebody different at the top of the Tory party. The debates have exposed how wrong that theory is. So fresh start for Britain would be the slogan. If we had a pledge card, I'm not going to write it here and now, but I think the most important things are growing the economy, growing the economy, growing the economy. So that would be absolutely number one. Fixing our public services and uniting our country. This toxic division has been going on for

• 8:48Speaker 03

  too long where too many politicians are looking for wedge issues. How can I divide people into different camps? And we need to bring them together. For a pledge card, you'd probably then just be much more practical about it. You know, GPs, appointments, waiting lists, childcare skills, mental health. But I would have as a sort of organising principle, growing the economy. I want that to be the single biggest argument in the next general election because I think that if we don't grow the economy, if we don't raise living standards, then all of the other issues, what are you going to do about public services, what are you going to do about education, all fall away. Because if you're not growing the economy, you're not creating the wealth to do that.

• 9:28Alastair Campbell?

  How do you show in opposition that you can grow an economy?

• 9:30Speaker 03

  We've come up with ideas on it, which we've done, you know, with the climate investment pledge, with the skills commission that we're running with David Blunkett, by make and sell more stuff in Britain. We've got good, strong ideas. One of the problems we've got is we don't say it often enough. People say, what are you saying here? What's the big project? And I've been saying grow the economy for some time. We've got really strong policy offers behind it. We need to just make that a much more coherent narrative. I want to go to the election fighting on the economy.

• 9:57Rory Stewart?

  One of the things that worries me about this is obviously everybody's trying to grow the economy. And it ends up sounding, it doesn't matter whether you're in the US or in Britain, as though you're sort of reciting a kind of article from The Economist magazine 20 years ago. Everybody's talking about, you know, innovation, education, investment. I think is the way that Rishi Sunak's catching it. So, and the truth is, we are, I think, about a head into a 10-year global recession. And even if you become prime minister, you've got very limited control. And what on earth are you going to do with interest rates and inflation?

• 10:31Speaker 03

  Well, Rory, just let's humanize this, because I agree, growing the economy feels very abstract.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  I went to Whitley onshore wind farm just outside Glasgow last year. It's an amazing place, by the way, you may have been there, it's up on the hillside. You've got these turbines, huge wind turbines, which are massive, there's 350 of them there, overlooking Glasgow. It's almost like a film set, it is incredible, and they're big pieces of engineering, they're generating so much electricity that they have to turn them off because they can't actually store the electricity. These are big, big bits of kit. And I said to the CEO when I was there, how many of these were built in Britain? And he said, none of them. And I said, why not? He said, because the government didn't have a strategy, they didn't have the certainty, and the investors went elsewhere.

• 11:24Speaker 03

  And it was as simple as that. And that's so, I think.

• 11:28Rory Stewart?

  So where were they from?

• 11:29Speaker 03

  They were coming in from Indonesia and some of them from Denmark. And that's where they were literally being towed in and put together.

• 11:37Rory Stewart?

  And a lot of the component parts from China, but that's partly labour costs, right?

• 11:40Speaker 03

  But Rory, I mean, the other example that just give is, I went to Filton just outside Bristol and saw these brilliant apprentices

• 11:50Speaker 03

  who were working on a project to build the hydrogen plane. And they were incredible because not only were they highly skilled, they were well paid, they were proud of what they were doing. They felt like they were revolutionaries, they wanted that change. And so, and this is why some of the stuff in the Tory leadership debate about net zero is so depressing. Because here we have an absolute opportunity to seize the next generation of jobs, to see the climate transition that we've got to go through, we have to go through for the sake of the planet and for our children and our children's children, as a massive opportunity. Some countries got to get ahead on hydrogen, some countries got to get ahead on the next hydrogen plane,

• 12:32Speaker 03

  some countries got to get ahead on what will probably be deep sea wind turbines, floating turbines of the future.

• 12:38Rory Stewart?

  I guess, Keir, the challenge there is that the Germans tried to make that bet on solar, didn't they? And what they found out in the end is that it was cheaper to make this stuff in China, that there's no natural relationship between. Preparing for renewable energy and a transition and creating jobs in your own country unless you begin to put in some pretty stern structures around your country to try to protect your own industries. And I guess you're not prepared to go there.

• 13:04Speaker 03

  Well, Rory, I've had lots of discussions now with CEOs of, you know, some of the big banks, some of the big investment projects and said and had this discussion Rory, which is look, what do you want from a government that is pro-growth, that really wants to get our economy going? What, how do you want to work? How, how, how could we do this? And I say to them upfront, I, I believe in an active state. So I don't, if you're going to say to me, leave it all to us, just, you know, get out of the way. Well, that's not how I'm going to operate. I do think we should, there's a role for the state. I think if you're elected as an incoming Labour government, you're entitled to say what the mission is. I don't think that the state should then try and run everything because it doesn't

• 13:47Speaker 03

  work very well. But you can empower others to do it if you're clear with the mission. And if you're, you provide the certainty, the trust, the respect, the ambition and work in a partnership with business where everybody understands what that mission is and everybody works to that mission so that you empower them to do it. That, and that model they were describing, we were talking about, this is the model that they want to operate. It's the model I want to operate. And, you know, even saying those words, certainty, trust, respect, a plan, tells you exactly why we can't go on with this broken government because that's what we've been missing for 12 years.

• 14:27Alastair Campbell?

  No, you won't be surprised to hear me say that any growth plan would surely benefit from having better trading relations with the European Union up to and including, we join, up to and including, single market customs union. I mean, Brexit has taken 40% out of our economy.

• 14:46Speaker 03

  Couple of things, Alastair. Yes, of course, we want better trading relations with the EU. And that's why I've said we've got to make Brexit work because what we've

• 14:53Rory Stewart?

  But do you honestly believe it can work?

• 14:55Speaker 03

  I do.

• 14:56Rory Stewart?

  How?

• 14:56Speaker 03

  And not only do I believe we can make it work. Uh, that I believe that it can work. I think we have to make it work. Um, and you know, I've, as you know, got young kids. I'm not going to say to them, um, for the whole of their lives, I'm sorry, um, because of what happened in 2016, um, we can't make anything work. Your, your, your futures won't be brilliant. Um, you won't have the best economy, the best housing, the best public services in this country.

• 15:24Alastair Campbell?

  Do you also want to say to them that you'd like them to be able to have some of the rights that we've, that we've lost?

• 15:29Speaker 03

  Look, you know, we had that discussion. Um, we voted and we not only voted, we've left. Um, and I think we have to look forward, not backwards. And I think just looking over your shoulder. And I was in Germany with Olaf Scholz this weekend, uh, last week. A fantastically interesting meeting about how we improve relations between Germany and the UK, including our economic relations, because there's been a downturn in trade on both sides. So this is a discussion that he wants to have. And you know what? We didn't have a discussion about going back into the single market, back into the customs. That wasn't the discussion that I wanted to have. It wasn't a discussion that he wanted to have. But we did have a discussion about how would we reduce barriers to trade. How, the first question, you know,

• 16:13Speaker 03

  on the agenda was, what are you going to do about the Northern Ireland Protocol? There are things that can be done to make Brexit work. And that's, we've got to look ahead to this. I honestly think that just sort of tearing ourselves apart for another five years, um, would be the worst of all options for an incoming Labour government. We have to make this work.

• 16:29Alastair Campbell?

  But you must know that there are, you've got to build a coalition. You've got to go from, as you say, the worst result since 1935.

• 16:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  You've got to be basically Smith, Kinnock and Blair in one.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:41Alastair Campbell?

  And there are people who won't vote for you because of what they see as a position on Brexit that they, they won't support. And all I'm saying is you're happy to live with that.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Look, uh, Alastair, people say to me,

• 16:56Speaker 03

  With great certainty, what's going to happen and what people will or won't vote for. When I took over as leader of Labour Party, we did come off the back of that terrible general election result. And most people, certainly in the party, said to me, to my face, good luck here. And behind my back, but not with any nastiness, it's not possible to do it in one term. It's not possible. I'd never believe that. And we've got on with it. We've changed the Labour Party. This year, in the local election results and in the Wakefield by-election results, we have proved that if there was a general election any time soon, we would win that general election. People told me that was impossible. I do not believe it. I don't believe that it's

• 17:40Speaker 03

  impossible for Labour to win with the majority at the next election whenever it comes. Even we never won without Scotland. Absolute, absolute certainty that we can do this. What are you going to do about Scotland then? Well, in Scotland, you know, the deal I'll do in Scotland is with the Scottish people. I won't be doing a deal with the SNP because I want to be Prime Minister for the whole of the United Kingdom. I want a Labour government for the whole of the United Kingdom. But what are you going to do to get people in Scotland to vote Labour? Oh, we have to make a much better case for the whole of the United Kingdom. Why the future is the United Kingdom, not the past. We can't just look backwards and say, these are the things that you'll lose if you don't do as we suggest. We've got to make an exciting

• 18:22Speaker 03

  argument about the future of Scotland, which is about growing the economy, the next generation of jobs for the United Kingdom, et cetera, et cetera. Make that positive case for the United Kingdom. But we can't do a deal with the SNP. And that's why I've been very clear, no deal into the election, no deal after the election. And I've also been very clear that that's not just a numbers game. It's actually, I fundamentally don't see any basis for an alliance with the SNP. Because you can't have a progressive Labour Party coming into government

• 18:54Speaker 03

  to create a better United Kingdom and have an alliance with a party whose defining mission is to break up the United Kingdom. What about the Lib Dems then? The Lib Dems are not, you're much more closely aligned with the Lib Dems. Yeah, but we haven't got a pact with the Lib Dems. Why not? Well, look, you know, they're they are fighting where they they need to fight. I'm fighting where I need to fight. I am very focused on where we need to win. I've got a list of where we need to win. I'd keep it by my side to remind me not to lose my focus because a lot of noise going on out there, people telling you do more of this, do more of that.

• 19:36Speaker 03

  But I'm utterly focused. I know what we've got to do to win that general election. And on my list of seats that I need to win, there aren't many fights with the Lib Dems. Most of them are with the Tories, almost all of them with the Tories, some of them with the SNP. So I know what I've got to do. I know where the fight is going to be. And that's why we haven't got a pack with the Lib Dems.

• 19:55Alastair Campbell?

  Now, don't give me a politician's answer on this one, right?

• 19:58Speaker 03

  You keep telling me I should be more of a politician and now you're saying I can't give a politician's answer.

• 20:01Alastair Campbell?

  No, that's not what I mean by that. You know that. What, give me your honest assessment of Johnson's legacy, first of all. We don't need to spend too much time on that, but also of the of the the serious contenders that you might have to face at the next election, what you think of them?

• 20:19Speaker 03

  I think that he is a complete bullshitter and I think he's been found out. And I'm really struck with the partygate stuff because, you know, he it it wasn't just that he did things which broke the rules. It's that they then took the piss out of the public with his ridiculous defences afterwards. And in the local elections, I I accept that not everyone on doors was saying it's that that's done it for me. But there was a general realisation that this guy bullshits. And if he's bullshitting about that, he's probably bullshitting about everything. And all this stuff about levelling up, when people can see there's not much happening around near them, I think there's there's this sense

• 21:04Speaker 03

  that this guy doesn't mean a word that he says. And that goes very, very deep, very deep. It's I mean, that's why I don't think there was ever any way back for him from that. And I think it's really good for the country. They were seeing the back of it.

• 21:16Alastair Campbell?

  So there's a danger, though, that you lose, in a sense, one of your greatest strengths?

• 21:21Speaker 03

  No, I don't think so. I mean, I think that, you know, we'll face whoever wins this awful contest, but there, you know, look at the state of them. I mean, there are the individual things that they're saying, the sort of fantasy economics. I did a speech in Gateshead a week ago today in the morning, and at that stage there were £200 billion worth of unfunded spending commitments. By the time I did media in the evening, it was 330 billion. So that was the time it took me to get back to London from Gateshead. They'd gone up by another 100 billion. So there's the fantasy element of it. But more profoundly, the Tory party has lost any sense of purpose. They are tearing themselves apart. They don't know

• 22:04Speaker 03

  what party they are. They don't know what they stand for. And that's why the change that the country needs cannot be to replace the person at the top of the Tory party, whoever it is.

• 22:16Rory Stewart?

  It strikes me, though, that a lot of these problems are much more fundamental. We're going, they're not just unique to Britain, right? It's a global phenomenon. We're looking at different forms of populism, and Alice, as Alice loves to say, polarisation, post-truth populism.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:32Rory Stewart?

  And some of this is driven by our electoral system. I mean, one of the things we hear again and again is actually they're fed up with a lot of you. They're fed up with the Tories, they're fed up with Labour, they're fed up with the Lib Dems. And what people really want is a bit of fresh blood. They want an electoral system with some proportional representation, where we can get smaller parties coming in, where we can get people who aren't, haven't been completely allied to these parties and these machines forever coming in. Why won't you get behind us on electoral reform?

• 23:00Speaker 03

  Rory, I was with you a long way down that sentence or series of sentences until you got to proportional representation. I think one of the biggest issues and challenges in politics now is that because of people like Johnson, who debase politics and drag everybody into the gutter, there is this general sense that you're all the same. And that is the most corrosive thing, because once people think you're all the same. They lose heart in the idea that politics is a force for good. And that is a very dangerous place to get to. It's why Johnson in the end drags everyone into the gutter with him. He wants everyone down in that place with him. He's not the only one, but he's a classic example of it.

• 23:44Speaker 03

  And one of the reasons that I said what I said about the Durham incident when I was being investigated by the police was not to say, look, you know, I'm a little goody two shoes. I follow the rules, et cetera, et cetera. That was sanctimonious. That wasn't what it was about. It was much more fundamental, which is to say, I understand that it matters that if I want you to trust me, I have to say I'm prepared to put my entire career on the line if I'm found to have broken the rules that I helped make. And that I needed to demonstrate that we're not all the same because that that is the single most important thing in politics, which because if people lose that, they lose heart.

• 24:21Rory Stewart?

  I admire you for that, but I don't, I don't believe anymore that we can rely simply on the virtue of individual politicians. What you seem to be saying is we don't need to change the system. We don't need to change the constitution. We don't need to change the structures. We just need better people. And I concluded after nearly 10 years in that place that there is something fundamentally wrong with the incentives, the structures, the way the parties operate, the way the vote is. It's not an accident that we end up with people who are most of the time more interested in campaigning and sticking it to the opposition than they are in thinking critically and governing well. And we can't change that just by hoping that we're going to have noble individuals.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  Look, I think, you know, I accept that noble individuals on their own aren't enough. But I would, if I look back to the last Labour government, they did do lots of incredible things. They made incredible change when it came to, you know, health, education, shore start, things that were done, you know, for young people. I've been in local schools seeing mentors working with young children who were almost certainly going to go off the rails as a crime prevention strategy. And I had the depressing experience of sitting as Director of Public Prosecutions in the back of courts for years and years and years and years and seeing, you know.

• 25:47Speaker 03

  Broadly, the same cohort of people being processed through the system over and over again, and you need to break that. And I think the last Labour government did that. So I do think you can bring about change and good. And we are, you may have noticed, we are being very clear about the success of the last Labour government, because I don't think the Labour Party has been over the last decade or so. And there's a lesson here for the Tories as well, because as they tear themselves apart in this leadership race, they're trashing, they're already doing it, they're trashing their own record. When a party starts trashing its own record in government, I mean, we've proved a few things of the Labour Party, and one is, if you trash your own record in government, it's not a winning formula.

• 26:24Rory Stewart?

  Let me have a last stab at this, and I'll hand back to Alistair again. I think the world's changed since then. That world that you're talking about, 97 to 2010, was the last hurrah of this kind of centrist technocratic politics all over the world. And something changed in the world, all over the world, not just in Britain, Brazil, the United States, India, between 2014 and 16. And there are many reasons for it. Globalisation, 2008 financial crisis, a lot of it's to do with Twitter and Facebook. But we're entering a very, very different world. And I don't believe that our structures and institutions are set up to deal with them. In fact, I think what we've got in the Westminster system and an unwritten constitution is a very, very dangerous situation, where we're

• 27:09Rory Stewart?

  more vulnerable than almost any other country potentially to people behaving in the way that Boris Johnson behaved. And I think there's a strong possibility that he's not just an exception to the rule, he's a symptom of a much deeper problem in our system.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  I think that we certainly could strengthen the institutions and strengthen the rules. And one of the challenges of not having a written constitution is, of course, that a lot of what we do in Parliament is by convention rather than by rule. And that convention does rely on people at the top in politics, you know, having integrity and honesty. Even the rule that

• 27:57Speaker 03

  You can't call someone a liar in the chamber, which is curious. And I know sometimes people say, well, why don't you just call him a liar here? But you can't do it. And obviously, it's a frustration sometimes in not being able to do that because if I'd been able to, I'd have used it many, many times. But but the thinking behind it is that, one, the debate shouldn't just descend into everybody shouting liar at the opposition because that isn't you know, that wouldn't be a constructive debate. But it's also deeply rooted in the idea that should someone say something in the chamber that's wrong, they would have the wherewithal to come back and correct it.

• 28:31Alastair Campbell?

  Isn't that Rory's point, that the rules are?

• 28:32Speaker 03

  No, so that's why I agree with Rory, that we should strengthen the institutions, strengthen the rules, strengthen the conventions.

• 28:37Alastair Campbell?

  But you don't feel politics is broken. A lot of the people who listen to this podcast, one of the things that comes through again and again and again, you you seem to think it's about Johnson, whereas there's a genuine sense that actually the system is creaking.

• 28:49Speaker 03

  Look, I don't think it's broken. And but we have to give people belief that things can change and change for the better. But so I would change the institution and the rules, Rory. I do think they need strengthening. I do also do something bolder than that. That is to devolve in the, I mean, devolve such an awkward word, but to put decisions closer to people where they are in the place that they live, so that you build up from each place, each town, each city, each area. And so you don't have Whitehall. I mean, the leveling up, so-called leveling up project is a classic example of this, a pot of money in Whitehall that local areas have to bid into and somebody in Whitehall then tells you whether it's good enough, completely the wrong model. Turn that on its head

• 29:34Speaker 03

  and put the decision making closer to where people are, involve them in it, turn it completely upside down. And that's why I'm very interested in this question of economic devolution and whether we can actually get the money, the resource, the skills, the infrastructure as a set of decisions much, much closer to people. Because I do believe that people believe in politics when you talk about where is my place? What do I want to see where I live? What are my aspirations for my place, my kids, my school, the next generation? People have real belief in that politics. The disconnect comes between.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  That and national politics. And I think that not only do we need integrity and honesty in politics to rebuild that, not only do we need to change the institutions and the rules, but we need to, we need to put politics back where it really belongs, which is in the communities that we all champion, that we want to see thrive.

• 30:27Alastair Campbell?

  How are you going to dominate the agenda between now and the election? I mean, I, I know it's been difficult. Johnson's taken so much oxygen. You've had Covid, you've had Ukraine. But you do get a sense sometimes that Labour sort of tags itself on to the end of stories about government. You get a lot of criticism because saying you don't have oomph and all that stuff. Where's the energy going to come from? And how are you going to dominate the, do you accept you have to dominate the agenda now for the next two years?

• 30:50Speaker 03

  Yes, I do. And

• 30:52Alastair Campbell?

  And how's that going to happen?

• 30:52Speaker 03

  We've got to do that with real energy. I think something's happened this year to the Labour Party, which is really important because the hope of a Labour government is what we've had for two years. After those local election results, after Wakefield, after everything that's going on the Tory party, that hope has become a belief. And that's, they're not just two words. Hope is what you have at the beginning of a football match, even though you're, you know, up against the Premier League champions. You still hope that your team is going to win. Belief is what you have when, you know, there's only 60 seconds left and you're three one up. So they are two different emotions. That has changed. We need to dominate, but we need to dominate on the areas that we want to dominate on.

• 31:31Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, and you didn't answer my question about the Tory contenders.

• 31:35Speaker 03

  What was the question again?

• 31:36Alastair Campbell?

  The question was what you actually think of them.

• 31:38Speaker 03

  Oh, right.

• 31:38Alastair Campbell?

  Sunak, Truss.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  I, I, I think they're all B grade candidates. You know, I really don't mind which of them I go up against. They're all, I mean, most of them are tainted by having propped up Johnson for three. It's no good now. Rishi Sunak saying, you know, I'm the guy with principles. I'm the guy with integrity. He propped him up for three, for three years. Trust the same. So I constantly get this question, which of them do you fear? I don't fear any of them. They're a busted flush. The whole project is broken. I think the Tories have been more divided, and Rory will know this from his time. For longer than people think. This isn't just a fallout because of Partygate and what's

• 32:22Speaker 03

  happened in the last 10 months. If you look at those years, 2016 to 2019, it was bitter. There were two Tory parties fighting it out. Rory was in the middle of all this. Two different senses of what you wanted a Tory party to be. Add to that the 29 intake and you've got, you know, so-called Redwall Tory MPs with so-called Blue Tory MPs who want completely different things. So it's not just that the government hasn't got, for example, an economic strategy. It's not capable of having one because it can't hold that coalition together. So I, that's why I think the idea that they're going to elect someone, you know, as the new leader and it's all, they're going to get their mojo back and it's all going to unite. I just can't see that. This is a bitter battle about

• 33:06Speaker 03

  the very purpose of the Conservative Party.

• 33:08Rory Stewart?

  Okay, I mean, I think you're making a very good observation. I think it's true. I think the Conservative Party is two parties. I think the Labour Party is also two parties. I mean, oddly, we're in a situation where we've got a kind of four-party system. And one of the problems is, is for you and for Conservative leaders, how on earth you hold these coalitions together. You didn't quite answer my push on the economy. I reckon we're going into a global recession. I reckon we are facing a horrible, long-term, deep inflation. And I think it's going to be very difficult. There's going to be an attempt by central banks to raise interest rates in order to try to have some kind of landing. But we are so much in debt, and this is one of the ways I disagree with Alistair. I really,

• 33:52Rory Stewart?

  one of the reasons I think that there was something to be said for what David Cameron and George Osborne were doing, is that I think it's very, very dangerous to build up these levels of debt and deficit because when you have them and the interest rates go up, you're going to spark a financial crisis. So my guess is, in Britain, in the United States and in Europe.

• 34:09Speaker 03

  I'm going to be Fiona Brucie, Rory. What's your question?

• 34:12Rory Stewart?

  There'll be an attempt to raise interest rates. And then the central banks will panic because it'll spark a financial crisis. So they won't take the tough measures necessary. And we're going to enter a decade of stagflation. We're going to enter a decade of stagnant growth and inflation.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Governments can make decisions that affect the economic downturn. And you talk about Cameron and Osborne. They took the wrong decision in what they did between 2010 and 2015. I saw this firsthand upfront because I was running the Crown Prosecution Service. I was running a public service. And they just took across the board cuts to all of our public services. Instead of reimagining public services, instead of saying, well, how do we have a strategy here that gets the best for the money we've got? They just did a blanket cut across the piece and it was a complete and utter disaster. We didn't have economic growth. We didn't get out of that by 2015.

• 35:08Rory Stewart?

  I apologize, Kieran. I shouldn't have raised the question of Cameron Osborne. I get that. But will you answer my question, which is moving forward? How on earth are you going to be able to deal with a situation in which you're going to inherit if you take over immense inflation and where it's going to be almost impossible for the central banks to take the action necessarily to control it?

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Well, we have to build that relationship that I spoke of with business. We have to have the certainty that we need. We have to pull the levers that are available for a government to pull in a situation like that. What taxes? Where do you put those taxes? Are they fair? Are they efficient? The way we work with businesses, many, many businesses and investors saying to me, there is money in the pipeline here, but it's just not being released because we don't have the certainty that we need about the economy. So I'm not a sort of doomsday here, Rory, saying, well, you know, the outlook looks pretty grim, but there's nothing a progressive government can do about it. I do think there are things that we can do about it as long as we make the right decisions.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  And, you know, there's obviously a lot of talk about, you know, whether I should be more of an entertainer in politics. But all the discussions I have, whether it's with communities in Burnley or whether it's the CEOs of the huge investment banks, they're serious discussions about the future of the country and none of them, not one of them has said to me, Kieran, the thing that...

• 36:26Alastair Campbell?

  Tell us a joke.

• 36:26Speaker 03

  If I say to them, what do you want from incoming progressive Labour government? None of them has said, a few more one liners would be great, Kieran.

• 36:32Rory Stewart?

  You're charged with the lightweight brigade.

• 36:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, charged with the lightweight brigade.

• 36:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, you like that.

• 36:37Alastair Campbell?

  Let me ask you this. Matthew's in the corner looking, starting to look like I used to look. So my last question, the Daily Mail showed over the Durham thing just how venal and evil they can be. Are you ready psychologically for the scale of the onslaught that's going to come your way?

• 36:57Speaker 03

  Yes, I am. And, you know, we got a little glimpse of it with Durham and everything the last however many months of this absolutely sort of vicious campaign that they will run. I'm ready for it. I'm not relishing it, but I'm ready for it. What does worry me is, and this is the same for anyone in public life, the impact it might have on my family. One of the reasons that I think my wife has never done an interview is because we don't want to put her into the public domain. She works in the NHS, she has her own life. We never use our children's names in public or put any photographs of them out there.

• 37:39Speaker 03

  So I'm ready for it. I know what is going to happen. We've had enough of a glimpse of that. I will do everything within my power to protect my wife and our kids as we go through that awful period.

• 37:51Alastair Campbell?

  And what about in the long term, protecting the country from their continuing insidiousness in our public debate?

• 37:56Speaker 03

  Well,

• 37:57Alastair Campbell?

  Levison.

• 37:58Speaker 03

  We deserve better than the media we've got.

• 38:02Alastair Campbell?

  What can the government do to bring it about?

• 38:04Speaker 03

  Just as I've got a list of the constituencies that I need to win, I've got a list of the priorities in government. And the priority is rebooting the economy, rebuilding our public services and uniting the country, I'm afraid. They're going, and I'm going to be laser focused on those because, you know, if you promise too much and don't deliver, you end up where Johnson is.

• 38:26Rory Stewart?

  And what's it going to take here to get Alastair Campbell back into the Labour Party? What's it going to take for you to invite him back in?

• 38:32Speaker 03

  I don't know whether he wants to come back in. We'll have to have that discussion.

• 38:37Alastair Campbell?

  I've never stopped being Labour.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  He's part of the Labour family.

• 38:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And what about, what about getting Rory Stewart a job as a, are you going to bring back Diffitt?

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Yes, yes, we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For so many reasons, you know, not to see the importance of a, of a department that is focused on fixing some of the global problems that actually unlock a lot of the promise, et cetera, is, I just think, totally misguided. I did a lot of work in my previous life in other countries. On projects that were diffid-led, where we were dealing with problems of, you know, the rule of law in other countries, in order not only to ensure those countries thrived as democracies, but also to ensure that we continue to thrive as a country. And I think the wrong-headedness of not seeing that as a massive asset is huge.

• 39:26Alastair Campbell?

  So maybe a job for Rory Stewart on the board of the newly constituted diffid, because he's desperate to get back into public life. And I think he's finished in the Tory part. I think he's just had it. What do you think Rory?

• 39:35Speaker 03

  Put your application in Rory.

• 39:38Rory Stewart?

  Thank you. Well, us and I will join together. Thank you very much. All right. Lovely. Thanks. Thanks for coming on the show.

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Nice to see you again Rory.

• 39:45Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.

• 39:45Rory Stewart?

  Thank you.

• 39:46Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 39:57Speaker 05

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 40:03Speaker 06

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stole, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 40:08Speaker 05

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 40:11Speaker 06

  I'm not the first then.

• 40:12Speaker 05

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 and under 18 without parent.

• 40:17Speaker 07

  Bonjour compadre. It's the

• 40:21Speaker 07

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. And wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 40:48Speaker 08

  There is so much NFL on ESPN right now. Monday Night Football, plus pregame and postgame, NFL Live, NFL Primetime. Everything you need to stay on top of every game, every week. And now NFL Network is on the ESPN app. More football, more coverage, more ways to watch. Football's on, all season long, on ESPN and streaming on the ESPN app.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  How about a latte?

• 41:19Speaker 09

  Maybe dark roast?

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Vanilla?

• 41:21Speaker 09

  Caramel?

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Blueberry?

• 41:22Speaker 09

  You could get them to agree on one flavour, or give everyone what they want. With Keurig, there's over 500 K-Cup Pod varieties of fresh, flavourful coffee. No effort, no grind, no settling.

• 41:39Speaker 09

  Great coffee without the grind. Keurig.

• 41:51Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, I keep delivering these big Labour beasts. When are we going to get a Tory on here?

• 41:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, yeah, I don't know. Part of the problem is they don't trust you. They think you're really, really nice to all these Labour people. And as soon as you get a Tory on, you're going to go nuts. So I think they're all terrified. They think it's a sort of new Labour chat show.

• 42:09Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'd be very respectful to people who've got courage of their convictions. So anybody who came on for a proper debate, that's exactly what we'd have, a proper discussion. What did you make of that? I quite enjoyed that.

• 42:21Rory Stewart?

  I thought he was OK. I mean, he's very intelligent. He's very thoughtful. He, I think he isn't bold enough, to be honest. I think, both with your Leveson question and my questions about the Constitution and my questions about the economy, he basically reverts to, if you're a good, well-meaning person, you know, it's all going to be fine. So with Leveson, for example, he'd say, yeah, you know, they're awful, these particular newspapers. But he doesn't want to reform the structure in which newspapers work. He says Boris Johnson's awful, but he doesn't want to really change fundamentally any of the ways in which Parliament operates. And I felt with the economy, he tends to come down to, nice how it goes. I mean, I felt this when I was an MP. It's a real temptation to, you've had an inspiring meeting with a company, you've been somewhere, you've seen something nice,

• 43:06Rory Stewart?

  and you think, well, that's great. I've just met someone who said, if only the government was more efficient, got the money out better, everything would be fine. But he's not really yet stepping back and seeing the big structural problems. And I think if he becomes Prime Minister, it's those big structural problems that are the real tests.

• 43:21Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I think that it's really interesting. You know the thing he said right at the start? I think I've said to you before. I've heard him say it before. And it was the first time when I actually felt there was a kind of sense of strategy there. It was actually last football season when Burnley played at Arsenal. And Kieran and I met for a drink afterwards and he was with some of his old friends, some of whom went back like decades. And there was a woman there who was, uh, I think the wife of one of his old school friends and I was giving Kieran a bit of a hard time over Brexit and not giving Johnson enough stick over Covid and all my usual sort of, you know, blah, blah, blah. And there was a woman there and she said, I, I, I've got to say, Kieran, I agree with Alistair. I think you're far too nice to him.

• 44:01Alastair Campbell?

  And he, it, it was the first time I heard him lay out that thing that he laid out right at the start of our chat just now, when he said, step one was decontaminating, detoxifying the Labour Party after Corbyn. Step two, showing this government is unfit to government and I'm absolutely convinced that we can do that. And then the third stage is about setting out a Labour agenda. Now, I, I think what he's doing, it was interesting that he used the same sort of way to describe this. The reason he didn't want to get hooked up on Leveson was because he said, I'm going to focus absolutely on economy, public service and uniting the kingdom, uh, bringing the country together. And likewise on the thing about the libs, they're obviously not going to campaign in lib dem Tory strongholds.

• 44:45Alastair Campbell?

  They're basically, he's basically, they've got a list of seats where I'm going to be, that's. So I, what I took from that was a kind of more of a strategic focus, I think. And he's not going to get pushed around into doing the things that he doesn't think are going to help him.

• 44:55Rory Stewart?

  I, I think that's right, but given that key to this focus is economics. I'm not seeing the economics. I, I don't understand his economic theory. I don't get, how's he going to fund? The NHS and social care, does he want to? Does he want to have a transformation in social care? If so, what's he going to do? Is he going to borrow money? Is he going to raise taxes? You know, what is his policy towards inflation? I mean, basically his answer to that kind of question is, well, you know, I'm going to come in and, you know, I've met a lot of businesses recently and they've told me that, you know, there needs to be more strategy and more direction, but he's not really biting. I mean, the, the truth of the matter is the reason why it's difficult to do green growth is that so many of the things that we're doing in renewable energy are basically made in China.

• 45:40Rory Stewart?

  Or they're made in lower, lower wage economies, right? And to deal with that, you have to confront big questions. Is he going to be protectionist? Is he going to follow this government in putting up tariffs on steel, for example? I'm not seeing any of that stuff yet, and it may be that he's just, it's too early, but I'd like to see a bit more of that.

• 45:59Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'd like to see, I've actually said to Kieran before about, before Tony Blair, when the Social Justice Commission, which was, you know, a really good, I think a really good piece of policy development work, where they identified the big problem, social justice, and then the policies developed over time. And I think with this, if you're going to make economic growth your big thing, there then has to be a clear process by which serious arguments, serious policies then developed. And I hope that's what follows in the next stages.

• 46:29Rory Stewart?

  And what you'd find, I guess, is you need to find an economist who you really embrace. And it's not necessarily going to be the kind of economist that I'd embrace, but, you know, maybe it's somebody like Larry Summers. You get behind them and you're honest about their views and you have answers to questions like inflation and borrowing, deficits and all this kind of stuff. And that, I think, is the problem, that the hard truths he's told to the Labour Party are basically, so far, the one that we all remember is antisemitism, and that's not a hard enough truth. If you really want to reform a party, he's going to have to get into the really tough stuff. And that tough stuff is about how much is he going to spend and where the money's going to come from.

• 47:09Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, I enjoyed his reboast to you about austerity. I'm glad that he just came straight back at you on that one.

• 47:14Rory Stewart?

  That was good. That was good. And it taught me a lesson, didn't it? Because I made my question too complicated and set myself up to hostage for fortune.

• 47:22Alastair Campbell?

  But, you know, you've been on a play for a long time.

• 47:24Rory Stewart?

  So the big question is, are you going to rejoin his party? You're going to be his comms director?

• 47:28Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'm not going to be his comms director, but I'm sure I will rejoin the Labour Party at some point. And what about you, Rory? Are you ever going to rejoin the Tory party? No. So why don't you join the Labour Party?

• 47:38Rory Stewart?

  I'd like to see some clear thinking. I'd like to see some economic policy. Actually, I'm afraid, without being too partisan, you know, I'm not very partisan on this, but I think I, at the moment, have clearer answers out of Rishi Sunak on what he'd do with the economy, agree with him or disagree with him, than I'm getting out of Kieran Starmer.

• 47:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, let's see how he develops you now in the election. I think you'll vote Labour at the election, Rory.

• 48:00Rory Stewart?

  Libdam probably.

• 48:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yes, you are. You're a bit of a libdam. When push comes to shove, you're a bit of a libdam. It's true. Anyway, I've got to go see my daughter Grace. Tickets are now on sale for the Gilded Balloon at the Fringe. Dom is shaking his head in disbelief that I'm plugging my daughter's tickets, but I promised her I would. And if you can plug your bloody radio show, I can plug my daughter at the Gilded Balloon.

• 48:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you for reminding everybody. Yeah, it's called The Long, Long History of Argument. From Socrates to social media on BBC Radio 4 next three weeks. Thank you very much.

• 48:31Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

• 48:32Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 48:36Speaker 04

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering the tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 48:45Speaker 05

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 48:53Speaker 06

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You start, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 48:57Speaker 05

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 49:00Speaker 06

  I'm not the first then.

• 49:01Speaker 05

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 49:06Speaker 10

  Espolone Tequila. Balanced, delicious. 100% agave, 0% ego. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth. For a real margarita, ride the rooster.

• 49:16Speaker 09

  Espolone Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026, Compaq America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.