266. Labour vs Conservatives: What do their manifestos reveal?

How do the Labour and Conservative party manifestos compare? What are the key policies that will swing votes? What are the Greens and Liberal Democrats proposing in their manifestos? Join Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell for the latest episode of The Rest Is Politics, where they answer all these questions and more. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP FIRST 100 DAYS TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson + Chris Sawyer Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:04Rory Stewart?

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• 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 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.

• 0:42Alastair 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?

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• 2:28Alastair Campbell?

  Hello, welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:31Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart. And today we're doing, Alistair, a manifesto special. And just tell us honestly, how, before you became an internationally renowned podcaster, how much detail did you normally read these manifestos in? And how much detail do you think, I mean, who's reading manifestos in detail? Because I remember, just to get a sort of a terrible revelation, I think many of the MPs, it'll be a total surprise to, I remember 2017, I was campaigning, I was out on the streets. The manifesto had been written in a very small room by Theresa May, a friend of mine called Ben Governer, I think Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, who were her special advisers. We got absolutely no say in what was in it. The Cabinet didn't know what was in it.

• 3:16Rory Stewart?

  And of course, that was the manifesto that contained the announcement that became the death tax announcement. We were going to tax people's homes to pay for social care. Took her 20-point lead and destroyed it, and meant that she lost her majority. But anybody who thinks that these manifestos are generated by, even at that stage, I was a relatively senior minister. You know, the Home Secretary, and I remember Amber Rudd ring me saying she hadn't read the manifesto.

• 3:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, this, may I say, we're going to be talking mainly about Labour and Tory manifestos. There is a process for Labour Party manifesto.

• 3:52Alastair Campbell?

  So it gets agreed in a formal meeting by the National Executive and by others who are involved in that process. So I would say that this manifesto will have gone through the, it will certainly have gone through the Shadow Cabinet, and it would have gone through the National Executive. I think one of Theresa May's problems was that she, frankly, that she, she didn't go through that sort of process. And, you know, when you have the whole Cabinet, or the Shadow Cabinet as it was today, sitting there, sort of just, you know, nodding along, they have to then go out and be part of the, of the communication and the selling of this.

• 4:34Alastair Campbell?

  So, no, I think that when you say who reads manifestos, I mean, for example, back in 97, we actually... I think it was W H Smith. We got them to, it says there Rory settings camera insta links. I don't know.

• 4:46Rory Stewart?

  I've got, I've got, I've got, I'm, I'm back and back and back and riding. So sorry, W H Smith.

• 4:51Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So we actually, we actually did a, I think it was W H Smith. So we actually got the manifestos put into the shops. And of course, the front cover, it was an A five thing. It was a big picture, which, um, what's his name, Lord Snowden. We got Lord Snowden to do the cover photo, one of your kind of, you know, posh, posh friends.

• 5:09Rory Stewart?

  Posh friends, yeah.

• 5:09Alastair Campbell?

  And, and, and it actually was a very, very nice photo. Um, just as Kia today is the front cover. So we got into newsages. Now, nobody was pretending that millions of people were going to read them. But I think you'd be surprised how many people in, well, first, the first, one of the most important things is the civil service now have it. They have it there. They now have a few weeks, assuming there's a Labour government, which most of them will be assuming. They can now start to sort of work out. They've been doing a bit of work, but they now have the thing. The second thing is lots of people in the public sector read them. Uh, lots of lobbyists read them, lots of different sort of think tanks and, and, and sort of academic world read them. And some people will actually go online and look through it.

• 5:52Rory Stewart?

  So, so, so let, let's just give us, take a big step back and do a little bit of an explainer on, on what we've got. So again, for, for people who aren't right in the weeds of these things. This is a moment where the Conservatives have now announced their manifesto and Labour's announced their manifesto. I mean, in, in simple terms, these are the programmes for government. And they matter because if something is in a manifesto, as a manifesto commitment, uh, that generally means that all your MPs should be voting for it. And it also means that the House of Lords traditionally can't block the legislation. Those are the formal constitutional things. Informally, it's also incredibly powerful because it means that even

• 6:36Rory Stewart?

  NGOs, civil society groups and others who might want to challenge what you're doing are much less likely to do it if it's in a manifesto. If you hold something back, and this is why Theresa May put this very bold thing in the manifesto and destroyed her election. If you hold them back, and this is, the risk is that you announce and it's not in your manifesto and you face all kinds of oppositions. Your MPs rebel, the House of Lords blocks it, the NGOs are out against you. Public service institutions out against you. What do we see? We see a Conservative manifesto called Clear Plan Bold Action Secure Future, which we can talk about a little bit. And then

• 7:16Rory Stewart?

  we have a Labour manifesto called Change, My Change. And the Labour manifesto is done in a much more elaborate way, at least as I'm accessing it online. And I wonder whether that's partly that they're gathering data as you click on to the different categories. So you click on Labour manifesto, you begin with rather a nice letter from Keir Starmer, with lots of pictures of him as you scroll down. And then you hit Labour's First Steps, Change, Mission Driven Government, Strong Foundations, Kickstarting, Global Situation. The Conservative manifesto reads as a more conventional document, more like the kind of stuff you printed in WH Smith, right?

• 8:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think the, I've seen them both online. I don't have physical copies. I agree with you that I think that the Conservatives are a much, much more traditional sort of document. As you go through the Labour thing online, you get little films pop up, you get endorsements, Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific officer during Covid pops up, Richard Walker, the guy who was one of the people who were introducing Keir Starmer today.

• 8:26Rory Stewart?

  Is he the Iceland boss?

• 8:27Alastair Campbell?

  He's the guy from Iceland, yeah. Who I thought spoke very, very well, but it was perfectly clear to me that that had been written by somebody who's in charge of the Labour Party message. It was sort of, you know, word perfect. I did think though-

• 8:40Rory Stewart?

  Richard and I know a bit. He's done some very good work on prisons. But he was, I believe, a Conservative candidate. So that's another-

• 8:46Alastair Campbell?

  That's a big, big, big thing. I actually, I do think that the introductions, there was, there was, there was more kind of vim and confidence in the way Labour projected it. They had Angela Rayner- Who spoke pretty briefly, just went through the kind of missions. They had Richard Walker from Iceland, they had a guy called Daniel, who was a young guy, married, two kids, living in a bedsit, basically talking about struggling to get on the housing ladder. They had an incredibly moving, even I, and I'm, as you know, Rory, I can be quite hard hearted. I did feel little sort of pricks at the back of my eyes with the, with the tear ducts. When this guy called Nathaniel, who was, who was basically dying of cancer.

• 9:28Alastair Campbell?

  And said, he's just, you know, longs for a Labour government so that other people don't have to have the treatment that that he's had. And then a young woman called Holly, who was 18, first time voter. So they were, they were straight in, you know, business, poverty, health service and, and young people. And I thought, one of the things I said on the podcast last night, I really hoped that Keir Starmer didn't focus too much on the Tories and he didn't. This was very much, you know, this is what we're about, this is what we're doing.

• 9:57Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Um, quick, quick summary of contents of manifestos. And, and in some ways, one of the strange things is that people will be reading the Labour manifesto much more carefully than the Conservative manifesto. In some ways, the Conservative manifesto is almost a historical document now. Cause they're not going to win the election. And it's, at most, it's going to be a sort of sign of sight desperation, but I'll give you a brief summary of what's in the Conservative manifesto. Not worth, I would suggest spending much time on unless you're a real political geek. Cause they're not going to do any of it, but, but this, this is, this is what they, they claim they're going to do. And first thing is that they, they talk about their record. And, and that's one of the big problems the Conservatives have going into this election. How do they talk about their record?

• 10:44Rory Stewart?

  Some of the things they say they've done, they actually have done. So, you know, I'm a, I was a Conservative MP and it is true that employment figures are quite strong, four million more jobs. They have cut taxes. They've cut taxes for certain bits of the population, the tax burdens up, but a lot of people on low incomes were taken out of tax and, and some people on low middle income acts and have lower taxes. Um, and they also boast about having achieved the best readers in the Western world. That's true, there's good statistics on the phonics programs on non-literacy. The second category of claims on their record are a bit more dodgy. So they say they've built two and a half million homes, that crime is down and that they've been increasing defence spending.

• 11:28Rory Stewart?

  Basically, their record on house building is not great. A lot of people are very unhappy about crime and defence spending. Yeah, okay, maybe it's been increasing, but basically we have a terribly funded defence.

• 11:43Rory Stewart?

  They boasted that they've got Brexit done. I suppose they did get Brexit done.

• 11:51Rory Stewart?

  The strangest one of all is they say, vote for us where immigration is never allowed to run out of control. And this is one of their fundamental problems. Maybe the thing I'll stop rabbiting on at this point, just to summarise the problem of the manifesto. They're going with immigration because they thought what they could do is squeeze the Reform Party vote, Farage Party vote by talking hard about immigration. And it's backfired spectacularly. They're not squeezing that vote. What they've actually done by putting immigration front and centre is to validate, is to support Nigel Farage's position. And also to point at the fact of their own record. And their own record is in fact that they let in 700,000 people last year, 700,000 people the year before.

• 12:36Rory Stewart?

  When many parties in Britain have been talking about trying to keep immigration in the tens of thousands or at about the 100,000 level. This is historically very, very high levels of immigration. So they can't really go into this thing trying to sell themselves as the party that's strong on immigration.

• 12:53Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, I mean, they really do have a problem with the record. And I think there are, you know, you said dodgy. There's so much stuff in the manifesto that is really, really quite dubious. There's one line which really leapt out at me. Where is it? They said, well, first of all, they say, we are cutting taxes. Okay, now, there are taxes that they are cutting, okay? But they are not overall cutting taxes. And I saw an amazing interview yesterday with James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, who said, this manifesto has reduced tax. He actually was talking about the promises in this manifesto as though they had happened. He said, Rory, what does this one mean?

• 13:37Alastair Campbell?

  Last year, we delivered one, we removed one billion pounds' worth of trade barriers per hour.

• 13:48Alastair Campbell?

  What does that mean?

• 13:50Rory Stewart?

  Per hour? Per hour throughout the year?

• 13:54Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know.

• 13:55Rory Stewart?

  You mean three hundred and sixty five times twenty four billion pounds worth of trade values?

• 14:00Alastair Campbell?

  Which they removed. And they also say that they're going to continue to seize the benefits of Brexit with more trade deals. And Richard Fraser just put a comment up on the comments, he said, getting Brexit done is like being proud of a car crash. And we'll come on to Brexit later.

• 14:15Rory Stewart?

  I'm still struggling to say that's

• 14:17Alastair Campbell?

  So nice.

• 14:17Rory Stewart?

  Eight thousand seven hundred and sixty billion pounds worth of trade deals. I mean, that's, that's, that's

• 14:23Alastair Campbell?

  No, it's not trade deals.

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  Six times, six times

• 14:26Alastair Campbell?

  Trade back.

• 14:27Rory Stewart?

  Six times the size of the entire British economy. Okay, let's just quickly finish, because again, as I say, they're not going to get elected, so it doesn't really matter too much. But the most outrageous and irresponsible thing in it for somebody like me who's trying to argue for a more moderate, sensible Conservative Party is that they've announced essentially seventeen billion pounds worth of tax cuts.

• 14:52Alastair Campbell?

  Unfunded.

• 14:54Rory Stewart?

  And they're not funded. They're really not funded.

• 14:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Rory Stewart?

  And those were going to come from getting rid of self-employed employers' national insurance, which is a very, actually a bad policy. A bad policy because it just causes perverse incentives in the system. In fact, in twenty seventeen, when Theresa May was in power and I was part of that government, we were trying to do exactly the reverse. We were trying to move employers' national insurance for self-employed people to the same level as for employed people to try to stop these perverse differentials. They were trying to abolish it entirely. They're trying to, et cetera, et cetera. So we'll leave it there. Let me now jump on very quickly to the Labour manifesto. Do you want to provide a quick summary of the Labour manifesto? Or you'd like me to do it? What's that?

• 15:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I, Keir Starmer made a, made a virtue really of saying there are no big surprises in here. This is the, what he was, I think, trying to do was, was, was tell the story that they have been telling since he became leader of the Labour Party. I was pleased that he focused much more on Labour and the country than he did on the Tories. There was very little Tory bashing and I think he should carry on in that vein. I was right last night when I said that they they clearly were going to try to land this idea that Labour, the party of wealth creation. This is a plan for wealth creation. He kept talking about growth, about wealth creation. And then I think in terms of the, there was a slight disjunct between his speech

• 16:21Alastair Campbell?

  and the document itself in that, you know, he was really giving a kind of big picture in terms of the way that he was projecting it. When you read the document, there is an, there are, there are an awful lot of kind of detailed policy or detailed policy aspirations is what I would call it. And when you get to the, to the costings. And look, they all say, they all say that everything is costed, et cetera. As you just said, there's no way that the Tory manifesto is, is they haven't even tried to cost it really. But if you go to some of the costings of, of the Labour manifesto, if you go right to the end of the, of the document.

• 17:04Alastair Campbell?

  You know, so let's, let's just go through some of them.

• 17:09Alastair Campbell?

  So they're talking, for example, forty thousand more appointments, scans and appointments in the National Health Service. And that's one point naught one billion. Okay. So one point naught one sounds, my God, they've really worked this out. Double, double the number of NHS CT and MRI scanners, two hundred and fifty million. Dentistry package, two hundred and twenty five. And so it goes on. So there's got the policies funded on that side. And then you go to revenue and it says revenue from closing further non-dom tax loopholes and investment in reducing tax avoidance. Five point two three billion now. And that, all I'd say is they all do it and we did it in the past. If and when it comes to delivering, implementing the policies on the right that I'm looking at now.

• 17:54Alastair Campbell?

  These will not necessarily be the numbers because they never, we interviewed Rachel Reeves yesterday. And, and sorry, we interviewed Bridget Phillips yesterday. And, and, and she was making the point that Sure Start. Ended up, and David Blunkett, I think, said the same, ended up being a lot more expensive when they actually delivered it. So these are kind of indicative numbers as opposed to what they say, fully costed, fully funded. And I think then you go through to the next one, and we're talking about, you know, the VAT on private school fees, six and a half thousand teachers, increased head teacher training, and all these things. And some of these are big numbers, some of them are small numbers. But I think what you're talking

• 18:36Alastair Campbell?

  about is a quite a big shopping list of aspirations, things that they intend to do. But I think what he did do quite well was convey the message of reassurance, which he's been doing, but also there is a lot of change in here.

• 18:52Rory Stewart?

  Stepping back for a second, to the big picture, one of the things that we just have to keep repeating again and again and again, because it's getting lost in this election, is that there are currently eighteen billion pounds' worth of cuts already pencilled in to the Conservatives' forward spending plan, which has been accepted by Labour. Eighteen billion pounds' worth of cuts. And that's not including the extra seventeen billion fantasy stuff that they just put in the Conservative manifesto. And these are going to come from unprotected departments. So, take an example of something you and

• 19:33Rory Stewart?

  I both care about, prisons. Current plans are to cut four thousand prison officers. No idea how they're going to do that, but both Conservative and Labour have signed up to these things. So if Labour wanted to stop those cuts on unprotected departments, the eighteen billion pounds' worth of cuts, they would have to find another eighteen billion pounds somewhere just to level PEC, or just to keep expenditure where it is now. If they wanted to have the money to do kind of big industrial strategies...

• 20:08Rory Stewart?

  Not just stand still, but actually put in more money. They would need to find another, I don't know.

• 20:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:14Rory Stewart?

  Twenty, thirty billion pounds on top.

• 20:16Alastair Campbell?

  And when you go, when you go through, so both, so Labour have addressed prisons, they've addressed prisons by saying they're going to build more of them. They've addressed prisons.

• 20:25Rory Stewart?

  But, but, but, but on the, exactly. But as you say, they'll build more prisons, but there's no money. I mean.

• 20:29Alastair Campbell?

  No, and also.

• 20:30Rory Stewart?

  No money for prison officers. Yeah.

• 20:32Alastair Campbell?

  They're talking about building more prisons and they're talking about having a more rehabilitative approach inside prisons. Well, that also does not come cheap. So I think with a lot of these things, you, you, you'll find that what happens now with this manifesto is it gets turned into the priorities. If they get into government, gets turned into a first king's speech, the legislative stuff that they have to do. I think it was pretty clear on the kind of big ticket items they're going to be in there, GB energy. Some, you know, that, that some of the tax changes they're going to have to make and so forth. But then there's an awful lot of stuff in there that I think they could pick on as the sort of, you know, what I call the.

• 21:11Alastair Campbell?

  You know, the, the, the things that you can do without them being the biggest deal of all, whilst you're taking time to do the bigger stuff. And, and I, there was more of that kind of thing in there than I was expecting.

• 21:23Rory Stewart?

  So one of the ones struck me, which I think is a really good one, that presumably you and I both violently agree on is. Much more local devolution, much more power to local authorities, local meds. That doesn't necessarily cost you any money, something you can do through legislation. Planning reform could be another one, may not cost you a huge amount of money if you've got the political will and the courage to drive it through. Stability, certainty. Again, if he would sign up to say ministers are going to serve a minimum of two years, get proper training in their posts, not be industry shovels, that doesn't cost you any money.

• 21:57Rory Stewart?

  The other stuff I'm a bit more sceptical about, there were, there were four things, job centres, making work pay. Reforming immigration, that kind of stuff, I'm a little bit more doubtful because that sounds like the kind of stuff the conservatives probably think they've been trying to do over the last eighteen months and haven't managed to do. And the modern industrial strategy, which is very important, is not a Biden-type strategy because it doesn't have any money.

• 22:25Rory Stewart?

  I mean, if you think about Biden's IRA, that is hundreds of billions of US dollars. You can't do that kind of industrial strategy with no money. I mean, you can do stuff around the edges, coordinate better, change regulations a bit, the kind of stuff that Rachel Reeves was talking about when we interviewed her, but it's not going to be an industrial strategy. In other words, this is a manifesto from Labour, which I'm here stealing from my great hero and god, David Gork, but he would say that

• 22:52Alastair Campbell?

  He's been a god. He's been elevated from hero to god, my lord.

• 22:56Rory Stewart?

  Exactly, from hero to god. That still seems to be a manifesto that believes that Britain is a little bit small C conservative and they can't afford to go into an election saying they're going to raise taxes, raise spending. And I was sort of wondering about that with Rachel Reeves and Bridget Phillips, who we've been interviewing. I imagine, I'd love to know from you, but I imagine their instincts in an ideal world probably would be to have a more Swedish social democratic system with probably a bit of higher taxes, higher spending. But they don't think that's where the public is and they're real professionals, they want to win an election.

• 23:34Alastair Campbell?

  I think he went even further than that. He kept saying that, you know, working people are paying too much tax already. It would be unfair to put more tax on working people. It was quite clear, though, I think we spotted this in the debate he did with Beth Rigby on Sky last night, that they're absolutely parking on not being moved off, no rise in income tax, no VAT, no rise in national insurance. But beyond that, they're not saying much. And I think that you, you know, I see that Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, he has been pretty dismissive of both the manifestos in terms of their costings. And

• 24:14Alastair Campbell?

  I think that was probably always going to be the case. But I still think that this, in trying, putting all the kind of eggs in the growth basket, which they kind of are,

• 24:29Alastair Campbell?

  And it's true, you can't predict, you can't be absolutely confident that all this stuff, whether it's planning, whether it's investment in skills, whether it's some of the inward investment thing, they obviously, I think, have got a lot of business inward investment lined up. I, well, I know that from sort of talking to different people, that there's all sorts of things. I think the mood around business investment is going to be, is going to be pretty good. But ultimately, the economy growing is, there are so many factors and forces involved in that, that are out with the control of government. But I, I, I still feel that it was, I think it was, it was a richer document than I was expecting, and I was quite pleased.

• 25:10Rory Stewart?

  Again, footnote, so, and I guess we said this before, but just once more, those taxes they've ruled out, VAT, national insurance.

• 25:22Alastair Campbell?

  They're the big ones.

• 25:23Rory Stewart?

  They're the big ones. That's where eighty, ninety percent of the money comes from. So where are they going to get money from? Possibly from a readjusting council tax bands. But that doesn't make much money. I mean, you know, when, when we looked at that in the Treasury, when we were in government, it looked like it would bring in maybe half a billion. It's not going to get you towards the five billion. So the best idea of what they're going to do comes from Nick McPherson, who used to run the Treasury.

• 25:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Rory Stewart?

  He reckons what they're going to do is they're going to put another tax on top of income tax. Now, it's a bit not in the spirit of things, but they'll probably call it something like a health and social care levy. So put another two, three percent on income tax, but it won't be called income tax or national insurance, be called a health and social care. Do you think they can get away with that?

• 26:11Alastair Campbell?

  Hypophication, we call that, don't we?

• 26:14Rory Stewart?

  Hypophication? Do you think that's just about doable? Or do you think people might feel that's a bit against the spirit of things?

• 26:19Alastair Campbell?

  I think that, I think that would be very, very difficult. I think that would be very, very difficult because they have been so clear. Look, I think that they'll get, if they get a decent majority, if there is a sort of sense of real goodwill around change, they will have a period where they can, they can do the whole thing, basically saying, things are a lot worse than we thought. Okay, they can do that. Right. But it struck me that both when we were talking to Rachel Reeves and watching Keir Starmer today and in previous debates that he's been involved in, I get a very, very, very strong feeling that really, really don't want to do that. He's not giving himself that much wriggle room around that kind of thing.

• 26:57Rory Stewart?

  Right, he really doesn't want to do it.

• 26:59Alastair Campbell?

  And don't forget, don't forget, he's also, this was very, very clear in the way that he was dealing with a lot of the questions as well. He really is kind of putting himself up there as saying, you know, whole, in a way that Sunak has now been very, very badly damaged. The worst part for Sunak in that debate last night was when Beth Rigby was going through his five, you know, no ifs, no buts, hold it to it. So if Keir Starmer were to go against some of the really kind of cast iron stuff that he's been saying, then I think that becomes a problem quite quickly. By the way, we should just just mention on Brexit, I mean Brexit is mentioned in the manifesto, but it's mentioned in a very kind of,

• 27:38Alastair Campbell?

  you know, we are not rejoining the single market, we are not going back into the customs union, we are not bringing back freedom of movement. And then it goes into talking about, you know, new defence partnership, veterinary staff and all this. So I, again, I was quite disappointed that that, that I think pins them in far too, far too tightly.

• 27:56Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so Nick says there was no need, no need whatsoever for Labour to explicitly rule out single market.

• 28:06Rory Stewart?

  Simply ruling out returning to the EU for now would have been sufficient. Single market, EA from outside, still Brexit. So Nick, I think we both violently agree with you on that. We were very sad about that. It didn't seem a necessary thing to rule that out. Yeah, it's, and do you think he needed, I mean, there's the element of, you know, this is stuff he profoundly believes in, but if you were just thinking tactically and cynically, do you think you needed to be this extreme in your statements to win an election? I mean, would there have been a chance of Labour saying, okay, we'll maybe not win such a big majority, but we'll say,

• 28:47Rory Stewart?

  we think the country's in a mess and we're going to have to raise taxes a bit and, you know, we've just got to be honest about the problem.

• 28:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I mean, put it this way, Labour have won only if if Keir Starmer wins this election, he will become only the fourth prime minister to win an election for Labour from opposition. And I think those who failed to do that, I think most of them would argue, both those who are living and those who are dead, that one of the reasons that they may be failed to win from opposition was because they went into those elections basically saying they're going to put taxes up. And what's more, to do that in the current context, where the Conservatives have got taxes higher than they've been for, you know, your and my

• 29:38Alastair Campbell?

  lifetime, I think that would be very, very, very, very difficult. So, does it mean that they they might have been able, I mean, let's be honest, a year ago, two years ago, nobody-

• 29:49Rory Stewart?

  And also I'm interrupting, Pat Fox, I just want to make sure that it's clear that we are reading these comments, is asking the same question to you. Did they have to follow a Ming Spars strategy to win as part of the variants on what you're answering now? Sorry, just wanted to-

• 30:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I would I would argue that a lot of what they're doing in in the content today is not is not that Ming Vars. Some of it, I think, is going to be very big and quite difficult. I think it's the fact that we've known about all this stuff. So people are, and and this is a different way of doing it. I think it's actually, you know, there's a case to be made for it. I thought it was I thought it was quite refreshing that he said, listen, if you want a pantomime, go to Clacton. If you want a serious document that's the, you know, thought through, this is what we intend to do, then then here it is. But I I think that to have to have come up with any sort of big surprises, and particularly on tax, taxes, tax remains very, very neurologic for a lot of people. And and so I I think

• 30:46Alastair Campbell?

  they've they've they've neutralized it. The Conservatives have helped them because taxes, they put taxes so high, they've been specific about what they're ruling out, and they've given themselves a little bit of wriggle room on other stuff. But as you said earlier, it's not that much.

• 31:01Rory Stewart?

  Shaun, I feel really optimistic. It's it's heartwarming. I've been feeling this stuff about I have a problem with privately educated elites in the arts. It's in there. It's like we've been listened to. That's an interesting one, because I sometimes think that one of the strategies they're pursuing- Is talking quite a lot about class and private education as a way of signalling that their hearts are in the right place and their left wing while actually pursuing an economic policy that's pretty fiscally conservative. So I almost think, I've been struck by how many of the interviews we've done, people talk a lot about their background, they talk a lot about the poverty they grew up in, they talk a lot about class, they talk a lot about how uncomfortable they feel in the arts with privately educated people,

• 31:45Rory Stewart?

  they felt at university was privately educated people. And I wonder whether they're not doing that partly, and Keir obviously with his dad being a toolmaker and all this, whether they're not partly doing that because that's a way of showing cultural sympathy, your heart's in the right place when you're delivering a manifesto that's fiscally quite so conservative.

• 32:03Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know. Yeah, I think you're taking the class thing too personally and too sensitively. I think that, and I've been very, very struck both by our polling, by other polling, and also the response that I've seen when it's been raised in debates and other fora where there's a public audience. I get the feeling that this VAT on private schools is actually a very popular policy. And I think Labour should be pretty confident and comfortable about continuing to talk that up. Yeah, I get, look, there's another couple of things. I was surprised, for example, I mentioned on the podcast recently, a friend I go swimming

• 32:47Alastair Campbell?

  with, Michael Donald, who's written this book about Orgreave, which has been serialized in the New European. And, you know, there's a thing in there about promising an inquiry into the violence at Orgreave after all these years. And so when I said earlier, there were little things in there that I hadn't necessarily been inspecting. But I don't think, you know, could that be seen as a bit of a class thing? I don't know. And don't forget, some of the, one of the big, you know, Unite, the big trade union, has basically not endorsed this manifesto.

• 33:20Rory Stewart?

  Because they think it's not, yeah, not doing enough for workers.

• 33:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:24Rory Stewart?

  Robert Edge-Partington, why aren't Labour taking more measures to improve public access to nutritious and healthy food and address health disparities related to diet? So there's been some really good work done around food. Obviously, Jamie Oliver did work around food, Henry Dimbleby did a big. Report around food. And that's an interesting one. That's something I would have thought you could have put in the Labour manifesto, wouldn't cost that much and would be right, right on the, on the button for a lot of people. And maybe, maybe not a huge vote winner, but something that would seem serious and thoughtful and in line with values.

• 33:57Alastair Campbell?

  Is it, he's also asking that question, you know, so i- isn't it odd that the Lib Dems appear to be more radical on some of these things than Labour? It's a lot, we should talk about the, some of the smaller parties here. I mean, it's, it's, um, there he is. What, what's going on? Liberal Democrats more progressive on food migration, climate, Brexit. The first thing I'd say is, it's easier for the Lib Dems to say things. It's easier for them to campaign. They, their manifesto basically was about health and social care. That is what they wanted the big thing to be. And actually, although he talked about, you know, wanting to rejoin the single market, they are talking very soto voto about Brexit, because a lot of the seats that they're chasing there were, there's quite a high Brexit support amongst, amongst traditional Tories.

• 34:42Alastair Campbell?

  I thought the Green Party manifesto was, was, was in a, in a bizarre sort of way, less focused on green than, than maybe I expected it to be. I think they're trying to project themselves a bit like the European green parties as moving away from being seen as kind of single issue. They're obviously trying to project themselves, as are the Lib Dems in some seats, to the left of Labour. But, but I, I think, you know, particularly in some of the foreign policy issues and, and Gaza in particular. And then I must say, while I was waiting to, to watch Keir Starmer, I thought it was very, very good that the BBC News Channel covered the

• 35:22Alastair Campbell?

  launch of the Plaid manifesto live. That was very, very good. But I think somebody at Plaid should have thought of making sure there was subtitling. You and I are very interested in languages, but when he started going off into Welsh, uh,

• 35:37Rory Stewart?

  Some's up titling.

• 35:38Alastair Campbell?

  I, I think there could have been some.

• 35:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I, I, I was struck with Ed Davies' forward to the Lib Dem manifesto, how little there was in there compared to the way that Sunak and Starmer approached their forwards. I mean, the forwards to the Conservative and Labour manifestos are basically very clear summaries of the argument that follow. They've got top line, they've, I mean, it's almost, you know, the Alastair Campbell one on one, they've got a kind of sentence description, they've got a paragraph description, they've got a page description. Ed Davies.

• 36:11Rory Stewart?

  Is just basically slightly waffles on, you know, every vote for the Liberal Dem cuts the vote to elect a strong local champion who will fight for a fair deal for you and your community. This is the fair deal Lib Dems are fighting for. I know we can achieve it. Join us and let's make it happen. Much less visuals, much less. So maybe they've just got less timeless money, I suppose.

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know. I don't know. I mean, it goes back to your very first question, though, you know, who are they aimed at? I mean, look, let's, I suspect that if you and I, who are always interested in book charts, I would suspect that the most read manifesto is going to be Labour's.

• 36:49Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 36:49Alastair Campbell?

  I suspect that after that, it probably will still be the Conservatives.

• 36:55Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 36:55Alastair Campbell?

  I think then it might be kind of a mixture of SNP, Lib Dem, possibly Reform. But I think that the point about Reform, and I think we've seen this increasingly since Farage started to get even an even higher profile than he normally does. Reform don't really talk about policy. All that Farage does is exploit whatever the issue of the day is. You know, he's like, recently, he, you know, so at the moment, he's on this rampage about the opinion polls aren't being done fairly in relation to, well, nobody cares about that. That's got nothing to do with policy. And I thought, I also think, by the way, Roy, I really think that there's, I don't know if you're aware, there was this big fundraiser for Trump in London yesterday.

• 37:41Rory Stewart?

  And with Farage presiding, right?

• 37:43Alastair Campbell?

  Farage was there.

• 37:44Rory Stewart?

  And Matthew Elliott.

• 37:45Alastair Campbell?

  Matthew Elliott, the Vote Lea guy, who's now in the House of Lords, thanks to Liz Truss. Apparently Liz Truss was quite keen to go, but was blocked. I also think.

• 37:55Rory Stewart?

  And that is a very smart move. I mean, one of the few smart moves by the Conservative campaign. I mean, absolutely the last thing you want is your former Tory Prime Minister turning up at a Donald Trump fundraiser. I mean, can you imagine?

• 38:10Alastair Campbell?

  But let me just, let me just get my head around this, as to why the media, who continue to treat Farage like some kind of, you know, cheeky chappy, quite interesting, good copy sort of blow. There's a guy who was out in on the campaign trail the other day, and some guy who, I don't know the guy, he didn't look well to me, to be absolutely frank, throws something at the bus. Okay. It didn't hit anybody. The guy got arrested and he's been charged. As a result of which Farage says, I will not be silenced by the mob. It was one bloke. I will not be silenced by the mob, and this is a threat to democracy. This is a guy who then goes to a fundraiser for a man who provoked a riot,

• 38:52Alastair Campbell?

  which led to people dying in Washington and who then gets convicted of thirty four felons. And both of them say this has been run out of the White House. I mean, why is that guy allowed to do any interviews at the moment by saying, excuse me, can we just talk about threats to democracy? And it's because they keep treating him, they, to be fair, somebody just said, I didn't hear it. Somebody said, to be fair, Nick Ferrari gave him a real going over today. Well, he should get a going over. I've yet to see him grilled properly about Brexit.

• 39:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, wait, where did he cut you off? He's coming on our show, isn't he?

• 39:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I hope so. Want him to.

• 39:29Rory Stewart?

  So Jamie, Jamie Foote, it's interesting that Labour have reportedly adopted the gentle density in building beautiful ideas to create streets to inform their new towns, new house building plans. That will be very exciting if it happens. Watch this space. A lot of talk about Labour building new houses. Create Streets is trying to come up with ways of doing gentle density. And if Angela Rayner's really got behind that, it could be transmatory in terms of beautiful, affordable housing in Britain. So I'm very excited by that.

• 39:58Alastair Campbell?

  I've got to interrupt you. The comment of the day so far, Leroy, Leroy the boy says Farage was made by Kier's dad. I think that's quite clever.

• 40:09Rory Stewart?

  That's good. That's right. Okay, we're coming to the end. I did promise that if people came to see us and behaved in this thing, I would show them the pot. So I'm going to go and get the pot. Actually, it's going to take you a second. Can I be very mean? You'd say, tell people about what Germany, Scotland, which is what you're doing, right? Are you there to see Germany, Scotland?

• 40:31Alastair Campbell?

  I'm halfway there. Do you know what? We, we, we, oh, by the way, before you go, Rory. Yeah. There's another bit that leapt out to me in the Conservative manifesto. It talked about how we have, we've got rid, we've cleared our economy of what they call dirty money. Okay. By, by cracking down on, on, you know, dirty money and on. As I was reading that in the car on the way down today, Fiona was driving, we were listening to the book that you recommended I should read, Cuckoo Land by Tom Burgess.

• 41:03Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 41:03Alastair Campbell?

  And I was at the point where Elliot, who you talked about earlier, and Johnson and Banks and all these other people were at a fundraiser where these Russians were paying hundreds of thousands of pounds to have dinner, to play tennis with Boris Johnson and all this stuff. So this lot talking about having cleared up dirty money made me throw. Anyway, there we are. So what do you want me to talk about? Football?

• 41:29Rory Stewart?

  Football. Very quickly, I'll be straight back.

• 41:30Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, so Azar already goes to get his pots. And thank you so much. Oh God, he's cut himself off again. So the first of all, I'm so excited to see these pots. I don't know. I mean, I never, I'm not, it's not that I'm not tight, but I would no more think of spending a thousand pounds on a pot than kind of, you know, flying to the moon. I mean, look, you probably see I always wear the same top and I'm, I'm a bit sort of, you know, yeah, a bit tight. But Scotland, Germany, the Euro start tomorrow. There are so many Scotland fans that we saw kind of, you know, various parts of the journey down. So yeah, I'm, I've driven down with Fiona. I'm going to then go head off, peel off tomorrow to Munich and hopefully see Scotland produce one of the greatest surprises of all time. Right.

• 42:15Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, oh, it's nice.

• 42:17Rory Stewart?

  So there's two of them, Chinese pots, they're a pair. And they, yeah, they, they, they came in from Holland. But the thing that surprised me is I sort of bought them on a kind of eBay website. And, and I was then hit with a lot of tax importing them, which is where we got into this conversation, which wouldn't have been true before we left the European Union.

• 42:38Alastair Campbell?

  What, what, what colour's the other one?

• 42:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, they're, they're exactly the same. They're, they're two identical, blue and white dragon pots.

• 42:44Alastair Campbell?

  Rosebreed says that's not worth a grand, but I'm, I'm not, I think that's nice. I like it. Yeah, I like it. Somebody says, don't, don't do a Rishi and drop the pot. What a cracking pot. That's a big pot.

• 42:56Rory Stewart?

  Presumably this is a Mingva strategy joke possible here.

• 42:59Alastair Campbell?

  I thought, nobody's even put that in there. No, you're getting a lot from that. Somebody says you stole it from the British Museum. Somebody says it's a good, it's a good, a good cookie jar. Legalise pot. Was there anything about legalising pots? I didn't see anything on that, did you?

• 43:15Rory Stewart?

  No, no, I think it's just an endless pots jet going on.

• 43:18Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, but was there anything, did any of the parties, the Lib Dems, I think, are interlegalising cannabis, aren't they?

• 43:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, probably. Guys, thank you all, Alistair. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed that and look forward to seeing you all very soon. Now, before we leave, Alistair, there was some stuff that we didn't manage to tell everybody.

• 43:38Alastair Campbell?

  No, we failed. We failed.

• 43:39Rory Stewart?

  Shall I try to pull it up if people would like?

• 43:42Alastair Campbell?

  Tomorrow, tomorrow, the first thing to tell you is already out. We've had recently David Blunkett. We've also had recently Rachel Reeves. Tomorrow, this will, this is going out live now, as you know, because otherwise you wouldn't be watching, but this will go on the main feed at some time tomorrow. But also Trip US and also tomorrow, also tomorrow, Nadeem Zahawi on leading. And it was actually a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. And I, and I actually quite enjoyed it. On Monday, Bridget Phillipson on leading. And then on Tuesday, you'll listen to, you can listen to our main episode. Obviously, if anything massive happens over between now and then, we'll do.

• 44:22Rory Stewart?

  And am I right? Alex Chalk coming on Friday?

• 44:25Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I, I know.

• 44:27Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's what I was.

• 44:28Alastair Campbell?

  At some point. Yeah. Anyway.

• 44:32Rory Stewart?

  Lots, lots of interviews coming. Some of them for international listeners may be a little bit more niche than you're used to.

• 44:39Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, don't put the listeners off. Don't put. Fascinating. They're absolutely fascinating. Alex Chalk Friday. Alex Chalk, fascinating guy, fascinating guy for Tory.

• 44:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, absolutely. Almost as interesting as Robert Sapolsky, the baboon expert.

• 44:53Alastair Campbell?

  We talked, we didn't talk about baboons, but my God, we could have done.

• 44:56Rory Stewart?

  We could have done. Good. Okay, guys. Look forward very much to seeing a lot of you over the next few days. Thanks again.

• 45:02Alastair Campbell?

  All the best. Bye bye.

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