191. Braverman sacked and Cameron returns

The emergency pod button has been pushed as David Cameron returns to politics and Suella Braverman has been sacked. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. 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

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• 0:04Rory Stewart?

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• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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• 2:11Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:14Rory Stewart?

  And me Rory Stewart.

• 2:15Alastair Campbell?

  And it's been quite a day. The very, very good news that Cyril Braverman, who should never have been appointed in the first place, has finally been sacked as Home Secretary. And the sort of jaw dropping news that David Cameron, former Prime Minister, is now back as the new Foreign Secretary. Lots of other changes still going on around us. We'll come on to those in a minute. Anyway, as a result of that, we listened. We listened to you all. Those of you who said there must be an emergency podcast, so we hit the button.

• 2:47Rory Stewart?

  That's wonderful. And we can see an amazing stream of comments already coming in. I don't know whether you've ever done these things, Alistair, but we've got about 75 comments in already saying things like, Alistair and Rory for King and Queen, or petition to make Gary Neville the Foreign Secretary.

• 3:02Alastair Campbell?

  I'm very glad it was in that order.

• 3:04Rory Stewart?

  Very good. So anyway, for those of you who are listening on the podcast, we're doing things a bit differently. We're recording a live and interactive podcast on YouTube. If you're listening to this on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you might get your podcasts, this might sound a bit different than usual. We'll be reacting to news as well as taking live questions from listeners on the live stream.

• 3:25Alastair Campbell?

  And if any of your friends are sort of doing terrible things like having a day job and unable to join us now, this will go out as it were, a normal podcast as soon as we get all the sort of graphics and that stuff put on there. So let's get going Rory. Pretty, pretty big potatoes, I'd say. Whether it will change the dial of our politics, I'm not sure. But my God, wouldn't I have liked to be I've been trying to get Tony Blair to talk to me about what it was like backstage at the Senate House yesterday. Because if you think that there's Sudak walking in front of the former Prime Ministers, including David Cameron, who he probably has already lived up, past James Cleverly,

• 4:05Alastair Campbell?

  who's about to shift from a job that he wants to keep to one that he doesn't necessarily want to do, then past Braverman, who he's about to sack. Braverman and Cleverly then lay a wreath together, and then they will troupe in backstage to have tea and cakes.

• 4:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, we need, we need to get your friend Tony on to talk about it. So I think first thing, just to, I guess, set the context for reshuffles.

• 4:32Rory Stewart?

  This is going to be a very big deal, obviously, for Rishi Sunak. He won't have waited until this morning to line up David Cameron for the job. Obviously, you don't ask the person into Downing Street if they're going to say no. So he probably would have lined him up a few days ago. And they will have been waiting for the timing. What's the right time to get rid of Suella Braverman? And I guess one of the calculations was, why not do it on Thursday? Why not do it on Friday? Why not do it on Saturday? And I'm guessing the answer is that they were waiting to see how the demonstrations panned out. What's your view on the timing bit?

• 5:05Alastair Campbell?

  Um, Paul, I think if he was talking to David Cameron about coming in as Foreign Secretary, I think that sounds to me like a done deal. Once they'd sorted out a few questions, I suspect they've had to sort out questions about how David Cameron becomes accountable from the House of Lords. They'll have had to sort out questions which they'll be asked about, about money. David Cameron is on a former Prime Minister allowance, which is a very, very large whack of cash. Does he also take a full salary alongside that? All the sort of difficult questions that are probably asked about the politics of whether he now has to go out as a defender of the government's Brexit position, which he, we know he doesn't support. Does he have to, does this make austerity more difficult for the government, given

• 5:50Alastair Campbell?

  that he's, as it were, with Osborne, it's chief architect? I think they'll have gone through that. Cameron will then have said, okay, I'm up for it. I think he would have, Braverman, of course, has lobbed in this hand grenade of the article in the Times undermining the police. I don't think they could have done anything of this nature over the weekend, either on the Saturday because of the protests going on, or on the Sunday because of the armistice, because of the Remembrance Day events in Whitehall themselves. So I think he probably did have it for the Monday. And of course, it, it does mean there are consequential changes. So Cameron goes in as Foreign Secretary. Braverman out, James Cleverly, and he said, you know, I said to Fiona yesterday when we were

• 6:33Alastair Campbell?

  watching the Senate, I said, that is going to be a picture, you know, when the two of them walk together. And Fiona has been saying for a while now, and I think she may have a point, that Cleverly is probably more of a contender for the leadership than Braverman. Braverman, I don't think does have the support that she thinks she has. I think she has a lot of vanity and a lot of ambition. I'm not sure she has support. But to see the two of them together, that must have been a moment and a half for Sulak. He watches them, and he's the only person that knows what he's about to do, probably.

• 7:06Rory Stewart?

  Amazing. Well, let's take it back to the question of what it means to firstly get rid of Braverman, and then we'll move on to what it means to get rid of, to bring in Cameron. So getting rid of Braverman first. I think the first thing is, obviously, you've been pushing for a long time. You've been saying it's very important. And I think it's a litmus test of whether a prime minister is able to keep authority in his own cabinet. I mean, she broke the rules. She was supposed to clear an article that she didn't clear. And it's also a question, I guess, of his moral values. He's been clearly allowing Suella Braverman to remain in the cabinet,

• 7:48Rory Stewart?

  saying things that we presume that he's uncomfortable with for a long time. And I've explained it in terms of fights within the Conservative Party. He's now got rid of her. And what do you think are the risks that she will be a sort of martyr, and the Conservative Party will now tear themselves to pieces?

• 8:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think she's a symptom of them tearing themselves to pieces anyway. You've said several times that the Conservative Party has almost become like a sort of series of factions. I think she will, you know, she said she sort of was channeling Arnold Schwarzenegger. She basically was saying, you know, I'll be back. You know, you haven't heard the last of me, kind of thing. I think she will cause trouble. I think, look, if you're going to cause trouble for a prime minister while you're literally sitting at his right hand inside the cabinet. Then the idea you're going to stop causing trouble for him once you're out the cabinet is a nonsense. She'll cause trouble. The question is whether it has traction. And I think my sense is what Sunak is trying to do by putting, by bringing back Cameron,

• 8:50Alastair Campbell?

  some of the other changes, there's a mixed picture of the other changes, we'll come on to those. But I think what he's trying to do, frankly, is do what he should have done when he came over, when he, when he first moved into Downey Street from number 11, which is to, to get the Conservative Party to a more sensible, grown up position. Um, I, my worry, if I were him, was whether frankly, it's all too late and whether the questions that are going to surround David Cameron, related to Brexit, related to austerity, related to his financial dealings. I think the Greensill thing, we'll hear a lot about that again. But I think with Braverman, it's intolerable. You cannot have a Prime Minister who is willfully and deliberately undermined in the way that she undermined him, undermined him last week. You just cannot tolerate that.

• 9:34Rory Stewart?

  So, so let's start with the fact that in a sense, he's got no option other than to get rid of her. I was talking to an MP this morning as the, as the news came through. And he said, whoa, quite a lot of my constituents have got quite a lot of sympathy with Suella Braverman and agree with quite a lot of the things she says. So I guess that's one type of risk. I don't know how many of those people are, but maybe there's 20, 25% of the public who sympathize with a lot of what Braverman says, sympathize with her on immigration, on boats, probably agree with her on, uh, they may not agree with her about her comments about homeless people, but they probably don't like seeing tents in cities.

• 10:18Rory Stewart?

  They probably don't like, and this is a very, um, sensitive point, but I'm assuming that there are a lot of voters out there, and some of my constituents would have been like this, who do not like the sight of people walking through London with balaclavas on and Islamist bandanas, because it reminds them of ISIS and terrorismist demonstrations. And so there's a possibility that she may try to use this issue to position herself in the sort of anti-woke vote.

• 10:52Alastair Campbell?

  She will do that, without a doubt, and there is a constituency for that. But the other thing we shouldn't forget is that her record as Home Secretary has been pretty hopeless. Now, that can now disappear into the ether because she no longer does the job. And what you'll see happen, the way the media will treat her now will be very different. Because they will see her as somebody who's going to be interesting because she can undermine the people who are now in power. But I think there'll be, I think she's, I think she underestimates how, how much she's undermined herself by the manner of her conduct. Most people, maybe not all these Tory party members who gave us truss and gave us Johnson, but I think most decent people actually, whatever they think of the Prime Minister,

• 11:34Alastair Campbell?

  don't like somebody who's out there just sort of deliberately undermining them for their own ambition. And also the stuff that you were, you were quoting there, that people support her on, it is to my mind, it's the populist stuff. I don't believe she thinks for a second that sending people to Rwanda is the way to resolve the boats problem. I don't believe for a second that she actually thinks it's a genuine, you know, it's a crisis facing the country that makes the Prime Minister make it one of his five priorities. It's classic populism. Now, I think Sunak, if he's got any sense at all, in my view, will sit, will use this as the moment to signal real change. But I just think he may be, it just may be too late.

• 12:13Rory Stewart?

  Can I just bring in the, the comments coming down the right hand side of the screen? So we don't, we don't normally have this going on, and they've been pouring in so fast it's very difficult to keep up with. I'm trying to concentrate on you and my eyes going to these comments. But it's going everywhere from people saying 25% of people, nothing like that, and people saying 0.01% of the 300,000 demonstrations, to other people coming and saying it's 75% you left wing nut, you know, so it's extraordinary kind of running commentary on this.

• 12:41Alastair Campbell?

  That's, Rory, can I just tell you, it's why I never look at Twitter comments.

• 12:47Alastair Campbell?

  I occasionally dip in, but I'm sure the, but I'm trying to sort of, here's one, here's a good one. Well, let's just explain this. Why is David Cameron returning by entering the House of Lords even legal? To my, by my reckoning, he's at least the, since the, since what we might call modern times, going back, you know, last century, I think he's the sixth Foreign Secretary who's done the job from the House of Lords. So it's certainly not illegal. It's a bit Victorian for sure.

• 13:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And can I just comment on that? It really has a Victorian feel. So people will remember that traditionally Cabinet Ministers could come from the House of Lords or the House of Commons. We had Prime Ministers who came from the House of Lords back in the Victorian era. So, you know, famously, lots of these people, Lord Salisbury would be an example, and Foreign Secretary is people like Lord Palmerston, Duke of Wellington. But it's been a pretty long time in British politics since this has happened. The famous recent or relatively recent example that people remember is Alec Douglas Hume, who'd been the Prime Minister, then being brought back to be Foreign Secretary. But of course, that's more than 50 years ago now.

• 13:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. You've had, I think the last, you had Carrington under Thatcher, and he resigned over the Falklands. But he wasn't a previous Prime Minister. You had Douglas Hume, as you say, Lord Halifax, and before them, Lord Reading and Lord Curzon.

• 14:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I think, I think someone's going to correct me, but I think Lord Reading had been an MP before he entered the House of Lords.

• 14:15Alastair Campbell?

  Correct, correct. And I think that, so David Cameron adds himself, dare we use your distinguished word, Rory? Is this a distinguished list or not?

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's a very interesting list. I mean, Lord Reading, Marcus of Reading, was a very interesting figure at the early 20th century. He was, he was Jewish and he was incredibly able. He'd been, I think, Secretary of State for India. But it was a big reach for him to become Foreign Secretary. And one of the questions that's been asked on Twitter, which I want to stop you on for a second before we get on to the

• 14:47Alastair Campbell?

  It's not Twitter, it's not Twitter.

• 14:48Rory Stewart?

  Sorry.

• 14:49Alastair Campbell?

  It's not Twitter.

• 14:49Rory Stewart?

  On the side of the YouTube comment.

• 14:50Alastair Campbell?

  It's a live feed.

• 14:51Rory Stewart?

  It's the live feed YouTube comment.

• 14:53Alastair Campbell?

  Either way, Rory, you probably listen to him, but an Austrian listener has just asked either of one of us to become Chancellor of Austria. So that's quite

• 15:00Rory Stewart?

  Well, I was trying to, I was trying to, obviously, in our last leading interview, try to convince Arnold Schwarzenegger to do that, but he wasn't having any of it, was he?

• 15:08Alastair Campbell?

  No, he wouldn't have it. He wouldn't have it.

• 15:09Rory Stewart?

  No. So one of the things that came in on the feed is somebody saying, why didn't he bring in William Hague? And I, I think there's a very, very strong likelihood that he tried to get in William Hague and William Hague said no.

• 15:23Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Hmm. The, the, listen, the other thing you never know about these reshuffles until they're kind of over. And, and even then, you might never find out the full, the full picture. But I, my understanding is that James Cleverly really did not want to do this, that he felt that he was doing a genuinely important job at an incredibly difficult time with the Middle East thing going on. To be fair to him, I think I, I said to you in a previous podcast, he has been holding the line for a more serious approach on this, where he brings David Lammy in, that he briefs Keir Starmer fully and that sort of thing. And that there's, they tried to build a kind of consensus position. Whereas you've had the Bravermans and the Goofs, who've been really wanting to stir

• 16:06Alastair Campbell?

  this up for Labour, as it were. And I think he sort of felt that he was a bit of a round peg in a round hole. And now he's been shipped out just because she was doing the job in a way that was annoying Sunak. And we should also put in the, in the newsletter, there was a wonderful article, which somebody sent me today from the Independent, just after, a few days after Sunak became Prime Minister. And the headline that was Sunak, no regrets over appointing Braverman. And saying that he felt that she'd learnt her lessons and nothing like this would ever happen again. Now Rory, this question has gone through. Would Rory accept a lordship and go into the Cabinet for Rishi Sunak?

• 16:45Rory Stewart?

  If someone had offered me the chance to be Foreign Secretary, I definitely would have accepted. You would have lost your podcast co-host.

• 16:52Alastair Campbell?

  Right, okay.

• 16:55Rory Stewart?

  No, I think, I think, no.

• 16:56Alastair Campbell?

  So your crawling messages to Rishi, is that what they were about?

• 16:59Rory Stewart?

  Those just didn't work, did they? Obviously didn't work. Obviously, I've not been complimentary enough on the podcast about the whole Conservative machine.

• 17:06Alastair Campbell?

  Now, can I give you, can I give you a quick question? How many Foreign Secretaries have there been since Brexit?

• 17:14Rory Stewart?

  Foreign Secretaries since Brexit? Well, I can try to count it, can't I? So it was William Hague, Philip Hammond, Jeremy Hunt, sorry Boris Johnson, Jeremy Hunt. So I'm going to go for seven.

• 17:29Alastair Campbell?

  Seven, you're absolutely right. Seven, since, we've had eight Environment Secretaries since 2016. I'll give you a million pounds if you can list them within 30 seconds.

• 17:40Rory Stewart?

  I once almost got a million pounds off you trying to do that.

• 17:43Alastair Campbell?

  You did, you did. I'll tell you, Liz Truss, Andrea Lettsom, Michael Gove, Theresa Villiers, George Eustace, I'd forgotten this guy existed, Ranuljai Wadina, Theresa Coffey, and now Steve Barclay. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. 16 Housing Ministers, as I said, we had six Health Secretaries. There's a great question from Jason Peel. Rory, you could have been the first podcasting Foreign Secretary.

• 18:09Rory Stewart?

  Actually, it would be amazing for Britain's soft power, isn't it? We could rethink the Foreign Office. We could just do our great podcast explainers. Okay, let's, let me slow this down for a bit, so that we're not completely distracted by the live feed.

• 18:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I'm not going to look at them for a while.

• 18:22Rory Stewart?

  Question of the advantages and disadvantages of bringing in David Cameron. I'll have a first stab and then I'm going to hand you. So, advantage. Of course, it seems quite strong to have a former Prime Minister coming in to work for you. So it seems like quite a confident thing that a former Prime Minister would agree to be underneath you. I think David Cameron has an advantage that he knows a lot of these world leaders very well. So he wouldn't only be able to have the normal access for Foreign Secretary, but if he flies around the world, I suspect the heads of state will come in and say hello as well.

• 19:02Rory Stewart?

  I think he represents for many people, somebody who, despite the catastrophic referendum, was at least on the remain side and in 2010 represented compassionate conservatism and a slightly more left wing vision of the Conservative Party. So could be a move towards reconciliation and you can make that case for some of the other people that he's brought in. Victoria Atkins was also more on the remain side. And then the case against, I think there's going to be an enormous amount over the next few days of people going through what David Cameron has been doing with his finances over the last six, seven years, lobbying, representing. So there'll be a real attempt to do that. I don't know

• 19:47Rory Stewart?

  whether journalists will find something, but that's going to be a big risk because that would change the story round from we've brought in a dignified big hitter to suddenly the newspapers being dominated by scandals around David Cameron. And I think the other thing is, at some point, getting into what his real record is on foreign affairs. I mean, I felt, working for him, I got often very frustrated. I began to, obviously, once we saw the ERG going and Boris Johnson coming in, I began to miss him more. But at the time, 2010 to 2016, I was often very much at loggerheads with him on foreign policy. Anyway, over to you.

• 20:28Alastair Campbell?

  I've got, you know how I love my little letter things. I've got an ABC, which I think is a bit of a problem. Austerity, Brexit, China. He was the architect of austerity. That's going to be a big part of Labour's campaign. He is the guy who gave us the referendum, which has given us a lot of the mess that we often talk about. And I think for the Conservative Party, his views on China, now I'm sure he's a very slick, professional politician, he'll, whatever Sunak is sort of, you know, he'll find a way of adapting. But I think that could be, that could become a problem. And the Greensill stuff, that story kind of, you know, came and went. But Lex Greensill, as I understand it, is still under a criminal investigation.

• 21:12Alastair Campbell?

  Over dealings in which David Cameron earned ten million dollars for lobbying. So all it would need would would be something that we don't know to sort of trigger that one to come out again. And then it looks like Sunak's reset has gone off kilter again. And people will be will be looking for that. I think it's only fair, Rory, as you've got a book out at the moment called Politics on the Edge, that we should take a little bit of a look of, I've just had a quick look through the index, the David Cameron index. I've got to say, I think he comes worse out of your book than he does out of mine.

• 21:48Alastair Campbell?

  First of all, and it might be related to the fact that I think the first mention, it's basically him telling somebody that you're the last sort of person that they want in, the last kind of person they want in Parliament. You basically say he's obsessed with the news and the news agenda. You weren't impressed by the fact that he considered himself to be an expert on Afghanistan because he's flown there for a few day trips. You thought backbenchers are sidelined by him. He was too, he was too sort of in hoc to financial services people. And let me just remind you, Rory, this may, this may not help your future career. But I have to tell you, this is what you, this is your judgment on his approach to foreign policy. This is after he left.

• 22:32Alastair Campbell?

  I did not regret his departure. Partly, I had not liked the way he approached foreign policy. He hadn't challenged the global financial system or questioned Obama's approach to Afghanistan. I felt he'd failed to prepare for a military threat from Russia, good point, and mishandled Libya and Syria and misjudged his charm offensive on China. Pretty damning, Rory.

• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I don't think he's about to appoint me as an ambassador anytime soon.

• 23:00Alastair Campbell?

  Either inside or outside the House of Lords.

• 23:03Rory Stewart?

  No, no.

• 23:04Alastair Campbell?

  What's all that about? But you do, you said before that you felt he was superficial.

• 23:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think if I step back for a second, I think he is somebody who is very much a product of the nineties. He Kind of came of age at the time the Berlin Wall fell. That's when he began his sort of political career. He went into politics very early, straight from university. And his worldview was very much dominated by that. It was, and we talk about that era from about 1989 to 2005 a lot. And 2005 is when he became Conservative Party leader, and that's when David Cameron's character was formed. So it was the era of John Major. It was, of course, the era of you and Tony Blair. It was an era when the US was unchallenged in the world, where the number of democracies in the

• 23:50Rory Stewart?

  world was doubling, where the world was becoming more peaceful and prosperous all the time, where there was this idea of liberal intervention, responsibility to protect, the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo that seemed to go well. All of that was what created him. And he never saw really how the world changed in 2005. He didn't see how the financial crisis was going to change things. He didn't see how Iraq and Afghanistan were going to humiliate foreign policy. He didn't really take on board the widening inequalities that were emerging. He remained somebody who, from 2010 onwards, and I think this is probably true of Ed Miliband and Ed Balls too, they're all the same generation.

• 24:31Rory Stewart?

  They're all part of the same products, continued to act, as late as 2015, as though they were still in that 89 to 2005 period. And my question really is, as Foreign Secretary, can he adapt to a very, very different world order where Britain, in 2005, when he became Conservative Party leader, the British economy was still larger than the Chinese economy. It's now seven times, seven times smaller than the Chinese economy. So can he adjust to a very, very different world? Anyway, over to you.

• 25:05Alastair Campbell?

  That, well, I mean, I guess we'll see in the next day, few days, a sort of reaction. I think within the Conservative Party, it's made those who are not on the right, the hard right, like Braverman, feel slightly happier with life, I suspect. I think it's saying to them, Sunak has decided that this whole sort of, you know, Bang the drum, stop the votes, popularize, stop the boats, popularize everything, um, isn't doing them any good. The by-elections were a disaster for them. They seem to be going backwards in most parts of the country. I wonder if also because of who and what Cameron represents, the kind of conservatism he represents, whether it's partly Sunak saying, look, I think for

• 25:50Alastair Campbell?

  much of the red wall, we're gonna, we're gonna have to let it go. But the way that where they're watching their backs is in the so-called blue wall. And I think what this is partly about is trying to turn a lot of those don't knows in the polls, who are probably former Tories, back into the Tory, the Tory camp. I think that's what this is about. Um, but I think it's a bit late. And I think also it shows that my, my, one of my great heroes on strategy, Gary Kasparov, says never change the strategy unless the fundamentals change. I don't believe the fundamentals have actually changed. They haven't changed since Sunak became prime minister. What's changing is his approach to it. But I don't believe it's because he actually needs to do this now. It's

• 26:35Alastair Campbell?

  that he didn't do it when he should have done it.

• 26:37Rory Stewart?

  Um, do you think they're going to, I, it's absolutely, I'm mesmerizing what's going on in the live stream. I get all these people saying, why is Rory drinking a whole flagon of tea? Has he texted congratulations to David Cameron yet? Since I've got that 11 times, I'm going to respond. Um, I don't think David Cameron likes me very much. And I think my texting him congratulations might go down like a

• 26:56Alastair Campbell?

  I have, I have, I have.

• 26:58Rory Stewart?

  You have, oh.

• 26:59Alastair Campbell?

  I, I, I've said to him, I'll read you exactly what I said to him. This is, um, well, well, well, I said, brackets, done, brackets. Don't you think this is the perfect time for a three hour special on the rest is politics? Let's see what he replies, Rory.

• 27:16Rory Stewart?

  Oh, how wonderful, how wonderful.

• 27:17Alastair Campbell?

  It'd be a great place to get all his views out on foreign

• 27:20Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely, and, and put me in my place. Um, would it, do you think they're going to use David Cameron now much more in the media? That they'll put him out to do the Sunday shows, that he'll become much more of a spokesman as they go into the next election?

• 27:33Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's a, he is a, he is a good, technically, he's a quite a good communicator. I mean, he, you know, I think he's a better communicator than Sunak by a long way. Better, better communicator than Hunt. They might do, but I think it's a big risk. Because he, what people will want to do, and even the sort of client journalists, of which there are many, will want to sort of get into the guts of what this is all about. They'll want to sort of explore all the divisions. He won't get away, I think, with doing interviews without being pressed on Brexit or austerity. And on some of the big foreign policy decisions that you talked about. Robert Schlimsley, Schlimsley at the Financial Times, who is, you know, quite a Serbian, but also quite a serious journalist.

• 28:18Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know if you saw his tweet. It just said, "Time to do a, a thread on David Cameron's previous foreign policy achievements." They just said, "One out of one." So there was no thread. So I think, I think it would be, um, look, it's given, what I think about this in general, I think it's bold. I think it's made them a bit more interesting for a bit. It means we're talking about Braverman now in the past, which is, I think, quite a good thing for.

• 28:46Rory Stewart?

  So, so just to interrupt, tell us, so what, one thing possibly that they're doing there is you, you're suggesting that it actually suits number 10 also because it moves the story on from Braverman's bitterness to the question of Cameron.

• 28:59Alastair Campbell?

  To the question of Cameron and also the question of whether this is Sunak trying to do a really genuine repositioning. So, for example, we've got the Rwanda case coming up in the courts. Now, I hear from sources close to sources who know lawyers, I hear that actually the government, there's a very good chance the government's going to win this. If that's the case, be interesting to see how the reaction is. But if they lose it. What Bravom was all lined up to do was to go for this pullout of the European Convention on Human Rights. Well, both Cameron and James Cleverly now, who's taken over from the Home Office, both of them are on record as saying that would be a very, very stupid thing to do. So that presumably is dead. Does that then provoke these ERG people? The truth is,

• 29:44Alastair Campbell?

  though, this is what I tried via the podcast to tell Sunak and his people from the word go. You can't trade, you can't trade with these people. You have to do your own thing and understand that between now and the general election, Sunak is pretty much safe. He's going to be there. If he's not, then the Tories are done. I mean, and they might as well just all go home and not even bother having an election. There's another interesting appointment, I thought, where he Greg Hans, the Tory chairman, has been moved. Just business, I think he did that before. And the new guy, Richard Holden, I suspect that's a new name to most of our listeners. But it suggests to me that Sunak still needs to have a few

• 30:21Alastair Campbell?

  basic lessons about politics, because this guy's got a majority of 1,144. Now, to be the party chairman, where you have to become a high profile defender of everything the government does and in the campaign, if that's your majority, I think he can wave bye bye to his seat. So easily.

• 30:41Rory Stewart?

  It's an interesting one, isn't it? The often you're looking for people to put into party chairman who are real campaigners who really fight elections. And of course, someone with a marginal seat like that, small majority, is somebody who had to work very, very hard on winning their seat, keeping their seat. But you're right. I mean, this is what happened to Chris Patton, who was the chairman for John Major and ended up losing his own seat as the chairman. Although Chris Patton went on to do pretty well afterwards. Other bits, the reshuffles. So. Steve Barclay will be frustrated. He was Health Secretary. He was meant to be.

• 31:22Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think the NHS will be frustrated.

• 31:24Rory Stewart?

  The NHS not not be frustrated.

• 31:26Alastair Campbell?

  They have not enjoyed his time.

• 31:28Rory Stewart?

  But but that's a very interesting move and will lead to some very strange dynamics around the Cabinet table because Steve Barclay was very much brought in. He's an ex-management consultant, I think a former accountant to come in and really focus on remodeling the NHS and a lot more money was put into the NHS and he will feel rightly or wrongly that he's had the legs cut out from him in the middle of what he was trying to do and he's been moved to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is a less senior position. You actually know it. I mean, when I was sitting at the Cabinet table, you literally see ministers moved down the table. The seniority is how close you are to the Prime Minister. So he will be literally shifted down the table.

• 32:12Alastair Campbell?

  He's now he's now basically become Fergal Sharky's shadow.

• 32:16Rory Stewart?

  Fergal Sharky's shadow. And it but of course, very frustrating for farmers and people who care about the environment to get a sense that DEFRA is a sort of second best job.

• 32:26Alastair Campbell?

  Batters on the on leading, she said it was just so frustrating to keep seeing these people moving around. And we've never had churn like this. And and yet again, these ones who get sacked will get a nice big fat fat payoff. I see Nick Gibb is going. He must be about the longest serving.

• 32:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so Nick Gibb is the other end of the spectrum. We often talk about how quickly people are reshuffled, but Nick Gibb has been in almost continuously as a junior education minister, Minister of State and Education since 2010.

• 33:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Rory Stewart?

  Which is 13 years, which means and most civil servants, senior civil servants are often only in the role for a couple of years. So Nick Gibb will have seen six cycles of civil servants go through. Another example of that was George Eustace, who didn't do quite as long, but was a junior minister and then the Secretary of State in DEFRA for a very, very long time. Nick Gibb has stepped down, saying that he has been, he's going to go on, seems to be an ambassador somewhere. And he's somebody who there was a lot of affection for in the House of Commons. He represented something unusual. Somebody who seemed to be willing to be a junior minister in a department and put in a dozen years. He put a lot of focus on improving British students' scores in maths and it seems to be

• 33:47Rory Stewart?

  quite effective, gone up a piece of tables on maths, gone up on literacy. But I know that Fiona, Fiona, your wife, who follows this very closely, wasn't always a fan. Is that right?

• 33:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think, I mean, I was in a school today and I think most people in the education sector, the state education sector, when you talk about Nick Gibb, they think he and go between them have done an awful lot of, an awful lot of damage. There's a great question here from Sam Hills. I wonder if Alistair regrets turning down a peerage now that he would have had the opportunity to hold a sitting member of the cabinet to account. It will be interesting. David Lammy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, has put out a statement saying that, you know, there needs to be some way that Cameron is answerable to MPs. I mean, and I guess this is the other thing that will happen, because he obviously can't turn up in the House of Commons and the Lords is much more sort of gentle in the way that it debates, I suspect the select committees

• 34:40Alastair Campbell?

  will be gagging to get Cameron up before them.

• 34:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Well, this question of accountability is, is really important. And I wonder, as we think about the constitution, why exactly we couldn't be bold and say that a Secretary of State who's in the Lords can't go into the Commons and answer questions. I know the answer is that, you know, the, nobody who isn't elected a member of the House of Commons is allowed to pass into the Commons Chamber and all this sort of thing. But the principle of accountability seems to me pretty fundamental. And remind us a little bit about Mandelson, because that's, people were surprised by this, but it's not the first time it's happened recently.

• 35:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, when, when Gordon became Prime Minister, he, Peter Mandelson was, was out of Parliament, working in the European Commission and Gordon got him back, put him in the House of Lords and made him Business Secretary and First Secretary of State. So it's not, it's not unprecedented on the Labour side either. Do you think he might have thought about Theresa May?

• 35:47Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I think that's a, I think if you were Theresa May, you probably would have been very tempted by the role of Foreign Secretary. So I think he might have thought about Theresa May. I also stick to my view, I've got no inside information on this, but Rishi Sunak is very, very close to William Hague. William Hague was his predecessor in Richmond. And if you read William Hague in The Times, he's talking up Rishi Sunak a lot, was an early supporter of his leadership bid. I think there's a very strong likelihood he approached William Hague first. But interestingly, I think William Hague probably doesn't want to do that role. He's stepped out of the House of Lords, he's stepped out of public life. I think he's been quite grateful to do that. And remember, he stepped down a year early as Foreign Secretary.

• 36:30Rory Stewart?

  And I remember him saying to me, I was very, very shocked that he would want to step down as Foreign Secretary, because obviously it's a job that I and many, many other MPs would see as one of the great jobs in government. But he certainly found it pretty frustrating. He, I think, probably conscious maybe that Britain's power isn't all that it was. But also, a lot of the time, you feel like a travelling salesman, you know, for some Foreign Secretaries, basically selling British armaments abroad and stuff like that. So he may have thought, I've done that already, I don't want to do it again.

• 37:03Alastair Campbell?

  We talked recently about the whole thing about families as well. I wonder what David Cameron's wife thinks about it. I mean, if he's going to do the job and do it properly, he's going to be travelling a lot, he's going to be away a lot again, he's going to be under the cosh again, he's going to be getting scrutinised pretty heavily again. And I wonder whether, I'd love to know what she's, what she's thinking about it. And while on the subject of spouses, very, this was on my list of things to raise and see what you thought, but it's come in from a question from Ahmed Aja Khawee. Interesting to see the new Secretary of State for Health, Victoria Atkins, is married to the Managing Director of British Sugar.

• 37:44Rory Stewart?

  And she's diabetic.

• 37:46Alastair Campbell?

  And do, yeah, do potential real or perceived conflicts of interest ever get discussed when reshuffling a cabinet? The truth is that they do. And that was one, because I was aware of that connection, that was one that my, my, my antennae did prick up a little bit when I saw that. That's quite, you know, we've got a big obesity strategy apparently, and you've got the health secretary literally in bed.

• 38:09Rory Stewart?

  I also think this live streaming, Alistair, is attempting to troll me all the time. There's people sending things like Rory, the sticker under the cup, or wave at my six year old.

• 38:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I got one who said that my, he said, my wife loves Rory more than she loves me. I get loads like that, but I just, I just blank them out now, Rory.

• 38:27Rory Stewart?

  You just, just blank that, yeah.

• 38:29Alastair Campbell?

  But there's one that says 17,500 viewers, GB News don't get this in a week. I don't know about that. I don't know about that.

• 38:38Rory Stewart?

  So there's somebody in the thread said, as a working class Tory voter, I can tell you this has finished him. So that, that will be the somebody in the thread here, expressing the view of the right to the Conservative Party, who like Liz Truss, like Suella Braverman, felt that Rishi Sunak betrayed Boris Johnson, felt that even though Rishi Sunak was a Brexiteer, he's too centrist for their liking, and feel that bringing in David Cameron just confirms everything that they were suspicious of right back in 2010, and that drove them to vote for UKIP, I guess.

• 39:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I think, look, just as there's a danger in us assuming that our excellent listeners on the thread represent the totality of public opinion. So I think there's a danger of thinking that the media represent the public opinion, or that social media represents public opinion. And I think what this is about is trying to maybe get back in touch with those people who aren't that political, don't think about it too much, but probably don't despise John Cameron quite the way they maybe despise some of the people they've been seeing on the telly day after day, like Braverman, and not to mention, of course, Johnson and Truss. I felt rather sick seeing them at the Senate House yesterday. I really think it's utterly absurd that because they, she was Prime Minister for 10 minutes, and,

• 39:55Alastair Campbell?

  you know, he having wrecked the, wrecked the country in so many ways, that they now, their constitutional function is an annual reminder that they were once ludicrously Prime Minister.

• 40:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, so we've had the Health Secretary, we've talked a little bit about Steve Barclay moving to Defra. There's also been the loss of some pretty substantial figures who were ministers of state. So they're technically junior ministers, so they're not not secretaries of state, but they're quite big figures within the party have stepped down. So Jesse Norman, so Jesse Norman in from 2010, very bright, very ambitious, was somebody who came in with me and was absolutely tipped to be in the cabinet, whose wife led on the the Covid vaccine procurement and is

• 40:45Rory Stewart?

  an academic, he stepped down from transport. Neil O'Brien, who, again, very interesting voice in the Conservative Party, sometimes quite right wing on things like justice, sometimes quite left wing on social justice, been working closely on issues like levelling up in the past. So that's a surprise resignation. Will Quins, from a younger generation, but again, had been head of a parliamentary select committee, he's gone too. George Freeman, who came in with me, who was the science minister and has been was the science minister for David Cameron, got back in again with Boris Johnson, retained his job under Rishi and has really made life

• 41:29Rory Stewart?

  sciences his mission in life, has stepped down as well. So there's there's something interesting going on because some of those figures are more in the centre of the party. They're not sort of Nadine Doris usual suspects. George Freeman was a kind of Remainer.

• 41:45Alastair Campbell?

  But don't you think that'll be people who are perhaps thinking about throwing in the towel before the election and moving on as MPs?

• 41:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, although I've never quite understood why you have to do that before an election. You're right, a lot of people do because they want to look for a job before an election and they think if they get out ahead of the queue of everybody else. I think there is a fear amongst MPs, particularly Conservative MPs. If the current polls hold and Keir Starmer gets in with a 20-point majority, there will be hundreds of people looking for a job in a single day. So I guess people will hope to be again, those conversations earlier. But I can't believe that's the only reason. I imagine that some of these people have actually been fired.

• 42:25Alastair Campbell?

  There's a great question here from Yellow Letters. How come only some MPs are able to say they've been sacked? Rachel McLean said she'd been sacked, whereas Theresa Coffey says she has resigned. Well, I know quite a lot about that.

• 42:40Rory Stewart?

  Tell us about that. What is the difference between being sacked and saying you've resigned?

• 42:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, basically, what nice, kind prime ministers tend to do in some circumstances is to alert people to the fact that it is highly likely that come the reshuffle, they will not be in a job.

• 43:01Alastair Campbell?

  So they might start to prepare a letter that can be put out that says, I've decided now is the time to spend a little bit more time with my family and pruning my roses. Whereas Rachel McLean, I suspect, wanted to make a point. The point being that this guy isn't taking housing seriously if he, you know, puts in his 16th housing minister.

• 43:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so that's right, isn't it? That most of the people, not all of them, some of them will genuinely have resigned, but most of them basically have been politely sacked.

• 43:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Rory Stewart?

  And some of them will take the opportunity to say I've resigned, and some of them will say, over my dead body, I'm sticking here, you're going to have to fire me.

• 43:42Alastair Campbell?

  Are you genuinely disappointed that the call to elevate Lord Stuart didn't come?

• 43:51Rory Stewart?

  I don't think it's realistic. I think one of the things we've decided to do, Anister, is to try to be pretty open and blunt, and I don't think I can get away, have my cake and eat it, and be quite so rude about the Conservative government and expect to be the Foreign Secretary.

• 44:04Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, now unless he changes the Foreign Office setup, I think I'm right in saying that Andrew Mitchell is now the Senior Foreign Office Minister in the House of Commons. So that means we now have a Foreign Secretary in the House of Lords and a Foreign Minister in the House of Commons, who is absolutely of the view that 0.7% of GDP should go on development, and indeed that getting rid of Difid was a terrible mistake by Johnson. So I wonder if that's one little sliver of good news out of this.

• 44:37Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I think it could be, because of course David Cameron really embraced that commitment that was made under you guys. So that commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on international aid was made under the Blair Brown government. But Cameron brought it into law and actually hit the target. So when

• 44:55Rory Stewart?

  He came in in 2015. Britain was spending about six billion pounds a year in international aid. And as we've discussed, during austerity, he increased that spend to thirteen billion pounds. So he put another seven billion pounds a year into international development. And this was, he saw this and gay marriage as two of his really big achievements that he talks about a lot. And since he's left, he's been doing quite a lot with international aid. And he wrote a big paper on international governance. So I think there's, and of course, Andrew Mitchell was his international development secretary. So that pairing should be very good for development. Also, a bit of a shout out for Andrew Mitchell. He's just brought

• 45:37Rory Stewart?

  together a white paper that he's about to release. We'll get, hopefully, a bit of an early glimpse of it before it's released to the public. But I think there's going to be some promising things about some of the movements in which international development might go, which hopefully will get cross party approval.

• 45:53Alastair Campbell?

  Of course, if David Cameron is put up in front of the media, let's just say that this becomes one of the threads that the media decide is an interesting one to pursue. But Sunak, in a sense, puts him in his box and says, no, we're not shifting on that because that's going to set off flares with these crazy people on the right. Then, of course, that weakens the attempt to use Cameron to to change the look, the image, the brand, call it what you will. So I think this is one of those things that frankly could be a good move, but could also unravel, depending frankly upon what Cameron now says and does and what people, what sort of demeanor people decide to take vis a vis him, both inside the Conservative Party, but also the media and the public.

• 46:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, and just a final thing, which we often say in reshuffles.

• 46:44Alastair Campbell?

  Remember Doesn't change much.

• 46:47Rory Stewart?

  Well, but also remember how bizarrely amateur the system is, that these people will be expected. I mean, remember this when I was moved. I was moved, I think I had five ministerial jobs in just about three years. And what people maybe don't quite understand from the outside is that within two days of your new job, you can be standing in the House of Commons, answering questions on your new brief. I want to change the system, and I'd like Keir Starmer to sign up for this, to say people should spend a minimum of two years in their role as a minister. And that when they take over, there should be a three week training period to get them up to speed. Somebody's pointed out that James Cleverly's gone from Foreign Secretary to Home Secretary.

• 47:27Rory Stewart?

  So he will have had to, when he became Foreign Secretary, very rapidly learn about 150 countries that he knew next to nothing about. He would have had to try to memorize the names of their presidents, find out how big they are. Now he's responsible for the whole of the police, the whole of the security service, all of immigration, terrorism, so responses in the UK. And he's going to be standing up within two, three days, having to be confident about all those things.

• 47:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Well, we've whittled on, we've whittled on wrong enough. We should probably plug Comfort Aero on leading and we should say that we're.

• 48:02Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, but wait, wait, wait. I have one for you quickly, a football one, which has just streamed up. I don't know. I'm going to get, bring it back. It's a football one. Um, oh no, actually it's asked to me, but I'm going to ask it to you. So can Rory, insert Alastair, explain the Cameron appointment in football terms, please. Is it like Ronaldo returning to United or Marino returning to Chelsea?

• 48:23Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, it's a good one. I'd say, I'd say it's like, it's like Darren Anderton coming back for the next World Cup. Or I'll even go Darren Bent. It's like Darren Bent.

• 48:42Rory Stewart?

  Oh, come on. It's more than Darren Bent. It's more like, it's more like some, some star player who may be getting a bit old, isn't it? Isn't it like somebody who played in the World Cup, but is now getting a bit creaky?

• 48:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I don't want to, I don't want to flatter Cameron enough to say it's like Gaza. But I guess you could, it's like, maybe it's like Gaza coming back in 2010. It's that kind of thing. No, listen, those of us, those people who've been. Watching us live, we'd be very interested to know whether you've enjoyed this experience of us sort of trying to talk to each other while reading your thousands of comments.

• 49:20Rory Stewart?

  And also abusing the bottom of my, people keep saying, have I looked at the label at the bottom of my mug?

• 49:25Alastair Campbell?

  It's only a bloody label. People get obsessed about the wrong thing. Here's the problem with the modern world, Rory. We care far too much about things that don't matter and not enough about things that do.

• 49:34Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 49:34Alastair Campbell?

  I don't give a damn about the label on your.

• 49:36Rory Stewart?

  Thank you very much. The real question that we should have been focused on is what is Cameron's policy going to be on Israel Gaza? Because he was a big backer of Israel. He's now right in the centre of this. And that, for our podcast tomorrow morning, is going to be more of a question than the label on the bottom of my mug.

• 49:53Alastair Campbell?

  I think so. We'll talk about that. Now, anybody who enjoyed this and wants to encourage us to do more, then I suggest that you subscribe to the Rest is Politics YouTube channel. Shout out for Comfort Hero. I listened back to it today on the train up to a school in Bedford and I thought it was really good, really interesting woman, actually. Do you find this Rory, when I, when we, I don't know if you listen back, but when we're doing the podcasts, doing the interviews, I'm so focused on doing the interview that I, I sort of, I get a completely different experience when I listen back to it.

• 50:30Rory Stewart?

  I think that's right. I also love the fact, if anybody's thinking of doing a podcast who's listening to this, I like the fact there's two of us because it means when you're asking a question, I can be listening to her answer to you and thinking about a new direction to go in. I like the dynamic of having two people interviewing. I guess it's a bit of a luxury, but I would encourage anyone podcasting for two people.

• 50:51Alastair Campbell?

  That's why it's very, very important that your sycophantic text to Rishi Sunak didn't result in you being put in the house more than.

• 50:59Rory Stewart?

  I take advice from you on the texts. Yeah. So Comfort Hero on Leading, definitely, definitely worth listening to. And we'll be, we'll be back again very, very soon with the podcast and with the question time. Oh, incidentally, Alistair, at one point, I think we had nearly three times as many people listening to us as we had in our Royal Albert Hall show.

• 51:19Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 51:20Rory Stewart?

  So that's, that's, that's so worth doing, maybe even for us. Yeah.

• 51:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Good. We could just live our lives on YouTube. You in a, you in a sort of dodgy hotel room.

• 51:29Rory Stewart?

  Do you like my hotel room? Do you think it looks, do you think it looks good?

• 51:32Alastair Campbell?

  Do you like my new, my new.

• 51:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's lovely. I like the dark in the back. I like the wall art in my hotel room. Look at that. Beautiful.

• 51:41Alastair Campbell?

  It's really, it's not nice.

• 51:43Rory Stewart?

  Not nice, oh dear. No, I didn't say that.

• 51:44Alastair Campbell?

  I was commenting on that before you arrived, actually.

• 51:46Rory Stewart?

  All right, okay. Time to time. Thank you all.

• 51:49Alastair Campbell?

  Bye, bye.

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