281. How one night transformed British politics

What happens now? How radical will Starmer’s Labour be in government? Would a change of the voting system only further strengthen the far right? In the first episode of Keir Starmer’s premiership, Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more. 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 TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Podcast Editor: James Hodgson Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Botox on a botulinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty, crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, wrapping you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 2:28Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics post-general election special with me Rory Stewart. And me Alastair Campbell. So, quick explainer for people who've not been up all night like us, and this is us. I think we can now claim we've been up for 26 hours. Oh, well I had a nap. You had a nap, well done, very well done. No wonder you look so terrific. Anyway, the results, currently 645 out of the 650 seats have been declared. Yep. Labour currently on 410 seats, that's they've added 210 seats. Conservatives have lost 249 seats, dropping down to 120. The Lib Dems have gained 63 seats. I know. Getting up to 71. Amazing.

• 3:12Rory Stewart?

  And as you can tell from the difference between 63 and 71, that means they went from 8 seats to 71 seats. Yep, amazing. Unbelievable. SNP, other direction, went from minus 38 down to 9. Absolutely extraordinary. Yep. And then there have been some very interesting developments with independents, Greens and the Reform Party. So independents, 6. Reform, 4. Green, 4. And this is an extraordinary election. It's extraordinary because it's one of the biggest Labour landslides ever. It is one of the biggest landslides ever. It's also one of the lowest turnouts ever, so a lot of people didn't turn out to vote, whatever that means, voter apathy, they thought it was all in the bag.

• 3:56Rory Stewart?

  A little bit worrying maybe. An amazing performance for the Greens, who've quadrupled the number of their seats in Parliament. Very strong showing from Reform, which is a new party, which somebody calculated has taken a million votes for every seat they've taken. And that's because our electoral system means that they got a lot of votes spread around the country, but they only managed to get four seats. In fact, they probably got... Fifty percent more votes than the Lib Dems, but the Lib Dems ended up with seventy one seats and they ended up with.

• 4:26Alastair Campbell?

  The Lib Dems who normally complain that the electoral system works against them in this context has actually worked quite well for them. I thought, I mean, look, the big, big, big, big story of the night is the change of government. New Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who I thought spoke really well. I just think it's interesting how, I saw this with Tony Blair. I mean, Tony Blair, people said at the time, had all the charisma and all that stuff, but I noticed when we had won and people knew that we'd won, people started to look at him in a different way. And I felt that with Keir tonight.

• 4:55Rory Stewart?

  And you felt that he was almost speaking in a different way?

• 4:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:58Rory Stewart?

  Did you give him more confidence?

• 4:59Alastair Campbell?

  He was projecting himself more confidently. Now, the truth is, there are going to be massive challenges ahead. First mini headache, well, big headache for the two people involved, but mini headache for him, is he probably thought he'd just transfer the Shadow Cabinet to the Cabinet. But in this rather strange outcome that we've had, despite a landslide, Labour lost some seats and two of those were belonging to Shadow Cabinet Ministers. So Thangam, Debenare and John Ashworth, both gone.

• 5:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, partly a story there about the Greens and the rise of the Greens and partly a story about this new phenomenon that's emerged with these six independents, which is the Labour left splitting off. People who are, think that he wasn't clear enough in his condemnation of Israel, his support for Gaza, have generated MPs who, in certain cases, have defeated Labour candidates. Some cases came very close. West Streeting, the Health Secretary we just interviewed, just won by, I think, about five hundred, five hundred votes.

• 5:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 5:58Rory Stewart?

  So Labour will be a little shaken by that, maybe.

• 6:01Alastair Campbell?

  Where there is a large Muslim population, Labour were down twenty percent. And I think you have to put a lot of that down to Gaza. I think of the more dramatic moments of the evening, I think Jess Phillips' acceptance speech after what was clearly a horrible campaign with people, opponents, Galloway types out and about.

• 6:25Rory Stewart?

  Chasing at her.

• 6:26Alastair Campbell?

  Abusing her, abusing her staff and so forth. And she actually said today, I got quite moved by, she said that Jo Cox's family were going to go and campaign with her today and she felt she couldn't take them into that. That environment. I think the only moment of the night when I literally could not contain my absolute joy was Liz Truss, because that says to me, if you do a job as badly as she did it, you are going to pay a price and she's paid a very heavy price.

• 6:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's been a lot of people saying the country's had enough of the psychodrama of the Conservatives. So maybe this is the last time we refer to this. But obviously, the Conservatives were the really big losers here.

• 7:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:08Rory Stewart?

  They were in government and in 2019, it's the last election, they got one of the largest vote shares they'd ever received, got a vote share up in the sort of 43%, and now they've crashed down to about 22%. And in the process, they've lost enormous numbers of Cabinet Ministers.

• 7:26Alastair Campbell?

  Eleven.

• 7:27Rory Stewart?

  And this is because it's almost as many Cabinet Ministers have been lost since the Second World War in elections have just been lost. So devastating for them. But it's also reshaped the party. So you talked about Liz Truss. That was very, very dramatic and maybe we can come back to that because that was a huge majority and she seemed to say she couldn't possibly.

• 7:49Alastair Campbell?

  That was one of the safest seats in the country.

• 7:51Rory Stewart?

  Definitely.

• 7:51Alastair Campbell?

  It's now Labour.

• 7:52Rory Stewart?

  Would have thought she couldn't possibly lose it. For me, as somebody who comes from the centre left of the Conservative Party, I'm a bit troubled because the Cabinet Ministers who were very much on the centre left, lost their seats. Alex Chalk, the Lord Chancellor of Justice.

• 8:11Alastair Campbell?

  Jilly Keegan.

• 8:12Rory Stewart?

  Jilly Keegan.

• 8:13Alastair Campbell?

  Lucy Fraser.

• 8:14Rory Stewart?

  Who we've interviewed on Leading, yeah. And also some of the up and coming bright young things, Rupert Harrison, Will Tanner, failed to take their seats.

• 8:24Alastair Campbell?

  So who's left, do you think, that would make a pitch for the leadership? Badenoch, Braverman?

• 8:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so the

• 8:29Alastair Campbell?

  Penny Morden's gone.

• 8:30Rory Stewart?

  The right kept their seats. Penny Morden was beginning to pitch herself as more of a sort of one nation candidate. She's gone. So left, our Camembert knock, on the left, Tom Tugendhat kept his seat.

• 8:43Alastair Campbell?

  Cleverly.

• 8:45Rory Stewart?

  James Cleverly narrowly kept his seat and Jeremy Hunt, almost miraculously, managed to keep what now seems like a very slim majority, a 7,000 majority, when other people were losing 17,000 majorities.

• 8:56Alastair Campbell?

  It was interesting, in the discussion that we had on Channel 4, where Nadine Doris was kind of ridiculous, but one interesting point I thought she did make, well, two points. She said she had no interest in doing any sort of deal with Farage, which I thought was quite interesting. And secondly, she thought that the Conservative Party should go for Jeremy Hunt.

• 9:16Rory Stewart?

  I don't think she thought they should.

• 9:17Alastair Campbell?

  She thought they would.

• 9:18Rory Stewart?

  She thought they would.

• 9:19Alastair Campbell?

  That's presumably completely wrong.

• 9:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, so I think it is totally wrong. I mean, she, because she noticed some of the people on the right lose their seats, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, she has overinterpreted that. But actually, I think if you look at the figures coldly, we now have a Conservative Party that has many more Brexiteers than Remainers, many more supporters of Boris Johnson than opponents of Boris Johnson. And I don't think Jeremy Hunt is going to want this job. I think he will feel that he's been in government a long time.

• 9:51Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think he'd be slightly disappointed, given the scale of the defeat that he didn't lose? I mean, he really fought to win.

• 9:57Rory Stewart?

  To be fair to him and Rishi Sunak, they fought hard, didn't they?

• 9:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:00Rory Stewart?

  But he can't have thought that he was going to hold it. I mean, that was a very slim majority. So he was up against the Lib Dems and Gillian Keegan, up against the Lib Dems, lost the majority, 23,000. He was defending a majority, a notional majority, about 7,000. So he can't have thought that he'd make it through the other end.

• 10:16Alastair Campbell?

  The other interesting thing in terms of losses, three seats that used to be held by prime ministers, Boris Johnson, Henley, Theresa May maidenhead, David Cameron Whitney, not now the candidates, but all very, very safe seats for the Tories, all gone.

• 10:32Rory Stewart?

  And what does that tell you? What it tells you is that the Remain-voting Conservative seats closer to London have been completely alienated by the hard Brexit antics of Boris Johnson and the behaviour of Les Truss.

• 10:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Rory Stewart?

  And they're the natural centre-right of the party and they're drifting towards the Lib Dems in large numbers.

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  Will you finally admit, Rory? That Ed Davey played a blinder in his election strategy.

• 10:58Rory Stewart?

  I'm very reluctant to do that, but I'm certainly happy to say the Lib Dems have played a blinder. And he was the boss. I think regardless of what I think about him on the water slides, I think where he's been completely vindicated, I had an argument with his chief of strategy about two months ago, where I was saying, you know, why are you not talking about the single market more? Why are you not talking about national policy? And he said, we're fighting a local campaign, we're going to win by a very narrow margin, as many local seats as we can.

• 11:27Alastair Campbell?

  Tory seats.

• 11:28Rory Stewart?

  And we're not interested in doing these big, big national campaigns. And boy, do they do it. They squeezed out of a vote share which has barely moved. They managed to shift up from, you know, whatever it was, eight up to 70 seats.

• 11:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. One of the happiest interviews of the evening was Anna Sawa. And one of the least happy was Stephen Flynn, the SNP leader in Westminster, not helped by the fact that he looked like he was in a graveyard, standing in front of a big gravestone. But I was surprised the extent of the SNP collapse. I thought they would have held up better.

• 12:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. In fact, we should just quickly go through the different nations. So, England, Labour has dominated, but the Lib Dems performed well. SNP has been essentially wiped out in Scotland. They've lost Glasgow, they've been reduced to-

• 12:17Alastair Campbell?

  Nothing in Edinburgh.

• 12:18Rory Stewart?

  To a rump now. The Conservatives have been completely wiped out in Wales-

• 12:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 12:23Rory Stewart?

  And in Oxfordshire-

• 12:24Alastair Campbell?

  Plaid did pretty well.

• 12:25Rory Stewart?

  And in London.

• 12:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 12:27Rory Stewart?

  And then there's been some transformations in Northern Ireland as well. But let's just do Scotland first. So, there's going to be, with all these losing parties, Conservatives are going to fight for their souls, you know, where did we go wrong? You know, Nadine Doris will say it's because we got rid of Boris and his boisterous energy and other people will be like, it's because we didn't deliver growth and Justin Greening will be like, because we didn't get behind aspiration, whatever it is. The SNP is, you can feel them arguing. Some of them are saying, oh, it's nothing personal, it's just an anti-Tory vote. And that's not good enough. They're not going to get out of the hole if they just convince themselves it's an anti-Tory vote.

• 13:02Alastair Campbell?

  They were caught up with the time for a change of mood as well, but they are the government.

• 13:07Rory Stewart?

  And then they're saying, well, it's not really our fault because, you know, we're just devolved government. We're not really responsible for all the stuff that's going on in Scotland. But I felt on the doorstep, so I've been up in Scotland, that there was a very, very strong feeling from people that public services were not working. People hadn't necessarily changed their views on independence, but many people were saying, I'm somebody who believes in independence, but honestly, the SNP hasn't delivered on health, hasn't delivered on education. Now, to flip around your challenge to me, would I admit that Ed Davey's strategy of coming off bungies was vindicated. Will you now admit that Keir Starmer's Mingvar strategy was vindicated?

• 13:47Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Hundred percent. I still would like the campaign to have been more dominant of the narrative. It was interesting, some of the polling we saw, that the three most remembered parts of this entire campaign were D-Day, Rishi Sunak coming back early, betting on the day to the election, and Rishi Sunak getting wet on day one. Now, Labour having won this election so comprehensively, you'd have thought there'd be something in the top three that was for Labour, but there wasn't. So, yeah, listen, you have to judge an election campaign, particularly if it's about the opposition, you've got to judge

• 14:30Alastair Campbell?

  it by the result. And we talked a lot tonight about the efficiency of the vote. Labour did not put too much effort into seats like Keir Starmer's, where he actually had quite a big fall in his support. They put all the effort in the places where they needed to win.

• 14:44Rory Stewart?

  And this is often a sign of the master strategist. And I believe, you know, General Kutuzov, the Russian general, would often say, you know, it's all very well, these kind of French with their glamour and their beautiful movements, but all that matters is winning. You just grind them down. You don't have to make them proceed.

• 14:58Alastair Campbell?

  That is my view. However, in politics...

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  The winning is the beginning of something that is tougher. And I think that where I think they are going to be in a better position than people maybe think and give them credit for, the size of the majority, I think, gives them a lot of scope to take these issues like growth, planning reform, housing, some of the big things they've talked about, I think they can feel more comfortable now about fleshing out some pretty difficult stuff, and that's what they need to do.

• 15:29Rory Stewart?

  It also looks like it's resolving one of the big conundrums when you're running a campaign, because traditionally, it was considered to be very, very important to put things in a manifesto if you wanted to drive them through quickly, and there was reasons for that. And one of them is that the civil service reads a manifesto, and if it's in the manifesto, they prioritise it above everything else. Very easy to get stuff done. But of course, Theresa May lost by trying to reveal her social care policy in her manifesto, it's basically why she lost the election. She didn't actually have a betting scandal, she didn't stand in the range, she didn't skip D-Day, she lost on policy. And Labour maybe understands that in this modern world, maybe you just have to take the risk of not revealing a policy and then use your big majority to do radical things when you get in.

• 16:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, just briefly on Northern Ireland, I think the big story there is Ian Paisley Junior losing his seat to Jim Alister, who's a kind of, you know, so anti-everything that, you know, we'd been trying to do.

• 16:32Rory Stewart?

  So traditionally, the DUP was often perceived as quite obstructionist, quite anti-peace, but this-

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, multiply that by several factors, and that's the MP that's now replaced the Ian Paisley.

• 16:42Rory Stewart?

  So, and in a sense, this is part of a story we talk about a lot, as the DUP began to compromise, signed up a little bit more to the Good Friday Agreement, suddenly something pops out on their right and it's even more extreme.

• 16:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, I think that could be tricky for Hillary Benn, who will, I presume, be the new Northern Ireland Secretary, because, you know, that situation is still pretty fragile. I think that was a, I do think Hillary Benn will really get a grip of that, though, and I know that he's been doing an awful lot of work to get on top of the policies of it already.

• 17:14Rory Stewart?

  Okay, that's a quick break. Back in a minute.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 17:26Speaker 03

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away, as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 18:11Speaker 02

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• 18:19Speaker 04

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• 18:35Speaker 05

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• 19:08Rory Stewart?

  How now, Alistair, are we going to be presented with the new leading figures in the cabinet? So, in 97...

• 19:17Rory Stewart?

  Did you have a view on, you know, we're going to put Robin Cook out next week and we're going to focus on Gordon Brown this week and we're going to, David Blunkett's going to come out the week after. I mean, how do you, if you have this team, how do you introduce them to the country? How much of it is about the leader for the first couple of weeks? How much is about pushing the team out so that people can see them?

• 19:39Alastair Campbell?

  I think we'll now see more of the team. I think they fought a campaign that was very much about Keir and a very small number of shadow ministers. So for example, we saw next to nothing of David Lammy in the campaign. We saw next to nothing of Ed Miliband. We saw next to nothing of Ait Cooper. Now, I wonder if that was because they were amongst the small number of people who'd actually been ministers before.

• 20:01Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 20:02Alastair Campbell?

  And the message was changed. So they were putting out the, although no, Pat McFadden was seen fairly high profile.

• 20:07Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 20:07Alastair Campbell?

  But I think what you'll, what you'll see today, Keir Starmer will speak outside Downing Street, will start to appoint a cabinet, lots of stuff that's already in the diary, easy enough to do, quite a lot of it foreign policy related. And then you'll see the cabinet starting to do stuff. But what we tried to do, we tried to organise everything around the central themes of modernisation. Education was a priority. So Blunkett was out very high profile. Gordon had his big day one surprise on Bank of England independence. That was like a really big thing which set the agenda for quite a while.

• 20:40Rory Stewart?

  And it is interesting that, I still remember it to this day.

• 20:44Alastair Campbell?

  Bank of England?

• 20:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, just the impact of that because it felt so exciting. It felt so original. It felt so radical. And it was something that really excited wonks and economists, but it also excited the public. And it felt like, woo.

• 20:58Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I don't know whether Labour have anything like that up their sleeves. What's interesting is that when Gordon announced it, there was no fuss over the fact that nobody had mentioned it during the campaign.

• 21:11Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 21:12Alastair Campbell?

  All that we said in the manifesto was that Labour will endeavour to ensure economic stability.

• 21:17Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 21:18Alastair Campbell?

  And keep interest rates and inflation low. So that was the line in the manifesto that allowed us to say, and here's how.

• 21:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Alastair Campbell?

  I wonder whether that's going to be approached for Labour.

• 21:26Rory Stewart?

  You deliberately kept it back as a surprise all the way through the campaign?

• 21:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:30Rory Stewart?

  So you were never tempted to think this could be a moment to get a few more votes in the campaign? You thought, well, we can hold this back and make it our entry moment.

• 21:38Alastair Campbell?

  No, because I'm not sure it would have been as effective during the campaign as it was in government. The campaign was, you know, was pretty well put together, Bill Ikea's around these very specific pledges, Tony doing a lot of the big picture messaging of modernisation, which for Kier was change. It was very interesting, that in his speech tonight where he said, "We ran as a changed Labour Party, we will govern as a changed Labour Party." Tony literally said the words in that, in his speech, "We ran as New Labour, we will govern as New Labour." So there were quite a lot of echoes going on. And the other thing that happens very quickly is how rapidly people get used to the idea that this is the new government. It's really amazing, and I thought one of the best moments of the evening, slightly

• 22:21Alastair Campbell?

  ruined by his second speech to the party activists, I thought Rishi Sunak, actually he's accepted in Richmond, his acceptance speech for winning the seat, I thought he spoke really well when talking about this seamless, peaceful transition.

• 22:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think we-

• 22:38Alastair Campbell?

  I thought it was really, and when you think that it's happening literally overnight.

• 22:41Rory Stewart?

  No, I think that's right. And it's in those moments that I felt some residual pride for the sort of disgraceful mess the Conservative Party. And felt very, again, alienated, I'm afraid, by the way Les Truss behaved.

• 22:54Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  You know, she turned up late to her count.

• 22:57Alastair Campbell?

  Didn't start to speak.

• 22:58Rory Stewart?

  She didn't give a speech. And, you know, I get extremely annoyed with the sort of pomposity from Jacob Rees-Mogg a lot of the time, and I think his defence of Boris Johnson is kind of incomprehensible. But-

• 23:13Rory Stewart?

  He knew that he'd lost that Somerset seat.

• 23:15Alastair Campbell?

  And he still came and did the interview.

• 23:17Rory Stewart?

  We spoke to him.

• 23:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 23:19Rory Stewart?

  You know, two hours before the result, he already knew the result.

• 23:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Rory Stewart?

  He was courteous, he didn't give anything away, very straightforward, but he was so cheery that Emily Maitland said, she said to him, well, we can tell from the fact you're doing this interview that you won.

• 23:31Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 23:31Rory Stewart?

  And he said, well, I wouldn't take anything for granted.

• 23:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 23:33Rory Stewart?

  Kept a complete sort of poker face all the way through.

• 23:35Alastair Campbell?

  And also he too congratulated Keir Starmer.

• 23:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 23:40Alastair Campbell?

  Wished him luck.

• 23:41Rory Stewart?

  And there was no sort of pompous sort of attempt to launch some grand analysis. He just said, you know, new roots swing. And Jeremy Hunt said, really good luck. I think they're very decent people. I think, you know, Keir Starmer is a very decent person. I think it's a real opportunity and I agree with him. Maybe Labour can do something to reform the NHS, which the Tories couldn't do because the Tories are not trusted enough for the NHS to be radical. Labour maybe could do unpopular things because they've got a bit more trust and space. So as we kind of move towards the end, just to kind of summarise where we are for people who've didn't stay upright the way through the night. Incredible victory for Labour. So Labour's now in a commanding position.

• 24:23Rory Stewart?

  You know, 411 seats is sort of beyond imagining. And to put it in context, the Conservatives were feeling pretty cheerful under Boris Johnson when they had 365 seats. But Boris Johnson got 365 seats on 43.6% of the vote. Labour has got 411 seats and they've probably done it on only 33.9% of the vote.

• 24:47Alastair Campbell?

  Is that where we are, 33.9%?

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  That's currently what this is showing, 33.9. These figures will change, but at the moment, that's what it's showing.

• 24:52Alastair Campbell?

  It's pretty low.

• 24:53Rory Stewart?

  Very, very low. Probably the lowest in record that a governing party coming in with such a low vote share. And it's also true that the turnout is one of the lowest on record. So. Great victory for Labour, great opportunity for Labour, but it's a product of this strange first past the post system and under the surface, some things to worry about. Why didn't voters turn out and vote in larger numbers? I mean, it feels like the major parties together may have only got 56% of the vote between them. That will be the lowest joint vote share. I mean, these parties used to get 90% of the vote between them. So it's a story about new parties emerging. It's a story about the beginnings of the rising of the far-right populists, reform taking off, scooping up four million votes.

• 25:36Alastair Campbell?

  And we're convinced every time we called it the far-right.

• 25:38Rory Stewart?

  Yep, four million votes. And, but it's also a story of the Greens popping up, it's a story of the independents. So it's a story of a much more fractured politics. Even if it's not shown in the seats, if you look at the votes in the country, as you pointed out, it's the first time, what was your thing?

• 25:54Alastair Campbell?

  Four parties have got over 10% and five parties have got over 5%. First time ever.

• 26:00Rory Stewart?

  So very, very striking, a sign of a different type of Britain, different type of British politics.

• 26:03Alastair Campbell?

  Good, well, it's been very enjoyable, Roy, spending all night with you in a hot and sweaty studio with the lovely Emily Maitlis and Krishnan Gurumurthy and a succession of, a carousel of politicians. I was looking at the other channels, I think they've got some pretty good guests in there. The rest all looked a bit dull.

• 26:20Rory Stewart?

  I think we did well. I think we did well. We did sometimes feel when there was sort of seven people around the table, talking for 12 hours a bit, as though I'd entered one of your nightmare French discussion chats.

• 26:31Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know what, there is a French programme that I believe are called La Grande Librairie, the great bookshop, and it's just they have this sort of authors round, exactly round the table that we were at, and they all sort of sit there with these wonderful philosophical statements.

• 26:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and they were asked presumably, you know, but the question is, is reform unreformed? Is Labour unlaboured? Is the Conservatives no longer Conservative? You know, this is, yeah.

• 26:55Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, I wish we'd done more audience interaction because one of the best bits was the audience interaction when we finally got them to speak.

• 27:01Rory Stewart?

  They were great, yeah, we should have done much more of that.

• 27:03Alastair Campbell?

  And they love Keir Starmer.

• 27:04Rory Stewart?

  Next time when we're...

• 27:05Alastair Campbell?

  They said they were open to loving Keir Starmer.

• 27:06Rory Stewart?

  When we're top TV presenters, and then they said that they didn't really believe he'd be able to achieve much of that. Okay, thank you very much.

• 27:11Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 27:12Rory Stewart?

  Thanks again, bye bye.

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