122. Question Time: Leaking Liz Truss, the funniest person in politics, and ‘Killing Thatcher’

Is leaking a way to get ahead in politics? What did Paddy Ashdown do to Rory? Should Joe Biden run for President again? Listen as Alastair and Rory answer these questions and more… Sign up to the free TRIP weekly newsletter: bit.ly/3zhYAIl TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, 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. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:33Alastair Campbell?

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

• 1:37Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart. And we're here in Belfast, but I wanted to start with one question. So what do you make of the current crisis befalling the CBI? What does it say about corporate Britain? Is there a better way for the business community to be represented and have their voices heard in Westminster Whitehall? Is that a question about Tony Danker's support of Labour? Or has he done something else?

• 1:59Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, this is just the classic Tory Party negative campaign, sort of sinister smeary that you people do. No, I think, I'm sure this is about the allegations against Tony Danka, the head of the CBI, that have led to him departing his post. So I'm guessing that's quite serious. And then whether there is something deeper about the culture there or not, I don't know. I'm a very, very close friend of his predecessor, Carolyn Fairburn.

• 2:26Rory Stewart?

  Oh, I think she's great. And she was one of the few people who was prepared to make really constructive, detailed proposals on a soft Brexit, which I thought was absolutely vital. And businesses' failure to do that, and I really think business did fail to do that. I kept saying, you guys have got so much riding on Brexit. You've got untold resources. You could be spending millions funding think tanks and campaigns to come up with a really constructive proposal on a good compromise customs union Brexit. And none of them did it. They either privately backed second referendum remain, or they just kept quiet. And that was terrible, I felt, for someone like me trying to campaign

• 3:11Rory Stewart?

  for something more like a customs union Brexit, that there were no voices out there really producing the papers. Boy, the ERG had them. They had Brady and arrangements and Malthouse compromises and Sangara agreements and all these weird things that we've now unfortunately forgotten, being produced a lot of them by Tufton Street think tanks. But Carolyn Fairburn was one of the few people prepared to engage in trying to produce concrete details on what a better Brexit deal would look like. But even she didn't actually produce what we wanted, which was the 500-page chapter and verse campaign, which would allow us to go to The Guardian and The Times and others, saying, this is what it looks like and get the MPs behind it.

• 3:50Alastair Campbell?

  I'm very pleased that you Fell into my little jab there of turning a question that you were putting to me, trying to suggest that anybody who supported the Labour Party was involved in some sort of terrible sex scandal into a discussion of how brilliant by very good Fred Caroline Fairbaird. Thank you very much for that Rory. Now, moving on. Alison Golding, is Rishi Sunak really any better than Trussor Johnson? The scale of government financial losses during his watch as Chancellor and PM, his failure to stop utility profits going abroad rather than to the UK infrastructure and his deliberately leaving the NHS to rot, all say not to me. Telenor, could Rory explain why he's a fan of Rishi Sunak? I applaud his efforts on Northern Ireland EU relations but could never be a fan of anyone who enables

• 4:33Alastair Campbell?

  and reinforces Suella Braverman on asylum seekers. Brackets Rory is correct on Labour's attack ads. So we can park that. We've talked a lot about that last week. But, fair question, isn't it? I mean, he's not, he's a record of a chance to not be great.

• 4:47Rory Stewart?

  The first question is a good question and obviously people who are strongly Labour are going to be against Rishi Sunak and absolutely I do agree that I find Suella Braverman's stuff around boats and asylum in Rwanda deeply, deeply uncomfortable. And one of the things that has made me uncomfortable with Rishi Sunak is the fact that Suella Braverman is Home Secretary. I hope he's now going to move to get rid of her as he becomes more confident in his position. And I think that's something that people should judge him on.

• 5:15Alastair Campbell?

  And hold on, so you said on the main podcast that you think that might happen. Is that wishful thinking?

• 5:21Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's to do with, and this is something we've talked about a lot and we talk particularly about here in Northern Ireland, which is how much you can say no to your party and confront your party. And that's the genius of politics, isn't it? Because you can be like Boris Johnson, just feeding the very worst instincts of your party all the time. Or you can be, I'm afraid to be honest, like Theresa May, ending up very isolated from your party, not really bringing them with you. And it's very difficult to judge from the outside how tough you could be. But I think, and this is something I can give you credit for, you've been pushing Rishi Sunak on being tougher and more confrontational towards Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. And I think we'd like to see it with Suella Braverman. On the plus side, very quickly, I'm very struck by the fact that ministers I admire

• 6:06Rory Stewart?

  and cabinet ministers too, just say to me consistently, he is the first grown up prime minister they've seen in a long time. And what they're talking about there is number 10 is run much, much more professionally and thoughtfully. He really masters his briefs, but he's not strangely, like Gordon Brown and some people would have accused Theresa May of this, somebody who masters his briefs but doesn't delegate. He's somebody who masters briefs and seems to be able to allow people to get on with their job. First time we've had a prime minister, I think, that I've felt for a long time where the people who work with him closely really admire him. But he is, I guess, in the end, still quite private, quite introverted. And he's still very much a conservative, you know, more

• 6:49Rory Stewart?

  on the right, the Conservative Party than I was, a Brexiteer, more comfortable leaning in on the immigration boats thing than I would have been doing. But I think a huge improvement on Liz Truss and Boris Johnson.

• 7:00Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we've got a very good question here, which I think could be an absolutely brilliant idea from somebody with a brilliant name as well, Laurie the Anti-Growth Collider. I think this is a point about Liz Truss. Could we get a one-off special podcast where Shashana and Fiona discuss Rory and Alistair?

• 7:17Rory Stewart?

  Do you think they want to do that?

• 7:19Alastair Campbell?

  I think Fiona would love it.

• 7:20Rory Stewart?

  Really?

• 7:21Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 7:21Rory Stewart?

  And do you think anyone wants to listen to that?

• 7:23Alastair Campbell?

  I think they might. Fiona's had quite a few offers to sort of write books about the hell of living with me.

• 7:28Rory Stewart?

  Okay, well, we could pitch it out. I mean, they're both definitely more interesting than us. I think we'd have to accept that probably the podcast in the future would be done by them as soon as people hear them.

• 7:37Alastair Campbell?

  So we see it as a bad idea because it would put us out of a job?

• 7:40Rory Stewart?

  I think.

• 7:40Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, so Laurie, it's not happening. Go back to your little fantasies about Liz Truss and her anti-growth coalition.

• 7:47Rory Stewart?

  I think it's quite threatening. I think they're both considerably more appealing personalities than we are, but we could try it. Paddy, who would be the presumptive Democrat nominee if not Biden, comma, Alistair?

• 7:58Alastair Campbell?

  I just don't know. I mean, people talk about Gavin Newsom, but I just don't know. I think, I think, I think that, I think people have got used to it. Biden's going to go. Biden's going to run for it. And I can see. People, Rory is shaking his head and looking rather alarmed.

• 8:13Rory Stewart?

  He's the dude.

• 8:13Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think he's, I think he's going to go for it. And I, and I don't think it's, as you said before, there are people in the Democrats who'd think, oh God, no, please, no, he's too old. But at the same time, I think if Trump does get the nomination, I think Biden might be the guy to beat him.

• 8:28Rory Stewart?

  It's a, it's a big decision though.

• 8:30Alastair Campbell?

  It's a huge decision.

• 8:31Rory Stewart?

  I mean, can you imagine how stupid we'd feel if Trump defeated Biden and how we'd all be beating ourselves up and saying we should have found someone else?

• 8:37Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Look, let's ask you, ask yourself this. When he was in Ireland, did he look like a guy who was on a victory lap of departure? He didn't, to me, look like a guy who was starting out a new campaign. So I think, I think it's going to be Joe and I hope to God he wins. Now Rory, I'm going to ask you this one.

• 8:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 8:55Alastair Campbell?

  James Thomas, Rory, knowing what you know now, if you had your time again, would you vote for the chaos of Ed Miliband in 2015?

• 9:02Rory Stewart?

  Ed Miliband? No, I would vote for David Miliband, possibly. I would not vote for Ed Miliband. Marty, who was the funniest person you met in politics?

• 9:11Alastair Campbell?

  I'll tell you what popped into my head straight away with that question was Tony Banks. Do you remember Tony Banks?

• 9:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 9:16Alastair Campbell?

  Two, one of the reasons I love Tony Banks, he was a massive, massive Chelsea fan. That's not something I loved about him, but he was the MP for West Ham and he never pretended to be any, he used to walk around his West Ham constituency with a Chelsea scarf on, you know, which some people get on their heads kitted. And one of my favourite memories of, of, of Tony, and here's a shout out for a Tory, by the way, at Tony Banks's funeral, David Mellor made one of the best funeral orations I've ever heard.

• 9:47Rory Stewart?

  Known for Chelsea sport, but you're telling me did not wear a Chelsea strip in bed?

• 9:51Alastair Campbell?

  I don't want to talk about Conservative MPs in bed, but I think it's well recognised that that story about David Mellor wearing a Chelsea shirt in bed while having sex with somebody called Antonia DeSancha, I think her name was.

• 10:04Rory Stewart?

  Who was, who was the girlfriend of the England manager? No?

• 10:08Alastair Campbell?

  What are you talking about?

• 10:10Rory Stewart?

  Is that not it?

• 10:11Alastair Campbell?

  Sven!

• 10:12Rory Stewart?

  It wasn't Sven's girlfriend, no.

• 10:13Alastair Campbell?

  No, you're talking about, you're talking about Nancy the Lolio.

• 10:17Rory Stewart?

  They weren't the same at all.

• 10:18Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, this is staying in, this is staying in.

• 10:23Rory Stewart?

  So anyway, so I have a vague memory of scandals about Sven in bed.

• 10:28Alastair Campbell?

  About Tony Banks.

• 10:29Rory Stewart?

  Scandal scandals about David Miller in bed, but they weren't the same scandal at all.

• 10:32Alastair Campbell?

  There were a lot about scandals involving Sven. In fact, here's a little confession for you, Rory. His most famous scandal was an affair with Ulrika Johnson, Swede.

• 10:42Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 10:42Alastair Campbell?

  Sven's a Swede and I introduced them.

• 10:44Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 10:45Alastair Campbell?

  At, it gets worse, at a party for Richard Desmond's birthday. This is the sort of thing I had to go to in the olden days and Fiona was giving me a very, very BDI.

• 10:55Rory Stewart?

  Can we just remind listeners, Richard Desmond made his name as a publisher of porn, right?

• 11:00Alastair Campbell?

  He actually owns the copyright to some of my work.

• 11:03Rory Stewart?

  That's right. And, and then went on, now owns the Dead Express.

• 11:06Alastair Campbell?

  No, he sold them now, I think. But he's basically a media guy and he had this birthday party and I was talking to Ulrika. And Fiona was giving me a bit of a BDI.

• 11:16Rory Stewart?

  And also he brought down Robert Jenrick, didn't he? He was the guy who sat next to Robert Jenrick to get a planning permission for a building.

• 11:22Alastair Campbell?

  He didn't bring him down, did he?

• 11:23Rory Stewart?

  Jenrick, I think in the end resigned because of this. Yeah. Desmond had paid money, sat next to him at a event.

• 11:28Alastair Campbell?

  This is going so far from Tony Banks. Tony, R I P. We're going to come back to you eventually.

• 11:32Rory Stewart?

  What's a joke? Have you got a joke from Tony Banks?

• 11:34Alastair Campbell?

  Wait a minute. So, so I said to Ulrika, I saw Sven arrive and I said, have you met the other famous Swede in London? And I introduced them and a few weeks later it's all over the front pages. I had a bloody affair.

• 11:48Rory Stewart?

  Was that, that was the sun again?

• 11:49Alastair Campbell?

  Think it might have been the mirror, but I can't remember.

• 11:51Rory Stewart?

  Phone tapping? No.

• 11:52Alastair Campbell?

  Well, around that period, very good point. Very, very, very good point. Very good point. Anyway, so Tony, so David Miller made this fantastic speech about Tony Banks, which is interesting if you think about it. David Miller was a Tory MP and he was invited to do one of the main speeches. I think Margaret Beckett spoke and possibly Sadiq Khan. I can't remember, but anyway, but David Miller made an absolutely brilliant speech. But my, my favorite memory of Tony Banks was at a Labour Party conference where we were working on Tony Blair's speech for the conference and I got a message on, this is back in the days of pages. And I got a message saying that Tony Banks had caused this terrible stir because

• 12:34Alastair Campbell?

  Tony Banks had done this speech where he said Labour would definitely go to the election because William Hague was the Tory leader at the time. And he said, nobody's ever going to elect a fetus as Prime Minister. Which was truly horrible on one level, but when we sort of, so we phoned Tony, we said, Tony, what the hell is this? And he said, oh God, you know, I just got a bit carried away. What am I going to get bollocked? Am I going to get bollocked? So the thing is, he was, he just one of those guys, you couldn't bollock him because he was so funny. So that's my, who's your funniest MP?

• 13:04Rory Stewart?

  Actually, I thought Labour MPs were generally funny.

• 13:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they're generally better people.

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  Well, funnier, I was on. What do you make of leak politics, Alexander Kay? This week again has been all about a new wave of leaks. What do you make of leak politics and how the unintentional or apparently unintentional leaks impact modern politics?

• 13:23Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Well, this of course relates to this American stuff, which does seem amazing that it's on, I think we're on Discord, aren't we? You can get onto Discord to talk about the rest of politics. So this guy has got access to stuff relating to some pretty sensitive material and he's discussing it with his mates on Discord and he's now been taken. And so whether it, whether it's part of some sophisticated intelligence operation against Americans or not, I don't know. So it's been described as a leak, but I think when people think of what we mean by leaks, I think the word gets used way too much. A leak to me is when you're in possession of usually a paper or a piece of information

• 14:07Alastair Campbell?

  which you should not necessarily be going into the public domain and you put it into the public domain for your own political purposes.

• 14:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And often, I mean, that was something that comes across in your diaries, isn't it? Suspicions that Damien McBride and Gordon Brown were leaking things to the press to try to bolster Gordon Brown's position against Tony Blair.

• 14:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but that, but, but sometimes what the press would sometimes do is have a conversation with a guy in a pub, uh, who sort of shrugs a shoulder or raises an eyebrow in a different sort of way, or says a few sort of choice words. And that becomes viewed as, you know, leaking, briefing against, when sometimes it's just journalists kind of hoovering up information. I think when-

• 14:44Rory Stewart?

  You also see, I mean, you'll see, I've felt this with my colleagues, that it's clearly a basic bit of self-promotion. One of the reasons that Liz Truss made it to be very briefly Prime Minister is she was very- Very well known, along with Gavin Williamson and others, for being one of the first to come out of Cabinet, which is meant to be confidential, internal conversations and talk to the media.

• 15:02Alastair Campbell?

  I hear from journalists that they used to get messages during the Cabinet of who was saying what.

• 15:06Rory Stewart?

  And it was a very odd practice because it was something that somebody like me or David Gork, who were kind of more boring Cabinet Ministers didn't do. But it was clearly an absolute necessity for the political career of certain kinds of people. I remember when journalists used to take me out as a young politician, how disappointed they'd get if I didn't say anything interesting. And how those people who did say interesting things, Priti Patel, Les Truss, found their careers rocketing up because the media developed them and convinced the Prime Ministers the day that these were the great media stars. So there's a sort of slightly strange relationship between the two.

• 15:43Alastair Campbell?

  Just related to that, I would say that one of the reasons that Michael Gove has been such a survivor within Conservative Party politics is he's very good at making sure the press reflects him in a reasonable light. I mean, Fiona, my Fiona has a sort of running joke about, you know, whenever she reads a story about Michael Gove in The Times or The Sunday Times, it basically says, why didn't he just put his byline on it? You know, the Prime Minister's thinking of asking Michael Gove to take over X problem, Y problem, or some amazing observation Michael Gove made.

• 16:09Rory Stewart?

  Did you have ministers who tried to do that to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown?

• 16:13Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I don't think, I think by and large, we run a pretty tight ship.

• 16:18Rory Stewart?

  But if you read an article saying Prime Minister's thinking of appointing X or Y to run this, your suspicion would have been that that minister was briefing out and trying to get their name in the press.

• 16:26Alastair Campbell?

  Or somebody else was doing it so that they'd hope that you'd think that. So in the end, it's best to just ignore it, unless it becomes a problem.

• 16:33Rory Stewart?

  Does it, I mean, how does it work? Can it sometimes help an MP to get stories out? That sort of, or does it backfire and just make everyone a number 10, think you're a dick?

• 16:42Alastair Campbell?

  I think if somebody overdoes it, one of Tony's strengths, I think, as a leader, he wanted other big figures around. He wanted people to kind of have a profile and get noticed for the right reasons. But I think if people start to do what I kind of the puff piece stuff, I think I think we'd find that pretty tiresome. Look, there's no doubt, particularly in the modern age, getting noticed, having a profile. So you said recently, for example, we were asked at a show, you know, who do you think on the Labour side should be, if not Keir Starmer, would be leader? And you said Peter Kyle, who's here at the moment because he's the Shadow Secretary of State of Northern Ireland. Now, I think Peter's terrific, but Peter doesn't have a big profile. You need a big profile to be viewed as and therefore to

• 17:27Alastair Campbell?

  be one of the big beasts.

• 17:29Rory Stewart?

  And so interestingly, people like Jess Phillips or Stella Creasy, who've had more social media exposure, can end up in a stronger position than Peter Kyle.

• 17:37Alastair Campbell?

  Although Peter is in the Shadow Cabinet. So that says to me that, you know, so sometimes it can go, it can go either way. And ultimately, these are, we still operate in a system that's essentially the patronage of the leader.

• 17:49Rory Stewart?

  I remember this though with David Gork, because I thought he would have made a brilliant, brilliant Prime Minister. And yet, the only response I got out of colleagues when I was trying to canvas for him when Theresa May was stepping down was, he just doesn't have enough of a public profile. You know, nobody's heard of him.

• 18:02Alastair Campbell?

  But it goes back, this goes back to our argument about the ads, is that in our media world, I'm afraid, you either get noticed because you are, people recognise a sort of supreme talent. I would put Tony and Gordon in that category. Johnson got noticed because he'd built, very carefully built his own profile up under years of journalists.

• 18:21Rory Stewart?

  He was a big celebrity long before he came in.

• 18:23Alastair Campbell?

  He was a celebrity politician. And then obviously Sunak now is incredibly high profile because he's become the Prime Minister. I would argue that it's possible to make the case that Rishi Sunak's elevation to become Prime Minister actually goes against some of that stuff. And I think that's a good thing. But I think I can see why somebody like David Gork, because he didn't cause scandals, he didn't say stupid things that had people talking about him on the phones, he didn't polarise, he didn't go out there and try to kind of, you know, say, look at me. He tried to be a serious bloke doing a serious job. And I'm, I think that there is a part of our politics that doesn't take those people seriously enough. All right, loads more questions to come. Take a quick break.

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• 21:08Rory Stewart?

  Australian referendum. Here in Australia, our Labor Prime Minister is planning to hold a referendum to change the Constitution and in it acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Conservative Party back the no vote and as such I can't see it getting up as a double majority is required. What will be the damage to our reputation if the no gets up? So I think Frank is more on the Labor side on this and then Helen would be interested to hear your view on the upcoming referendum in Australia to amend our Constitution to give First Nations people and Torres Strait Islanders a formal voice to power. There's a vigorous debate in Australia about this proposed change to our Constitution among both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Any thoughts?

• 21:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I, as you know, I'm a regular subscriber to The Conversation and because of that, I've always been sent, even though I've never asked for it, but I really enjoy it, I get sent The Conversation Australian version. And this week, I didn't know this was coming up, this week I listened, as I was walking here yesterday, to a podcast on The Conversation with somebody called Michel Grattan, G-R-A-T-T-A-N, who was interviewing a well-known Indigenous campaigner and writer about this issue. And I found it, I think I sent you a message saying that if, you know, this might be an interesting one for discussion, but it's a very difficult debate to get your head

• 22:28Alastair Campbell?

  around because it strikes me, all that it seems to be is that Albanese is trying to say, we need to put into our Constitution something that gives proper recognition to the voice of the Indigenous population, which seems so blindingly obvious, what's wrong with that? But as often happens in referendums, people are sort of taking it to other places and developing arguments that look kind of slightly off to one side. On the question about what damage it does, I think it would be quite damaging to their reputation.

• 22:55Rory Stewart?

  But presumably constitutionally, or I suppose philosophically, the challenge is that generally liberal democracies are very, very blind. Their fundamental theory is total equality, one person, one vote, no special treatment. And so we're always dealing with this tension between majority representation and protection of minority rights and the question of how much you can lean into minority rights and in this case, on the basis of ethnicity and history and to what extent special treatment is the correct way to think about discrimination and injustice or not.

• 23:31Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think I think it's something we should dig into and come back to because I was fascinated listening to the conversation, but at the end of it, I was I was slightly left thinking, I can't understand why this is proving to be such a contentious issue. So it's one that maybe we should we should come back to a bit more research.

• 23:50Rory Stewart?

  Good.

• 23:50Alastair Campbell?

  What small wins have you had recently? This is from Dom Fertado. Life these days, says Dom, is made up of small wins. For me, a small win is covering the Daily Hate Mail and the newsagents with other newspapers to inconvenience the little Englanders desperate for their daily hit of Small Boatery. What small wins have you had recently? I do that. I used to do that at airports all the time.

• 24:12Rory Stewart?

  You just hide the Daily Mail?

• 24:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I used to really annoy me about British Airways, that the only paper that they have, they're sometimes the FT, but basically you'd gone to British Airways and they just have stacks of the Daily Mail. So I used to go to, like, I'll go to the Lufthansa and I'll find a load of De Velt and Frankfurt, Algamyl, etc. I could put them in my bag and carry them off dad had covered the Daily Mail in the, in the, is that childish, Roy? You're looking a bit like it's a bit childish.

• 24:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Well, you've actually made me think, I've made me think about an answer to a previous question. Funniest MP, Paddy Ashdown, I thought was pretty funny. His one to me, which exposed my vanity and ludicrousness, he gave me a copy of his book and I looked at it and I opened it up and there was no inscription on the front. I thought it was a bit odd. And then I got to the index and around my name, he'd written, I thought you'd look here first. Love, Paddy.

• 25:04Alastair Campbell?

  What's the, the other great index story, of course, is what's the one, Gore Vidal? He put somebody in the index, but then he wasn't in the book.

• 25:12Alastair Campbell?

  I think it was Gore Vidal.

• 25:13Rory Stewart?

  Final one for you. Mark Grabowski, if you both had to sing karaoke, what song would you choose? What's your karaoke song? Have you been watching Succession recently? I realise I owe you an apology. I was a bit snooty about Brian Cox, who incidentally was quite nice about me. So I was feeling a bit guilty about that. Shun's telling me about that. It is an extraordinary performance in Succession. I really, I mean, completely blows me away. There's a question we had this week, actually, from somebody on who our favourite actor is, the stage Of Stockwell asks this.

• 25:43Alastair Campbell?

  I like Brian.

• 25:44Rory Stewart?

  My favourite actor I guess is Mark Rylance, who I think is extraordinary. From Wolf Hall and incredible Hammerhead performance to Glove, but my goodness, Brian Cox.

• 25:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 25:52Rory Stewart?

  That is quite a performance, isn't it?

• 25:53Alastair Campbell?

  I am, I mentioning the conversation, somebody wrote a piece, I'm not angry, I'm a bit angry. But somebody wrote a piece, the headline of which gave the ending away.

• 26:04Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 26:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 26:05Rory Stewart?

  Of succession. Yeah. With Mark Grabowski, if you both had to sing karaoke, what song would you choose? And don't ask me, because I don't sing.

• 26:10Alastair Campbell?

  It would either be when it's ace in all in three languages simultaneously.

• 26:15Rory Stewart?

  Lovely.

• 26:15Alastair Campbell?

  Which I can do.

• 26:16Rory Stewart?

  Okay, good.

• 26:16Alastair Campbell?

  I can do the French and the German in between the next line coming out. I've done that before. And I think it might, and the other one that comes very, very, very, very close is, are you alone tonight? And I do the Elvis version where he laughs. Do you know that one?

• 26:30Rory Stewart?

  All right. So which one are you going to do for us to close the question time? Which one of the two?

• 26:35Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's got to be Are You Lonesome?

• 26:37Rory Stewart?

  Okay, go on then.

• 26:37Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not gonna say.

• 26:38Rory Stewart?

  We need the laugh, just a little bit of a laugh.

• 26:40Alastair Campbell?

  Because I can't do Elvis's laugh. Although I will say Elvis's laugh, people can check this out, Elvis's laugh is almost identical to Bill Clinton's.

• 26:47Rory Stewart?

  Really?

• 26:47Alastair Campbell?

  Which is quite interesting.

• 26:48Rory Stewart?

  And to your impression of Bill Clinton.

• 26:49Alastair Campbell?

  My, my impression, my impression of Bill, I can do quite good Clinton. I'm not doing it. I can do, I can sing quite well Elvis. The other one I think is Johnny Cash's, I keep a close watch on this heart of mine. I like that one as well.

• 27:03Rory Stewart?

  It's good, isn't it?

• 27:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:04Rory Stewart?

  I, I love.

• 27:05Alastair Campbell?

  You've got to sing something.

• 27:06Rory Stewart?

  Well, Johnny Cash's performance in Folsom Prison, if we're looking for a cultural reference to drive people out. Absolutely extraordinary. You can hear the prisoners in the background. And that's a great movie, actually. We've, we've recommended the Elvis movie, the Johnny Cash movie with Joachim Phoenix, who does a really a pretty cool Johnny Cash impression. You can actually get, get a tape of him singing all Johnny Cash's songs.

• 27:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, the guy doing Elvis as well.

• 27:27Rory Stewart?

  Film is Walk the Line, includes a great scene set in Folsom Prison with the, with the prisoners raging as he sings.

• 27:33Alastair Campbell?

  What book are you reading at the moment? Oh, Ireland, I read in a single day. Rory Carroll, the Ireland correspondent of The Guardian, has written a book called Killing Thatcher. I actually think they could have done with a better title.

• 27:47Rory Stewart?

  That's a pretty good title, isn't it?

• 27:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the only thing is Thatcher wasn't killed.

• 27:51Rory Stewart?

  That is true, but it certainly makes you wake up.

• 27:53Alastair Campbell?

  It's the rea-, I mean, it's very, very rare that I read a 300-page book in a day because I'm, you know, I just don't have the concentration to keep going, but I just, I was lucky because I was on a train, I was on a plane, I was travelling about the place, but it was gripping. It was quite fitting in a way because I was, I was picked up at Dublin Airport to come here and I read the last 80, I was desperate to get it finished by the time we got here, so I read the last pages coming into Belfast to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. And it's basically the story of the Brighton bomb, which I covered as a journalist, and then the police hunt for the bomber and then what happened afterwards.

• 28:31Rory Stewart?

  To remind non-specialist listeners, Brighton bomb, IRA attacks, Conservative Party conference.

• 28:37Alastair Campbell?

  Date?

• 28:37Rory Stewart?

  Almost kills Mrs Thatcher.

• 28:39Alastair Campbell?

  Date?

• 28:39Rory Stewart?

  Date, go on, go to the date.

• 28:40Alastair Campbell?

  Eighty-four, I think, and it was 2:54:01, I've never forgotten that, 2:54:01. And he's, he's got some incredible accounts of the police investigation.

• 28:51Rory Stewart?

  What does 2:54:01 mean?

• 28:52Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, 54 minutes past two in the morning.

• 28:55Rory Stewart?

  And that was Norman Tebbet's wife was killed?

• 28:57Alastair Campbell?

  No, John Wakem's wife was killed and four other people, and Norman Tebbet's wife, Margaret, was paralysed.

• 29:02Rory Stewart?

  Extraordinary.

• 29:03Alastair Campbell?

  But it's the story of the, of the bomber and his life and his background and, and obviously his, his work is, is, there's a, there's a lot about Gerry Adams in it who doesn't give an interview. And then there's the story of Thatcher's rise and why Thatcher took the approach to the IRA that she did. There's got the hunger strike story, but he writes it like a thriller. Look, I know the ending, right? I knew the ending of the book, but I was kind of, it's literally you're turning the pages to see where it goes next.

• 29:28Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's a great recommendation. Well, I've been reading Making Sense the Troubles, A History of the Northern Ireland Conflict, David McCutcheon and David McVey, and it's really extraordinary. I mean, to manage to write a book that produces something pretty close to a balanced account, given how raw and passionate the views of both sides are in Northern Ireland. An achievement. They were also two of the authors on this extraordinary book. I think nearly a million, million words on the dead of the troubles. Following the story of every single story of everybody who was killed. We talked a little bit about the victims. So I'd recommend anyone who wants to understand the troubles, making sense, the troubles, a history than all non conflict.

• 30:08Alastair Campbell?

  Good. Final thing to put in the newsletter. I think it would be lovely for people if they haven't seen it, to see the picture of Joe Biden in the office of the Irish President, Michael D Higgins. It's one of the greatest photographs I've seen for a long time. What sort of desk policy do you operate? Are you a tidy desk person?

• 30:26Rory Stewart?

  I go for tidy. Yeah.

• 30:28Alastair Campbell?

  I'm moderately tidy and where I'm not tidy, everything's in quite neat piles, some distance probably. Michael D Higgins has got an enormous desk that is just absolutely covered. And obviously made no effort whatsoever to tidy it up before the president came in. It's a beautiful picture.

• 30:45Rory Stewart?

  Good. Well, thank you all very much.

• 30:47Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you. See you soon.

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