74. Question Time: Women in politics, AI advancements, and airports

Join Rory and Alastair for this week's Question Time episode where they discuss everything from the growth of artificial intelligence in professional life to their airport travel tips. Plus culture and arts in Britain, women in politics and Rory and Alastair's favourite novels. Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen 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.

• 1:13Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to another episode of the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:18Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:20Alastair Campbell?

  Right, Rory. I think this one, we should have one word answer from both of us.

• 1:25Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 1:26Alastair Campbell?

  It's from UK Economist.

• 1:29Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 1:30Alastair Campbell?

  Re 2010 austerity. Can Alistair agree that some fiscal tightening was necessary? And my answer to that is yes, I can. Can Rory Stewart agree that Cameron Osborne overdid it, cutting too much too fast, and that this caused real damage to people's lives?

• 1:48Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 1:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well done. Well done, Rory. We're going to get there at the end. We're going to get there at the end. Right, compulsory voting. Sally Finster. Following the Julia Gillard interview last week, and just to remind people, Julia Gillard said that the great power of compulsory voting... Is that it kept politicians from being tempted by the extremes because they knew that what she called Mr. And Mrs. Average were usually left of centre, right of centre, but the important thing was the centre. For the Julia Gillard interview last week, what is Rory's view of compulsory voting in the UK? This also links to your interview with François Hollande and his interesting position on sticking with two-party system. Now, as you know, Rory, I'm in favour of compulsory voting, but you're not.

• 2:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, I guess I'm, I'm extremely, I, I think I haven't thought enough about this issue. I don't think I've got much interesting thing to say. I think that the normal argument around this is that the right to vote is, is, I guess, it's a civic duty and it's a right, but there's a liberty about whether or not you did it, whether you make it more like jury service, where you have to do it. I, I'm increasingly coming around to it. I like, I like the idea that you get everybody voting. And I, I tend to like it for the same reason that I like citizens' assemblies, which is I basically believe that everybody has an equal right to say stuff and everybody's views are valuable.

• 3:13Rory Stewart?

  And I think there's a sort of, I, I worry sometimes that people who are against compulsory voting have a slightly elitist view of the world, where they quite like the idea that some people aren't voting because they don't want them voting.

• 3:24Alastair Campbell?

  This is good. I like this, Rory. So you've moved on austerity, excellent, and you're now moving on compulsory voting as well. That's good.

• 3:32Rory Stewart?

  Well, we, we could, we could do a slightly more detailed conversation about austerity. There's maybe some nuance there that we're missing, but anyway, let's get on to that. Let's get on to the next question. UK's answer to your ad, Lizzie Tyrell Bunch, love the podcast, great to hear the inimitable Julia Gillard being interviewed and her views on misogyny within the Australian government. Wondering where you see strong feminist voices coming from within UK politics? Do you think the current government is focusing enough on issues such as childcare and misogyny in British schools?

• 4:01Alastair Campbell?

  Interesting, and there were lots of questions, by the way, about childcare in relation to this campaign that's being run called Pregnant and Screwed. Just to throw in a couple of those. Louise Martin, do families need more support with extortionate childcare costs? Other countries are offering far better. Rebecca, after 15,000 parents marched for March for the mummies last weekend demanding childcare reform, do you think it's time for better investment into this infrastructure in line with other European countries? And the answer to that, I think, is yes. I do think that there are feminists, strong feminist voices. And I was actually at an extraordinary event last week, Rory. I've written my column for The New European about this.

• 4:45Alastair Campbell?

  I went to an event, as you know, I don't really get off on going back into Parliament too much, but I went to an event in Speaker's House to celebrate Harriet Harman's 40th anniversary as an MP. And what was extraordinary was when, so Lindsay Hoyle spoke, Margaret Hodge spoke, Keir Starmer spoke, and of course Harriet spoke. But when they all went through, the different campaigns that she'd been involved in, the different legislative processes that she'd been involved in, the different bills that she'd taken and turned into legislation, but above all, her leadership role in being a woman in public life. And then when you looked around the room and saw, for example, Theresa May was there and you think, well, okay, I think all Labour people would rather that one of the three female prime ministers had been a Labour person rather than a Tory.

• 5:30Alastair Campbell?

  But Theresa May was there and Margaret Hodge made this point. There was a point where there were no women toilets in Parliament, let alone MPs and Prime Ministers. So I think there are some amazing feminist voices. And I think Harriet, it just sort of hammered home to me that Harriet Harman really has been this consistent feminist voice in our politics and really has made a difference. And now there's a new generation coming through.

• 5:54Rory Stewart?

  So there's obviously, there's a huge amount more to do, and neither you or I are very well placed to talk about this. But the change is also dramatic, as you say. When Mrs Thatcher was... First became leader in the 1970s, it was an unbelievably male dominated place. And as you say, it was difficult for finding a toilet to go to. We're now in a situation where we're March 2022, there are 225 women in the House of Commons. So this is 35% of the House, first time that representation's been over a third. Previous record was 2017, when it was 32% of members. And in the 2019 general election, more females than male Labour MPs were elected or re-elected.

• 6:39Rory Stewart?

  104 women out of 202 MPs, we've now had three Prime Ministers. So I think things are getting a bit better in British politics. But obviously a third is still a long way from being a half.

• 6:49Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other point that's important, in fact, this is something that my daughter Grace, who's a very, very kind of active feminist. And she always makes the point that amongst the people who are described themselves as feminists and act as feminists. We have to include men in that, men have got to take up the cause of feminism as well. There's a question here on gender in politics from Bella Longdon. Do you think that Truss and May's poor performance as Prime Minister, Truss especially, in brackets. Has damaged the perception of women as leaders in a way Boris Johnson's disastrous performance? Doesn't appear to have damaged the perception of men as leaders, and I'm afraid the answer to that is, is yes.

• 7:28Rory Stewart?

  Really? I don't know, I don't think that people have read her failure as being primarily about being a woman. I think people primarily.

• 7:36Alastair Campbell?

  Primarily, but I think, I think it, I don't know, I've, I, I put it this way. She is utterly defined as a disaster in a way that Johnson is not. How was, I don't know how Johnson even has the nerve to go something like to cop and lecture other world leaders about how to, how to lead.

• 7:51Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's just unbelievably awful.

• 7:54Alastair Campbell?

  Let's leave, let's leave that one, but I, I think Bella's got a point there, I really do.

• 7:57Rory Stewart?

  Unbelievably awful. So David Wood's Arts Cuts, two opera singers asking, David Wood's not in the cloud.

• 8:05Alastair Campbell?

  We've got some cultured listeners, Rory.

• 8:06Rory Stewart?

  We've definitely got cultured listeners and of course, you know, we've never had you sing opera, but that could be, that could be the next pod. As an opera singer, I wanted to ask your opinion on Arts Council funding, massive cuts to the arts, particularly in London. Overall 28% reduction of opera and classical music nationwide. Wanted to know your thoughts on this and Laura MacLeod, seconded by a fellow opera singer. Here's the table doing the rounds, percentage cuts. Not included is, yeah, no, the English Ashlop from the fact they're being made uproot out of London. So that's an interesting thing, isn't it? I mean, I'd, I'd, obviously, I guess one of the questions, which is kind of question that goes back to kind of sort of debates people have in school is whether government money should be used to subsidize opera or ballet and things that some people might

• 8:51Rory Stewart?

  think are more elite. Or whether that is a sign of a civilized, mature country that it does put some government money into financing difficult performances. And I guess people would also point out the ENO has been very good at including people, bringing in new audiences into its opera. But how would you, if you were a government, dealing with, or if you felt that you needed to make serious reductions in public spending? How do you think you'd make the arguments or get the balance right between putting money into things like opera, ballet, classical music against education and health?

• 9:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think that the, I think you have to see the arts as part of our culture and education. And I don't, I think you have to, you make the case about the arts. I mean, look, if you look at all the things that go wrong in our country, there's so much about our country that isn't working right now. But the one part of our life that I think is still, where we genuinely can say that we're, I mean, I hate this whole world beating rhetoric that the Tories do the whole time. But I think in arts and culture, we are. And that happened in part because we have invested in that and we've understood its importance beyond merely being the act of performance. And essentially, I know the chief executive of the, of the ENO, Fiona, as it happens, is a big opera fan. I'm more football than opera, I have to say that.

• 10:09Alastair Campbell?

  However, I've always understood the importance of arts to our culture, to our economy, to our soft power, to our standing as a nation. And Stuart Murphy, who's the chief executive, I remember, he knows how to get on the right side of me, he once said to me that the, the ENO is the new Labour of opera. He said, well, I think it's, I think I'm right in it, one in seven who go there are under 35. And I think one of the things you, you notice whenever you go to the theatre is generally the audience tends to be old. Their, their tickets for anybody under 21, anybody under 21 goes free. For other younger people above twenty one, it's ten pounds. They monitor and they have very good figures on ethnic diversity, both of audience.

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  And again, you go to the theatre, it's one of my absolute bugbears, you go to the theatre and it is mainly white and it is mainly middle class. And you only change that if you decide to go out and change. And the other thing that's crazy about, this is all part of the Arts Council cuts, okay? So they've told them they've got to go to Manchester and I'm all in favour of things going to the north. But two things, they had no discussion with anybody in Manchester.

• 11:17Rory Stewart?

  This is the year, no, the thing is just not pretty, yeah, it's being made to move from London.

• 11:20Alastair Campbell?

  The decision has been made that they run the Colosseum and they perform at the Colosseum, but they want them to move their base to Manchester without having done any audience research. It's not even one of their so-called levelling up places. And I think this is, and here's one to put it in context, Rory. The Brexit festival cost a hundred and fifty million pounds. Test Track and Trace cost twelve point five billion. And this is all done by pulling fifty million pounds from London arts funding. I'm all in favour of levelling up if it means something. I'm all in favour of things going to the north. But, you know, we London as a cultural capital of the world is something we should be proud of or we should continue to invest in.

• 12:04Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I think that the risk is, I'm with you, one hundred percent with you. I'm a big supporter of funding for the Arts Council and for all these kinds of things. And I agree with you, it's something that we should be very proud of in Britain. And I think it's a problem when governments begin to get too kind of brutally utilitarian because I think culture and beauty and the environment are all part of what makes life worth living.

• 12:27Alastair Campbell?

  And also, also Rory, I don't want to bring up your old school, but I remember once looking at the website of Eton and they've got theatres, they've got film schools, they've got film directors, you know, kids in state schools should have access to good arts, good culture, good sport. Here's one, Jenny McConnell.

• 12:47Alastair Campbell?

  The reach of your podcast knows no bounds. I was in a bar in Grenada where I got talking to some women from the Netherlands. Upon establishing I was from the UK, we very quickly started joking, I'm afraid we are a global joke at the moment, about the state of British politics, at which point one of the Dutch ladies recommended, quotes, "An excellent podcast called The Rest Is Politics." As an avid listener, says Jenny, we bonded quickly. Please shout out to Hester, wish her a happy 30th birthday, she'll definitely be listening.

• 13:17Rory Stewart?

  Not to be, not to be mean, that's not exactly a question, is it, Alistair?

• 13:20Alastair Campbell?

  The question comes, Rory, the question comes. Please be patient. I know you don't read the questions as carefully as I do. The question is coming. She says, "Please give a shout out to Hester, wish her a happy 30th birthday." I'm going to do more than that, I'm going to say something in Dutch. "Hester, ik heb de feil op mijn dorp gespeeld." Hester will understand that. "My question," says Jenny, "what is the one thing you both think the UK is exceeding at, we can be proud of, rather than feeling constantly embarrassed? Well, I've given my answer, it's arts and culture. What's yours?"

• 13:47Rory Stewart?

  Goodness, I think a lot of things, actually. I mean, I think, I think our Foreign Office is extraordinary, still. There are bits that are extraordinary. I still think we have bits left of our international development, which are incredible. I think it's very, very sad how much that's been reduced, but everywhere that I've been recently in the developing worlds, the respect for Britain, the fact that Britain is still able, even with all these cuts, to play a very significant role in shaping the way in which one thinks about the end of poverty agenda. I think Britain was important in shaping climate out of Glasgow, and we should have been proud of what we did there. And we've actually made quite a lot of progress on renewable energy, more than many, many other competitive countries. So I think that there's a lot that we can be proud

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  of. And obviously, there's all the stuff that you're talking about, and we talk about all the time, design, art, culture, artificial intelligence, and some of the investments that are happening in Britain there. I think our universities are still extraordinary, and we should be investing much, much more in them. I think one of the ways in which... The dreaded Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's sort of chief of staff was right, is that we haven't put enough money traditionally into research and development.

• 14:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 14:58Rory Stewart?

  But we have an amazing intellectual heritage that we should be building on and developing.

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  And did you understand, did you understand my Dutch?

• 15:04Rory Stewart?

  I didn't understand your Dutch. It was very, very, very impressive, but I didn't understand a word of it. What were you saying? Happy birthday?

• 15:10Alastair Campbell?

  Nee, ik heb te feil op mijn doodslach gespeld.

• 15:14Rory Stewart?

  Blimey, no, can't do it.

• 15:16Alastair Campbell?

  I have played my bagpipes too much. And that's the only Dutch I know.

• 15:21Rory Stewart?

  Oh, for goodness sake. Somebody once said to me that there are people on the Tine who can understand a certain dialect of Dutch, that there's some amazing historical connection between the two. And maybe if you said that in a Geordie accent, it would be comprehensible.

• 15:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but yeah, again, Rory, you're somebody who thinks that you could read Frans Swahelin's book in French without speaking French. So, you know, who knows? Right, Steve Wilson, Steve Wilson, I was hoping we'd get through without talking about this guy, but I think we probably have to. Re Elon Musk and all things Twitter. Would The Rest Is Politics, Alistair Rory, pay for their blue tick? Or consider moving to another social network platform if Twitter becomes a different network to what it was?

• 16:00Rory Stewart?

  Well, so I would say, please don't over commit us at this stage, says he being a boring, non-idealistic, cautious fellow here. At the moment, none of us have paid for our blue tick and we're watching it very carefully and we're watching to see whether anyone's going to get a blue tick. But I think moving to another platform is very, very complicated. And the other platforms that people are recommending are pretty clunky at the moment. And it's a very rich ecosystem that's been built up in Twitter over 10 or 12 years. So I'd be pretty cautious before we immediately announce that we're hopping somewhere else, says he a bit cowardly.

• 16:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I kind of agree with that. I still like Twitter. But it's interesting, I found myself engaging less on it. And also, I was pretty revolted by him saying, Musk saying that he thought independent minded people should vote Republic in the midterms. You know, he's, I think he strikes me as one of those guys who just thinks because he's been successful at one thing, he's going to be absolutely brilliant at anything he does. I think there's a lot of, I can smell hubris in the air with that guy.

• 17:01Rory Stewart?

  Favorite genres, Neil McRobbin. My own podcast is focused on interviews with authors of horror fiction. That's very clever. He's, he's, he's learned from you. He's plugged his podcast through the question. You talk a lot about non-fiction on your show, but regardless of genre, what are your all time favorite novels? There we are.

• 17:19Alastair Campbell?

  Madame Bovary.

• 17:21Rory Stewart?

  Madame Bovary, my goodness, right.

• 17:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I think, I think mainly because I can remember the feeling, reading it and thinking for the first time, I love reading this book in French, and I love this book. And I've read it so many times since. And more modern, Ismail Khadari, the Albanian guy that I mentioned before, I love his novels. But yeah, I think, I think Madame Bovary is my number one novel. Obviously, moving into plugging mode, apart from All in the Mind by Alastair Campbell, a great read, Stephen Fry said it was one of the best novels he'd ever read.

• 17:57Rory Stewart?

  In, in, in Madame Bovary, am I right that Flaubert's last words, you'll be able to turn it into French for me, but were reputed to be, I die now, but this whore will live forever, referring to Madame Bovary?

• 18:09Alastair Campbell?

  It's one of the, put it this way, we talked about the mythology surrounding Polite. I think if you're as famous within French literature as he is, there are all sorts of myths about his dying words.

• 18:18Rory Stewart?

  Now, my, my recommendations for a moment, I've, I mean, I talk about a lot of novels. I read a lot of novels, but I have recently been rereading a book by Norman Mailer called Harlot's Ghost.

• 18:30Alastair Campbell?

  You've done it again. There's, what is it with you Tories and rereading? You never say you've read a book. You say you reread.

• 18:35Rory Stewart?

  That's true. That's true. That's true. Good, good observation. Let me try to think about something I've read for the first time for you. Let me give you a little plug on Harlot's Ghost, their first thing. Extraordinary, extraordinary dense spy novel set in the sort of CIA of the 1960s, working against Castro. But he's fantastic at getting a sense of the bureaucracy. I mean, it's a sort of deeper version of John le Carré. He really brings alive. The way that infighting, committees, memos, minutes tie into these kind of huge global events. And if people are also looking for cheesy novels, I have read for the first time, there we are, a novel by Len Dayton called Close Up,

• 19:18Rory Stewart?

  which is a really disturbing fictional biography of a Hollywood actor from the 1950s, which brings out a lot of what we've been talking about: hubris, vanity, insecurity, but actually in a very, very attractive, unusual way. I think it's a really impressive book republished by Penguin Classics.

• 19:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well done. You see, you're getting quite good at plugging, but mainly for other people. Anyway, shall we take a break at that point?

• 19:42Rory Stewart?

  Over to the break.

• 19:46Speaker 02

  There we are, getting a statement from Number Ten. On that flight, with 350 passengers on board.

• 19:55Speaker 03

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 20:02Speaker 04

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 20:10Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

• 20:27Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today, disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO.

• 20:37Speaker 05

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia.

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• 21:31Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 21:35Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 21:37Rory Stewart?

  And before we get into the second half, I wanted to tell you a little bit about a podcast from the United States and it's called Pod Save the World. It's hosted by a couple of people who works in Obama's staff, Tommy Vita, who Alistair knows, and Ben Rhodes, who I know. And they break down bigger stories around the world and introduce you to activists, politicians, journalists. They've just been doing a series looking at the political ramifications around the World Cup in Qatar. They've done episodes on the elections in Brazil and Israel. Remember, we've actually, we haven't had a chance to talk about it. There's just been an election in Israel, which BB Nathan and I use now back in again, and the recent developments from the Chinese Communist Party. So their episodes drop every Wednesday. You can listen

• 22:21Rory Stewart?

  and follow wherever you get your podcasts. But I mean, I'm a great admirer of Ben Rhodes and you are Tommy Vita, right?

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think Obama had some pretty good people around him. And it's interesting how many of them have gone into the whole pod world. And James Carville, who is Clinton's, it's the economy stupid guy, he does a podcast. I'm slightly alarmed Rory that we're telling people to listen to another podcast on a Wednesday morning.

• 22:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that is a bit disturbing, isn't it? Yeah.

• 22:45Alastair Campbell?

  I think we need to get these guys under manners first. So, once you've listened to the Rest is Politics, I think you can go on to very good American podcasts as well.

• 22:53Rory Stewart?

  Called Pod Save the World.

• 22:55Alastair Campbell?

  Pod Save the World. Right, what about this one Rory? Travel tips.

• 22:58Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:58Alastair Campbell?

  Hillary Nichols, you're both big travelers. So, top tips at airports. A, how do you feel the waiting time? B, what queue busting strategies do you have? C, what proportion of your lives are spent in transit? And do you think it's all been worthwhile?

• 23:14Rory Stewart?

  Oh my goodness gracious me. Well, the first thing is, I think Hillary Nichols works in the nonprofit sector in Britain, if it's the same Hillary Nichols that I know. Tips on airports, okay. I mean, obviously, we spend a lot of time flying and I'm perpetually getting attacked, understandably, for spending too much time on aeroplanes.

• 23:32Alastair Campbell?

  Including by me, has to be said.

• 23:33Rory Stewart?

  Including by you. And I started very, very young because... I was born in Hong Kong and then moved to London, then moved back to Malaysia with my parents. And I was sent off, when my parents were in Hong Kong, I was sent off to school in London on my own, on the plane. I'm not sure whether they do this anymore, but as an unaccompanied minor with a little thing around my neck.

• 23:51Alastair Campbell?

  With your name and, oh.

• 23:53Rory Stewart?

  Like Paddington, like Paddington Bear.

• 23:55Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, no. So sad.

• 23:59Rory Stewart?

  So the little eight-year-old Rory would set off with this little thing around its neck. And in those days, flying from Hong Kong, you often had to stop twice. And we'd suddenly find ourselves marooned in Bahrain at one point for thirty-six hours. And Bahrain in the early eighties for thirty-six hours was not very exciting for an eight-year-old.

• 24:15Alastair Campbell?

  And did somebody look after you?

• 24:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the, the poor old flight attendants from British Airways used to have to try to look after us.

• 24:21Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, my God.

• 24:22Rory Stewart?

  But I think, I, I don't think they allow it anymore. I, I tried, I was saying confidently to my wife that, you know, I was sure we could send my eight-year-old back on a plane. And she looked it up. And I think you've got to be fourteen or fifteen now to go.

• 24:33Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 24:34Rory Stewart?

  As an unaccompanied minor. Anyway, so, yeah, so I've had, I've had a lot of miles at, a lot of time on airlines for a long time. And I've come to the conclusion, first thing I do, obviously, is I'm somebody who cuts it very fine.

• 24:47Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I'm the, I'm the, I'm the opposite.

• 24:49Rory Stewart?

  I, I can imagine. You're more organised than me. I only have hand baggage. I can travel for three and a half, four weeks with only hand baggage. So I never, never check anything in.

• 24:58Alastair Campbell?

  Ditto, ditto. Yeah, with you on that one.

• 25:00Rory Stewart?

  And I've got, got some neat stuff when you go through security. There's, there's a rather sort of weird George Clooney movie in which he's a sort of travelling businessman, which opens with a sequence of him doing the perfect security X-ray check where he's got it.

• 25:15Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, up, up in the air?

• 25:16Rory Stewart?

  Up in the air, exactly.

• 25:17Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah. Love that film.

• 25:19Rory Stewart?

  I've, I've desperately tried to model myself on that ever since by having all my stuff all ready to roll through.

• 25:24Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, absolutely. I'm with you, two out of three.

• 25:27Rory Stewart?

  Final tip, never ever eat the food on the aeroplane. Go straight to sleep if you can with a sleeping pill and something over your eyes and eat at the airport or take a sandwich with you, but don't ever stay up for the meal.

• 25:41Alastair Campbell?

  That's really interesting. We're very, very similar, Rory. Apart from, I will happily, I do a lot of work in transit. I like writing on planes. I like writing in airports and railway stations. I like, so I will get there early. One of my many anxieties is the fear of missing a plane, or the fear of missing a train. And so I will tend to get there early. Dave Brailsford, cycling guru, I remember him once saying to me, rule one on a plane, never eat the food, take your own, eat in the lounge, make sure it's proper food, and drink loads and loads and loads of water, even if it means you're going to pee the whole time.

• 26:20Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So that one, just quickly on that, John Hat, an avid listener to the podcast, would want me to point out here that actually, ideally, you should take oral rehydration salts, stuff like Dioralite, because one of the biggest contributors to jet lag is not actually the time change, it's dehydration. And if you can take an oral rehydration salt, you can make a lot of difference to your recovery. I've just flown San Francisco to Amman, so that's a 10-hour time change. And I'm two days in and I'm back on a normal schedule. And I attribute part of that to rehydration salts. Henry, John, what are your top tips for a healthy diet and exercise during demanding work commitments?

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  The answer's in the question. You have to have a healthy diet, and you have to exercise. So I will, very, very rare that I don't do some sort of exercise, including, by the way, I once saw this guy, I was in, once had a long wait in Paris airport in transit somewhere. And there was this guy, you get running round, he was sort of running round, and then I saw him, then 10 minutes later, I saw him again, then I saw him again. So eventually, I stopped him, and he said he was doing a marathon. He was doing a marathon, running, running around the airport, because he had like, he had six hours to wait. He said he does a four-hour marathon.

• 27:36Rory Stewart?

  How terrific.

• 27:37Alastair Campbell?

  So I've done that a few times. If you're wearing the right gear, the thing is, if you run in airports, you have to find somebody to look after your bag. And I'm totally with you, by the way, never, ever, ever put your luggage in the hold, ever. It's just fatal. I can remember when I went to live in France for a year when I was a student, I told my, I bore my kids with this one the whole time, I had one quite small suitcase. You don't need that much stuff to travel. Go light.

• 28:02Rory Stewart?

  I had a, my most radical friend of all on this, we should get off the subject, but my radical friend of all had a theory. When I was doing my big walk, he told me I only needed to have three socks because I could, I could move my left sock to my right sock, wash my right sock and move the clean sock onto the left sock. Okay, now here we are. To finish up on a more serious subject, your great friends, the Lycée Topfa.

• 28:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 28:26Rory Stewart?

  This week, our first year class, Premier Baccalaureat SPAMC, is studying transhumanism. Do you agree with Yeovil Noah Harari that future human races will be AI-modified? Now, let me have a stab at that, and I'm going to hand back to you. I think this is fascinating. I think Yeovil Noah Harari is absolutely right that we are moving into a world in which it is very, very likely that humans will be modified, that artificial intelligence and robotics are going to change the way the world works, that we can see already in every dimension

• 29:07Rory Stewart?

  of our life, the way that artificial intelligence is probably going to eliminate billions of jobs worldwide and mean that by 2050, we are in a completely different work environment. It's going to pose huge security threats to us. It's going to upend our economy. We're going to have algorithms buying from algorithms with nobody understanding how those algorithms work. And I suppose the thing that is most striking, this is where I want to come back to you, is how little this features in our politics. I've just come back from California, where of course, people talk about almost nothing else except technology and artificial intelligence. And then you realise that these leadership elections in Britain, the US election, the Israeli election, almost none of them ever talk about the fact that technology is

• 29:51Rory Stewart?

  likely to completely upend our world in the next 20 years.

• 29:55Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know if you noticed, or I don't know which document you're reading the questions from, but I picked out the Lycée Topfa question. That's three weeks in a row the Lycée's managed to land a question. We've got thousands of listeners that are going to be very pissed off with the Lycée Topfa. But I did, I did put at the top, Rory, definitely one for Rory this because you are.

• 30:15Alastair Campbell?

  I, look, I completely agree with you. In fact, I'll tell you something. One political figure who bangs on about this relentlessly is my old boss, Tony Blair. And he said something very, very similar to me recently. He said, all these elections in Brazil and these big European elections, why is nobody talking about both the threats and the opportunities of artificial intelligence? And, you know, I think, I do hope that as we get closer to general election in the UK. I was glad to see Keir Starmer yesterday out in a white coat in a scientific setting. I was pleased with that. I think that this whole kind of environmental approach and, and, but seizing the opportunities of science, research and development technology. I find the whole thing, what you just said there, I find quite scary, but it's clearly where we're heading.

• 31:00Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's completely terrifying. And, and everything that I'm seeing now, every time I'm on the West Coast, every time I'm with people at Google, every time I'm with anybody in any of the sector, it is extraordinary what's now being achieved. And it will mean that quite soon we will not need, I'm afraid, doctors, accountants.

• 31:21Alastair Campbell?

  You won't need doctors. We'll be operated on by machines.

• 31:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, because pretty soon an AI doctor will be much more reliable than a human doctor because at the moment, obviously, if a human doctor, a new bit of research comes out, they have to read the paper. An AI doctor can be updated in a second globally, worldwide. They also have a hive mind so that a doctor is an individual, but an AI doctor can communicate with billions of interactions worldwide, informing and improving the algorithm all the time. Now, a great bunch of that could mean that if you're in a village in Africa in 20 years' time, you could get really high quality healthcare from your AI doctor. But it means that lots of professions, accountancy, law possibly, many, many manual professions.

• 32:07Rory Stewart?

  This is going to be a problem for Africa. One in 10 children born in the world are going to be born in Nigeria by 2050. And of course, there's going to be less and less demand for manual labour. So it's going to be very difficult for many economies to transform. And I'm absolutely with Tony Blair. It's bewildering. That with all this happening, elections still feel exactly as they did 20, 30 years ago. Nobody's talking about technology.

• 32:31Alastair Campbell?

  Tax and spend, health and education, transport and crime. It's very, very, yeah. So there's, there's a, there's a kind of related question, but maybe one that, that is less terrifying. Dr. Lee John Curtley, last week on Question Time, this is after our interview with Ollon, you both discussed companies that work across borders. How much do you think companies like Tesla and Amazon compare to the East India Company of old? And are these companies continuing Western colonialism throughout the world?

• 32:59Rory Stewart?

  Well, this is our sister podcast, which is called Empire. One of the presenters there, William Dalrymple, has written a book on the British Empire in India, which drew a very, very explicit comparison with these big global corporations and points out basically that the British Empire in India was a global corporation that was in it for trade and that everything else that came out of it, its military, its government, its administration, was really just a way of facilitating its, its trade. And he, he drew the analogies with Enron, and I'm, I'm sure he'd be up for drawing analogies with people like Amazon. I mean, there, there is a difference, of course, which is that we're still in a world in which these companies are not actually physically running governments in the way

• 33:44Rory Stewart?

  that the East India Company did. But you, you will have seen some of the reporting around Linton Crosby. So Linton Crosby, the Australian election strategist, whose partner, Mr. Fulbrook, had been the chief of staff very briefly for Liz Truss. You remember we were talking about him because he didn't take a salary in.

• 34:00Alastair Campbell?

  He'll, he'll doubtless be in her resignation on his list.

• 34:03Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 34:03Alastair Campbell?

  He's sterling public service.

• 34:06Rory Stewart?

  But that they had been hired by companies, it appears, to try to influence the elections in Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia. And that was quite striking to be reminded of how big mining companies can get involved in hiring election consultants to try to turn elections around.

• 34:24Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. I mean, I think what's, what's interesting though is that the And William Del Impul, far better qualified than either of us to talk about this. But I'm imagining that for the East India Company, they understood that they had that political role and they understood that there was a kind of Britishness to it. Whereas what I think you see with the Teslas and the Amazons and the, you know, the kind of genuinely multinational brands that cross these borders. Olan made this point about Elon Musk, he doesn't see himself as having a loyalty to a country that he's doing this for. He has a, he has a loyalty to a company, his own company that goes, that is trying to escape from the control of countries and escape from any state nation control. So I think it's, I think there are similarities, but just as I'm worried by the whole transhumanism

• 35:09Alastair Campbell?

  thing, I'm, I'm slightly worried that these companies are becoming much more powerful than nation states and we'll, we'll regret that in the end.

• 35:14Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think on that, on that happy and cheerful note should bring it to a close.

• 35:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, lovely to talk to you, Rory.

• 35:20Rory Stewart?

  Lovely to talk to you too. Have a very great week and look forward to speaking next week. Bye bye.

• 35:25Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.