26. BORIS JOHNSON RESIGNS

Boris Johnson has resigned. Join Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart for this emergency podcast as they react to the news of Johnson's resignation. After a tumultuous few days, Johnson is finally standing down, and Alastair and Rory answer the key questions raised by this landmark announcement. Can Johnson stay on as caretaker? Who are the candidates to replace him? What happens next? Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson 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 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?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  Well, we're in this very, very strange moment. So we're talking to you just after the first rumours have come out of Downing Street that Boris Johnson is definitely going, but he hasn't yet appeared at the podium to make his announcement. We're definitely in the dying days. I mean, it's it's been the most, I'd say, I don't know what you think, Alice, but probably the most bizarre surreal thirty six hours ever in British politics.

• 2:12Alastair Campbell?

  I think that's right, because Johnson yet again has tried to show that the normal rules of political logic and gravity don't apply to him. If you compare it with when Margaret Thatcher went, there was a procession of cabinet ministers to her room. I remember I was hanging around at the end of the corridor, she did in the, her House of Commons office, and there was a procession of cabinet ministers, and it was obvious, the writing was in the wall, everybody you saw. I remember that she had a very nice PPS called Mark Lennox Boyd, I think, yeah, Mark Lennox Boyd, and I remember bumping into him, and I could tell in his eyes that he knew, and I said, she's gone, hasn't she? And he just nodded and walked on. And whereas Johnson is frankly, you know, has been trying to say that even though some

• 2:56Alastair Campbell?

  of the people who've been closest to him for longest are saying your time's up, that somehow he can hang on. And this other thing, Rory, I mean, you've been elected MP, you were elected by the people of Penrith, he was elected by the people of Uxbridge, and prior to that by the people of Henley. He talks about these fourteen million votes as if they were a personal mandate, like he's a president, like he's the President of the United States. He didn't get a majority of the country if that were the system.

• 3:19Rory Stewart?

  Alice, you're completely right, and this is one of the reasons why we should be really worried. That's, I think, why people felt there was something slightly sinister and almost Donald Trump about this, because the truth is, we live in a prime ministerial system, and the fundamental bit about that is that our prime ministers are supposed to be first amongst equals. They're just MPs like everybody else, and they run a cabinet government, which pops them into place. And he was suddenly trying to suggest that it didn't matter almost if the majority of his own MPs moved against him, if his entire cabinet moved against him, he somehow had a mandate to remain. He was going to try to challenge and hang on. That was his argument, right up until the dying minutes. And that

• 3:59Rory Stewart?

  shows a lot of things. It shows he didn't care in any way about the Conservative Party. It showed that he never understood that these parties are supposed to be broad coalitions that have different views and different sides to them. But above all, it showed that he was putting himself in this weird presidential fantasy, where he somehow thought that

• 4:21Rory Stewart?

  It didn't matter that the whole of the House of Commons and the whole of the Cabinet was against him, he somehow had some independent mandate to continue. And as you say, that's pretty close to Trump.

• 4:30Alastair Campbell?

  Added to which, millions of those people now actually are the ones who are getting in touch with their MPs, it's why there has been such a shift, saying, for heaven's sake, will you stand up to this and do something about it? But I think, look, I do honestly think, I've just written a piece for Metro, the newspaper, and I've said that this goes way beyond Johnson. Johnson getting to that job in the first place reveals massive failures in our political and media systems. And I think the media is as much responsible as this is, as our political systems. And I think that we surely now have to open a debate about the need for a more formal written constitution. We surely have to have a debate

• 5:10Alastair Campbell?

  about what the exact powers of the different people in power are. And we cannot sort of muddle on with these kind of ragbag of rules and conventions, because it's not impossible, even out of the leadership contest that follows, it's not impossible that we get somebody else who, because bear in mind, all of these Cabinet Ministers have defended him up till now. They've defended lawbreaking, they've defended undermining the judiciary, they've defended undermining, they've defended corruption in public office. So I think we have to have, I actually don't think any of these Cabinet Ministers should, I think they should all be barred from running, to be absolutely frank, I think.

• 5:48Rory Stewart?

  You're right. I mean, I think we've, in a sense, seen a glimpse of what can go wrong in our system, because the system obviously depended on these unwritten rules, these kind of sort of funny gentleman's agreements. It's a thousand years old, this unwritten constitution, and it required people to have a feeling for things. I mean, and we saw that going wrong, obviously very, very dramatically with Boris Johnson, right from the very beginning. But it was beginning to go wrong, I'm afraid, before. I think it was beginning to go wrong under Tony Blair, I think it was beginning to go wrong under David Cameron, because people began using simple majorities in the House of Commons to overturn very, very fundamental bits of the Constitution, the thing that...

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  You know, angered me most about David Cameron was his attempt to use a simple majority in the House of Commons to try to abolish the House of Lords in return for some boundary changes that he wanted to get out of the Lib Dems. And that was the first time I thought, whoa, this is no country in the world could one chamber abolish the second chamber on a simple majority. You need procedures, you need every other country, two thirds majority referendum, something really big to do that kind of thing. And but Johnson has taken it to such a mad extreme. I mean, I obviously in some ways I've got a kind of personal bitterness about the fact that he threw me and twenty other people out of the House of Commons, including Churchill's grandson and Ken Clark and all these people. But there was a deeper point there, which is that in doing it,

• 7:16Rory Stewart?

  he broke the strongest convention of all, which is that these political parties were supposed to be broad coalitions of left and right. And if you try to turn it into a personal ideological machine, which is what he was doing by lopping off the centre of his party, you're creating this polarised divisive populist politics. And that's why, that's I think why we need to change our electoral system, because we could get away in the sixties, seventies with the idea that we didn't need coalitions, we didn't need pro-portal representation, because the parties themselves were coalitions. But when the parties become, and he's shown how that can be done, sort of ideological battle machines, then I think we need to change the system.

• 7:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think I would say, by the way, in Tony Blair's defence in particular, one of Tony's great strengths as a prime minister, I think, was that he he understood the point about coalition, he wanted, knew Labour was new Labour, he was changing the Labour Party. But not for nothing, did he have, and okay, John Prescott was elected as deputy leader, but John Prescott was also a really significant figure to Tony Blair, likewise Gordon Brown, likewise Robin Cook, likewise people like Jack Straw and Jack Cunningham and Margaret Beckett. There was, he understood that you had to take people from, you know, with broadly the same objectives, trying to modernise the country, but you can't just do it based around your own personality, even if you have a very strong personality like Tony Blair or, you know.

• 8:41Alastair Campbell?

  Boris Johnson would say that he has as well. And I do think that I saw a very good tweet this morning. Somebody, I can't remember who it was, that somebody said, to those who've said for years, and I guess I wouldn't number myself amongst these people. Who've said for years that debate about the constitution is just for political geeks and nerds. Just understand how this, what's happening right now. And I do think Labour, I think it'd be very good for Labour. And very good for Keir Starmer, I think it would play to his strengths if he actually came out and said, this was Britain's Trump moment. We must ensure it can never happen again. That does mean we need to have a complete fundamental overhaul of how our politics works, how our parliament works, how our voting system works. How our media works, by the way, I've said in the Metro that I think that we should actually, Labour should pledge.

• 9:24Alastair Campbell?

  To tackle these foreign tax dodging non-doms who own so much of our media. So I think these are really big questions that that can come from this. And I'm looking at my, you've not been in my study up in top of my house, Roy, but it's covered in Post-it notes. And they're little messages to myself. And one of them is G G O O B, always get good out of bad. And there has to be some good out of Johnson. I think the only thing it can be is actually to. Really properly to analyse how we got to a position where this liar, crook, charlatan narcissist became our prime minister and did so much damage. And make sure we put in place proper functioning political and media ecosystems that make sure it can't happen again.

• 10:04Rory Stewart?

  And and don't, I think, I think we need to be very, very careful now about what he now does. I'm worried actually, because there will be people who will feel nostalgic towards him. There'll be a small minority of the country that will be fanatically attached to him. And I think he can cause a lot of trouble. And he's somebody who doesn't want to take things lying down. And I'm very worried that he will. Try to cause immense trouble from wherever he goes. It's a bit like what I was saying about Imran Khan in Pakistan, where again, having been pushed out of office after really, you know. Endangering the Pakistani constitution. He's now causing almost more damage from opposition than than he was in government. So I, I, we've really got to watch Boris Johnson because, and that's why I'm not.

• 10:49Rory Stewart?

  And obviously neither you or I are signing up for a sort of. Nostalgic, more in sorrow than in anger. I think we've got to absolutely pin down that this is the very, very worst prime minister we've had morally, ethically, constitutionally. And that he. Is leaving without a single shred of dignity.

• 11:06Alastair Campbell?

  I also think this idea that he should somehow stay around as a caretaker. Caitlin Moran has just, she just treated, say that, given that I wouldn't trust him to be a caretaker, I don't see why he should be a caretaker prime minister. But I think that, can you imagine him for several months trashing checkers, having all his oligarch friends down for sort of weird parties that he likes to enjoy, doing probably right, probably finally getting around to recouping his, his book advance, probably, you know, he will, he, he will just use the office to set up his future wealth, which is something that he, that he cares about. I think he should be out by the end of the day. Dominic Raab, or if Dominic Raab is going to run for the leadership, somebody else should be appointed.

• 11:49Alastair Campbell?

  It might be Ben Wallace, I don't know, somebody should be appointed to be a caretaker prime minister. This leadership contest should be brought forward and it should be speed ahead with it. And we should get somebody else in place. And I think Labour Party should be absolutely forcing whoever the new prime minister and new leader is to, to a general election, because we can't keep just replacing one Tory leader with another, chosen by the MPs and the members.

• 12:10Rory Stewart?

  This is, you'll be very, very pleased to hear that. I just did James O'Brien on LBC and he, he could put in a good plug for the podcast. But he said to me that I had to ask, he said, ask Alastair Campbell, who was the last prime minister to enter and leave office through a general election?

• 12:28Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, oh, I'm going, I'm going Wilson or Heath.

• 12:35Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Yeah, I think it's something like that. I, I mean, I don't know the answer. I think it's Heath probably, but it's a very long time ago. I mean, it's almost fifty years ago. It's extraordinary.

• 12:43Alastair Campbell?

  It's crazy.

• 12:44Rory Stewart?

  And, and we, we don't, that's not the way we normally think about politics. We normally imagine you're sort of elected as the leader of the opposition. You win a general election and you lose a general election, you leave. It's amazing that for fifty years, that's never happened.

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  Well, David Cameron and Tony Blair were among a very, very, very small number of leaders who went from being Prime Minister, straight from being leader of the opposition.

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  And even they, of course, handed over to people who who came in midway through.

• 13:12Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. No, so I I I I've got a feeling that the only good that can come out of this is for a real sort of clearing of the stables. I mean, I it's interesting to watch Zahawi, you know, the Chancellor du jour, as I now call him, and and him, Sunak, Javid, all sort of clearly trying to pitch themselves into this leadership debate. Trust will do the same, Wallace. I really do think if I was a Conservative, I would say, nobody who sat at that Cabinet table should be considered prime ministerial material. We've got to clear out the mess. And I think it should, they should be looking to these guys on the back benches. I had a couple of people on my morning walk today with the dog Rory suggesting that, saying to me, when you're on your next podcast with Rory Stewart, will you ask him if he's going to try and get a safe seat and get back in?

• 13:55Rory Stewart?

  Well, as you point out, I'm wearing a tie on the podcast for the first time ever.

• 13:59Alastair Campbell?

  Are you doing, are you in Scotland?

• 14:01Rory Stewart?

  And I'm in Scotland. It's it's it's pretty, you know, this, this, you know, I'm I'm not saying that I've already got myself a flat in Uxbridge, but you know.

• 14:11Alastair Campbell?

  I do think, I must admit, one thing that does tempt me, we've talked about this before, about whether I'm too old to throw my hat into the ring. But I am, I do sort of wonder whether next time I see Keir Starmer, I say, have you got, I might say, have you got a candidate in Uxbridge yet? I could cause a lot of trouble down there.

• 14:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, you could definitely cause a lot of trouble. No, honestly, you should run. You should run.

• 14:31Alastair Campbell?

  And now that, now that I'm living in, now that I'm living inside Nadeem Zahawi's head, where he's, where's his seat? I could maybe, is he Stratford or somewhere? I could maybe try him as well.

• 14:43Rory Stewart?

  Stratford, yeah. So that the producer of our podcast is very concerned we might run against each other. I think that's a slightly terrifying thought to be honest.

• 14:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think that'd be, I think that'd be very good for the podcast. Instead of doing, instead of doing hostings, we just do live podcasts everywhere we go.

• 14:55Rory Stewart?

  One thing, Alison, I have taken away from this, without kind of flattering you too much, your energy is absolutely extraordinary. I mean, every single show, basically, that I've done in the last 24 hours, there you have been either before me or after me.

• 15:11Alastair Campbell?

  Where were you on, where were you on Radio New Zealand at midnight last night? Where were you?

• 15:16Rory Stewart?

  Exactly, exactly. It's extraordinary, absolutely extraordinary. No, you're doing it all with, I think you're doing Question Time tonight. You've done pretty much every major show, but you also seem to be popping up on the ones that I'm afraid I'm not doing.

• 15:29Alastair Campbell?

  And I'm also, and how good is the timing in this? We're just moving into the final stages of Make Me Prime Minister. I mean, the timing could not be better. And I have to say, we've already found several who would be substantially better than Boris Johnson or any of the people who are lined up to follow him. And these are members of the public.

• 15:50Rory Stewart?

  Now, I was thinking on that, we're supposed to go to a break. Let's get back again soon. Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd.

• 15:59Speaker 03

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• 16:11Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

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• 16:54Alastair Campbell?

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  Vanilla?

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• 17:58Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to a special edition of The Rest Is Politics Boris Johnson resignation issue with me Rory Stewart.

• 18:05Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. Can we say it's special when it's the second special one in a week? How many specials can you have in a week before it becomes daily?

• 18:12Rory Stewart?

  I think, well, I think the special podcast. Alice, just very quickly, I think one of the things that you kindly asked is just for me to give a little explainer on how these conservative leadership things work now. So he's off. At the point at which he's off, somebody has to keep running as prime minister until the new person comes in. And as you and I were saying before the break, we feel very, very strongly that it can't be him. He's got to be out and it's got to be somebody else who comes in. But as you pointed out, that will have to be somebody who's not running in the leadership. So it's usually a more senior, safe pair of hands. Could be somebody like Dominic Raab, who's currently deputy prime minister, come in to, to run the government. And while the government's being run, they go into the conservative party, goes into a leadership contest.

• 18:55Rory Stewart?

  And leadership contest is essentially that the MPs will whistle down all the candidates. Could be 13, 14 candidates. That's what it was last time.

• 19:04Alastair Campbell?

  I see Sula Braverman has decided that she's the future.

• 19:06Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely.

• 19:07Alastair Campbell?

  That made me laugh. That really made me laugh.

• 19:10Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely extraordinary. But you'll see a lot of that. I mean, it's, it's amazing how many MPs will put their names forward. You know, I, I think it's probably true to say the majority of MPs in parliament, at least their mothers and their partners think they should be prime minister. And and there will be there will be at this very moment that we're talking sixty seventy people sitting around the lunch table, working out whether they can have a go at it.

• 19:32Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, out of that, I reckon we'll get, let's say, a dozen go forward. They'll then go through a series of rounds where there'll be the lowest number will be knocked out. The way they did it last time is that if you couldn't get eight votes in the first round, you were knocked out the first round. If you couldn't get sixteen votes in the second, you were knocked out in the second. If you couldn't get thirty two in the third, you were knocked out in the third, et cetera. And then they start doing an elimination competition. Then the final two go through to the party in the country. So that's one hundred and fifty thousand members of the Conservative Party who then pick the next prime minister.

• 20:03Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, do you think we should encourage? I mean, the other day, when we did our first special one of this week, we had something like over, you know, getting on for a quarter of a million people tuned in. Should we be encouraging them all to join the Conservative Party? And if they did that, would they get a vote?

• 20:18Rory Stewart?

  I I tried to do that, actually, when I ran for leadership last time. The problem is the nineteen twenty two committee will try to write the rules to prevent people joining at the last moment to try to prevent entryism. So I had a lot of people who tried to join the Conservative Party to vote for me, but in fact, they ended up in a position where actually I was knocked out without them being able to vote in the leader. And then they found themselves having to pay Conservative Party subscriptions for some time to go, which they never really forgave me for.

• 20:42Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 20:43Rory Stewart?

  So so the answer is probably the twenty two committee will write it in a way that unless you're a member of the party already, you can't vote. It is it is an absolute disgrace because it means that just over a hundred thousand, largely, I'm afraid, quite elderly people.

• 20:57Alastair Campbell?

  Ninety five percent white, probably.

• 20:59Rory Stewart?

  Ninety five percent white are going to choose the next prime minister. It's a completely mad situation. I actually think, in a way, it was a better situation when the MPs chose the prime minister because at least the MPs knew them. And I don't think the MPs on their own would have gone for someone like Boris Johnson because they their real reason they went for him is they felt that he was popular with this one hundred and fifty thousand in the country. But if it had been left to them, they knew that he had lied to almost all of them personally, that he was completely chaotic, incapable of administering anything. And they would have gone, I think, for a more sensible choice, not necessarily a great choice. I mean, they made mistakes in the past. They went after Anthony Eden.

• 21:39Alastair Campbell?

  So listen, what I was talking about things like maybe, you know, written constitution, review of the electoral system, review of our media. What else do you think can good can come out of this?

• 21:50Rory Stewart?

  Well, I hope one good that will come out of this is that for the next 20 years, people seeing a candidate like this will say, we don't want another Boris Johnson. In other words, that he's been a real reminder, not just MPs, but to the public of how mad it is to appoint a, yeah, a celebrity with no skill or interest in government.

• 22:14Alastair Campbell?

  And not a serious person?

• 22:16Rory Stewart?

  And not a serious person. It's very difficult to see it as anything other than a very, very odd sort of narrow ego trip. I say narrow ego trip because, you know, most politicians are egotistical, but most politicians are trying to combine their ego with the desire to do something for the country. Boris Johnson honestly really struggled to work out what he wanted to do. I mean, he, I mean, this was true, this should have been clear to people from when he was London mayor. He'd make these great comments about how when he's London mayor, he'd say, I want this to be a beautiful city like Pericles' Athens. And then he'd sign off on these kind of horrible skyscrapers at Nine Elms, or he'd, or he'd say, I want to create these kind of beautiful cultural spaces. And he'd end up creating the Emirates Cable Car. I mean, the guy really has never known what he wanted.

• 23:01Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm not going to defend Boris Johnson, but I do like, there's an open water swimming site under the Emirates Cable Car. And there's something really nice about doing backstroke in the, in the river, looking up at the Emirates Cable Car going above, going across the sky. It's quite a nice thing. We did it during lockdown.

• 23:18Rory Stewart?

  Why do you think you like that, Alison?

• 23:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I love cold water swimming.

• 23:22Rory Stewart?

  But why the Emirates Cable Car? I mean, do you like people looking at you when you're swimming?

• 23:26Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know, I couldn't see if there was anybody in the cars, I just saw them going across. Anyway, that's enough of the Everest cable car. Listen, I want to ask you whether you say, I'm on question time tonight, as you said, it's up in Barnsley, so I imagine there'll be, you know, quite a few people who are very pro Brexit and possibly even people are still very pro Johnson. So this is, and we're bound to get asked, I'd imagine, about Labour's new Brexit position. Maybe we won't, but I suspect we will. And I don't particularly want to, you know, go for Keir Starmer too hard, because as you know, Rory, I'm still very tribally. But what I, just tell me if you think this works as an argument. So I think that Boris Johnson, we've talked before about Moises and Aime's book.

• 24:03Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 24:03Alastair Campbell?

  Or the new, the new autocrats and their three Ps. Populism, where you exploit rather than solve problems. Polarisation, where you seek to divide rather than bring people together. And post-truth, where you debase the truth so that people actually don't know what's true anymore. And that Johnson is a three P leader. He, and Brexit was a three P phenomenon. And Brexit would not have happened without Johnson. So here's Johnson, now exposed for the whole world to see as a liar and a crook. The one part of his legacy that will outlive him is Brexit. And yet, the entirety of our politics is saying, oh, let's not touch it. Even though it's doing massive damage to the country. So I'm going to say, leadership is not about avoiding the big challenges, it's about confronting the world as it is, to try to create the world as you want it to be. And at the very minimum,

• 24:48Alastair Campbell?

  we should be looking at trust new trading arrangements that may involve the customs union, may involve the single market, certainly have to involve cracking down on this sort of massive myriad of new red tape that is strangling businesses, destroying farming, destroying fishing and so much else. And it's simply wrong, in my view, for the Labour Party to get into a defensive crouch on a position that was fought and won by a liar and a crook. How does that work?

• 25:13Rory Stewart?

  Firstly, I think you believe that very, very passionately and strongly. So you have to advocate for that. I think there is a tactical question for the Labour Party. Firstly, we need to understand what does Keir Starmer really believe? I mean, does he, is he a conviction politician in the way that you are about this? Does he passionately believe those things? If he does. He probably needs to take some kind of risk here. But tactically, I suppose if if I flipped it round and I was trying to give comms advice to you, which I'd be very Larry of doing, I think I'd probably say that you need to wait to see who the next leader of the Conservative Party is, if you're thinking purely tactically. Because and work out whether you're running up against somebody who's promoting themselves as a hard Brexiteer.

• 25:53Alastair Campbell?

  I'm just taking a few notes now, Rory, as I prepare. I'm taking a few notes.

• 25:57Rory Stewart?

  I think that's probably, probably, probably, probably enough for me. What, what, let's, let's have a quick look at some of these questions that have come in.

• 26:04Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know we had about 800 questions in an hour?

• 26:06Rory Stewart?

  Oh, it's just so wonderful, isn't it?

• 26:08Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, it's crazy.

• 26:09Rory Stewart?

  They were beautiful questions, aren't they?

• 26:10Alastair Campbell?

  There are a lot of them, there are a lot of them.

• 26:12Rory Stewart?

  How much damage Christina Lister has Johnson and his shenanigans inflicted on our standing globally?

• 26:18Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, enormous. I mean, I did, you know, one of the many interviews that I did yesterday that you weren't on before or after me, Radio New Zealand, and they asked a question about, you know, is the sort of damage that's been done to, that we see being done to Britain's standing in the world, do you see that around the world? And the truth is, as you know from all your travels, that we do, it's absolutely enormous. I love this question from Catherine, C A B A twenty four. Will the parliamentary investigations into the Prime Minister's actions continue with the full vigour once he's resigned? What should happen regarding his comment yesterday that he did meet Lebedev senior, hoping that accountability isn't lost in the excitement? Now, it just shows you how debased our politics and media have become, and I know there was a lot going on yesterday, but he finally admitted yesterday that at that time when

• 27:03Alastair Campbell?

  he went to Italy, slipped his security detail, slipped all his officials, that he did meet this senior KGB guy.

• 27:09Rory Stewart?

  And all of, all of this, of course, is something that, that we, we broke on the podcast, isn't it? I mean, this is the same Lebedev invitation that I got to go to Lake Cuomo, I think.

• 27:17Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly.

• 27:18Rory Stewart?

  So I was, just to remind listeners, I was the Minister of State at the Foreign Office, and one of Lebedev's aides or supporters came up to me and said, would I like to go to Lake Cuomo on a lovely weekend? And I was completely astonished, I said, because, as we know, Evgeny Lebedev's father was a very senior KGB officer. And it seemed to me completely mad, this idea that a minister in the British Foreign Office would want to go for a weekend in which I was told, I don't know if it's true, but I was told ladies were taking their tops off at the table, at which point, when I said all this to his aide.

• 27:55Alastair Campbell?

  Was it very hot? Was it very hot?

• 27:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, probably very, very hot, exactly. So I said, well, this is ridiculous. I mean, obviously, I can't go. And the answer was, don't worry, Boris Johnson is going. And I think this is the very one that he went to. So I think it was a combination, not just of the KGB, but everything else that's extraordinary. And slipping your security detail, I mean, remember, Priti Patel was forced to resign as Secretary of State for International Development because she had met the Israelis without permission. But this is a different scale of stuff. I mean, the Foreign Secretary.

• 28:28Alastair Campbell?

  You wouldn't do that unless there was something bad that you wanted to do, that you didn't want other people to know about. And the other thing, I mean, I know a lot of the diplomatic protection people and the personal protection officers that used to look after us and that I still see around, the guys that look after Tony and so forth. And that was an incredibly dangerous thing for him to do, not least for them, because they would have got into such trouble had something happened to him. Had he been attacked at an airport, had he been assassinated, they would have got the blame. And yet he put them in that position so as he could go off and do whatever he did with Lebedev. And how the hell is Lord Lebedev? Lord Lebedev, how are those two words even in the same sentence?

• 29:10Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, Rory, the other thing we've got to sort out, other than him having getting kicked out by the end of the day, there should be no resignation honours from Boris Johnson.

• 29:20Rory Stewart?

  To prevent your friend, Lord Dacre, getting in.

• 29:23Alastair Campbell?

  I barely thought of that. I barely thought of that. But that would be one, that would be one very good side effect, yes.

• 29:30Rory Stewart?

  So let's just quickly, before we get back to the questions, let's just go through what seemed to be the likely leadership contenders one more time, so people get a sense of what's going on.

• 29:38Alastair Campbell?

  And also, I think it'd be interesting to know, if you did still have a vote, Rory, who would you vote for?

• 29:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, okay, let's try, let's try to romp through this. So we've got, broadly speaking, we've got the right of the party and we've got the left of the party. But the left of the party is much, much weaker than it used to be, partly because Boris Johnson threw out 21 of the people back in 2019. People like me, Ken Clark, Nicholas Soames were thrown out of the party at that time. And actually, in the 2019 election, many other people from the centre of the Conservative Party didn't stand again.

• 30:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:08Rory Stewart?

  And many people from the right of the party were elected for the first time. So I think we've talked about this, but you can see the maths, it's very striking. In something like 2017, almost 60% of the party Conservative Members of Parliament had voted for Remain and Brexit. By 2018, it's down to about 55%. But after 2019, the majority of the Conservative Members of Parliament are people who voted for Brexit, and the minority are Remain voters, insofar as that indicates right against centre. So at the far right of the party is the ERG, European Research Group, which are these people like Steve Baker, Marc Francois, who push for the hardest possible version of Brexit. And these are the people who've been trying to essentially refuse to put any borders in

• 30:52Rory Stewart?

  Ireland and play chicken with the European Union. So they really want to accept almost no more relationship with Europe than they have with Thailand. Who are their candidates going to be? Well, we can see Suella Breiverman has already put her name forward. I think that's a terrible choice. I mean, that she was, again, you know, talking about the ways in which Boris Johnson defied the constitution, she was the Attorney General, and the point about the Attorney General is actually, in the end, a bit like the Lord Chancellor, they're supposed to provide some form of independent legal advice. And Suella Breiverman made it so clear from the beginning, and particularly with Ireland, that she was nothing other than a political spokesman for Boris Johnson.

• 31:30Alastair Campbell?

  And also with the party. She said it was fine that Johnson broke the law.

• 31:34Rory Stewart?

  That's shocking. So Suella Breiverman, Steve Baker, also from the ERG, put his name forward. So Steve Baker is extraordinary. He's a born-again Christian, fully immersed himself in water to be baptised. He was an engineer in the Air Force.

• 31:50Rory Stewart?

  He gave an extraordinary interview to the Church Times in which he said that he wasn't sure that God was really in favour of democracy. He said if you read One Kings properly, that's a bit doubtful. Let me pause on that. Hand back to you, though, I'm talking too much. Some other candidates.

• 32:04Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, it's interesting. No, it's interesting. The other thing about Steve Baker, I saw him on the news last night, he had a very strange black necklace on.

• 32:11Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's, and he's grown a beard, hasn't he?

• 32:13Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I mean, is he having a midlife crisis? It just looked a bit like a midlife crisis to me.

• 32:16Rory Stewart?

  It does feel a bit like that, doesn't it?

• 32:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Rory Stewart?

  There is things that, well, maybe he's got a, maybe he's got a new partner. I mean, Matt Hancock, who doubtless will emerge as a candidate too, has taken to one of his amazing-

• 32:26Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, no, no, no, no, please, please.

• 32:28Rory Stewart?

  Amazing milk, milk tray, sort of roll net. Roger Moore circa 1972.

• 32:34Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think, by the way, the guy, Matt Hancock, he is one of the reasons, we were very briefly again, only very briefly, Rory, but we were very briefly knocked off the top spot again this week. We've obviously climbed our way back up, thanks to my maladaptive competitiveness and special additions. But Stephen Bartlett was back to the top and, of course, he was made, you know, podcast, he, he made podcast gold with Matt Hancock when he came out. That was when he really launched the milk tray look and, you know, I'm just a guy who fell in love and all that crap. So let's ignore him. What about Michael Go? Will he go?

• 33:05Rory Stewart?

  Wow. I mean, that would be quite a thing to try again. I mean, normally the tradition in leadership contests is you've got two runs at it.

• 33:13Rory Stewart?

  He and Sajid, this will be their third run. And generally, if you've been rejected twice, it's pretty difficult to go a third time.

• 33:20Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think Sunak is, I think Sunak is back in the running, having, I think he shouldn't be, because I think he's propped up Johnson and I don't think he's a very good chancellor and I don't actually know what he stands for and I think he's very right wing, so I don't really like him. But I think he will think he's back in the frame, having, you know, jumped the sinking ship.

• 33:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, Rishi Sunak, I think he's back in the frame. The, the challenge for Rishi Sunak is he was seen as a unifying character. So he was supposed to be somebody who'd voted for Brexit, but because he's quite fiscally conservative and relatively understated, wasn't offensive to the left of the party. The, the, the problem I'm getting on Rishi, and I, I don't know whether this is fair, is that people feel that once he got into the cabinet, he no longer kept his friendships going. People felt that he, there was a slight sense that he'd made it to the top and he didn't really look after the people. Down below, whether that's true or not, I don't know, but I certainly get a certain amount of bitterness about Rishi, and that may mean that people are unwilling to get in behind him.

• 34:16Alastair Campbell?

  Liz Truss, Ben Wallace?

• 34:17Rory Stewart?

  Liz Truss, I think, will bottle it again. I think she won't do it again. I mean, every time she's supposed to be a leadership candidate, and every time she doesn't do it, what she does instead-

• 34:28Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, surely all that Instagram work is not just going to go to waste. I mean, honestly, there's a lot of money has gone into that Instagram account, surely.

• 34:35Rory Stewart?

  It might be leveraged again to be Chancellor of the Exchequer or Foreign Secretary. That's what she's tended to calculate the last couple of times round.

• 34:42Alastair Campbell?

  She's already the Foreign Secretary, isn't she?

• 34:44Rory Stewart?

  She might do it. Yeah, she's already Foreign Secretary, yeah. She might, she might do it. She may think this. I mean, of course, all these people want eventually to be Prime Minister. It's quite, I mean, remember also that some people will be thinking, this is a pretty poisoned chalice. They're taking over a party that has smashed itself to pieces, when it's trailing in the opinion polls, when it's been in office since 2010, it's a long old run, 12 years in office, where a lot of the money is going to be on a Labour-Lib Dem coalition next time round. So people are going to be asking themselves, do they want to do that? Or are they going to try to wait it out? But, but actually, I think in the end, they gamble, they better go for it now because they never know what's going to happen in seven years' time, anyway.

• 35:24Alastair Campbell?

  I was very, very surprised to see that Michael Fabricant has ruled himself out.

• 35:27Rory Stewart?

  Well, he'd be, he'd be, you know, he'd be absolutely, it's a sort of, it's like your ABBA guys, like, you know, remember you went to see the ABBA show where everybody was sort of robotic simulacrum? He'd be like a robotic simulacrum of Boris Johnson, wouldn't he? He'd be like Boris Johnson reemerging as even more farce.

• 35:43Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, if you're going to put Michael Fabricant in the same sentence as ABBA, it is like putting Andrew Bridgen in the same sentence as Elvis. It's like putting Nadine Dorries in the same sentence as Jack Brel. You cannot do that. And I'll have you know, I didn't, I wasn't going to raise this, but I'm now going to do some absolutely splendid name dropping. I got a message this morning from the manager of ABBA telling me that she and Bjorn and Benny were enjoying my media appearances yesterday.

• 36:13Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 36:14Alastair Campbell?

  That made me so happy.

• 36:17Rory Stewart?

  You've totally made it.

• 36:18Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, if you want, I could probably sing "Thank You For The Music" in German for you now.

• 36:22Rory Stewart?

  Go on then, go on, Alastair, go on, we all want it. Go, go on.

• 36:25Alastair Campbell?

  Danke für die Musik. Die Lieder, die ich singe, danke für die Freude, die Sie bringen. Wer könnte leben ohne sie? Ich frage in aller Ehrlichkeit. Wenn er changes, wie wäre unsere Zeit ohne singen und tanzen? Was sind wir? Also ich sage ich danke für die Musik, dass man sie mir gegeben hat.

• 36:53Rory Stewart?

  That's very good. I wasn't sure that it was quite as good as your Elvis singing. I think we might get you to do some more Elvis singing on another podcast, but maybe not just now.

• 37:04Alastair Campbell?

  Can I go to a question which goes back to what I was saying, but I've just spotted this one from Intrepid Thinker. With the architect of Brexit now disgraced as a proven liar, deceiver and incompetent, why then has Keir Starmer sided with the complete lie that Brexit can be made to work, which I think risks Labour losing the election as a result? I do think Labour have got to be incredibly careful. I mean Fiona, my partner, had basically said, as I said yesterday, we had this letter in the New European. Somebody said, if he's ruling it out, you know, even joining the single market, then I'm ruling out voting Labour. I mean, I think there will be people like that.

• 37:36Rory Stewart?

  Look, I'm obviously have been passionately in favor of a customs union Brexit for a very long time now. And I think that I can imagine a world in which you say it's time has finally come. Because now people can see that the problems that we're facing, particularly with Northern Ireland, but also the problems we're facing with trade. We can see that the benefits of these independent trading deals have been incredibly small. And we're looking for a confident story. And finally, I guess my big kicker is we can now see that because of what's happened with Russia, Ukraine, that the ERG gamble that they could give up trading with Europe in order to trade with China. You remember they kept saying China is a much more rapidly growing economy.

• 38:17Rory Stewart?

  Looks very dodgy now. Nobody wants to be exposed and totally reliant on trade with China. In fact, almost all companies are trying to reduce their reliance on China at the moment. So I think if you were trying to rebuild the British economy, a big customs union pitch could be a central part of rebuilding confidence in investment.

• 38:34Alastair Campbell?

  I agree. Listen, I'm going to read this question now simply because it's such a wonderful Twitter handle. Cosmic haggis. Cosmic Haggis asks as follows.

• 38:43Rory Stewart?

  It's a Scottish questioner by any chance?

• 38:45Alastair Campbell?

  It is going to be a Scottish question. It is obviously from an SNP supporter. Since Scotland has a working, stable government, can't we just take over and then declare independence? It looks a far better bet than this total Westminster shitshow. There will be a lot of that in Scotland at the moment, I think, won't there?

• 38:59Rory Stewart?

  Well, my distant relatives tried that. They tried to come down from Scotland and take over the British government. Didn't kind of really work out. Their heads lopped off eventually. But it's always a good idea. I mean, I think the basic point, Alistair, about you and me and Gordon Brown and all the rest of us is that we always try to come down and sort out England, but it never really, I'm never sure they're that grateful for it in the end. Listen, I've got lots more questions for you, which we're going to try to get you in. Okay. Flora, how crucial is senior cabinet experience for the upcoming leadership race? What factors matter most?

• 39:31Alastair Campbell?

  I think in a normal situation, it would be very important, but I don't think we're in a normal situation. I think we're emerging from a period of absolute normality. So I think somebody like an Elwood or a Tom Tugendhat or, you know, some of those kind of more impressive backbenchers. I think if they were to throw their hats in the ring, they would deserve to be given a go. I don't think it would happen.

• 39:54Rory Stewart?

  And on more impressive backbenchers, your great mate, Johnny Mercer, who's the kind of veteran MP, I couldn't understand what he thought he was doing in the House of Commons. He got the first question against Boris Johnson at the moment when the entire world was watching and where it really mattered, the Conservative Party showed that they were disgusted by this man, that he needed to go. The resignations had begun. This was the great moment to demonstrate that the party turned against him and he didn't take it. What was going on?

• 40:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I mean, I think your great mate slightly overstates it. I'd say that I first got to know with Johnny Mercer in a sort of reasonable way when I was having a fairly bad manic episode and I got into an absolutely vituperic exchange with him on Twitter over a sort of stupid video that I did when I put on my brother's Guards tie and medals and started singing songs about Dominic Cummings. I wasn't well, to be fair. Although the song was quite funny. And Johnny Mercer said, you know, this is an insult to veterans and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we had an absolute shouty match. And then eventually, a friend of mine got in touch and said, you know, he might have a point, really. And I accepted

• 41:09Alastair Campbell?

  the point. And since then, I have become quite friendly with him. And I saw your tweet about it. You said, you know, what on earth is Johnny Mercer doing? And I sent, I sent him your tweet with a message. And I said, he does have a point, Johnny. And he said, he does have a point. He does have a point. But I am so passionate about this veterans issue. I wasn't going to waste the opportunity to land it. And he sent me a link, by the way, to a piece he wrote, he had written for the Huffington Post, where he said, basically, that Johnson's the worst prime minister this country's ever had. So I think it was just one of those judgments where he wanted, as it were, to stay on his own message of the issue that matters most to him, which is how we treat our veterans.

• 41:43Rory Stewart?

  Timing is so central, so central in politics. I mean, if, luckily Boris Johnson is now going. But that is one of those moments when the House of Commons, and particularly the Tory MPs, needed to stand up and be counted. They really needed to show that this guy's time was up. And every question, every question that those guys wasted, there was a wasted question from Peter Bottomley on Worthing.

• 42:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, Peter Bottomley is very good at wasted questions.

• 42:09Rory Stewart?

  Wasted question from Flick Drummond on investment in high streets and her constituency. I mean, I was just sitting there thinking, this is insane, right? This is the moment where this guy has to be pushed out.

• 42:20Alastair Campbell?

  Tim Lowton's was the question of the day for me.

• 42:22Rory Stewart?

  Remind us what he asked.

• 42:23Alastair Campbell?

  He basically stood up and said, can the prime minister foresee any circumstances in which he might resign? You know, is there anything that he might do? And Johnson just waffled. And I thought that was quite a powerful question. Just a final point in Johnny Mercer's defence. I think he might also be thinking, right, Johnson's going to go. I'm laying down a marker that this is going to be an issue for his, for the, anybody who follows. And of course, there might be a military element to quite a few of the contenders.

• 42:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So one of the weird things that's now happening as we are, as it were, on air is they're beginning to appoint the new cabinet. So James Cleverly has just been announced as the new education secretary.

• 42:59Alastair Campbell?

  Now, for God's sake, Cleverly, him, Cleverly.

• 43:02Rory Stewart?

  There's something really mad going on here because remember what had happened is that the previous education secretary was only appointed 36 hours ago. She was put in and she felt she had to resign to get rid of Boris Johnson. So she obviously was honoured to be given the education secretary role, but clearly the conversations when they lined up, Nardim Zahawi, her and the others, and said to Boris Johnson, "I'm really sorry, you're going to have to go", went so badly that eventually they felt they had to resign 36 hours after getting the job to have any chance of actually getting him out the door at all. So now Boris, Boris Johnson, is now appointing a new cabinet as we speak. Why is, what is he doing? Why is he doing this? Why is he appointing new people?

• 43:47Alastair Campbell?

  But why is he not, why is he not reappointing the people who resigned to get rid of him? The whole thing is mad. How can he carry out a new cabinet? But Rory, the other thing, something like James Cleverly, and the other thing, they're all going to, you see like Michelle Donnelly, who goes into the cabinet for 36 hours, she now gets a cabinet minister's pension, she now gets a cabinet minister's payoff. All of that's got to be stopped as well. These people are utterly trashing this country and its reputation. It's unbelievable.

• 44:16Rory Stewart?

  But, but, but let's just go back to the basics.

• 44:19Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, by the way, we forgot, we forgot one, we forgot one name.

• 44:22Rory Stewart?

  Go on, yeah.

• 44:23Alastair Campbell?

  Because she keeps popping up very high in the betting, Penny Mordaunt.

• 44:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So Penny is definitely a serious person. She was in the cabinet with me. She was my predecessor as Secretary of State for international development. She's dignified, she was a good Defence Secretary, she is somebody who voted Brexit, which will work for her, but she endorsed Jeremy Hunt. She was very much not a Boris person. I think she's somebody who knows her own mind. She's got, you know, she's a woman with a certain degree, I think, of toughness, reminds me a bit in some ways, although she was on a different side of the debate, of Amber Rudd, Anna Subri, those kind of people. So I think she's somebody that would engender respect. And I say that as somebody who...

• 45:08Rory Stewart?

  Wasn't particularly a friend of ours, a friend of hers. She's not, she's not somebody who's going to give me a job in government, but I do think she's somebody who might be able to command respect, yes.

• 45:16Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm, okay. And, and the question, who, who would you vote for if you had a vote?

• 45:21Rory Stewart?

  It's difficult. I've got to see who the runners and riders are, Alistair. And obviously, I'm wearing a tie, which is my pitch to be the next Foreign Secretary. So I've got to be quite thoughtful about how I'm in.

• 45:28Alastair Campbell?

  I understand that. And, and, and who, here's a question for, for both of us really, but I'll, there's, there's a lot of people saying, who do you think Labour should want to succeed Johnson?

• 45:39Rory Stewart?

  Oh, I think Suella Braverman's got to be their choice, right?

• 45:42Alastair Campbell?

  She, I think Liz Truss would be quite good.

• 45:45Rory Stewart?

  Fabricant could be great, no?

• 45:47Alastair Campbell?

  I think what Keir's got to watch out for is a sort of, I mean, I, I do think there's, there's a lot of mileage, particularly once Johnson's gone, in the whole thing about integrity and honesty and competence and looking like a Prime Minister, all that. That's why, another reason, by the way, why I worry about the position on Brexit, because it doesn't feel like it's a hundred percent, you know, in the integrity space. It feels it's in the very political management space. But I, I, I think that if you do get a kind of a Ben Wallace or a Jeremy Hunt or, you know, a kind of fairly, those guys who parade as being quite inoffensive, dare I say, a bit boring, then you maybe, you know, Keir's strength against Johnson gets a little bit neutralized.

• 46:29Rory Stewart?

  Alistair, yeah, absolutely. If the Conservative Party can produce somebody who seems highly intelligent, relatively dignified, competent, interested in governing, little bit of humility, wants to reach across, wants to rebuild the centre ground, makes people feel proud again of their Prime Minister, then I think the Labour Party's in trouble. The question is, will the Conservative Party be able to do that? Because my goodness, Boris Johnson's left a very, very frayed, humiliated, damaged party behind him. And I'm, you know, obviously as somebody who believes in the centre right, who wants to see, as it were, our Australian teal party reemerge, Liberal Unionists reemerge, I'm praying they find that candidate. But

• 47:10Rory Stewart?

  my goodness, they've got to have a tough fight through. Alistair, I think we're coming towards the end of our special, special, special.

• 47:17Alastair Campbell?

  And the end of Boris Johnson's wretched, ruinous, awful.

• 47:22Alastair Campbell?

  Reign of incompetence and corruption and lying and disgust.

• 47:26Rory Stewart?

  And have you got, have you got a song, do you think that's suitable to take us out on for Boris Johnson's departure?

• 47:32Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye Johnson, Johnson, goodbye Johnson, bye bye. That's the bassist role, do you remember them?

• 47:40Rory Stewart?

  I do remember that.

• 47:40Alastair Campbell?

  Please, please, you do remember them.

• 47:41Rory Stewart?

  No, I just, I just about could do that, yeah.

• 47:44Alastair Campbell?

  Tonight, hopefully he'll be singing it. I'm so lonesome tonight. I've lost the final fight. Having screwed up the country I claim to love. How's that?

• 47:58Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful.

• 47:58Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, I think it's a good day for Britain. It's been a terrible day, a terrible few years for Britain. Um, but at least some of us, Rory, at least some of us have been right all along. And as Bruce Grokot once said to me, he said, do you know what? If you write a book, you should just call it, I was right all along.

• 48:21Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful, beautiful. Well, that's a note of humility. Uh, we'll see you all next week.

• 48:25Alastair Campbell?

  Take care.

• 48:25Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 48:28Speaker 03

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