7. Partygate fines, political partners, and voting at 15?

In today's pod Alastair and Rory discuss the police fines that Johnson and Sunak have received for their roles in Partygate, the current political situation in both France and Pakistan, and the role of spouses in politics. After the break they also drill down into what Alastair and Rory vehemently disagree on politically. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Tony Pastor & Jack Davenport Goalhanger Podcasts 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/risterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:06Alastair Campbell?

  Right, Alistair here. And the bulk of what you're going to hear from me and Rory was recorded at 9.30 UK time on Tuesday. And then, I don't know what Rory did for the rest of the day, but I went up on my bike, riding up Mont Ventoux, when my phone started to go a bit bonkers with lots of breaking news alerts and then people from the media phoning me. So I came back. And it was because of the fines for Johnson and Sunak by the police for breaches of the law with regard to Covid lockdown and so-called partygate. Now, I know what I think, and I've been fulminating ever since. But Rory, what do you think?

• 1:48Rory Stewart?

  I think it's disgusting. It's awful. And one of the problems is that because Johnson piles distraction on distraction, scandal on distraction, it's a deliberate technique of his. I don't know if it's a technique that was around in your day, but his technique is that if you throw enough chaff in the air, people forget about the previous scandals. I felt this even when I was trying to talk to people about how awful what was happening during Covid in Number 10 was, that people had already forgotten the other scandals. They'd forgotten the scandals around Owen Patterson and lobbying. They'd forgotten scandals around his wallpaper. They'd forgotten parochial parliament. Just one thing builds on another. But the simple central fact is...

• 2:29Rory Stewart?

  He introduced laws for the rest of the country, which was an incredibly serious thing to do that had a huge impact on people's lives. And he was in endless Cobra meetings, looking at the very details of those laws, discussing them in real detail with people as he needed to, because this was basically the biggest issue in British politics for a year. And then he creates a culture in Downing Street which deliberately breaks those laws, as the Metropolitan Police has now confirmed. And that tells us almost everything you need to know about this man, which is that he simply is incapable of acting with any kind of responsibility or seriousness. I think it's inconceivable, for example, that Theresa May would ever have allowed

• 3:14Rory Stewart?

  any of that stuff to happen in Downing Street.

• 3:16Alastair Campbell?

  Also, Rory, he's misled Parliament many, many, many times. On all those occasions when he stood up and said, I've been assured there was no parties, I've been assured there was no breaking of the rules. He was at them, he was breaking the rules sufficient for the police, who won't have done this lightly, the police would have been a bit scared of this, they will not have done this lightly, and they've decided that he broke those laws. And I think that, allied to breaking the ministerial code, means he has to go. And if he doesn't, and I've written a piece for The New European on the back of this, saying that if, if they, do they believe in the rule of law or don't they? Do they believe in ministers upholding high standards or don't they?

• 3:58Alastair Campbell?

  Do they think that ministers should not mislead Parliament? If they think any of that, and they have any integrity at all, they all have to rise up and say, I'm sorry, Johnson, I'm sorry, Sunak, you've both got to go.

• 4:10Rory Stewart?

  You're quite right. And there's actually quite a good letter in The Spectator this week from a guy called John Hat, and he says, "The public might be able to forgive somebody getting a fixed penalty notice. That's not what this is about. What this is about is the lie. What this is about is the ministerial code. It's about standing up in Parliament and saying again and again, he didn't do it when he clearly did."

• 4:31Alastair Campbell?

  I know, I was having a discussion with somebody earlier, some of the Tory MPs are trying to say it's like a parking fine. The actual equivalent would be to say, I know I've been done for speeding, and I know the cops have got the evidence, but I'm going to stand up in Parliament and say that they haven't. It's a totally different thing.

• 4:46Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 4:47Alastair Campbell?

  And the thing about the ministerial code, which I can recite virtually verbatim, honesty, openness, objectivity, selflessness, integrity, accountability, and leadership. The only one he scores on is leadership, because he leads the others into breaking the other six on a regular basis. And I must admit, I'm a bit surprised by Sunak, I really am. When we get on to the podcast we recorded before what it is now 3pm, we had a bit of a dispute about Sunak and his other problems. But I'm genuinely a bit surprised that he would have got caught up in this, but he's clearly got caught up in it sufficiently badly for the police to think he's broken the law as well.

• 5:24Rory Stewart?

  The whole thing is so horrifying, and I'm struggling to get it straight in my mind, but I think that where you've put your finger on it is that democracy in the end, and this is why the ministerial code exists, democracy in the end has to rest on people telling the truth at the dispatch box. Why is that? That's because this is meant to be a partnership with voters, and unless voters hear the truth somewhere in the system, how are you supposed to vote? How are you supposed to work out what's happening in the manifesto? How are you supposed to judge a government? Democracy needs truth somewhere, and this has been broken.

• 6:02Alastair Campbell?

  Also, I mentioned last week that book I was reading, The Revenge of Power by Moises Naim. He made the point that all of these sort of mega populists like Bolsonaro, Trump, Putin, Modi, Erdogan, part of what they do is to show that they can break the rules and get away with it. Now, Johnson may be thinking he can get away with this, but if he does, if he does, I honestly think our democracy is absolutely done for.

• 6:29Rory Stewart?

  And one of the things, of course, is that none of this should be a surprise. I remember when we were all talking about this a couple of months ago, and in fact, of course, people pointed out at the time that one of the reasons, if he stays, one of the reasons he'll stay is, as people said, by taking the investigation away from Sue Gray and giving it to the Metropolitan Police, we've created this very weird number of weeks between the time when the scandal broke, since then, Ukraine's happened, and people can barely remember what it is anymore, right? It was a catastrophic error to take it away from Sue Gray and give it to the Metropolitan Police in this way, because if Johnson saves, that'll be why. People won't be able to keep it straight in their minds. But lying is so much part of what he does. I mean, I I got in trouble.

• 7:10Rory Stewart?

  Uh, because I I pointed out that this is a guy who, you know, was sacked from two jobs for lying. Who obviously his private life suggests an enormous amount of misleading and incredible number of different types of partners. Almost every MP I know has got a story of him lying to them. I mean, i- it's his trade, it's what he does, it's the whole shtick. So the idea that anyone should be shocked or have needed to look for evidence, it was pretty clear from the beginning that this is what was going on. We can see the photographs.

• 7:40Alastair Campbell?

  But what do you think your former colleagues are going to do? Because if they've got any integrity, they've got to ask, they've got to say, we're not supporting you.

• 7:47Rory Stewart?

  I'm afraid the answer is that a few will come out and say they're not supporting him. But I fear it may not be enough to trigger a leadership call. The thing that will really bring him down, I believe now is going to be the May election results. Because they cannot believe now that he can win the next election. And the Tory party is very, very ruthless. Earlier on in the podcast, when we're talking, you were talking about the fact that every leader of the Conservative Party that's ever been.

• 8:14Alastair Campbell?

  Don't give away my son's best stat of the week.

• 8:17Rory Stewart?

  Has has uh with with three exceptions, has managed to win an election, right?

• 8:22Alastair Campbell?

  With four.

• 8:23Rory Stewart?

  Four exceptions. Now, why is that? That is because in the end, the Conservative Party um is very, very ruthless. They're very good at putting people in place before the election who are going to win that election. And I don't think they can seriously believe that this man is a winner anymore. That this, and if they don't think he's a winner, that's what'll take him down, not so much the details of this.

• 8:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but if they even think that he can survive and limp on for even as far as that, I'm afraid I think they will all deserve to get swept away because it suggests that they're all willing, just think about this. It means they're fine about having a prime minister and a leader who has broken his own law. It means that they're fine about lying about it, which they've all had to do because they've all had to go and trot out all the defences. It means they're fine about having somebody in charge of the nation's finances who has also broken the law and who's also been engulfed by all this other stuff that we're going to be talking about in the stuff that we recorded earlier. I mean, I just find it absolutely mind-blow. And I keep thinking, my God, can you imagine what the media would be like on this if this was a Labour government? It would be meltdown time.

• 9:29Rory Stewart?

  I think if you were talking to a Tory MP now, getting rid of Boris Johnson is not just a moral thing to do, right? It's not just the right thing to do for the country because he's not actually running the country well. We can see that, hasn't delivered on his promises. Nobody really believes that levelling up is now going to happen in the North. Nobody really believes he's got a solution to the cost of living crisis. It's not just sort of good governance, it's also the practical thing to do. Their best hope of winning the next election is to get rid of him, start again and do a better job.

• 9:58Alastair Campbell?

  But it also looks in doing that, they're going to be taking out the favourite to succeed him as well. So Rory, maybe he needs to get back there, he needs to get back there, back into another contest. I think there should be four by-elections on the same day. Richmond, Uxbridge, Wakefield for the guy who's child sex abuse, and then the dandruff snorter, the man who couldn't work out whether it was dandruff or cocaine that he was putting up his nose. Four by-elections the same day, let's get a bit of movement in our politics.

• 10:24Rory Stewart?

  And now, the rest of the podcast, where we talk about Macron, where we talk about politicians' wives, and where Alistair and I get into a bit of feisty disagreement.

• 10:33Alastair Campbell?

  And a bit of music at the end.

• 10:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 10:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 10:49Rory Stewart?

  And today, Alistair, I guess we're going to be touching on France, where you're sitting. I can see that the listeners can't see a sort of very beautiful French impressionist painting behind your shoulder. We're going to touch on Rishi Sunak and politicians' partners. But maybe if we could start with France, tell us where you are, tell us what's going on.

• 11:10Alastair Campbell?

  I'm just outside Avignon. I've been here for a few days since getting back from the Cote d'Ivoire. I was here on Sunday for the first round of the presidential election. And I think the next two weeks are going to be absolutely fascinating. France, as you probably know, is a pretty difficult country to govern. And I think in a bizarre sort of way, it's become even more difficult, despite Macron being such a force of nature that he kind of came almost from a standing start and became president. But you now have these three poles of power. You have him as a kind of pro-European centrist, probably a little bit right of centre. You have the extreme right with Le Pen and Zemmour.

• 11:54Alastair Campbell?

  And you have the extreme left with Mélenchon, who did far better than people expected. And frankly, if the communist Fabien Roussel had not stood, might actually have tipped out Le Pen. So it's a very, very... And now we're down to exactly the same runoff as the last time, Macron against Le Pen. I think the smart money still has to be on Macron, but I think we're just in very, very, very volatile times. And I've been a little bit... I was telling Macron's people, I was talking to them yesterday. I was saying, I'm being a little bit alarmed at some of the people who are telling me they're either not voting or they might actually vote Le Pen.

• 12:33Rory Stewart?

  And I think the turnout was incredibly low, wasn't it?

• 12:36Alastair Campbell?

  No, it wasn't as low as... The lowest ever was 2002, and it wasn't as low as that. It was lower than they want, for sure. And they're really worried about turnout in the second round because Mélenchon, although he did say to his followers, "I don't want anybody to give a single vote to Marine Le Pen", he did not say, "Vote Macron". And I think they're worried that some people will vote Le Pen from a sort of far-left, putinist position, if you like. And a lot of people just won't bother to vote. So Macron's job between now and the 24th is to drive up those who didn't vote first time round, and in particular, those who voted for Mélenchon, to understand that whatever they feel about Macron, they really don't want a hard right.

• 13:21Alastair Campbell?

  Le Pen as président de France, which would be, I think, catastrophic, not just for France but for Europe.

• 13:26Rory Stewart?

  Obviously, we go back to the big story. The big story seems to be in France, as in other European countries, there has been a massive collapse of the traditional parties of the left and the right. So the Socialist Party, which dominated French politics and which was, you know, winning elections until not very long ago, basically has disappeared.

• 13:48Alastair Campbell?

  Two percent, not two percent.

• 13:50Rory Stewart?

  And the old gallant right wing party, again, down at 4.75 percent. So it's it's as though the Conservative and Labour parties in Britain were suddenly going into an election where having dominated politics for decades, they're down at two and five percent.

• 14:05Alastair Campbell?

  They're gone.

• 14:06Rory Stewart?

  Why is that?

• 14:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think it's some of the same reasons that we've seen leading to further polarization in our own politics and in America. But there was a question actually from somebody called Rust Keys. We've got lots of questions again this week. And he asked the question, could a new party like Or Marsh emerge in the UK? And if not, why not? And I think it's, I think the answer is probably that it's very, very unlikely, despite the dissatisfaction with the Tories and with Labour. You found this when you were running as an independent. It's very difficult to break through that. And of course, we don't have a presidential system. Macron was able to come along, create a party, create a brand around himself, and essentially blow away the other two.

• 14:50Alastair Campbell?

  And he's done it again. He's done it again. But he's done it without succeeding in what he wanted to do, which was basically to say, if you have me to vote for, there's no reason to vote for the extremes. People have actually voted for the extremes in even bigger numbers than the last time.

• 15:04Rory Stewart?

  So I, obviously, running as an independent to be mayor of London, thought a lot about Macron and the way that that worked. And the key in London was the electoral system, which was like the French presidential system.

• 15:16Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:17Rory Stewart?

  So the way it would have worked for me as an independent is if I'd been able to beat the Conservative candidate and come in in second place, there then would have been a runoff between me and Sadiq Khan. And then if I could convince the people who were not prepared to vote for Sadiq Khan, the Conservative voters, to vote for me, I might just have sneaked through. And it's those systems, because that's essentially what happened to Macron. He got, I think, last election, twenty odd percent in the first round. And then he goes into the final round and he manages to win a majority. But that's just been destroyed in Britain. The Conservatives and Labour basically abstained on this and didn't oppose it have now turned all the local elections in Britain into first past the post.

• 15:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:57Rory Stewart?

  I I don't know whether to some extent that's because they were worried by how close I came to beating the Conservative candidate and pulling this trick off, or whether I had nothing to do with it, but it's very striking that the last space left in British politics for an independent candidate to come through, which is in these mayoral races, has just been removed last week in the House of Lords.

• 16:15Alastair Campbell?

  I know, and it's also, I think it underlines what we were talking about last week about Orban, that Johnson really doesn't like, um, any, that he likes to skew the rules in his own favour, and he's pretty ruthless at at doing that. Um, but listen, Macron, I I I know Macron reasonably well, and I think he's a phenomenal, uh, well, he's very, very clever, very clever, he's one of the smartest politicians I think I've ever met. Um, but it's extraordinary how the depth of hatred that some people express for him, including people that you really wouldn't, you'd really think were right on his pitch. And it's a very, very strange thing. There's another question we got from WillDemocrat64, he he's asking, you know, what what I saw

• 17:00Alastair Campbell?

  as the similarities between what Macron did and New Labour. And I think what Macron did was, you know, way more ambitious in a way, actually to start, to come out of the Parti Socialiste and start his own movement, start his own party. But of course, what he's found, as a lot of people found, we found this in government, you can win, and we, you know, we won well 25 years ago, now and then won again and won again, but we at least had the party, and even if we didn't look after the party maybe as we should have done, Macron hasn't really developed the party. And the real problem he's going to have, if, as I hope he does, he wins, is that then they have the legislative, the parliamentary elections, and there, there's no way that he's going to do as well as Ormarch did last time.

• 17:44Alastair Campbell?

  And that's when he starts having to really, he talked about, je vais tendre la main, I'm going to reach out to others, but he really is going to have to do that once that gets, once that happens.

• 17:53Rory Stewart?

  So there are some things which I love about him as a politician at the centre. I mean, obviously, one of those is I loved his listening tours, I loved seeing him sitting in those municipal halls for two, three hours at a time, with people shouting at him and just taking it all in. I loved his embrace of data and technology, the ways he tried to use that. But I was also very struck that what made him successful as a centrist was his ability to be outrageous and offend both right and left. I mean, his his trick actually was frequently to make very right wing comments followed by very left wing comments or the other way around. So I remember in the last election, he came out very hard attacking the French colonial record and apologising for everything they'd done, which really irritated the right and got him fantastic headlines in the left wing press. And then followed that up two

• 18:37Rory Stewart?

  days later with a massive anti-immigration rant and complaints about Islam, which got him huge headlines in the right wing press and really alienated the left. And oddly, rather than what you might have thought, which is that this was losing him friends on every side, it was actually massively building his profile and exciting people.

• 18:54Alastair Campbell?

  I think that's right. And and look, it became a bit of a joke. He had this this catchphrase, en même temps, you know, at the same time. And he would he would sort of say something and then say mais, en même temps, and then put the opposite point of view. And and he did have this. And I think it was this was very kind of New Labour in its approach. It was basically saying, the centre is a large space, and I am going to command it. And he's pretty much, he's done that. And look, one of the one of the reasons why he's going to probably struggle to get all of the Mélenchon supporters, 20% was a lot, to get them to come over to him, is that he was absolutely adamant that he was going to put this raising the pensionable age right at the heart of his programme for

• 19:37Alastair Campbell?

  reform, because he wants to say, I've been stopped from doing a lot of the reforms because we had Covid, which was a crisis, which I think he handled pretty well. We've then got Ukraine, but I'm going to do it. And of course, that has enraged a lot of the people on the left. And they're the people he now needs. So whether he kind of now softens that a bit. But you're right, he doesn't mind saying what he thinks, provoking both sides. And but it's, you know, he's, he's definitely, he's got to, and he knows this, he's got to campaign a lot harder in the last, the next two weeks than he has in the last few months.

• 20:09Rory Stewart?

  And it's going to be tough, isn't it? Because Mélenchon, in a sense, is a kind of Jeremy Corbyn figure, isn't he? So it's going to be very, very uncomfortable for him, trying to say the things that will appeal to that kind of voter base.

• 20:19Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. And he mustn't do it by sort of pretending to be something that he's not. He's got to do it by saying, look, you may not like me for all sorts of reasons, but I am actually a progressive, and I do believe in helping the poor, and I do believe in the environment. And so on and so forth. And I think he will, he will do that. Um. The debate, the TV debate will be incredibly important. And last time, he absolutely destroyed Le Pen. But this time, I think because the bar will be quite low for her because she has actually sort of repackaged herself in quite a cynical but moderately effective way. And, you know, the, I think she will also be playing a little bit on the Michael Gove, people are sick to death of experts thing. You know, yeah, we know he's intelligent. We know he's got a

• 21:00Alastair Campbell?

  brain the size of the planet. Uh, but, you know, I'm, I want to speak for the common man. And that's what she's been trying to do. She even said in her, in her speech, accepting the runoff, you know, you know, celebrating getting into the last two. It was very pitched at cost of living, the people who've been forgotten and left behind, communities left behind. It was, it was very kind of Brexity in without, she's moved on Europe. She doesn't want people to think she's taking that European Union, but he will, he will pin her on that. There's, her program is very incoherent. And I think that's where he'll try and take her apart.

• 21:33Rory Stewart?

  Did you get much of a sense of him as a personality? I mean, do you get, have you had relaxed times with him where you can really get a sense of him as a person? Or are you just getting a sense of a big brain in a bottle?

• 21:42Alastair Campbell?

  No, I've, I've had, um, sort of, you know, private meeting and exchanges with him. Um, I like him. I mean, I, I think as a personality, he's got something very, very special about him. I'd, I'm, I met him first when he was campaigning, first time around. And I think at the time he was like fifth favorite. And he basically said, I'm gonna win this. And he said it with a, a conviction that wasn't just bullshit. It was like he'd worked it out and he was absolutely going to go for it. Um, I think, you know, he's a, he's like me, he's a, he's a football fan. He's, he's, he's French team like Bayern, he's Marseille. Um, he's, he's very, very smart. And I think he is, he's incredibly

• 22:25Alastair Campbell?

  well read. Um, very sort of musical, very, he's a very, very broad minded, well developed brain kind of guy.

• 22:35Rory Stewart?

  Would it work in British politics, that, that type of person, that type of personality? Do you think the British would vote for someone like that?

• 22:41Alastair Campbell?

  It's hard to tell. Look, I mean, Johnson does sort of try to project himself as, you know, the Latin and the and the classics and all that sort of stuff. So he tries to project himself as a bit of a, a bit of an intellectual.

• 22:52Rory Stewart?

  But Boris is more of a comedian, right? I mean Boris is very lighthearted about all of that. He does that as a kind of joke, whereas Macron is very earnest. I mean, he's, he basically delivers one hour sort of academic lectures to the French public. I mean, it's not like-

• 23:05Alastair Campbell?

  He did about last week, there was two hours, 20 minutes. And he does litter them with, you know, quotes from the classics and quotes from the great French literature and and so forth. But I think he's got, look, he doesn't have that sort of Blair, Obama, Clinton, common touch in a way. But when you see him, you mentioned those sort of circular talks that he did. When you see him work a crowd, and when you see him, what I, what I really like about him, and there we saw Johnson this week doing a walkabout in Kiev. But I've, I've noticed that Johnson has not done a walkabout in his own country for a very, very long time. Macron goes out and plunges into crowds, and he almost seems to enjoy it more when they're giving him a bit of a hard time. He really likes an argument.

• 23:50Rory Stewart?

  He loves the confrontation, doesn't he? But there's a very sort of prickly bit to him, too. I know there's a great scene a few months ago where somebody criticizes him from the crowd, and he steps forward and he says, I am the president of France. You never speak to the president of France like that, right? You will show respect.

• 24:06Alastair Campbell?

  No, that was, that was when the young boy called him Manu.

• 24:09Rory Stewart?

  That's right.

• 24:10Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, no, I thought that was a little bit sort of, uh, Sunak-esque in its thin-skinnedness. But, you know, in a way, I think what he's doing, look, he, if you read the biographies of Macron, it's obvious that his grandmother was an incredibly important figure in his life, and she absolutely worshipped him. And this whole thing about Jupiter, this feeling that he was going to be special, and, and he was going to do something amazing with his life. I think he's always felt it and still does. And it's interesting how some of the people who are now lending him their support, as it were, the Greens, Pécresse, the, the sort of Tory leader who's, who's vanished, um, they are, they're sort of making the point, it cannot be Jupiter, Mark II. There's got to be a greater kind of sense

• 24:55Alastair Campbell?

  of, of, of reaching out to other people. But, look, he, he, I think he'll win, I think he'll win. But I meet a few people who, I, I was talking to a, a French journalist yesterday, who, she said, you know, I really worry this is our Brexit-Trump moment.

• 25:09Rory Stewart?

  And what was this, just finally before we move on, because we're on thin skinniness, we'll move on to Rishi and Rishi's wife in a second. But the, um, do you get a sense that where the limits of his mind are, okay, he's a clever guy, but generally, or any clever guy I know has limits, has things where they're not as clever as they think they are, things they're less good at getting their head around. And presumably there are a lot of French intellectuals out there looking at him saying, okay, he's a very smart guy, but he's not quite as smart as he thinks he is in this direction or that direction.

• 25:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you definitely see those, a lot of those in French. In fact, in fact, there was a, on the, on the main TV panel the other night, there was a, there was a guy who was billed as ex-politician, now a philosopher. And of course, for him, there was no, there's no brain large enough. I think he's certainly somebody who's, I think he's got a very analytical mind. So for, for example, if you think about, I think Europe for him is a massive thing. He sees France's future as being utterly bound up in Europe. I think that's probably one of the things that he'll really go at Le Pen on. And then I think things like, you know, Ukraine, some of the big spending stuff that he works on. I don't see, I don't think he's got a limit as, as a politician, as it were.

• 26:23Alastair Campbell?

  But you're right, we all have limits in terms of where we can, where we can take that brain. And, but I do, one of the things I find it really baffling when I'm, you know, whether, whether talking to him or talking to the people who are working with him, is I find it genuinely difficult to work out why there is this visceral hatred of him amongst otherwise what seem to me to be reasonable people. And I wonder whether it's just the French, you know, the, the revolting French and all that. I do wonder whether the French, there's something uniquely French about this thing about, like Chirac, for example, Chirac was, you know, widely loathed by a lot of French people. After he, after he left office. He could do no wrong. He had approval ratings up in the eighties and ninety percents.

• 27:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's amazing what would the French do to their leaders. I mean, I was picking on the fact that Hollande didn't run again because his approval ratings were at four percent.

• 27:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:15Rory Stewart?

  And he was about to hit the next election. I mean, it's, and then look at what's happened to Sarkozy. I'm sorry, one more thing about him, which is obviously a bit, bit weird. Or maybe I shouldn't be pushing at it because we're about to get on to politicians and their spouses and it's a good route through. He, like Alex Salmond, is, his partner is much, much older than him, isn't he?

• 27:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:34Rory Stewart?

  Sort of almost old enough, basically, to be his mother.

• 27:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, she was his teacher.

• 27:37Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. And there's a very, very interesting thing, I think, which I do think they, Alex Salmond and Macron seem to have in common, which is that sense that they're sort of very precocious, brilliant schoolboys, almost being sort of mothered by an older woman who feels very, um, yeah, who adores them. And allows them to almost be the sort of perfect only child. Or maybe I'm, I'm getting into CODS psychology here and I have no right to get into their relationship.

• 28:01Alastair Campbell?

  Is a very dangerous area, as we, as we know, but I, there, there's something very, very, look, the story, I think, is, is really fascinating. So there's a kid at school who has the hots for one of his teachers. Now, that is a sentiment that I think is known to, I don't know whether they said, whether you were allowed women teachers at your school, Rory, but I, it's a sentiment that I could readily identify with. I can remember one of my French teachers, probably why I'm so obsessed with French, but I really had the hots. But he didn't just have the hots, he then sort of, you know, it went somewhere. And she's become his kind of life partner and, and it, and also what I think is interesting, she's,

• 28:41Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think we'd be having this conversation about, I'm trying to think of male politicians with, with much old, you know, if, if it was a man that we were talking about, that was the spouse. I, I, I think it's a sort of, there's a bit of, but it is, I agree, it's a very, very interesting thing. And whether it does relate to the fact that he had this grandmother that absolutely worshipped him and adored the sort of, you know, the ground he walked on. But she's a very important person in, in his, um, you know, obviously the spouse of any senior politician is. But I think she's, she's got a very, very political mind as well and, and he draws on it quite a lot.

• 29:17Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so moving on to spouses, we've got Rishi Sunak and his spouse. And you were being, I thought, quite interesting a couple of weeks ago in discussing it and saying that you acknowledge that there's a challenge and what do you do if there is an issue, right? In that particular case, it was that Infosys, which is her father's company, was investing in Moscow. I believe they've now announced actually they're withdrawing from Russia. And she's also, I think, now announced that she's going to be paying UK tax on her worldwide income. But somewhere in the middle of all of this is a very, very, what must be a very difficult relationship within that household. And I guess some people might ask, what is

• 30:01Rory Stewart?

  it that one's asking from a politician? I know that you on social media have been very angry with him and have been very keen to put the boot in about this issue.

• 30:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, as you constantly say, Rory, you keep saying that I play the man, not the ball. I don't think I do. I just think it is politically stupid, but I also think it's wrong for a Chancellor of the Exchequer to be standing up there telling us that we've got to pay more tax in breach of a manifesto promise, whilst at the same time, he is fully aware of arrangements that his wife is making and which are increased by some of the tax changes that he's making, without there being kind of openness and transparency about that. And for him then to turn around and bleep that this is some kind of smear campaign against her, I'm sure you read the ministerial code when you were a minister, you have to be very careful about your own financial affairs, but also those of your spouse and

• 30:54Alastair Campbell?

  key family members. And I think he's just, I think we're back to this thing about this lot, think the rules don't apply to them.

• 31:00Rory Stewart?

  Okay, let me make the defence. And I think it was a very good defence made by David Gork in a New Statesman article on this.

• 31:05Alastair Campbell?

  Your favourite politician.

• 31:06Rory Stewart?

  My favourite politician. Essentially, this comes down to these very weird non-DOM rules and the whole idea that you can be living in the United Kingdom but not domicile and you don't have to pay UK tax on your worldwide incomes. And Ed Balls, of all people, during the 2015 campaign, came out and said, these non-dom rules are right, and we have to be very careful about getting rid of them, because if we got rid of them, we're going to end up with a lot of wealthy people who are bringing money into the United Kingdom, not living in the United Kingdom. So this was not just a conservative policy, right? This was a new Labour policy, which Ed Balls was fully behind, and your government did nothing in its entire time in office to get rid of the non-dom stuff.

• 31:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 31:45Rory Stewart?

  So he's married a lady who's an Indian citizen and who's pays taxes in India and whose income is in India. And she is, as far as he's concerned, I guess, when they sat down and talked about it, she is absolutely following the law in the United Kingdom. But she's now said she'll pay full UK tax, and I think if her income's nineteen million, that means that she will be voluntarily, without having to, she's not obliged to by the law, voluntarily paying millions of pounds for the privilege of her husband being a member of parliament. And I can completely understand that most people listening to this will think, well, you know, I can't relate to that anyway, these people are so wealthy, it doesn't make any difference to them. But I think it's worth the public asking themselves, if they

• 32:28Rory Stewart?

  were in that position, do they think that someone should be paying voluntarily millions of pounds just for the privilege of being a member of parliament, when they're under no legal obligation to do that?

• 32:38Alastair Campbell?

  Right, but I do think, first of all, it is a privilege, and it is certainly a, an incredible power and privilege to be channeled with the Exchequer. And given that one of the ministerial guidelines they're meant to abide by is openness and transparency, if it is defensible, then in my view, Rishi Sunak should have been open and transparent about it. I have to say, I think Sajid Javid should have been as well. There's a guy who's served there as well, and he was a non-dom for six years, but we've only found that out now, because some journalist has, has dug it out. And I also think, by the way, that this green card issue, I mean, he had a green card while he was a minister. A green card is a step away from being an American citizen.

• 33:24Alastair Campbell?

  I find that, I find that mind blowing. And I think, and, and look, I think, I think Rory, and let me ask you something else Rory, I noticed, in fact Fiona, my partner spotted this, she said that Rory's pretty good at putting the boot into Johnson, but he defends the rest of them quite well. Is that a point? Is this you, is this you looking, somebody actually, one of the many good questions this week Rory, was one, I can't remember who put this one in, but somebody said to you Rory, if Johnson went and somebody a bit more reasonable and sensible were to be Tory leader, would you go back in?

• 33:57Rory Stewart?

  So I think you've got me on the record being disobliging about a lot of my colleagues. Liz Truss famously, you enjoyed my tweeting out, you, you enjoyed me having a go at David Cameron, at George Osborne, Boris Johnson, so.

• 34:09Alastair Campbell?

  Both former, both off the scene.

• 34:12Rory Stewart?

  But Rishi Sunak, I think is, I don't know, I mean, I, I, I'm not particularly fond of Rishi Sunak, he's not a guy that I particularly got on with when I was in Parliament. And I think I have talked on previous episodes about these very weird conversations that I had with him, when we were trying to debate things like whether people should be sent to prison for not paying their council tax, not paying their TV licence. But I do feel there is something very, very disturbing about this sort of political life and what it means psychologically for somebody.

• 34:42Alastair Campbell?

  I agree with that.

• 34:43Rory Stewart?

  And, and what has happened to him, which is that he has now, in an instant, finds his wife under attack, will be very anxious about his relationship with her, with his in-laws, they're moving out of 11 Downing Street, he's basically being accused of being a liar and a criminal, when from his point of view, he hasn't actually broken any law at all. And I think there is a real sense, and when I, I was saying to a friend that I felt sorry for him. And my friend laughed and said, what do you mean you feel sorry for him? I'm enjoying it enormously, right? But obviously for me as an ex-politician, I don't really enjoy seeing this happening to anyone, Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem, I think. And it's one of the reasons we don't end up with good politicians, because if you take someone like Rishi, okay, he has, you know, he's a.

• 35:31Rory Stewart?

  Son from a relatively modest background, he's a GP's son from Britain. Second generation immigrant, was very lucky to go to a good school, worked very hard at university.

• 35:42Alastair Campbell?

  Plenty of good schools in the state sector, Rory.

• 35:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, good schools in state sector, and he married a wealthy lady. And he had enormous opportunities, and I think that's what this green card story is about. He studied in California, but he chose to come back to Britain and put himself in the public limelight. And in doing so, he gave up quite a lot financially, and he's giving up quite a lot more. All that's fine, I think that's good, and I think I, you know, I respect people for doing that. Zach Goldsmith did the same, he had been, I think, non-resident for tax purposes. And I think ended up paying an enormous amount of money in order to have the privilege of becoming a member of parliament. I think it's good that people do that. But I think there is something very, very, um, that I find, it's one of the reasons I found being a member of parliament very traumatizing. Because I never did something on that scale, I was never in the centre of that kind of scandal.

• 36:29Rory Stewart?

  But when it happens, my god, you feel awful. And I can understand why, you know, members of parliament go through very, very tough times. Because it's all over the newspapers, right?

• 36:39Alastair Campbell?

  I get that, I've got to say to Rory, I don't think he's getting nearly as much of a harder time. Uh, as many, many politicians that I know have gone through. Um, and I think his attempt to pretend that it's some kind of smear against his wife. As opposed to people asking legitimate questions about his and his family's tax arrangements. I think he's, um, revealing himself to be very, very thin-skinned, slightly petulant. And I'm afraid, I think this is a government led by Johnson, who, for whom they really do think the rules don't apply to them. And the green card, the green card thing Rory, honestly, I had an American friend telling me, he said, have you any idea what it means to have a green card?

• 37:24Alastair Campbell?

  You're basically Americans, you've got that. Yeah, they don't, you, you, they don't even let you travel until you sort of prove that you don't, you know, you're paying all your taxes in the right place and so forth. So I think, and also I think the other thing that I don't know if you've crossed this today, but there's more revelations today about the level of access that Infosys have had to government. I think it's 15 one-on-one ministerial meetings. Well, that, you know, I just think you've got to be very, very careful when you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

• 37:53Rory Stewart?

  My guess is that Boris Johnson is probably quite enjoying this. I think he feels threatened by Rishi Sunak. Rishi was the big challenger to him. And I think when Rishi Sunak's saying it's a bit of a smear campaign, he's not just talking about journalists going after him. I think he suspects that Number 10 is feeding quite a lot of this and is enjoying...

• 38:17Alastair Campbell?

  And do you think that's possible? Do you think that's possible?

• 38:19Rory Stewart?

  I think it's perfectly possible that people inside Number 10 are quite enjoying dripping this stuff through. Suggesting that he's going off on holiday in California when he probably isn't going off on holiday in California. Drawing people's attentions to questions they might ask about his tax, asking about the green card.

• 38:36Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 38:37Rory Stewart?

  Because I think he is, apart from Rishi Sunak, it's difficult to see who really is in a position to challenge Boris Johnson.

• 38:43Alastair Campbell?

  That's really interesting because yesterday I was talking to a publisher about a book that I'm working on and, and, and he said, you know, this government, I, I just, I actually think they're capable of anything. So, you know, if you'd have said to me in normal times 10 years ago, oh, I think the Prime Minister's, you know, ordered his team to leak details against the Chancellor about his tax, I'd have said that's just impossible. But do you know what? With this law, I think anything's possible. But I must admit, I, I, so I'm, I'm, I'm kind of slightly gobsmacked at you. You're proving my point that you're like putting the boot into Johnson.

• 39:17Rory Stewart?

  Alistair, I guess a lot of people keep pushing us to disagree and we've had a pretty, pretty meaty disagreement there going off in the last 15, 20 minutes. And there are other people pushing to know more things we disagree on. So why don't we take a break and after the break, come back and do a little bit more, hopefully pleasant arguing with each other.

• 39:34Alastair Campbell?

  Let's disagree agreeably on a few things.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  The Great Game, the strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 39:56Speaker 03

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

• 40:03Speaker 04

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 40:05Speaker 05

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 40:08Speaker 02

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

• 40:21Speaker 06

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 40:23Speaker 02

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

• 40:32Speaker 04

  A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia?

• 40:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:39Speaker 04

  New from Goalhanger. Who is going to be able to pull this off?

• 40:43Speaker 02

  You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom MacDuff, Duffy!

• 40:47Speaker 04

  An audio drama journey like no other.

• 40:49Speaker 07

  Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons.

• 40:53Speaker 04

  Devized as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller. We have two tight friendly key. Where Britain plays its strongest hand. He's the best. Against its strongest foe. Don't do it, Duffy! Bear Hunt. Available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 41:26Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, our sponsor, The New European, is back. It's the place to get brilliant analysis and commentary on issues both British and all around the world. And in their Easter issue, they've had a very, very interesting piece by Clive Irving on the future of the monarchy. Front page headline, "Monarchy R.I.P." Now, I think maybe it needed a question mark afterwards, but as Matt Kelly, the editor, said to me, "Question marks are for wimps." Clive says, "Millions of the Queen's subjects don't share her past, and we all live in a present that simultaneously weakens the whole of the past while making the future seem no longer within our control." In such a...

• 42:03Alastair Campbell?

  Liminal, liminal atmosphere. The monarchy is dangerously vulnerable because its rituals display such a reverence for the past. Rory, views?

• 42:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, well, I mean, firstly, the guy sounds like kind of Emmanuel Macron, sounds like a French philosopher. I think that he's put his finger on the question, which is the relationship to the past. And that's something I think we've talked about ourselves, which is how Britain responds to tradition. And my instinct is that, yes, he's right. The world is in an ever more rapidly lurching, modern spasms. It changes, you know, all the time.

• 42:41Alastair Campbell?

  Monarchy R I P? Monarchy R I P?

• 42:42Rory Stewart?

  No, but I think because of that, because of kind of lurching, shuddering modernity, people are going to want to keep some roots and connection to the past. And that's probably why the British monarchy will survive when almost every other monarchy in the world is disappearing.

• 42:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there you go. If you want to read that piece and lots of others, including my weekly column, go to the neweuropean.co.uk/restispolitics and you'll get a special offer for our listeners. You get the annual whack for 52 quid digital and you get print plus digital for £104 a year, which is just £2 a week. And I worked that out all on my own. So that's theneweuropean.co.uk/restispolitics. And now back to the podcast.

• 43:34Rory Stewart?

  So, welcome back to the Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 43:38Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 43:40Rory Stewart?

  And on to questions. We've got a lot of questions this week. So Ed Tyler says, apart from private schools, on the pod, we've had almost complete agreement on most key issues: Johnson, Brexit, migration, international development, cost of living. What a major policy areas you both seriously disagree on. That's a sort of curiously timed question because I think we've just been having one of our more scratchy disagreements for the last 15 minutes. But any thoughts?

• 44:05Alastair Campbell?

  So what else do we disagree on? Where do you, I mean, I would get rid of the House of Lords. What would you do with it?

• 44:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I'd keep it. I'd try to improve what we have. I guess that's where we're getting to, aren't we? That I think. In the end, I can't really get around it, you're Labour and I come from a kind of conservative tradition.

• 44:21Alastair Campbell?

  What about, what about, I'm in favour of compulsory voting, are you? And I'm in favour of lowering the voting age.

• 44:27Rory Stewart?

  Oh, I'm against lowering the voting age, yeah, I like the voting age being at eighteen.

• 44:31Alastair Campbell?

  Why?

• 44:32Rory Stewart?

  I think, because I think generally the people who want to lower the voting age down to sixteen, in my experience, I mean, maybe I'm being very unfair, but I generally think it's something that whenever I go around schools, it's a great way of getting a cheer in school, everybody loves to hear it. But nobody wants to have a serious conversation with somebody on why it should be sixteen.

• 44:49Alastair Campbell?

  I don't agree. I think, in fact, I think there's even a case for bringing even lower than fifteen, than sixteen, to get people in schools really engaged and interested in politics. And when I go into schools, I've got to tell you, interstate schools where people have very healthy debates and don't all agree with each other about, you know, the monarchy and all that stuff. I find that the conversations are often deeper and more interesting than if I go into a room full of fifty and sixty and seventy year olds.

• 45:16Rory Stewart?

  There's got to be a cutoff, hasn't there? There's got to be a place where you draw a line. You're suggesting fifteen, right? People can't drive, people can't drive a car till they're seventeen. There's a lot of evidence that we'd be much safer if people weren't allowed to drive cars till they were eighteen. Why is that, Alastair? Why is it we think people shouldn't drive cars?

• 45:31Alastair Campbell?

  There are a lot of old people who get their licences taken away because they can't drive safely.

• 45:35Rory Stewart?

  Nevertheless.

• 45:36Alastair Campbell?

  I think, is it David Runciman who argues that we should lower the voting age to five? I'm not arguing for this, by the way. It is as a way actually of getting families engaged, much more.

• 45:46Rory Stewart?

  Okay, I have a five year old. I've got a five year old. Okay, now, I can assure you, he just had his birthday yesterday. If I were to ask his views on how to vote, that would not really go well. I disagree with him.

• 45:59Alastair Campbell?

  He would probably say he'd vote Labour. And also, by the way, you're an ex-soldier, Roy, you can join the army at sixteen.

• 46:06Rory Stewart?

  But you can't actually go into combat till you're eighteen. Why is that? In fact, it's considered child soldiers. In fact, the fact that Britain allows people to join the army at sixteen, seventeen is illegal. Many people argue under international law.

• 46:17Alastair Campbell?

  All right, we've disagreed on that.

• 46:18Rory Stewart?

  Here's another thing we disagree on, I think. I was very much in favour of trying to get a soft Brexit compromise, trying to push for a kind of customs union compromise, keep Britain as close as possible to European Union, but I accepted the result of the Brexit referendum and you were going for a second referendum, weren't you?

• 46:36Alastair Campbell?

  People's vote, we called it, a referendum on the outcome, which I thought was an entirely democratic way of resolving the issue, and I think if we look at the mess now, look, the reason why I didn't think your approach worked is because I don't believe those who were driving the debate on the right, Brexiteers, were ever, ever, ever going to accept what Theresa May was trying to do. I respect her for trying to do it in the way that she did, but it failed because of that political reality. And I felt the only way to fully to resolve this issue was actually to say, okay, get the deal and then put that to the people and see where we are. Now, we failed as well, and that's why, but you know, we probably both have to accept some responsibility for the absolute mess that we're in now. And

• 47:21Alastair Campbell?

  honestly, you talk about Brexit, have you seen these queues in Kent? They're just unbelievable and trying to, it's almost, it's Orwellian in the extent to which Brexit has been written out of the equation. It's all to do with P and O, it's to do with bad weather, it's to do with Easter holidays. And once the the new restrictions start coming the other way, we are going to be in a hell of a mess. So, but let's not revisit Brexit. Can I, can I put a question to you?

• 47:48Rory Stewart?

  Go on then.

• 47:49Alastair Campbell?

  And this one comes from a very distinguished listener, a member of the House of Lords on which we disagree, a former leader of the Labour Party, none other than Neil Kinnock, who sent this message, Rory said, it's Neil here, enjoying the podcast, so far, so good. I have to say, I found Rory Stewart's explanation as to why he is a Tory surprisingly unformed and unconvincing. And I must admit, Roy, I didn't give you a go last week, but I agree with that. I think you, I think when it boils down, there's another great question here from Will Deans. He says that Rory Stewart sounds like the biggest Liberal Democrat I have ever heard. What's holding him back?

• 48:32Alastair Campbell?

  So, I mean, let's go back to why you're a Tory. Last week, you basically said you want to make a difference in the world. Well, I think people on the left are motivated by that even more than people on the right.

• 48:43Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Well, let me take it back to the beginning. And obviously, I think about this a lot, worry about this a lot. And I'm now an independent, so I'm not a member of any party. I wasn't, I'd been a member of the Labour Party when I was 18. Then I wasn't a member of any party. And I only came into politics because of the expenses scandal. So I wasn't a member of the Conservative Party. David Cameron did this strange thing in 2009 when he said he wanted people who hadn't been involved in politics before to stand as MPs. I realised when I got into Parliament that one of my problems was that I'm not very ideological. I'm not actually very interested in a lot of the fights between Labour and Conservative and the kind of things they're fighting about.

• 49:23Rory Stewart?

  I think that the things that really I love about politics, I loved Cumbria, loved working with constituents, I love trying to get super fast broadband installed. I love trying to build affordable housing with community groups. I'm very, very interested in being a minister. I love running government departments, trying to improve them, trying to get, you know, development workers out into the field more, trying to improve the state of prisons. I, I'm interested in geopolitics. I'm very interested in how Britain relates with the rest of the world. But I'm not really part of the, the sort of debate of the 1980s. I, I didn't look at those politicians that you knew well through the 1980s on either side with any sort of admiration.

• 50:07Rory Stewart?

  I grew up seeing them as spitting image puppets, a whole lot of them. Kind of weird, contorted figures. I didn't think Margaret Thatcher's wonderful or Tony Benn's wonderful or.

• 50:18Rory Stewart?

  You know, I couldn't really see the point of Jim Callaghan like, and I, I so I, I, I actually, it was a weakness for me. I came into Parliament realising that I wasn't really that into politics. I didn't really have any political heroes.

• 50:31Alastair Campbell?

  So Neil's on to something. He spotted something there. He did spot something.

• 50:34Rory Stewart?

  He's definitely spotted something, but I suppose that there are, there are things which.

• 50:38Alastair Campbell?

  Maybe you should, maybe you should have just stayed as a civil servant.

• 50:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I, I, I often thought that. I actually realised in prisons that I would have loved to be the chief exec to the prison service. I, I thought actually what I should be is not the prisons minister. I should have applied to be chief exec to the prison service. But there are some things, I was thinking about this, which are, which is sort of to do with things we love and relate to. I, for example, am passionate about small farmers in the Lake District. I have very warm feelings towards the British Army, as you tease me, towards the monarchy. I really have a lot of admiration for tradition, for British history, for the British past. I tend to feel, this is me explaining why I'm a Tory,

• 51:20Rory Stewart?

  not Labour. I tend to feel that, um, yeah, I tend to believe in slow evolution, fixing things in a practical way rather than revolutionary change. And I also find, or I felt when I was in Parliament, that one of the things that put me off the Labour Party is that they are so, can be very, very aggressive and vicious towards opponents in a, in a different way. I mean.

• 51:46Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think, would you put me in that category?

• 51:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I guess that, I, I, maybe, maybe. So one of the things that somebody once said to me, which I think did strike a, strike a chord, which is that the Conservatives in Parliament think that Labour are basically well intentioned but wrong, whereas Labour basically think Tories are evil.

• 52:05Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think they're evil, but I think that, I, I also think that they, they, they managed to skew the political scales in their favour. And my, my, my, the other Rory in my life, my son, he sent me this extraordinary, extraordinary fact this week.

• 52:22Alastair Campbell?

  How many Conservative leaders before Tony Blair did not become Prime Minister?

• 52:30Rory Stewart?

  I don't know.

• 52:31Alastair Campbell?

  The answer is one. Austin Chamberlain. How many Conservative leaders did not become Prime Minister while Tony Blair was around? Three. How many Conservative leaders have not been Prime Minister since Tony Blair? None.

• 52:46Rory Stewart?

  Wow.

• 52:47Alastair Campbell?

  Our politics is Conservative dominated. You have to really fight.

• 52:52Rory Stewart?

  But so there's something really, but there's something really interesting there because of course the kind of, you know, without making a sound, obviously, we're very different people come from very different places. But I guess we probably read the same newspapers, we see the same stuff on Twitter. And we're basically in a world in which most people we're dealing with are centrist, soft left and find it very difficult to understand why Labour isn't doing better. But I guess at some level, it may be true, and this may be a difficult thing to come to terms with, that the British public may be just in some level more comfortable with Conservative policies and Conservative ideology than people on the left want to admit.

• 53:33Rory Stewart?

  And that the reason why Tony Blair won is that he moved quite strongly towards the centre.

• 53:40Alastair Campbell?

  Without apologising for it.

• 53:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and that the traditional Labour offering just isn't that appealing now for modern British voters. And that's a difficult thing for the Labour Party to come to terms with.

• 53:51Alastair Campbell?

  I also think it's about the way that politics is done. If you, you know, the, the number of people I've met in my life who say that they're really, you know, were really into being Labour until they went to a Labour Party meeting. Uh, and so I don't want to go through that experience again. Um, and I do think there is a real problem with both of the main parties. And I think this is what we're seeing in France with the disappearance of both the main parties who've been very similar in, in the way that they do politics and Macron did change the way it was done. Um, is that.

• 54:21Alastair Campbell?

  You just sort of think, well, this isn't kind of the way I live my life. And we see that in the, we see that in the way that, you know, I, I think now with the local elections, every time I see these, I mean, every weekend, thousands of tweets out campaigning in so and so fantastic reaction on the doorstep. And there's a picture of a candidate with two people with lipboards. And you think, you know, that is not how people live their lives anymore. They live it through data, they live it through screens, you've got to get into them and in different ways. And no, I think, I, I, but, but is it not stunning, is that not a truly stunning fact that, and you know, I'm, I'm trusting my son, he, he works in, in sports data and analytics, I'm trusting he's done, he's done the research. But only one conservative leader did not become prime minister.

• 55:05Alastair Campbell?

  Whereas, and, and the other one, I'd say, as I never tire of saying to people, three times more Etonian prime ministers than leaders of the Labour Party. It's incredible.

• 55:13Rory Stewart?

  It's, it is incredible. But one of the questions, I guess, is what is it that's made, whatever you think about it, we like it or dislike it, and obviously I've left this party. But what has made the Conservative Party literally the most successful electoral machine anywhere globally? I mean, this is a party that's been around for well over 200 years.

• 55:32Alastair Campbell?

  I think you gave some of the answers, I think you gave some of the answers. I think, I think those things of, I think that stuff about tradition and history runs really, really strong. And, and I think that people being a little bit scared of change at times. Um, and yet, these conservatives have given us probably the biggest change of our lifetime, which is dragging us out of the European Union. There's, there's one question here, I, I bet we're going to disagree on this. Adam, I think it's Mutterhead, I've scribbled it from down, we, we had hundreds this week, Rory, hundreds on the, on the Twitter feed. In light of the new restrictions on protest, when does rioting become justified under progression of this framework?

• 56:13Rory Stewart?

  Blimey. When does rioting become justified? That sounds like a big, big philosophical question. Um, I guess, for the first thing, I don't know what he means by rioting, but I think the first thing to me-

• 56:24Alastair Campbell?

  I think he means by taking to the streets and, and, and like the poll tax.

• 56:27Rory Stewart?

  But if you literally mean, you literally mean rioting, I think, uh, having been in many countries, not just Britain, where riots are taking place, you don't want to underestimate what a horrifying thing that is, how terrifying that is for women, how terrifying that is for people trying to run a small business on the street, how terrifying that is for children. And there are very, very good reasons why you do not want to be living in a society where people are, if, if by rioting he means rampaging down the streets, attacking, attacking policemen, smashing up shop windows, looting.

• 57:00Alastair Campbell?

  The point Adam is making is that this government is, and I think under quite a lot of false pretenses, is making what we would define as lawful protest, parts of it are going to be illegal.

• 57:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, that I totally disagree with. I think lawful protest is hugely important, and I think there's nothing more powerful than seeing the marches against the Iraq war, the marches, for example, on Brexit. I mean, I think it's incredibly powerful. The sad thing, of course, is that they, both of those things had no impact, did they?

• 57:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I remember, I remember when, when we got a million people out on the streets to march for the, um, the people's vote.

• 57:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 57:36Alastair Campbell?

  I remember Adam Bolton, then at Sky News, did a tweet which he got a lot of flack for, but actually, I think he was making a serious point. He actually, and I remember this, he said, marches don't change things, riots do. And he was obviously thinking about the poll tax. And the fact is that it did have an impact. Um, anyway, I think that's a really interesting question. I think the government needs to think, really think through this thing about protest because I, I sense amongst quite a lot of people, this, this idea that they are trying to, if you like, criminalize pro-

• 58:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I think that's, that's horrible. And that, that brings us to Pakistan. Sorry, just, just quickly on that, because we had a good, good question on Pakistan. Let me just, let me just pull it, pull it up. Yeah. Sadi, Sadiya Ahmed. Can you please cover the political situation in Pakistan? What this means for its people, Afghanistan, and whether Imran Khan can make a comeback? Now, Imran Khan's a very, very interesting figure. I mean, obviously, somebody who's more famous in Britain than any Pakistani president has ever been, because he was the most glamorous, iconic captain of the Pakistan cricket team. And of course, was, was married to a British citizen.

• 58:39Alastair Campbell?

  He mar- he married into the old Etonian family.

• 58:42Rory Stewart?

  That's it. Major celebrity. And so I remember first, when he was first running in Pakistan, people saying, Guy hasn't got a chance. And then he seems to have made a very interesting deal with the Pakistan military and the Pakistan intelligence services.

• 58:57Alastair Campbell?

  Which you have to do.

• 58:58Rory Stewart?

  Which you have to do, and he got into power. And his opponents certainly would say that he used them as his enforcers, and things became very troubling. I I I had time for Imran Khan, and suddenly I'm getting friends of mine from Pakistan, journalists, the editor of the Friday Times, television interviewers, explaining that their friends are being abducted, threatened, they're getting thrown in jail, their newspapers are getting locked down. He's clamping down on NGOs in civil society. And now, he's out. He's been replaced by a guy called Shabaz Sharif.

• 59:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 59:30Rory Stewart?

  Who actually we worked with very closely in Difid, did amazing education reforms in Punjab, and actually really impressed my my colleagues. And so they're quite hopeful about his abilities. He's just, I mean, you talk about Macron, his brain, people are actually quite optimistic about Shabaz Sharif, just as a technical administrator. He was a good governor of Punjab.

• 59:48Alastair Campbell?

  I think I think I think Imran Khan is probably finished, though.

• 59:51Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't know, because what he's doing is straight out of the populist playbook. He's announced that the whole thing's an American conspiracy. That they've moved against him because he wasn't aggressive enough against Russia for the Ukraine invasion. He's trying to stir up public sentiment, suggesting that he's the champion of Islam against the United States, and that the government isn't legitimate. And he's a very, very, he can be a very compelling campaign. And I think you you might have seen some of his rallies and his songs and. So I think in opposition, he's going to be a pretty formidable figure.

• 1:00:28Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Yeah, well, we'll see. I I I think, um, look, I've been to Pakistan a few times, and it's it's it's one of the most brutal political landscapes in the world.

• 1:00:39Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I mean, they are, well, we've seen it this week. They're absolutely brutal with each other. Uh, and you've got to be very, very smart. And you've also got, you do have to, I'm afraid they do have to make pacts with uh, the military and the intelligence service and so forth. Now, whether that will one day change, I don't know. It's interesting, you, you, you, um, you mentioned that. I didn't know about his educa-, this, his education record in Punjab. Uh, I do remember the fact that whenever uh, I went to Pakistan, the, the, the thing you get the whole time is this sense of the extent to which Kashmir just dominates the, so much of their thinking, the relationship with India.

• 1:01:21Alastair Campbell?

  And I think with that, you talk about Imran Khan being a populist, of course, next, you know, the Indian Modi is, is, is sort of, he's right, right in the populist playbook.

• 1:01:29Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:30Alastair Campbell?

  So you could be right, you could be right, that as an opposition leader, he, he comes back. I wonder if he doesn't actually end up doing something very, very different in his life.

• 1:01:37Rory Stewart?

  Couple of quick things. One of the interesting things is that Shabazz Sharif's great partner in driving through reform in the education in Punjab was Michael Barber, who was the head of Tony Blair's delivery unit.

• 1:01:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Rory Stewart?

  So actually, it was a real kind of Blair delivery unit culture that's behind this guy that's the new president.

• 1:01:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you know what? Michael Barber, Michael Barber, most of our listeners probably don't know who Michael Barber is, but virtually everywhere you go in the world, when you're, particularly in the developing world, if you're sitting down with a minister or a president or a prime minister, quite often you will see Michael Barber's book on the back shelf, on the bookshelf behind. He's a gr-, what he did for our government was absolutely, absolutely outstanding.

• 1:02:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And it was actually, it was a big, big problem when Cameron came in, that he got rid of that delivery unit. And it suddenly turned out that it was very, very difficult to run the British government without it. Um, another thing I think that's changing very quickly, and this is partly Russia, Ukraine. People were very hopeful that the way to find peace between India and Pakistan was really opening up trade. And of course, people are saying the same here in Jordan. There's been a expansion of trade between Jordan and Israel. Sharing water, sharing energy. And of course, the old story behind that is when you have strong trading connections, it brings peace. You don't go to war. And that's another reason why Russia-Ukraine is so disturbing. Because of course, those pipelines were built. Trading connections were built, the fertilizer was flowing, the food was flowing. And nevertheless, we did go to war.

• 1:02:59Rory Stewart?

  And that makes us a bit more worried, I think, about whether these attempts to bring peace in the Middle East or South Asia through trade are really, really add up to as much as we would have hoped a few years ago.

• 1:03:09Alastair Campbell?

  Lots of people last week were always saying we were very, very, very downbeat. We were too downbeat last week, we had to sort of lift the mood a bit. By the way, just on Ukraine, I thought it was very interesting to see the first sort of, not fissure, that would be too strong. But Annalena Baerbock, the new German Foreign Minister, who's a Green, really being quite frank in her disagreement with Scholz. And yesterday calling very, very strongly and very, very clearly for the Germans to join in giving heavy weaponry to, to Ukraine.

• 1:03:43Rory Stewart?

  It's fascinating, isn't it, that the German, the traditional German left. I mean, Scholz was right out there and now the Greens are out flanking him even more. And now I think 70% of Europe in favor of Ukraine joining NATO, which would mean that we'd have to get involved in full military operations to defend them. And I was struck, sorry, here's, here's me going to be, I mean, I really don't like Boris Johnson. I think I may actually dislike him even more than you do, which is really pushing it. But I was struck by, just in pure communications terms, how successful his trip to Ukraine was. That was real, that was good political communications. And I was also struck by the odd thing that, I think we've discussed this in the past, that when you're in a war, it often suits people who are actors.

• 1:04:27Rory Stewart?

  And Boris Johnson is a sort of actor, a bit like Zelensky, he's a kind of, he was a sort of almost professional comedian. And you get a sense that what war brings out in political leaders is the ability to symbolize on social media in quite a simple way. An idea of your country, and it means it takes you out of the stuff that often these leaders are not very good at, the detailed business of governing. Administration, running stuff, making difficult decisions about taxation or VAT. And what you saw there, I think, is a glimpse of, yeah, of what makes Boris so successful as a political leader. Which is that he does have a bit of that charm. And although we really want to feel in this Ukrainian thing, and many of the people we follow on social media are making the contrast between Zelensky and Boris Johnson.

• 1:05:13Rory Stewart?

  But, and I say I didn't like Boris Johnson, but I do think he's not a physical coward in any way at all. I think he's perfectly physically courageous guy. And I think in an odd way, this sort of war stuff. Might suit that style of leadership more than the normal civilian administration.

• 1:05:29Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I, I, I got into a bit of a, one of those ridiculous social media spats that one gets into occasionally, but with Ian Dale, who I've got a lot of time for Ian Dale. He's, he's, he's, he's kind of on the right in politics, but I think he's a thinking right wing person. And he said that, you know, I've been longing to be able to say that I'm proud of, proud of our prime minister and today I am. And Piers Morgan said something very, very similar and I, I think it's perfectly possible. To feel as I did that Johnson going to Kiev was the right thing to do.

• 1:06:03Alastair Campbell?

  At the same time, think he's a truly terrible prime minister and that even though we've done well on the military, we've done very badly on the economic and on the humanitarian. In relation to this, and also to think that a part of his motivation, I'm afraid, is to distract from all the other stuff. So I don't, and, and we're back to this thing about the way that our, our world works, that, you know, the idea that one visit should change your view. Fundamentally about, about somebody. And the other thing I'd say, look, Ursula von der Leyen went the day before and.

• 1:06:37Alastair Campbell?

  You know, I think just sort of sort of as part of her job. I think it is part of their job to do these kind of things. And honestly, the idea that he'd be in physical danger. Yes, there's the chance of the Russians picking up where they might be. But one, they're not unlikely to wipe him out. Secondly, they're pretty well protected, these guys, as they should be.

• 1:06:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but I just, yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you.

• 1:06:57Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not, I'm not knocking him. It was the right thing to do. But I'm not buying this idea that as a result, we should all say, you know, bow down before.

• 1:07:05Rory Stewart?

  No, not, not, not me. Now, as usual, we've talked too much. We haven't covered all the questions. There's one I'd love to do when we come back next week, which is questions about ministers. But I think we're, we're kind of coming to the end. And I can hear the call to prayer going here.

• 1:07:17Alastair Campbell?

  Although Rory, did you not see the person who said that you and I might feel we talk too much, but there were quite a few complaints saying, these podcasts should be at least two hours long.

• 1:07:27Rory Stewart?

  The full Macron. We should go for the full.

• 1:07:30Alastair Campbell?

  We should go for the full. Well, not, not as Macron, but you know, Fidel Castro and.

• 1:07:34Rory Stewart?

  Gaddafi.

• 1:07:34Alastair Campbell?

  There, there are a lot of them.

• 1:07:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 1:07:36Alastair Campbell?

  One of my favourite ever AP stories. It was about the leader of, was it, um, it was, it was, it was one of the now changed African countries. But it basically, there was a story that said, the president yesterday addressed the parliament for 13 hours and 14 minutes. His speech will resume tomorrow.

• 1:07:56Rory Stewart?

  It's beautiful. No, I, I think, I think we should do a director's cut edition where we get to hear you, you know, giving the full four and a half hour speech.

• 1:08:05Alastair Campbell?

  What I really think. What I really think about the Tories. Yeah. Now Rory, I, I, there was one person who said, she is called Andre Onfrancez. I love these Twitter names. Andre Onfrancez said, I'm a big fan of your podcast, but if you ever play the backpipes again, I will never listen again.

• 1:08:24Rory Stewart?

  Oh, then you should play them. I think this is your chance.

• 1:08:27Alastair Campbell?

  Not only am I, not only am I going to play them, I'm going to play. Can you, can you see this Rory? Can you tell the listeners?

• 1:08:33Rory Stewart?

  It's the Ukrainian national anthem. Oh, my Lord.

• 1:08:36Alastair Campbell?

  I have learnt the Ukrainian national anthem on the backpipes. And I think, I think, and also the other thing Rory, we always, we seem every week to be recommending a book or two. I want to recommend this one to you. Do you speak French, by the way?

• 1:08:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I speak French. Yeah.

• 1:08:51Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Well, Vladimir Fedorovski, who used to work for Gorbachev.

• 1:08:56Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 1:08:57Alastair Campbell?

  Has written a book in French. He's half Russian, half a UK, and it's called Le Faisse Cachet, The Hidden Faces. And it's absolutely fascinating.

• 1:09:05Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful. Okay, I've got a little, little recommendation back, a slight, slightly more lowbrow. But if you're ever looking for something to watch in the evening, have you seen the new movie of Dune? The science fiction movie Dune?

• 1:09:16Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I'm not going to.

• 1:09:17Rory Stewart?

  No, no, no, I promise you, give it a go. It is so beautifully shot, so beautifully conceived. The, the attempt to envisage a whole alien planet and civilization is completely mesmerizing. Give it a go.

• 1:09:30Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, all right, I, I, I will, I, I'll be, it'll be impossible to persuade Fiona to watch it because she's with me on science. Because you've told me to, I will. Right, so I am going to get my pipes. You, you haven't, you haven't gone back to the pipes yet then?

• 1:09:43Rory Stewart?

  No, I'm, I'm too intimidated by you. You're particularly since you attacked me on Twitter for bending my head in the wrong way and having my finger position in the wrong.

• 1:09:51Alastair Campbell?

  But I, I, listen, I was talking this morning, Finley McDonald, who runs the National Piping Centre, and, and he tunes my pipes by FaceTime. Tells me what to do, tells me where the reeds are off, where, where I need to chew the, the, the drone stocks and so forth. And anyway, he saw the picture and he did say, I think they must teach the pipes very differently in public schools. Your, your right, your right hand fingers, you were curling your fingers, you've got to cover the holes flat.

• 1:10:21Rory Stewart?

  I think I was, to be fair, I think I was 15 years old, just beginning.

• 1:10:27Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 1:10:28Rory Stewart?

  So while Alastair's just chewing on his drones and getting his fingering position right, that's goodbye from all of us and see you next week.

• 1:11:43Rory Stewart?

  How did that sound? That was absolutely amazing, really amazing, that's extraordinary. Isn't it incredible that it fits within the single octave as well? It's really extraordinary, it tells you something about ancient Indo-European links or something.