Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 277. What stands in the way of a Labour landslide? About this episode Which party has had the most effective campaign? Is there any way out for Macron in his fight against the far right and far left? Why are the Democrats closing rank over Joe Biden?
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Transcript 11,222 words · 10 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair 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.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. 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.
0:42 Alastair 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?
0:49 Rory 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.
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2:28 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
2:31 Rory Stewart? And me Rory Stewart, and a reminder that we're going to be with you this election night, Thursday night, right through the night, on Channel 4 with an amazing team, Krishnan Guramurthy, Emily Maitlis.
2:40 Alastair Campbell? Gary Gibbon, best political editor in the UK, I would argue.
2:43 Rory Stewart? Very good, and we'll be on air 9.50pm to 9am in the morning, so you'll be able to go to sleep with us and wake up with us too.
2:51 Alastair Campbell? Oh lord, okay, and we'll have been there all day as well, so if we look even more shattered than we do now, that'll be the reason.
2:58 Rory Stewart? Will you promise to wear that very fetching pink jacket?
3:00 Alastair Campbell? Well, the jury is out on the jacket. The main judge of my sartorial lack of elegance is one Fiona Miller, and she thinks it's a lovely jacket, but not for telly.
3:10 Rory Stewart? Not for telly. It's going to be quite good for whatever you're doing today in the sunshine, I imagine.
3:14 Alastair Campbell? Well, I'm actually going to see the tennis.
3:15 Rory Stewart? Oh yes, it's very good for that.
3:17 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, it's fine, it's fine. Anyway, what we're going to talk about today, we are going to talk about UK elections, just a few days to go, and we're going to talk about America with this Supreme Court judgment, which basically says that Trump can do what the hell he wants, and we're going to talk about France, because what is happening in France is beyond belief. And do you know what, I've been following lots of international media, as I know you do, our election is barely getting a look in, in the media around the world, whereas the French election is kind of mega.
3:42 Rory Stewart? Dominating everything, yeah, yeah. I was in France actually during the election, so I saw people going out, talking to them, but you would have been getting much more inside information. The mere fact of being geographically co-located with the voters probably doesn't give me that much insight.
3:56 Alastair Campbell? It gives you a bit, it gives you a bit, and you sort of feel the vibe. So should we start with the UK?
4:00 Rory Stewart? Start with the UK, so...
4:02 Alastair Campbell? How are you going to vote?
4:03 Rory Stewart? Ah, we're still staying off that. Actually, I got a good argument from Andrew Neil yesterday, said to me that he's now got this pompous line that he doesn't vote. He now thinks as a broadcaster, he shouldn't vote.
4:12 Alastair Campbell? Oh no. I'm sure he voted in the Brexit referendum, and I'm sure he's voted at every other election. That's basically a Labour vote, isn't it? If he says he's not voting, he basically thinks it's all over. I think, whether you're a broadcaster or not, I think you have a duty to vote. You don't have to say what you're going to vote, although I'm shocked that you won't tell me Rory, especially after your encounter with the Labour candidate who I hear you liked.
4:33 Rory Stewart? I did. Labour candidate in Kensington, very, very charming, amazing guy. He was involved in evacuating staff from Afghanistan.
4:40 Alastair Campbell? So you've got to vote for him.
4:42 Rory Stewart? So the staff that he evacuated from Afghanistan.
4:44 Alastair Campbell? Not biting.
4:44 Rory Stewart? Along with our own charity, all ended up in Macedonia together. He went to visit them. He's very thoughtful, very serious. Some great, actually, young Labour candidates.
4:53 Alastair Campbell? How can you not vote for that then?
4:54 Rory Stewart? Well, we're going candidate by candidate, but I'm thinking hard. I'm one of those 20% undecided that enrages you so much before you get into that.
5:01 Alastair Campbell? They don't enrage me, but I was, I went out at the weekend in Aylesbury in Bucks. I went to Rushcliffe where my nephew James Nash is the Labour candidate. I went to Newark where Mr Robert Jenrick is defending more than 20,000 majority.
5:15 Rory Stewart? How did you choose these places? What was the?
5:16 Alastair Campbell? Uh, Aylesbury was almost an accident. I just happened to be there signing a load of books in a warehouse. And because Laura, the Labour candidate is an old friend of mine, went to see her and obviously going to help my nephew. And then Newark because I think it's really interesting. I mean, if Jenrick goes, which is not impossible. That is, we're talking super defeat territory. But what was interesting is how many people were still saying, don't know. I mean, there was one guy I met in Rushcliffe who was, he said, I've been sitting at the kitchen table staring at my postal vote. Ever since it came, I just can't move my mind up. Historically, he'd voted Tory and Lib Dem. Wanted to vote Labour, but was still kind of struggling with the thought.
6:00 Rory Stewart? And what, and yeah, it's a bit like me in 97. I think if you, if you come from a traditional Tory background.
6:06 Alastair Campbell? It's hard.
6:06 Rory Stewart? It's hard, it's hard reaching across. But do you think he'll get there in the end?
6:09 Alastair Campbell? I think he will. And I think to be fair to my nephew, he did a really good job on the doorstep. It is amazing to watch. This is why get out the vote. The whole get out the vote operation is so important. You know, Labour now, I saw Keir Starmer, we're recording this Tuesday morning, yesterday, he was out in a constituency with a huge Tory majority. So they're obviously think that they're going into places that maybe even we in ninety seven didn't go to. I mean, I had some extraordinary conversations. One guy, he told me he couldn't vote Labour. He said, I can't, can't vote for you lot. No, I'm not doing that. I said, why not? He said, well, your last Prime Minister absolutely ballsed up this guy. I said, what Gordon? No, the other one. What Tony Blair? No, the other one. What Harold Wilson?
6:50 Alastair Campbell? Anyway, no, the other one, the one with all the antisemitism stuff. I want Corbyn. I said, Corbyn was never Prime Minister. Yes, he was. No, he wasn't. Yes, he was. I mean, what do you do with that? Lots of people, though, I'd say the main, the time for a change thing is the most powerful thing. People saying, I've voted Tory all my life. I can't believe that.
7:09 Rory Stewart? Well, definitely for someone like me, I mean, I don't know whether people are pitching someone like me. I sometimes worry about that when I talk to Rachel Reeves and Richard Philipson, how interested they are about getting my vote. But Keir Starmer, I think, is interested in getting my vote. I think the candidate in Kensington's interested in getting my vote. And the way they do it is they appeal firstly to the fact that nobody can disagree that the Tories have been in too long and want to get them out. Nobody thinks it's going to be healthy for the country to have them in for another five years. And then I think it's a question of, and this is why, in a way, I can completely understand. I think the dynamic partly is that because Labour is having to be so cautious on the money, they can't make any promises on spending. They have to, and I think this is what Rachel Reeves and Richard Philipson slightly doing, is to reassure people that they're more radical
7:52 Rory Stewart? than they seem by talking about class and talking about their backgrounds and slightly setting themselves up understandably against privilege. But I think if you're going to really win a big majority, and I think Labour needs a big majority to get stuff done, that's not very helpful because you don't want moderate swing voters feeling that they're joining a party in which they're not welcome. And I think that that's where there's some really, really great Labour candidates. I mean, there's a guy, a good guy called Hamish Faulkner, who's a friend of mine.
8:23 Alastair Campbell? Charlie's son.
8:24 Rory Stewart? Charlie's son, yeah, who.
8:26 Alastair Campbell? He's another one with Afghanistan connections.
8:27 Rory Stewart? Afghanistan connections, was at Yale with me. I mean, these are very reassuring people. There was actually an amazing guy who was one of the senior, well, he's actually sort of almost a spad in Defra with us. Who's now become a Labour candidate.
8:40 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
8:41 Rory Stewart? But I do think that's important. A final thing, just as we're talking, I think that Labour, looking back, probably two weeks ago, should have been much quicker to turn around this Conservative conversation on the supermajority and say, we need a supermajority.
8:55 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
8:55 Rory Stewart? We want a supermajority, and this is why. And I see Keir has begun to do that.
8:59 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. But I'll push back on that a bit. I actually think they should have been very quick to say, this supermajority thing is a constitutional nonsense. All it is, is a way of trying to suppress the vote. They're trying to scare you about something which doesn't exist. There is no such concept in our constitution.
9:16 Rory Stewart? But then make the positive case, because I think-
9:18 Alastair Campbell? And then say, yeah, we need a big majority to get stuff done.
9:20 Rory Stewart? Yeah, and I think the reason that also works for Tories is against the Tories is that what Rishi Sunak is trying to say is that if Labour gets too many votes, they're going to be too left wing.
9:29 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
9:30 Rory Stewart? What Keir Starmer needs to say is actually the only way that we can stay in the centre is by having a lot of seats, that they will be held hostage by the left of the party if they have a small majority. They're trying to do very unpopular things. They're trying to control spending, they're trying to not put up taxes. They're taking very difficult decisions, for example, on planning. At least, that's the hope from centrists like me.
9:51 Alastair Campbell? Hmm.
9:52 Rory Stewart? Their only chance of doing that is if they have a really big, comfortable majority. So in a sense, if you're on the right of Labour, we are a floating centrist voter, you want Labour to have a really big majority. If you're on the left of Labour, you want them to have a slim majority because they're unpopular.
10:05 Alastair Campbell? I think the other thing tactically, because people keep saying there's no excitement, there's no sort of buzz in the way that there is about lots of other elections happening in the world right now. I think actually to say to people, look, be part of something seismic. Be part of a change that will only come if there's a real mandate for it. Because there is a danger, I said this on Sky at the weekend, if Labour get a huge majority with fewer votes than Corbyn got, or a smaller share of the vote, and the Liberal Democrats get way more seats on the same share of the vote as they've had when they used to get next to none, and Reform get a few million votes but only a couple of seats. Then the kind of the message around the fallout of the election is going to be about
10:48 Alastair Campbell? our electoral system as opposed to the change that the country needs. So they've got to be appealing for a big mandate. And I just I just feel even in these last days, it's been a little bit too cautious.
10:58 Rory Stewart? Well, this this is, I think, one of the things that we haven't talked about enough. The new poll, which we've just produced on Trip Jail Partners Poll, suggests that Labour will get thirty nine percent of the vote, Conservatives twenty four percent of the vote. So put them together, that's only sixty three percent of the national vote. Going back in time, if you look historically at the elections in the fifties and sixties, the parties were getting close to fifty percent of the vote on their own. Together, they were easily clearing ninety percent of the vote. So one of the big stories in British politics is we've gone from a world in which Conservative and Labour were getting almost all the vote, like ninety percent plus the vote, to a world in which they're down to about sixty percent of the vote.
11:37 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
11:37 Rory Stewart? So it's a story about the fact that almost half the voters are now going to smaller parties, going to Reform, going to Lib Dems, going to Greens. One more thing on that. This is also part of the fact that Keir Starmer is coming in with the lowest popularity ratings of any winning Prime Minister on record. And that figure, if he wins at thirty nine percent, yes, it's going to give him a huge majority if the Conservatives are on twenty four, but historically, it's pathetic. Corbyn got forty percent of the vote in twenty seventeen, as you say. Boris Johnson got forty three point six percent of the vote last time round, twenty nineteen.
12:14 Alastair Campbell? For a majority of eighty.
12:15 Rory Stewart? For a majority of eighty, yeah.
12:16 Alastair Campbell? No, there's no doubt that will that will sort of prove difficult. And of course, having Farage in Parliament, if he's there, banging the drum for proportional representation, which he will, that's going to make life very, very interesting for the Liberal Democrats because do they really want to be on the same side of of an argument as Farage? The other thing I've I've found about the last bit of the campaign, particularly on the back of the betting situation, which we talked about last week, there's a very, very interesting thing happening in Wales today. We get criticised a lot for not talking enough about Wales. So I'm going to mention section sixty four of the Elections and Elected Bodies brackets, Wales brackets Bill.
12:51 Rory Stewart? And this has been brought in by the Welsh Labour Government?
12:53 Alastair Campbell? No, it's it's actually been. It was started by, you probably know, Jennifer Nadel of Compassion in Politics. And it's been driven through by an alliance at various points of plied conservatives, Lib Dems and independents. And it's now about, there's a vote literally today as to whether this thing.
13:12 Rory Stewart? So not driven by the governing Labour Party, but driven by the opposition.
13:15 Alastair Campbell? In fact, at various points, the governing Labour Party has been keen on it. But the worry some of them have is that the Labour Party nationally is saying, hold on, we need to see how this works. I'm proud of it. But just to, I, I think this is a really good idea. It basically gives candidates in any election fourteen days to correct, clarify or retreat a deliberately misleading statement. And the punishment goes up to a ban from the Welsh Assembly of four years. Now.
13:43 Rory Stewart? And what's the argument against it?
13:45 Alastair Campbell? Well, the argument against it is, I guess, that it could lead to spurious complaints. But a bit like your point about, you know, that if you lose an election, you get persecuted, et cetera. But I just think, if you think about what's happening in the, in the UK election right now, the Tories have been holding back loads of their spend. And they are currently bombarding people on social media in particular with directly targeted messages. Labour's going to tax your pension. Labour's going to tax your car. Labour's all basically untrue. At least totally denied or not Labour policy. I mean, I think it would be fair for them to say, there's a very interesting example that somebody gave on how this, this, this new law would work if it was passed. If you were to say, I met the Russian ambassador at one P M.
14:28 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
14:29 Alastair Campbell? Okay. But it turned out that actually it was three P M.
14:31 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
14:32 Alastair Campbell? That's fine. There's no material difference. If on the other hand, you said, I have never met the Russian ambassador. But then a picture emerges.
14:39 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
14:39 Alastair Campbell? Of you having met, I can't imagine who we're talking about here, Nigel Farage. Then you have two weeks to correct, retract or withdraw and apologize. Now, if you just think about, when you look at, including in our poll, one of the issues that really drives people mad is a lack of integrity and dishonesty in politics. I think this would really help.
15:00 Rory Stewart? It's very, it's very attractive. Just a technicality though, because I sometimes worry about. Dodgy memories. I mean, let's say, you know, famously, Tony Blair thinks he was at a particular football match, which he wasn't at.
15:11 Alastair Campbell? Rory, that was a myth invented by a journalist. We've dealt with that one. You can have a better example of that.
15:16 Rory Stewart? Forget about Tony Blair. Let's say, let's say you said to me, have you ever met the Ecuadorian ambassador? And I'm like, I never met the Ecuadorian ambassador.
15:22 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I get that.
15:23 Rory Stewart? Is it that I've got two weeks from when I make my false claim or two weeks from when you point out that actually there's evidence that I met him?
15:29 Alastair Campbell? I think it's two weeks from you making the claim or when it's been drawn to your attention. But that's a perfectly easy thing to do. I think people will be fine with you saying, oh, yeah, I'd forgotten about that.
15:38 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
15:38 Alastair Campbell? I'm not so sure about the Russian ambassador or the some members of the political establishment on the right. But just to give you some figures, nine percent of people say they trust politicians to tell the truth. That's dire. Seventy five percent say they have no faith in government. That's dire. Seventy two percent support criminalizing politicians who lie in public life. Now, how you do that is obviously a moot point.
16:04 Rory Stewart? No, I guess, I guess, sorry, just now I'm getting my head around this. I think it's very interesting. But presumably the problem is going to be that in the future, if this goes through, in every election, there will be fifty claims being made against everybody in every direction. And MPs will begin to feel they're being buried under claims, some legitimate, some spurious, some a little bit on the edge. Because it'll be part of the warfare of campaigning, won't it?
16:29 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but but it is now without any kind of framework for it. And if you throw in the fact that political advertising, there are no rules surrounding that either. So every other walk of life, if you're selling cars, if you're selling drugs, pharmaceuticals, if you're selling anything, if you missell, you are punished.
16:46 Rory Stewart? And the Advertising Standards Authority, if something comes up.
16:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, exactly. And and and most advertisers respect that.
16:51 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
16:52 Alastair Campbell? Whereas in politics, you can literally say whatever you like. And there's no comeback because the answer is, oh, well, people don't like it. They can vote against it.
17:00 Rory Stewart? Now, Alasdair, can I challenge you on on a strategy that you continue to endorse? And I have it here, I'm showing for those of you not watching, a picture of the fifty nine year old, rather aged Lib Dem leader, flying off a bungee jump, and then a picture of him being dragged along in a large rubber ring behind a boat.
17:19 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
17:20 Rory Stewart? I mean, so, look, I get in the first couple of weeks of the campaign, he was doing this, he was falling off paddle boards, he was going down water slides to get photographs like this, and the answer was this was going to help tilt towards the most serious thing. Do you not think enough already that actually continuing to play the same joke for six weeks is beginning to look a bit dark?
17:39 Alastair Campbell? No, I don't, because I thought I thought that I thought the bungee jump was particularly spectacular and quite brave, actually, I'm not sure if I would do it, and I'm even more aged, although probably slightly fitter.
17:50 Rory Stewart? He's I'm also slightly worried he's going to injure himself, I'm afraid.
17:53 Alastair Campbell? No, they love the old elf and safety were there.
17:56 Rory Stewart? So one of the weird things we don't talk about in Parliament is that every time I came back to Parliament after the kind of February break, there would always be very large numbers of MPs staggering around on crutches because basically the thing about Members of Parliament, they've got massive egos, they've got no sense of limits of their body, they're all getting a bit old, they've all pushed themselves too hard, they've fallen off their bicycle, they've gone skiing and broken their leg, I mean, I would not be insuring these people.
18:23 Alastair Campbell? Well, I would ensure, I think I think Ed Davey has added a little bit of colour to a pretty dull campaign, and I thought yesterday he, because when I heard he'd done a bungee jumper, I thought, oh, my God, so I went and checked it out, and the message he delivered was he was flying around in the air going, do something you've never done in your life before, vote Liberal Democrat, as he shouted. Now, will it have won people over? No, but I'll tell you what did happen is once he got unpicked from the the bungee, and then he was doing interviews, talking about, you know, all this other stuff, look.
18:58 Rory Stewart? What what stuff? That's the big question.
19:00 Alastair Campbell? I think he was talking about care or sewage or sewage and care.
19:05 Rory Stewart? This is my problem, you are a very, very attentive listener, and even you are struggling to remember what his actual message was.
19:10 Alastair Campbell? That's true, that is true, that's true. Well, listen, let's tick him off, let's tick him off, let's give, let's give marks out of ten for the campaigns so far. So Lib Dems, you're going low.
19:18 Rory Stewart? Well, no, I'm going. Six, and I'm saying they could have done much better.
19:23 Alastair Campbell? Okay, I'm going six as well.
19:24 Rory Stewart? If they'd gone for a serious campaign, put national policies front and centre, they had a real opportunity. There has never been an opportunity like this for the Lib Dems. The Tories down at about low twenties, a unpopular incumbent Labour leader. It was the moment for the Lib Dems to position themselves to scoop up all those moderate conservatives. And do so by seeming serious, credible in the party of government.
19:49 Alastair Campbell? Well, for different reasons, we're both going six.
19:51 Rory Stewart? Okay.
19:51 Alastair Campbell? Tory campaign.
19:52 Rory Stewart? Tory campaign, I mean, for goodness sake, I mean, they lost it again and again, three? What's, what are you giving them?
19:57 Alastair Campbell? That's generous, I'll, I'll go, it's hard to think of anything that they've done well. I guess you've got to know, they landed, they've landed some of their messages, even though lots of their message would fall foul of section sixty four of the Welsh Bill. I tell you what I will give, I'll give Sunak a point for his indefatigability, the ability just to keep going, I have been quite impressed by.
20:16 Rory Stewart? Yeah, but this is true, but on the other hand.
20:19 Alastair Campbell? What's he saying?
20:19 Rory Stewart? Well, and also it's his fault, he did not need to call the election. And this is why I think at some subconscious level, he has some sort of Freudian wish to get out because.
20:28 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
20:28 Rory Stewart? He called it in the middle of the rain at exactly the wrong time without having his party behind him. I mean, when he could have actually spent another six months in government.
20:37 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
20:38 Rory Stewart? And seen, just seen if he could actually prove that some of the things he's claiming were true.
20:43 Alastair Campbell? Fill, fill the skies with planes to Rwanda.
20:45 Rory Stewart? Well, could he actually have brought those NHS waiting lists down? We don't know. Could he have actually proven that the cost of living is coming down and the economy is growing? We don't know, but another six months, maybe he might have been able to do that. And actually, what we know about things like inflation, the economy is, nobody can predict the future anyway.
21:01 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
21:02 Rory Stewart? He might even have got lucky, even if it wasn't due to his own skills.
21:04 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
21:05 Rory Stewart? To go at the moment where your NHS waiting list are going, going in the wrong direction.
21:10 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. No, and it's been, it's been a terrible campaign on so many levels. I mean, so much has gone wrong, the launch, the rain, not looking out the window, not giving the guy an umbrella, not dragging him inside. The D day thing was a catastrophe. I think actually, although they think the, the lies on tax have helped them, and I sensed on the doorstep that they have to some extent, they have troubled a few people who were coming over to Labour. At the same time, I think they've, they've damaged his brand. I think he comes, I, I met no, I, I met literally nobody over the weekend with an enthusiastic word to say about him, nobody. I did meet people who said. I don't like Keir Starmer, but I met a lot of people who said I do like Keir Starmer.
21:48 Rory Stewart? You've become very fond of John Major over the years. Do you think Rishi Sunak in 20, 30 years' time will be a national treasure?
21:55 Alastair Campbell? No.
21:55 Rory Stewart? How will he be regarded in 20, 30 years' time?
21:57 Alastair Campbell? Well, it depends what he does next, but I regret to say Boris Johnson is a historic figure because he he was responsible for Brexit, or largely responsible for it, as was Cameron. So they are historic figures. I think Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak will be viewed as aberrations. I don't really think that Rishi Sunak is a politician. Now, let's talk about the SNP.
22:18 Rory Stewart? Very good.
22:18 Alastair Campbell? Marks out of 10.
22:19 Rory Stewart? SNP, well, I think overall marks four, but for Swinney probably six. He's done a better job turning it around.
22:26 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, looked good in the kilt at the football.
22:28 Rory Stewart? Very good.
22:28 Alastair Campbell? Steady the ship a bit. Plaid, I was very impressed with their leader on one of the debates I saw. But, and it's hard for us here because we've not, although we've talked about Wales today, we've not been to Wales. And the campaigns that are for there are very different. It's been really interesting to me, the extent to which Plaid are trying to put HS2 at the centre of the campaign. But normally they say, nobody cares about Wales for this, but now they're saying, well, there's this massive infrastructure project and we're not involved in it. And why is none of the money coming back to us? Really, sort of weird little tactic.
22:57 Rory Stewart? I'm writing a column for an American newspaper and fascinatingly, they wanted me to lead this American newspaper on HS2.
23:04 Alastair Campbell? Oh.
23:05 Rory Stewart? They tried to insert into my op ed, the biggest indictment of the Conservative government was this huge railway line that they built. And actually, in the eyes of the American editor, it's already been built, but it's 100 miles shorter than London and it's this kind of white elephant.
23:18 Alastair Campbell? I saw yesterday, talking about infrastructure, I saw a thing yesterday, a graphic on this new rail infrastructure project that's been built in China that was mind-blowingly advanced and modern. Right, so I'm going for SNP, I'm going, I think the same, campaign itself, I think they've really struggled. John Swinney, I think above his campaign. Right, what about the Greens?
23:39 Rory Stewart? Well, obviously Greens, I think, actually took the opportunity that the Lib Dems should have taken to really lay out some clear, radical, thoughtful policies. You disagree with many of them, as we know.
23:49 Alastair Campbell? As do you, as do you.
23:50 Rory Stewart? I disagree with some of them.
23:51 Alastair Campbell? You don't want to ban Trident?
23:52 Rory Stewart? I think, though, it's really. Really good to have a party doing that saying, okay, we are going to come out and say we do not think spending all this money on these very expensive nuclear submarines is the right way to spend the defence budget. Clearly, public services are creaking and there needs to be a colossal amount more money and we're going to be honest about how much more money. But probably the most exciting thing for me, which I cannot understand why Labour won't do, is their idea for media reforms. So they've said they're going to push ahead with the second stage of the control of media. And they've also said that they're going to reduce to 20% the ownership of media companies. So.
24:25 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, well, I'd like that.
24:26 Rory Stewart? Now, finally, your least favourite person who.
24:28 Alastair Campbell? Well, sorry, you haven't, we haven't, we've got not, you say finally, we've actually got two parties, main parties left.
24:33 Rory Stewart? Oh, I'm so sorry. Who have I neglected?
24:34 Alastair Campbell? You've neglected the Labour Party.
24:36 Rory Stewart? I neglected the Labour Party, okay.
24:37 Alastair Campbell? Who are probably going to win, Rory. So let's go for reform first, right? Reform, look, in terms of setting their objective for the campaign, which was to be a disruptive force. And through Nigel Farage's leadership, get up in the polls, they've succeeded.
24:53 Rory Stewart? Yes.
24:54 Alastair Campbell? Now, they've done it in their usual way by lots of, you know, dubious statements and et cetera, but, you know, they've succeeded.
24:59 Rory Stewart? And but the reason you they only get seven out of 10 is that actually there was a moment, three and a half weeks ago, if you look at our polling, where it really looked as their reform was beating into the Conservative vote. Lots of people, the jail partners polls we can share again, were looking at moving from Conservatives to Reform. He seemed to blow that with his comments, which were pro Putin over Ukraine. And suddenly, many moderate Conservative voters thought, actually, this man doesn't think.
25:25 Alastair Campbell? Even Kelvin Mackenzie, who I hesitate to utter the name on this podcast, given how awful it is, but even he said he couldn't vote for reform.
25:33 Rory Stewart? Yeah, and and the Daily Mail moves against them and all that kind of thing. So actually, I think if you were a Reform Party person, you would have initially been very excited that Farage came in, you got a big bump. And then you would have thought, you absolute hubristic, arrogant, big headed idiot, you blew this whole thing, just speaking off the cuff about Ukraine.
25:51 Alastair Campbell? I bumped into him, by the way, at Sky on Sunday.
25:54 Rory Stewart? Oh, did he agree to come on the show?
25:55 Alastair Campbell? I said, why do you keep bottling coming on the podcast? He says, because I'm never in London. I said, there's Big Ben. Right over there. Look, we're in, we're in. Yes, I'm on my way to Birmingham doing the biggest rally there's ever been. Right, Labour.
26:06 Rory Stewart? Labour. Well, I think Labour, I mean, I would have thought nine out of ten.
26:11 Alastair Campbell? Really?
26:11 Rory Stewart? Yeah. I mean, where have they really gone wrong? And even when they've gone wrong, they've somehow managed to control the story. So there was this issue around Diane Abbott and Jeremy Corbyn, but in the end, that kind of played to Starmer's advantage. I mean, it really annoyed the left of the Labour Party. And there's a good article you can read today in The Guardian of left-wing Labour voters feeling depressed. But the fundamental story that comes across to middle Britain is this is him imposing discipline and controlling. Otherwise, I can't really think. I mean.
26:39 Alastair Campbell? Well, that's interesting. So you are going to give them a higher mark than I. I would say seven and a half, eight, because I think that they've got through the six weeks, as you say, reassurance really strong, Keir's actually performed pretty well. But I still think that I found too many people on the doorstep over the weekend who, when I was saying to them, what's your favourite Labour policy? And there was not, there was not enough knowledge of what Labour are going to do.
27:06 Rory Stewart? That's a pretty dangerous question. If I was to ask a large crowd, what's your favourite Labour policy? That's a quite embarrassing question. I don't think that helps your campaign.
27:12 Alastair Campbell? I wasn't necessarily campaigning, Rory. I was trying to, I was trying to take the mood. I mean, these, these were, these were actually people who said they were voting Labour.
27:18 Rory Stewart? Okay.
27:19 Alastair Campbell? So they, some of them knew about the private schools, the VAT on private school fees, some of them knew about the GB energy thing, but mainly people knew what they weren't going to do.
27:28 Rory Stewart? And, and this is a really problematic thing, which came out in a poll yesterday, which is that only 5% of Labour voters think that Labour's going to be cutting spending, but Labour is committed to cutting spending.
27:39 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
27:40 Rory Stewart? 80% of Labour voters polled think that Labour's going to increase spending when they're in fact reducing. So there's a big gap between the expectations the voters.
27:49 Alastair Campbell? Ah, but growth, Rory, growth.
27:51 Rory Stewart? Rachel Reeves has said.
27:51 Alastair Campbell? Going to grow the economy, Rory.
27:53 Rory Stewart? The reason I'm not giving 10 out of 10 is that I think Starmer's debate performances have been absolutely lamentable. I mean, you, you can think what you want about Rishi Sunak's style, and I think it irritated people. But Starmer was not succinct, he was not crisp, he really doesn't, oddly for. Barrister seemed to be able to think quickly on his feet in debate in that kind of circumstance. Now, as we'll find out, I suspect, on Thursday, doesn't really matter, probably in the modern world. I don't know how many people watch these debates.
28:21 Alastair Campbell? A lot, yeah, pretty good figures. Okay, so on the campaign o meter, Labour win, Tories lose, so that, I guess, may feed the narrative that they're on the way out. Just a reminder to everybody before we go to a break, first general election ever where you need voter ID to vote, so don't do what Boris Johnson did and get sent away from the polling station.
28:41 Rory Stewart? Well, time to take a break, and when we come back from a break, we must talk about the extraordinary things happening in France, and where our expert, Mr Campbell, is going to be able to inform us.
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30:42 Alastair Campbell? Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
30:44 Rory Stewart? And me, Rory Stewart. Now, I've just come back from France. I was there for the election.
30:49 Alastair Campbell? I know.
30:50 Rory Stewart? But actually, despite staggering my way through the French newspapers slowly, and for what it's worth, as you will have seen, the fundamental message in every paper is fury, anger and disbelief with Macron calling the election. I mean, just as a sort of basic explainer for people, Macron won by far the most seats when the election was last held, the legislative election in 2022. And there's no way of putting a positive spin on calling an election where absolutely certainly he's going to massively lose, having the largest amount of seats, certainly go into third place. And so, as many of his MPs were saying in these articles that I was reading, they feel like lambs being driven to the slaughterhouse.
31:34 Alastair Campbell? You can hardly talk to anybody without them talking about la colère, anger, frustration. One of his closest supporters saying to me, this is an act of madness.
31:47 Rory Stewart? Who's this?
31:48 Alastair Campbell? Somebody who works for him.
31:49 Rory Stewart? Okay, so you're not going to tell us who that is?
31:50 Alastair Campbell? No, I'm not. I will tell you about somebody, though.
31:53 Rory Stewart? Okay.
31:53 Alastair Campbell? I was first introduced to Macron by a, I hope you won't mind me saying this, by a journalist called Marion van Rentachem, a Belgian name but French. And this was at a time when she felt Macron was going to be the savior of France. And she introduced me to him, and that's why I got involved in the first campaign. And she's been a really solid supporter. And she's written a column in Les Express, which is just absolutely extraordinary.
32:21 Rory Stewart? Tell us a bit about Les Express. Where does it sit on the French? What sort of British newspaper is it like? Where would it roughly be?
32:26 Alastair Campbell? Well, it's a kind of, we don't really have, I suppose we have Spectator, New Statesman type, it's kind of a weekly magazine, you know, kind of, it sort of gives all sides a fair hearing, probably a bit right.
32:35 Rory Stewart? Sort of prospecty?
32:36 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, that kind of thing, but maybe a bit more right.
32:39 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
32:39 Alastair Campbell? And she said that, I'll translate as I go, she says, you know, it's not the least of the paradoxes that on the evening...
32:46 Rory Stewart? I love the fact that when you translate French, you have to begin with, it is not the least of the paradoxes. If you were editing a piece of English prose, would you begin with, it is not the least of the paradoxes?
32:55 Alastair Campbell? It's pretty good. Ce n'est pas le moindre des paradoxes. On the eve of the European elections, on the eve of the most important European elections in history, the most European of French presidents essentially took the least European of decisions to sort of shake up Europe.
33:13 Rory Stewart? Wait, wait, wait, before we get into that, I mean, what a beautiful sort of expression of the French mind. I mean, it's not the least, the paradox is the most European of presidents.
33:21 Alastair Campbell? Exactly, exactly, exactly.
33:23 Rory Stewart? On the eve of the European elections, took the least European of decisions.
33:25 Alastair Campbell? What about this one then? So that's how it starts. And then at the end, this decision recalls the British referendum of June 2016 on Brexit. A bet without a strategy, an election without a campaign, leading to self-destruction, national and European. Now up to us to block the next stage.
33:47 Rory Stewart? So a bet without a strategy, an election without a campaign. Now, this is true, I think, absolutely of what Cameron did with the Brexit referendum. It's also true, I think, of what Rishi Sunak did, calling this election. That's also a bet without a strategy and an election without a campaign. Tell us, though, just before we get on to the current day, tell us a little bit about the first Macron campaign, just to give listeners a sense of where we've come from, what that elation was like, how he did it, and how unexpected it was.
34:14 Alastair Campbell? There's a guy, we talked about Jacques Attali last week, who introduced Macron to Hollande. Hollande put him into the government.
34:21 Rory Stewart? And Hollande was a left-wing president.
34:23 Alastair Campbell? Left-wing socialist who's just been re-elected as an MP because he's becoming back as part of this sort of popular frontline.
34:28 Rory Stewart? And shall we listen to on leading?
34:29 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely, absolutely.
34:31 Rory Stewart? And if you I did from a crackly line in Kenya.
34:33 Alastair Campbell? You did. So Macron comes along, and although it became sort of parodied, this en même temps, on the one hand, on the other, essentially what he did was to take support from the right and from the left.
34:44 Rory Stewart? And so he'd originally been in a left-wing government, but he was quite sort of right-wing, fiscally conservative finance minister.
34:49 Alastair Campbell? He was a centrist politician, yeah, absolutely, yeah. And made his name in a bit like Sunak in the kind of world of money.
34:55 Rory Stewart? Yeah, he'd been a banker.
34:56 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, and then came into politics as this fairly technocratic, enormous charisma.
35:02 Alastair Campbell? Very, very clever. I honestly do remember the first time meeting him, just thinking, this guy is so smart. Very rare you meet people like that. You think, this guy's so smart. And yet, politically, he literally has had his rise and fall in a matter of a decade.
35:18 Rory Stewart? And initially, he was a sort of political genius. I mean, as you say, this on-menton thing, I remember when I was trying to run as an independent for Mayor of London, quite a lot of Macron supporters came over to try to revise me. And what they explained is that being in the centre ground is not being in a grey, bland position.
35:33 Alastair Campbell? No, it can be radical.
35:34 Rory Stewart? It's taking radical right positions and radical left. So he would say, the French need to apologise for what they did in Algeria and really anger the right and please the left, but get a lot of headlines. And then he'd say, and immigration is a disgrace, then kind of angering the left and pleasing the right. And he's generating headlines on both sides. Sometimes they're headlines against him, but that doesn't matter.
35:54 Alastair Campbell? No, but what essentially he's done, I think the reason there's this anger, is that you've always, people have known about the rise of the hard right, and that's been something that's been a feature of several elections in the recent past. But in a sense, what you've now got is this cleavage within the country, where the centre is being crushed by the two extremes. And I think one of the most interesting things that's happening in this current debate, so tonight is when candidates have to decide whether they're going forward or not. By last night, by sort of midnight, wonderful word, désistement, withdrawals, there had been 185 withdrawals of candidates who were in third place, okay?
36:33 Rory Stewart? Because, and sorry, just put the context. So the way the French system works is that you need to get more than 12.5% of the vote to make it into the second round.
36:40 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, you have to get 50% to win.
36:42 Rory Stewart? And generally, that is expected to generate two candidates, but unusually, in more than half the seats, this has generated three candidates. And the three candidate problem is certainly for people who are anti-Le Pen, is the danger of splitting the vote.
36:56 Alastair Campbell? Correct.
36:57 Rory Stewart? So all these questions of people withdrawing are never about, or very, very rarely about anything other than either Macron's party withdrawing in favour of the left, or the left withdrawing in favour of Macron's party.
37:09 Alastair Campbell? Now, so as of last night, there'll be more today, because six o'clock, by the time this goes out, you know, there'll be more. One hundred and eighty five, one hundred and twenty one were those candidates on the left and sixty were from Macron's campaign. And then today, now, within that, however, within Macron's team, you've got the finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, you've also got Edouard Philippe, the former prime minister.
37:32 Rory Stewart? Bruno Le Maire has withdrawn.
37:33 Alastair Campbell? No, but they're saying they cannot vote for the left, they cannot vote for Mélenchon, who is a big part of this Popular Front.
37:43 Rory Stewart? And let's try to understand this a little bit more, because this is quite important in understanding what's driving people towards Le Pen. So I got two very different views, talking to people in France during the vote on Sunday. One was people who are very, very worried about Le Pen, but who are saying, you don't understand how broad this coalition was. So I was talking to a French civil servant, who, she's a prosecutor in a post-industrial town north of Paris, and she says everybody she knows is voting Le Pen, and why are they voting Le Pen? They're voting Le Pen not so much about immigration, it's a very white town, they're voting Le Pen because they just feel nothing has happened in their lives for forty years, that the economy's not performing for them, nothing's going in the right direction.
38:28 Rory Stewart? The second group of people are people who are trying to justify now voting for Le Pen, and these are often, let's say, upper-middle-class, professional people who would have been embarrassed to vote for the far right before. And their excuse is the left, so this is why we need to know more from you about who Mélenchon is, why it is that the left is considered so scary, that Macron's finance minister is not prepared to say, listen, anything is better than Le Pen, I'll endorse Mélenchon. So tell us a bit about the left in France.
39:03 Alastair Campbell? Well, so Mélenchon is the leader of this thing called La France Insoumise, which sort of won't succumb, and he's part of this Popular Front that was created when Macron called the election. Anybody who was looking on the back of the result for him to come out and say, "I'm going to be moderate, I'm going to be reasonable with this thing," he came out basically and effectively said, "I am the leader of this." He did so, standing alongside somebody called Reema Hassan, who is not even a candidate, but who is Palestinian activist, kitted out in the Kaffir, and who I think is in this sort of camp that says, "Not really sure that Hamas is really a terrorist organisation."
39:41 Rory Stewart? And so Mélenchon is not doing the Keir Starmer strategy. He's not trying to go to the summit.
39:45 Alastair Campbell? Oh, contraire.
39:46 Rory Stewart? He's like, full-on Jeremy Corbyn.
39:47 Alastair Campbell? He makes Jeremy Corbyn look pretty moderate.
39:49 Rory Stewart? So he's on issues like tax, spending, Gaza. Mélenchon is further left than Corbyn.
39:57 Alastair Campbell? I would say so. I mean, they probably see themselves as allies. And Mélenchon is unbelievably, way more divisive in French politics than, even than Corbyn was here.
40:06 Rory Stewart? So, just sorry, I'm just sort of really pinning it down. If you are a sort of centre-right, I don't know, doctor or lawyer or something, you see Mélenchon as basically a kind of dangerous communist?
40:18 Alastair Campbell? Well, he is. He's a kind of Trotskyist. You've got this situation where, and this is now becoming, I mean, there was a, one of the Green Party leaders was on a television interview I watched, in tears because she felt that Le Maire, in saying, "I can't vote for one of those candidates," essentially was saying, "Okay, well, you're letting the hard right in." But if you think about it from the point of view of Le Pen and Mélenchon, they now see the centre disappearing. They both say that there is no centre. Actually, Mélenchon said in his speech, "There is them over there, there is us here, there is nothing in the middle." And what they want, both of them actually, they actually quite like the chaos that might come from a parliament that's ungovernable, because you can't get anybody with a majority.
41:02 Alastair Campbell? Because that then takes them forward to the presidential election, where Mélenchon will intend to be the candidate of the hard left, Le Pen the candidate of the hard right, and somebody replacing Macron in the centre. And in the second round there, the runoff becomes Mélenchon-Le Pen. That's why people are worried about Mélenchon.
41:19 Rory Stewart? And if Mélenchon's going to hold to an extreme position on the left, that provides an enormous incentive to Marine Le Pen to try to rebrand herself as a more moderate, centrist candidate.
41:29 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely. They have this thing called "la stratégie de la cravate." The strategy of the tie, they all go around and I can remember the last, well not the last time, but I was in Paris a few months ago and I was talking to somebody who was worked from the assembly and we're in this quite swanky restaurant and in walked Marine Le Pen with her entourage of very young, good-looking people like Bardella, incredibly well dressed. And they've had this sort of normalization strategy. They haven't, they don't actually say that much outside campaigns, but what they've managed to do-
42:03 Rory Stewart? So they've become quite disciplined.
42:05 Alastair Campbell? They are, they are very disciplined.
42:06 Rory Stewart? And that's important too, because usually what goes wrong with the far right-
42:09 Alastair Campbell? They become a rabble.
42:10 Rory Stewart? Yeah. Look at Farage. I mean, you know, again and again, his candidates are caught saying completely outrageous, disgusting things. He has the distance in front. It's the same with the AFD in Germany. I mean, the basic problem for the far right is you have a bunch of lunatics charging around. She seems to have been able to impose discipline, which is critical if she's going to try to present herself as the sort of moderate centrament.
42:32 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but so now, let's just say that I think the likelihood of anybody being able to get a majority, there's some talk about whether the, if the Rassemblement National do well enough to be able to get in some sort of alliance with the Republicans, but I don't think that's going to happen. So what you end up with is a pretty ungovernable-
42:48 Rory Stewart? And sorry, just again, explaining for people the terminology, that's Le Pen's party potentially getting in bed with the old Conservatives.
42:54 Alastair Campbell? The right of the old Tory party, a bit like a sort of Braverman rump, as it were. So now what you have is the, the prospect of a constitution which says there can't be another election for 12 months, the possibility of chaos within the parliament, absolute stagnation. By the way, this is terrible for Ukraine, terrible for Ukraine, because this becomes very, very difficult now. A lame duck president, I'm afraid, who's become effectively persona non grata within his own camp. Atal, the prime minister, was the one who fronted up the results. So Macron's in a terrible place and we'll know better by the end of the day, but there'll be a lot of people who feel, why should I be told what I can and can't vote? People feeling the whole thing's being engineered and others who'll say, okay,
43:37 Alastair Campbell? let them have the government and let them make a mess of it and then we can vote against them. But that is such a big risk.
43:42 Rory Stewart? And the making a mess of it could either mean going with the far left, which presumably if they're
43:47 Alastair Campbell? They won't make a majority though. There's no way they can get, I don't think they can get a majority.
43:50 Rory Stewart? Or you've got to rely on the votes from the far right.
43:51 Alastair Campbell? Exactly.
43:52 Rory Stewart? So Macron's in an impossible position. I think one basic fact to get through to people, in the last legislative election in 2022, 4.2 million people voted for Le Pen's far right party.
44:05 Alastair Campbell? Yep.
44:05 Rory Stewart? On Sunday, 11 million people voted for it. I mean, that's the kind of fundamental fact and that's the fundamental problem with Macron's calculation.
44:12 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. There is, well, there are some people who say the bet will pay off because the National Front will be seen to cause nothing but chaos. But at the moment, Macron is the one who's getting the blame for the chaos.
44:22 Rory Stewart? And whatever the bet was, the bet cannot have been, I'm going to take my party from having the most seats in parliament to putting them into third place. I mean, that can't have been the bet.
44:31 Alastair Campbell? And also, this line that, you know, you can't vote for the left and you can't vote for the right. I mean, that has just failed in the first round. So why is that going to succeed in the second round? No, it's a bit of a disaster, I'm afraid.
44:42 Rory Stewart? Now, Alasdair, we did an emergency pod after the Biden-Trump debate.
44:47 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
44:47 Rory Stewart? And it's been one of the most popular things we've done recently. Got a lot of attention, a lot of focus.
44:52 Alastair Campbell? But Joe Biden didn't listen.
44:54 Rory Stewart? Joe Biden did not listen. And not only Joe Biden didn't listen, I have received an incredible amount from big Democratic figures, Democratic campaigning organisations, Democratic donors, very, very angry, pushing back hard. So, and why are they angry? Because you and I are saying Biden needs to step down. And it's been fascinating watching the Democratic Party close ranks and say, we're not going to do this. You've seen Obama come out and endorse Biden. You talked about Jill Biden greeting him. You've not seen any of the senior Democratic leadership in the Senate or Congress coming out against him. And the arguments that they're making are really striking. Some of them, I think, are really bad arguments. So the number one argument from one of the biggest Democratic donors
45:36 Rory Stewart? was, this is a decision for Joe and Jill, not for anyone else. And I mean, that, I completely disagree. This entire world is at stake. This is not I mean, he gets to make decision on what colour tie he puts on in the morning, but he doesn't get to decide future free world. Anyway, what response have you got to this?
45:50 Alastair Campbell? Well, in terms of people in America, a mix, actually. I got some of that, but I also got a lot of people saying, you've got a point and we're very, very worried. The panic that was ensuing as a result of his performance doesn't go away because they decide to make it go away. And if you look at the numbers for, I mean, for example, I know, as you know, neither of us bet, but the betting markets now on Trump are, he's something like seven to four on, which means, you know, it's almost slam dunk territory.
46:21 Rory Stewart? So you've got now three quarters of Americans saying he does not have the mental capacity to perform and he should step down. Now, many of those people will of course still vote for Biden.
46:30 Alastair Campbell? Yep.
46:31 Rory Stewart? Including a lot of my own family that are very worried about his mental capacity.
46:34 Alastair Campbell? Well, if you hate Trump, as a lot of people do, you can't possibly vote for Trump. By the way, I said, I regretted the minute I said it, but it was alive. I said of Robert F Kennedy, the wacko, he was wacko. I think that was a bit over the top.
46:46 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
46:47 Alastair Campbell? So I withdraw wacko. I still think though that he is, his role in this campaign is malign because he takes votes away from Biden more than Trump.
46:54 Rory Stewart? There's an argument that's been, one person who's been passionately taking the position that we've taken on this is, is somebody I know called Ezra Klein, who's a big podcaster in the US. And he's got an argument that I think is central here, which is that the, a lot of the Democrats who are supporting Biden are saying, he's got great values and he's got a great team.
47:16 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
47:16 Rory Stewart? Great policies. So we don't need to worry. But Ezra's point is that the US president is not just about policy, it's also about communication, persuasion. And that's particularly true in an unstable global context, world stage. I mean, that one of the president's roles is to get out there publicly and take that position on Israel Gaza, take that position on Ukraine and lead and bring people with them. And that's what one's really got to worry about if he stays in over the next four years. And I want to get into this with you because this is a question about how much the leader matters. If I had said to you, let's say Tony Blair. For some tragic reason, had ended up in some kind of El Cid position where he was not really able to function.
47:59 Rory Stewart? And I'd said to you, is it all okay? Because he's got a great team around him. It doesn't really matter that the prime minister can't really. What's your sense on that? Does the person at the top matter?
48:07 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely. It's fundamental. Well, for a start, the person at the top chooses the people around him. Secondly, the big decisions have to be made by the person at the top for all the advice that they get. And thirdly, as you say, one of the reasons that people get to the top is because they have these capacities that others don't have. And in the modern age, a lot of that is about communication and leadership and strategy and so forth. Which I think Biden has been good at throughout his career. But that one performance, I mean, if it, look, if it shook somebody like me as much as it did. Heaven knows what it does to somebody who's wobbling a bit between the two parties.
48:41 Rory Stewart? And this is our marine, the pen point that we had in the last slot, which is that it provides cover for somebody who's embarrassed to vote for Trump, suddenly has an excuse.
48:50 Alastair Campbell? Absolutely.
48:51 Rory Stewart? So let's say you are, I don't know, centre right. You think Trump's going to cut your taxes so he'll be good for you economically. You've been very ashamed, ready to vote for Trump, but now you can say, I'm really sorry, but this guy doesn't have the capacity.
49:04 Alastair Campbell? And the worst thing about it, of course, is that had Biden performed at the top of Biden's capacity. I think there's a very good chance that the the news that was made out of that debate was the fact that Donald Trump lied in every single statement that he made. And the fact that that's just gone and further normalising lying, further accepting that. And I guess the other big news this week out of the United States is this Supreme Court judgment. Essentially saying that, you know, when it, when it comes to job, to acts taken in his capacity as president. That Trump does have immunity from criminal offences he may have committed.
49:39 Rory Stewart? This is a technical decision by Supreme Court, as listeners will know, has got increasing numbers of right wing justices and it ruled six to three. And this is one of the tragedies of the court. Again and again, almost every decision seems to be falling along party lines. Six to three in favour of the idea that there needs to be a very high bar with a president to prove that they've actually done something that is illegal. Or rather that that they don't get immunity from prosecution on.
50:07 Alastair Campbell? And so imagine imagine if it was, you know, Uganda or Botswana, where you said that, you know, the president has packed the court full of judges who now say that they can do whatever they want. I mean, it really, this really is putting American democracy in the spotlight.
50:21 Rory Stewart? To be fair, it's not quite can do whatever they want. What they've done is they've pushed down to the other court, but they've set quite a high bar for that court to prove that what Trump did was beyond his capacity as president.
50:31 Alastair Campbell? But it was definitely seen by Trump's people as a as a big win.
50:33 Rory Stewart? Absolutely, and and by the Democrats as a huge blow. The thing that we need to get on to, once we're through the UK and French elections, is the process of how Biden could be replaced and who that replacement could be. And that's where a lot of the trouble happens. In fact, probably the most compelling argument that people are making. You know, you and I, I think, now believe that you have to get rid of Biden because he can't win. And so therefore you just work backwards from that. You've got to have a solution to this, that that running him doesn't work. It's too much of a risk. Trump is very likely to win. But he has, because of the way that the Democratic Party works. We didn't report it because it was a done deal, but there was this primary process,
51:15 Rory Stewart? not just that produced Trump, right, which was which was the process where Nikki Haley was defeated and Trump emerged, there was a democratic process, got all these delegates. So he's a presumptive nominee. And under the rules, those delegates are almost obliged to vote for him. And there's nothing that can be done unless Biden voluntarily steps down.
51:33 Alastair Campbell? It's down to him, it's down to him.
51:34 Rory Stewart? And even if he voluntarily steps down, the high likelihood is that he will endorse Kamala Harris, who has even worse popularity ratings than he has and is very unlikely to be able to beat Donald Trump. So the problem that the Democratic Party faces is that even if they agree with us that Biden's unlikely to defeat Trump, they're very worried that all these internal bigwigs in Democratic Party are going to produce someone even worse. And that's a structural flaw in American democracy, because in the UK system, we're able to get rid of people really easily. I mean, you know, that that's why Liz Truss lasted less than a lettuce. The Conservative Party decided they had a Joe Biden figure, forty nine days, boom, they're gone.
52:12 Alastair Campbell? Johnson, the same.
52:13 Rory Stewart? The MPs just kick him out.
52:14 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
52:14 Rory Stewart? But in this case, everybody's frozen. Nobody knows what to do. And the only way you'd get there, I think, is probably President Obama privately changing his position with the Clintons, going in to see Biden and saying, saying, you've got to step down.
52:29 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Well, it all makes our election look kind of, you know, grown up and mature and serious and sensible. And I've been shocked by how little coverage has been of our election around the world. I guess it's because people think it's a foregone conclusion.
52:42 Rory Stewart? And also because because Keir Thomas seems quite a reassuring figure.
52:46 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
52:46 Rory Stewart? I mean,
52:46 Alastair Campbell? In this crazy world.
52:48 Rory Stewart? The American coverage, I think, the headlines, the New York Times ever, will be centrist victory in Britain. They'll, the narrative around the world will be Britain has passed its peak populism. France and America are lurching into populism. Is Britain the future?
53:01 Alastair Campbell? Well, there we go. Soft power. Soft power all around. Right, that's it for this week. This is our last Channel Four podcast before the election itself. And we'll be there all night, as we said, with Christian Guerin Murthy, Emily Maitlis, Gary Gibbon, loads of good guests, and Gogglebox as well. See you there.
53:22 Rory Stewart? Looking forward very much to seeing you on the night, through the night. Stay up with us as long as you can. And if you're having an election night party, Channel Four is the place to see Alistair in his fancy jacket and eating his healthy food through the night.
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