Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 291. The Rise of Kamala Harris About this episode How much do you really know about Kamala Harris? Why isn't Venezuela the Saudi Arabia of Latin America? Should we view Rwanda differently to other autocratic regimes?
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Transcript 10,532 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
0:06 Alastair 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.
0:19 Rory Stewart? I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef. 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.
0:42 Alastair 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?
0:49 Rory 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/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.
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2:01 Alastair Campbell? Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.
2:04 Rory Stewart? And with me, Rory Stewart. And Alistair, I can see your beautiful dog in the back of the frame of the picture.
2:09 Alastair Campbell? It's my beautiful daughter's beautiful dog.
2:11 Rory Stewart? Oh, I see. Right, okay.
2:13 Alastair Campbell? My beautiful dog is asleep downstairs. This one's asleep upstairs. Yeah, we've become near-permanent dog sitters, as expected. Now, listen Rory, we're going to talk, I think, America is where we'll start. We also want to talk about Venezuela and a little bit about the UK. But on America, I want to start, I think we should see our role Rory, as informing people of things they don't already know. And I wonder how many of our listeners know that if Kamala Harris becomes the candidate, which is pretty well nailed on, I'd say, let alone if she wins, she will be the shortest ever presidential candidate.
2:55 Rory Stewart? My goodness. So how tall is she?
2:57 Alastair Campbell? She's five foot two.
2:59 Rory Stewart? Goodness. That is, that's, that's true. Am I right in saying that traditionally there was some theory that the people who won in American politics tended to be taller? That people used to draw graphs trying to prove that if you were half an inch taller, you were likely to win the election?
3:13 Alastair Campbell? Well, the one recently that disproved that was Romney, who was half an inch taller than Obama, but Obama still won. But Obama's pretty tall. It's a piece of data. Two-thirds of presidents have beaten a shorter rival for the presidency.
3:29 Rory Stewart? I guess people will be more aware of the fact that if she wins, she will be the first black woman and the first Asian American who will ever become president.
3:39 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
3:39 Rory Stewart? And she is also the first, of course, woman vice president, the first black vice president and the first Asian American vice president. So she's the first in lots of ways. Let's talk a little bit about Kamala Harris. And I'll try to provide a very, very basic overview and then hand back to you to get into the details. And we'll put in the show notes some amazing profiles and interviews that have come out. We'll share something that you sent me from the LA Times, which is a recent, quite short profile. There's a very deep one in the Atlantic. There's a great interview from Ezra Klein, the person who wrote that Atlantic piece. There is an amazing six-part series from the San Francisco Chronicle that gets into all the details.
4:22 Rory Stewart? Of her context in California, where she came from, but in very basic terms. Kamala Harris is the child of two academics. Her father is from the Caribbean. Her mother is from South India. They met when they were graduate students in California.
4:39 Alastair Campbell? At Stanford.
4:41 Rory Stewart? At Stanford University, where her father then later returned as a professor. And she grew up in a black neighborhood, or what was then a very much a black neighborhood in in South Berkeley, California. And her mother divorced her father when she was seven, but she remained, despite the fact that her mother was of South Asian heritage, her mother very deliberately connected her in strongly to the black community and took her to an amazing thing called Rainbow Side, which was a community center in Berkeley, which was very famous. It was a place, it's a black community center where people like James Baldwin, Nina Simone would come and speak. She went to a black church.
5:23 Rory Stewart? And she then, at the age of 12, her mother moved on to Montreal, taking Kamala Harris with her. But when Kamala had a chance to come back to university, she chose to go to Howard University in Washington DC, which is a very famous, predominantly black university or founded as a black university, and then returned back to law school in California. And from there, she worked her way up as a prosecutor and prosecuted quite a controversial thing in some ways for somebody coming from very liberal, black, progressive background, because prosecutors are often seen as people who were framing or stitching up or unfairly imprisoning black men and women. But she believed strongly in this job and she made a strong case for why this was a
6:09 Rory Stewart? way of being on the side of victims as well as on the side of law and order. Rose remarkably quickly, once she made it to be assistant DA in San Francisco and came up through San Francisco, came up through California, was elected to the Senate in 2016, which of course meant that she came into the Senate for the first time as Trump became President of the United States. Very much created a reputation on the Senate floor for interrogating very strongly Trump's appointments, people like Sessions, his Attorney General, Brett Kavanaugh, his appointee to the Supreme Court. Ran for the presidency in 2020, was defeated by Joe Biden and became his vice president. Over to you.
6:50 Alastair Campbell? Good, that's a very, very good. It's interesting you mention Howard University because one of the, those little sort of details that journalists love, that I read in one of the American papers yesterday was that when she was on the phone to over 100 Democrats on Sunday, when she had a little bit of an advanced knowledge that Joe Biden was about to do what he was about to do, she was wearing a Howard University hoodie and serving her staff pizza. So there we are. I think that this point about her reputation in the Senate as a prosecutorial figure and her role as a prosecutor in her first speech, well, her first speech since the news broke
7:32 Alastair Campbell? that Biden was stepping down was a kind of athletics event in the garden of the White House yesterday. She couldn't really get into the politics at all. She then went off to speak to campaign workers and she, she talked about some of the cases that she brought as a prosecutor. Sexual predators, cheats and con men, people who lied. And then she just sort of paused and said, I know people like Donald Trump.
7:58 Alastair Campbell? And it was a very effective and very well written. And it was interesting, when we, when we did our four way with Anthony Scaramucci and Kati Kay, Kati Kay said that one of Kamala Harris's weaknesses, that she couldn't really do the big speech, do the autocue thing. I'm not sure about that. I think that obviously when she gets to the Chicago convention, that's going to be a huge event and you really have to be able to carry an audience in that. But I think that the two performances she's done so far, I think she's looked good. And I also think that there's, there's something that both the Mooch and I said the other day, which I, I can already see is that once the limelight passes. It already has an effect, provided that you're pretty good at what you do.
8:43 Alastair Campbell? Now, the one, I think, really bad period in that CV that you went through. She didn't fight a good campaign when she went for the nomination. And one of the things that people kept saying is that the team around her were very kind of disunited, there was lots of blame gaming going on and that kind of thing, which is not good in any leader. But it'd be interesting, and there's a little bit of that, by the way, when she started as Vice President, lots of kind of staff turnover, lots of people really not quite sure about what she was about. But I think she's grown and I think that, I agree with the mooch, I think she should be much more formidable than people think. And I think she's a very hard person for Trump. I also re-watched her, I re-watched her debate with Mike Pence.
9:27 Alastair Campbell? Very interesting, there's this one bit where she kept saying, very politely, "I'm speaking", and eventually Pence stopped interrupting her. And I don't know whether there will be a debate head to head with Trump. But if there is, I just got a feeling that he won't be able to resist trying to kind of steamroll her.
9:46 Rory Stewart? Well, Lyn, let's maybe develop a little bit, some of her strengths and weaknesses, and think a little bit about what her strategy of comms could be. But just before we get back to that, the big backstory here is that what's changed really in the last 48 hours is that it's become very clear that it will be Kamala Harris. And there's been a debate about that, and I'd love to get your views just on this for a second, although in some ways it's ancient history. There were basically two choices, as we were discussing with Kadi K and the mooch when I was in New Jersey. One of them was to get right behind Kamala Harris immediately, follow up with the fact that President Biden had endorsed her and the Clintons had gotten behind her.
10:29 Rory Stewart? The other was to go to a open convention and open up the field, see who came forward. And the idea being there that it might have, over the next few weeks, got more attention on the race, might have taken some of the attention off Trump for three, four weeks as you head through the Chicago convention, would have shown some of the talent of the Democratic Party. And if Kamala had emerged from that process, she would have emerged with the added legitimacy and the excitement of having brought the Democratic Party in behind her. And I think that was Obama's instinct, which is why he held off for some time endorsing her. Instead of which, they clearly have gone for the other strategy, a big decision from the Democrats to get right in behind her from the start. And I
11:13 Rory Stewart? think that's about prioritizing unity, making sure that they can get the money transferred over from Biden's campaign efficiently, making sure they don't waste any time. And I also think probably from my experience as a politician, part of this is the campaign managers, they like to have a clear plan. They will have been pushing behind Biden. It would have been an absolute nightmare for him when he stepped down. It would have been very tempting to them. Okay, okay, we can do this. Let's just slot over behind Kamala Harris and we may be able to get this over the line. They would have hated the idea of an open convention. And just any thoughts from you on that?
11:45 Alastair Campbell? We talked about this on the podcast the other night, and you are clearly very strongly of the view that, and I kind of can see the argument for let's have a contest, let's see these people all throw their ass in the ring, see who emerges. Trouble with that is the division that it then inspires and that you see. So for example, one of the, probably the only thing that people remember of Kamala Harris's nomination battle before was actually when she attacked Joe Biden over his opposition. She was a child who was bussed to school. She accused him of working to stop people like children like her getting to school. That became a kind of quite a big moment. And it meant that when he not, when he took her in as the, as Vice President, there was always this kind
12:30 Alastair Campbell? of, you know, at the start, there was just this little sort of, that was the thing that the media went to, to say they weren't always that close, et cetera. Not a big deal in the scheme of things. But if you're right into the last few weeks before a campaign, an election, I think that could become a bit difficult. So I think that what they've had to conquer. Is the fears that they've had, including Joe Biden at times, as to whether she is actually up for the two things. First of all, can she beat Trump?
12:55 Rory Stewart? Yeah.
12:56 Alastair Campbell? Secondly, can she be president? I think they have overcome those worries. I think they've actually worked out, you know what? She could be a pretty formidable opponent, Trump. Trump won't quite know how to handle her. And secondly, can she be president? I think they've got over that as well. You mentioned on, on the podcast the other day, the last time that you would have had a Democrat convention where it was left at the time on the conference convention floor to the delegates was 1968, and it was a riot. And I mean a riot. I don't just mean there was a lot of argument. You had Vietnam going
13:36 Alastair Campbell? on. You had Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who was very tough on crime, shall we say? And you had the military out taking control. You had the similar situation, LBJ, Lyndon Johnson had said he wasn't going to run for reelection.
13:51 Rory Stewart? Slightly earlier, he said it, I think in March, whereas we're now, we're now, I guess, at the end of July. So he managed to sit before all the primaries were through, which was a bit of a help.
14:00 Alastair Campbell? Right. But, but he wanted, and the machine wanted Hubert Humphrey.
14:06 Rory Stewart? Right.
14:06 Alastair Campbell? Richard Daley wanted Hubert Humphrey. The party leaders who controlled the delegates wanted Hubert Humphrey. That became a real problem. So, and if, and I was looking last night at some of the coverage.
14:17 Rory Stewart? Who emerged as the candidate when everybody wanted Hubert Humphrey?
14:20 Alastair Campbell? Hubert Humphrey.
14:21 Rory Stewart? Right. Got you. Okay.
14:24 Rory Stewart? And it turned out to be an error.
14:25 Alastair Campbell? Turned out, well, turned out certainly not, not to win. And of course, this had happened in the wake of, I think Martin Luther King had been assassinated in the spring. Robert F Kennedy had been assassinated in June. It was a really, really difficult period. And the other thing, Roy, that I, I didn't know this until I looked it up. There was an organization, organization called the Yippies, that's the Youth International Party, run by Abby Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. And they basically wanted to sabotage the whole convention. So they, they put out one of the best press releases of all time. They were going to be sending super hot hippie women. They were going to seduce the delegates and give them LSD.
15:06 Alastair Campbell? They were going to find the the best endowed hippie studs who were going to seduce the wives and the daughters of all the delegates. And James Daley took this all incredibly seriously. So more police and more soldiers were brought in. So I think, we may think we live in unprecedented political times, but this was a crazy convention.
15:26 Rory Stewart? Nothing like the sixty eight convention. The other thing that may be going on, I don't want to obviously, there's no way I can remotely get into President Obama's mind, but I think another anxiety he may have is whether she can win. And let's talk about this in two ways. One of them is what she's like as a candidate, but the other one, before we get to that, is who she represents. She represents California. She grew up in Berkeley. And that is perceived rightly or wrongly in the US politics as in the way that people kind of attack Keir Starmer in Britain about Islington. I mean, it's it's seen as the more so, the absolute kind of epiphany when people say
16:09 Rory Stewart? Berkeley, they think of Jane Fonda protesting the Vietnam War and all this kind of stuff. So in in American minds, it's seen as a hyper liberal situation. And this is an election which is going to be determined more in the Rust Belt, determined in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan. And to win this election, you're going to have to get a critical number of voters, a few hundred thousand voters over in those states. So one anxiety about Kamala Harris is, again, to put it into British terms, as my dear friend of mine, a former Member of Parliament, said to me, he said, it's it would be a bit like trying Labour trying to win the Red Wall by running Emily Thornbury.
16:51 Alastair Campbell? Hmm, interesting. And and people did say that Gavin Newsom, who's been talked about a lot as a possible contender for the Democrats, I mean, one of the reasons he won't be vice presidential pick is because he too is from California. California has always been one of the things, those things that's held against him. You're right, but I just wonder, if you've been vice president, okay, she's from California, she represents California. I think if you have been vice president, even though she's not been the most high-profile vice president that America's ever had. I think you, she already has that sense of a national, a national identity. So the question then is the extent to which she projects herself as being of California,
17:35 Alastair Campbell? or whether she shows herself to be the person who, if you like, understands those demographic weaknesses and goes out and reaches out to people. And, you know, one of the things that you, you mentioned the, the Jamaica, the Caribbean, Indian background, which of itself is very interesting, but it's pretty obvious to me where the far right are going to come for her. There's a very interesting thing, doing the rounds on the social media in the UK, Nigel Farage, who I think is worth looking at because I'm sure he gets all the sort of Trump talking points, you know, through his mate Steve Bannon, whatever it might be. And he did an interview, pretty outrageously Farageist, where he said, I just don't think that America is going to elect a black African woman. Right?
18:19 Alastair Campbell? Now, that, that, that she is black and that she is a woman is true, but the very deliberate insertion there of African says to me that they will really go for the race thing. I said to you earlier that I was reading J D Vance's book, Hillbilly Elegy, and it's very interesting to me how much, you know, racism and misogyny is probably bigger outside the parts of America that maybe you and I know than even Americans like to think and like to admit.
18:52 Rory Stewart? I mean, I spent a lot of time over the last few days. I've been right out to the west coast of the States and then I was on the east coast. And one of the things that is very different, and I was talking to real political insiders, so people who are either serving members of Congress or Senate, or people who are at the top of these parties on both sides, how quickly American politics comes down to questions of family background. I mean, in a way that isn't true in Britain. The first thing people say about Kamala Harris is of course, well, people who want to say this will say, well, this was the joke that, that came from Condoleezza Rice, that America will elect a black person before they'll elect a woman. And I heard that again on the east coast, where again, people were saying, oh, I don't
19:37 Rory Stewart? think America's ready for a woman. Then when you raise Governor Shapiro, very, very popular, impressive governor of Pennsylvania.
19:46 Rory Stewart? Almost immediately, three different people said to me, I don't think America's ready to elect somebody who's Jewish.
19:51 Alastair Campbell? Particularly in the current climate, maybe.
19:53 Rory Stewart? Yeah, so, and this is very interesting because this, I, I think I'm right in saying this is much less true in Britain. You know, we, we don't hear particularly about whether people are or aren't Jewish. We don't feel that the defining feature of whether or not somebody gets a job, is their ethnicity in the same way, or maybe I'm being a bit complacent.
20:11 Alastair Campbell? No, I, I think you're right, but I think, I think it was the case relatively recently. And I think this is one of those areas, people often say that, you know, where American politics is, other politics follows. I think in this, American politics is behind us. I think the fact that Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng Chancellor, James Cleverly, Priti Patel, Swella Braverman, and nobody really batted an eyelid that the, the Republican Party equivalent in the UK was very heavily dominated by non-white faces. I think the Republican Party would find that a lot harder. I think Cathy Kay was maybe right, where a bit like the Nixon goes to China thing, that Condoleezza Rice was maybe more likely to become a Republican leadership figure
20:55 Alastair Campbell? than, than, than a black person would be in the, in the Democrats. But then Obama proved that wrong, and now Kamala Harris may prove that wrong as well. But I think in those states that you're talking about, where this election is going to be decided by relatively small numbers of people, I think we shouldn't underestimate that there is a racism and a, and a misogynist sexism that could be held against her. So it's just another thing that she has to fight.
21:23 Rory Stewart? And, and this is very quickly, because producers asked us to explain Nixon goes to China, the idea, the idea there is that Nixon from the Republican Party, who was seen as being a kind of anti-China hawk, was the one person who could really bring reform and relationships with China. Same idea in Britain probably would be that Labour are the only people who can tackle the NHS.
21:44 Alastair Campbell? Correct, yeah.
21:45 Rory Stewart? The Conservatives, the only people who can tackle police.
21:47 Alastair Campbell? All right, just before you move on, but given that Nixon has come up, I'm going to really put you on the spot. I wish it was Boots here, because I'm sure he wouldn't get it either. Name the three. Former vice presidents who have successfully won office through an election.
22:01 Rory Stewart? Gosh, so.
22:02 Alastair Campbell? Nixon is one.
22:03 Rory Stewart? So Richard Nixon was vice president, LBJ was a vice president and George W. Bush was vice president.
22:09 Alastair Campbell? George H. W.
22:10 Rory Stewart? George H. W. Bush, yeah, was the vice president, yeah.
22:12 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, but the only, the only thing about LBJ is he didn't, he, he didn't do it through an election. And the one that you're missing is Joseph P. Biden.
22:21 Rory Stewart? Of course, I've missed Biden. I'm sorry, that was extremely foolish, sorry.
22:25 Alastair Campbell? Just on that, 17 vice presidents have sought to become president. Only five have succeeded and only three have done so through election.
22:34 Rory Stewart? Well, LBJ was very brutally kind of clear about this. So he'd been dominating the Senate and then was offered this chance to be vice president, which he saw as a pathetic role that would marginalize him. But being LBJ, he said, you know, there is still a chance and, and LBJ seemed to be almost implying with that joke that he thought there was a chance that the president could be assassinated and, and he could come in. The vice presidents then are going to matter though. Let, let's just get on to that for a second before we come back because people will look at the choice for vice president and therefore, you know, given the conversation we just had, there'll be a lot of pressure from political strategists to say, probably needs to be maybe a white man from one of those key swing states.
23:20 Rory Stewart? So if you look at the New York Times' list of who they thought were potential VP candidates, they basically simply produce a list of men. So they mentioned Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator and astronaut.
23:33 Alastair Campbell? Is Gretchen Whitmer not in there?
23:34 Rory Stewart? Not in the New York Times list, no. They're very much emphasizing men. JB Pritzker, the billionaire governor of Illinois, Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor from Republican Kentucky.
23:46 Alastair Campbell? Yep.
23:47 Rory Stewart? And Josh Shapiro from Pennsylvania.
23:49 Alastair Campbell? Not Roy Cooper, North Carolina?
23:51 Rory Stewart? Roy Cooper comes at the very end of their thing. You know, they say, don't forget Roy Cooper.
23:55 Alastair Campbell? Okay.
23:56 Rory Stewart? And don't forget Pete Buttigieg. And they mentioned Gavin Newsom, but reckon that that's not really possible.
24:00 Alastair Campbell? And what about, I'll tell you where, where I, I, I don't bet, but where I might bet just because of, of the kind of America being America is, is Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator. Who, you know, you know, I know you love your backstories, Rory, an astronaut with a twin brother who's also an astronaut, Navy combat pilot, a life outside politics, and married to Gabrielle Giffords, who was the the the US representative who was who was shot in the head.
24:29 Rory Stewart? Survived an assassination attempt.
24:31 Alastair Campbell? Two thousand and eleven, yeah, yeah. And also one of the first people, Kelly, to come out and and say, I'm getting right behind Kamala Harris. By the way, all of them have, haven't they? Virtually all of them. All of the people tipped as possible running mates have essentially thrown their weight behind her already.
24:48 Rory Stewart? Yes.
24:49 Alastair Campbell? Which underlines this sense of momentum that she has.
24:52 Rory Stewart? Can I now come to what I see as the million dollar question, which is, is she going to be able to make the transition? And and here again, there is a little bit of an echo of Keir Starmer. So as people have pointed out, they're both prosecutors, and they're both not just prosecutors, they're people who went from the courtroom to being big administrators of prosecutor or departments. In fact, Keir Starmer's job as head of the Crown Prosecution Service is about as close as you can get to her job as being the Attorney General in California. And with both of them, people say they are better at cross examining witnesses than they are giving the big expansive speeches.
25:32 Rory Stewart? The The Atlantic profile keeps coming back to the fact that her real weakness so far is that if you ask her to interrogate a potential Supreme Court justice, she's good. But if you ask her to give a speech on democracy, or climate, or the future of the Democratic Party, she produces these things which people call word salads. And I just got another note from a a member of parliament from a Commonwealth country just came in on my phone while we were talking, saying that he'd. Been at something with her recently and that she was great one on one because that's another Keir Starmer theme, isn't it? People often say how warm they are one on one, but unbelievably disappointing when she gets onto the main stage. Now, that could be great
26:17 Rory Stewart? hope because of course Keir Starmer has just won an election. I could also make the case that it's very different. Keir Starmer was running against Rishi Sunak, who was a slightly sort of boring technocratic banker. He wasn't running against Donald Trump. And I suppose if you were also going to be pessimistic and eorish about this, Keir Starmer only managed to get 34% of the vote in that election. So, and a Ming Vaz strategy works better when you're in the lead. Doing a Ming Vaz strategy when you're five points behind is a bit tricky. Over to you on those points.
26:48 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, I get it. I mean, I managed to raise a laugh at the kitchen table this morning when I was reading lots of profiles of Kamala Harris and I said to Fiona, "Oh my God, I didn't know that Kamala Harris's dad was a tool baker."
27:04 Alastair Campbell? So, that is not true. As you said, he was a university lecturer. The parallels are there, but I think what you do when you're into a campaign, and Keir Starmer did this, you play to your strengths. And her strengths, as we've suggested, are in this kind of prosecutorial, take an argument, really probe it, really test it. So I think, for example, if Trump and she were involved in a TV debate, I mean, it would be absolute box office for sure. She, a bit like Vance the other day, suddenly went from being quite a big figure to a very big figure. And now he's gone, he's sort of, he's almost vanished in the last few days. I mean, he'll come back, obviously. But I think she's gone from, she is suddenly the
27:48 Alastair Campbell? person in the world that is being most talked about. And that is a massive opportunity. The fact that yesterday, virtually every major news station in the world cut to her baking a very anodyne speech about these young athletes who'd become champions in America, and then analyzing it for how she looked and how she spoke and all that. This is a huge opportunity. So the question is, how does she now play to her strengths? And I think that that is that is a massive opportunity for her and for the Democrat Party. And I think that the thing about Trump, I just to think about where we were. Trump had the assassination attempt. We had the TV debate where it all went wrong for
28:31 Alastair Campbell? Biden. Trump is suddenly in the ascendancy. We then had the assassination attempt where Trump was able to project himself in a very different way, present himself as this great unifying figure. The minute Joe Biden pulled out, Trump was back to being Trump again. His Truth Social post about Biden was about the least gracious thing that has ever been written by a human being. It was horrible. Now, just imagine he's in a TV debate with Kamala Harris. And Trump's people are saying to him, don't be too abusive, don't get carried away, don't let suburban women think you don't like women, don't sort of, and if you look at what she's said about him, she's said some vile things about her already. Crazy,
29:16 Alastair Campbell? she's nuts. The other thing which the right push out the whole time is, you know, Kamala Harris slept her way to the top. That's what the right tend to do about women who reach positions of power. When you see this stuff starting in the conspiracy theory world, what happens, and we saw this with the whole Berta thing with Obama, eventually Trump takes it on. And by the way, the Jamaica, India parentage, you watch, it's already started in the kind of the dark web and the conspiracy theorists of the right. She's not really American. This is what I think that that Farage was doing, a black African woman.
29:51 Rory Stewart? And just to cut to the chase, what you are saying basically is that she shouldn't try to become JFK and make huge big charismatic speeches, that that would be risky, that she's better concentrating on what she's already proven that she's very good at. I mean, she's she's 60 years old. She knows who she is. She's not going to change, she must see. So suddenly trying to reimagine her as a kind of great giver of passionate barnstorming, big rhetorical speeches is not the way to go. The way to go is to lean into what she's good at, which is the forensic prosecution stuff.
30:26 Alastair Campbell? Also, to be pretty bold about how she campaigns, where she goes to campaign. The danger she's got to watch is that she doesn't sort of stack up more and more and more votes in the places where she's already fairly secure. It's now about going into those places where people have got doubts about her and really confronting them. And I think, by the way, I think she's a better speaker than Than Cathy was giving her credit for. I think she she will be able to kind of rise to it. But yeah, she's not she's not JFK. She's not. She doesn't have the Obama oratorical touch.
30:57 Rory Stewart? And in terms of that going into those swing states, again, the big question is, will she now return to emphasizing her background as somebody who was tough on crime? Or in the words of the book that she wrote, smart on crime, right? She she was somebody who was very much seen as a tough prosecutor. San Francisco Chronicle, you know, interviewing police chiefs who were like, yeah, she was a good woman, which meant, you know, she was on the side of the police. She had to suppress that during the Democratic primaries in 2020 because that was the era of George Floyd, and she very much wanted to present herself as liberal in a context in which people were talking about defunding the police.
31:36 Rory Stewart? Now she needs to get those votes out in those Rust Belt states. Is she going to make the decision to sound more conservative? In other words, is she going to be a bit more like Keir Starmer in a way again, trying to reassure the center ground Republican voters by sounding quite right wing, assuming that she can hold the left wing base behind her on the on the basis of who she is and her own story?
32:02 Alastair Campbell? I'll tell you one thing that I think will come up from her record in California. Although she was, as you say, pretty tough on crime, she was always pretty outspoken about the death penalty. And, you know, I think in our country, we don't really understand it, but the death penalty is is one of those touchstone issues for some of the places where she's going to have to win over. So that's something I think she'll understand. I think we'll see this in her choice of running mate and in where she goes to campaign. But don't underestimate her as a campaigner either, or the fact that since Joe Biden dropped out to the race on Sunday, she's raised $81 million. Now, I don't know what the total spend on the UK general election was, but it was way less than that.
32:45 Rory Stewart? It's an interesting thing, though, that that raising, because Shoshana is a registered Democrat and got an email immediately. And she got the email basically from the Biden campaign, saying, will you send us some money? Of course, Shoshana immediately was like, I'm sending in the money. But what was happening there, it was very interesting, very clever of Kamala Harris's campaign, because basically what she was pulling off there in those very early hours after President Biden announced he was stepping down is a huge surge of Democratic support, which was then interpreted as a massive endorsement for Kamala personally. But in fact, was actually a lot of Democrats just feeling, and I think this is something not to be underestimated, hope has returned to the Democratic Party. They were so miserable.
33:28 Alastair Campbell? They were on the floor. They were on the floor.
33:30 Rory Stewart? What had happened after that debate and after assassination, people just thought, this is it, we've lost, we're not going to get anywhere. And Kamala Harris, with all the challenges she's faces and all these questions around the blank slate, which is what we're going to have to watch, what kind of candidate does she turn out to be? Nevertheless, there is for the first time, hope.
33:46 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. Well, listen, on that, let's take a break. And just to say as well that Anthony and Kathy, who we mentioned a few times, they've got their own episode out today. So, once you finish this one, go and listen to them. Just search The Rest Is Politics US, wherever you get your podcasts. Let's go to a break, and when we come back, we'll talk about Venezuela and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
34:06 Rory Stewart? Very good answer. Thank you.
35:07 Speaker 04 Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.
35:11 Speaker 05 On October 2.
35:12 Speaker 04 Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.
35:17 Speaker 05 Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.
35:24 Speaker 06 What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.
35:28 Speaker 05 With great power comes great deniability.
35:31 Speaker 06 I'm not the first then.
35:33 Speaker 05 Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2. Rated R, under 17, not a minute without parent.
35:44 Rory Stewart? Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me Rory Stewart.
35:47 Alastair Campbell? And me Alastair Campbell. And Rory, let's, before we finally, finally, finally leave America, very interesting stuff happening in the relationship between the two main parties and the tech giants, which is a good opportunity to plug our excellent two-part interview with Nick Clegg.
36:05 Rory Stewart? Which I really, really enjoyed. I mean, as you know, I'm a bit of a kind of Nick Clegg fanboy, which is a fringe position, I think, in British society.
36:13 Alastair Campbell? One of our, one of our production team is part of your club.
36:16 Rory Stewart? Very good. Incredible story. I mean, he managed, people forget this now, in 2010, he got more votes than Rishi Sunak, the Conservative leader, former Prime Minister, just got in the last election. So he, of course, was in government, he was Deputy Prime Minister, and I think he's a really interesting kind of glimpse of a different Britain, a different sense of personalities.
36:37 Alastair Campbell? I got a bit of grief as not pushing him as hard as we might have done on Meta, and it's sort of the downsides thereof. But I think I can safely say, I don't think this is a controversial opinion, when I look at the tech world, I think Nick Clegg is not nearly as big a dick as Elon Musk.
36:57 Rory Stewart? I think we can do better than that. And I think your friend Nick Clegg would like you a bit more positive than that. And I think when people listen to The Rest Is Politics leading into you, Nick Clegg, in fact, they'll come out with a pretty positive impression of him.
37:10 Alastair Campbell? I'm probably overcompensating for the fact that he's quite a good friend to buy.
37:13 Rory Stewart? Now, the first episode's out now, but if you want to listen to the second episode straight away, you can sign up to Trip Plus. Just head to therestispolitics.com and it's great because you also don't get the ads, but it's also an opportunity to get our interviews early and get the pods as soon as they drop. So the rest is politics plus.
37:32 Alastair Campbell? Now, let's turn to Venezuela and you mentioned the, before the break, the comparisons between Keir Starmer and Kamala Harris. Well, the comparison that you can make with Keir Starmer and the opposition, the main opposition alliance in Venezuela is a massive poll lead. And this is fascinating because you have Nicolas Maduro, who is the leader of the PSUV, the United Socialist Party, the Chavistas, and he is up against a guy called Edmundo Gonzales Urutia, who is a kind of pretty nondescript former diplomat. The leader of the main opposition party, Maria Corina Machado, the government blocked her from standing.
38:18 Alastair Campbell? She then recommended somebody else, Corina Yorres, and they blocked her too. So Gonzales Urutia is a very much a third choice, but he is, the alliance that they put together, this kind of popular unitary platform, they call it, is somewhere between 20 and 30 points ahead in the polls. And what that means for the election, which is at the end of this month, is that if Maduro announces that he's won, there will be nobody who believes it. And that really will, I think, provoke all sorts of angst and grief from, yes, the United States, but also from Venezuela's neighbours as well. So this is an election where it's entirely possible that an authoritarian leader could lose and could be forced out.
39:02 Rory Stewart? Little explainer on Venezuela. So Venezuela is a country which has kind of defied the trajectory of the rest of Latin America. So the basic story of a lot of Latin America, if you kind of step back and look at it from 30,000 feet. Is that you go through a period seventies and eighties of military dictatorship. And then as you come into the late eighties, early nineties, technocrats come in, the Washington consensus austerity balancing the books. And then you move forward to the early two thousands where you get lurches between left and right populism. Venezuela bucks the trend in every way.
39:43 Rory Stewart? It's a country which was in the seventies and eighties, moving between two different democratically elected parties, sort of equivalents of social democrats and Christian democrats. And they exchanged power peacefully back and forth. Until in the early nineties, a man called Hugo Chavez, who was a military commander, tried to mount.
40:06 Alastair Campbell? Well, is he a man? Is he a man? Because a lot of them say he is a god. He was, he was, he is a godlike figure, yeah.
40:13 Rory Stewart? So tried to mount a coup d'etat. It didn't, didn't go so well for him. He was put in prison, but when he was released from prison, he ran to become president, became president and set up a totally different style of government. And right the way through to his death in 2013, and boy, he clung on. I mean, he had very bad cancer towards the end, going off for treatment in Cuba, but he just kept pushing the revolution forward. And he was the first kind of real epitome of populism.
40:43 Alastair Campbell? Yeah.
40:44 Rory Stewart? He ruled the country from television. So he had this amazing show on a Sunday called Hello, Mr. President, which could go on for between four and seven hours a day, where you could call in and Hugo Chavez would answer your calls. He did this great stuff which dictators love, which he would fire people on, on television. So he'd say, things are going badly in the oil company. So I tell you, Mr. Alastair Campbell, you are fired. And then he'd pull out a whistle and he'd blow it, woo! And then he'd go on to the next. And he was running a country, and I suppose this is the final thing, and then I'll hand back to you. Before he handed over to his chosen successor Maduro, who he basically, in his final speech as he's dying, he announced as his chosen successor, he was running a country where
41:29 Rory Stewart? the number one thing you need to understand is oil. Venezuela is sort of Saudi Arabia, population not very different in size than 1970s to Saudi Arabia, and has proven oil reserves larger than Saudi Arabia.
41:44 Rory Stewart? And if you looked at it in the early nineteen seventies, it felt very much like Saudi. Similar GDP per capita, exporting similar numbers of barrels of oil a day. But since then, huge divergence. Like Saudi benefited enormously in nineteen seventy four from this massive rise in oil prices. Like Saudi Arabia and to some extent, the other Gulf states created an entire state, which was basically about the government takes the money from oil and then it hands it out and benefits to the people. So it's not really a country with a proper tax base. It's not really a country with a functioning democracy because in the end the state gets all the money and the state hands out all the money. And in the good days, the oil revenue in nineteen seventy four
42:26 Rory Stewart? went from, you know, about a billion shot up to something like six or seven billion in a single year. So you can imagine the kind of revenue jumps up, but then you head in the other direction and this is the story to finish with. The economy of Venezuela, when things began going wrong under Maduro, contracted by sixty five percent. And the way to think about that is that if there were three shops open on the streets, you're now down to one shop open on the streets. If you were eating three meals a day, you're down to eating one meal a day. If three people are in work, now one person is at work. And this led to the largest push of refugees of any place outside war torn Syria.
43:06 Alastair Campbell? Yeah, yeah. They reckon about a fifth of the population have left. One of the reasons why this election could have an impact upon the American election is because after Mexico, Venezuela is the country that produces the most people trying to get into the United States. And they reckon that another two million will be hot footing it if Maduro does try to cling on to power. The thing about, I've only ever been to Venezuela once and the thing about Chavez is that it's um, I was only half joking in saying that there are those who think he is a godlike figure. There was even the Lord's Prayer. I don't know if you've heard this one, Rory.
43:48 Alastair Campbell? Our Chavez, who art in heaven, on earth, in the sea, and in us the representatives, hallowed be thy name, thy legacy come. So we can bring it to towns here and there. Give us this day your light, so it guides us every day. Lead us not into the temptation of capitalism, but deliver us from the evil of oligarchy and the crime of smuggling. Because the motherland is ours, as is peace and life, forever and ever. Amen. Long live Chavez. And that was a, that was a, used at one of the training programs for the party after his death. So this is somebody who, when you go around the place, you see these kind of, you know, these, these portraits and these figurines, there's all sorts of things linking him to Christ.
44:30 Alastair Campbell? And of course, Maduro is a pretty charismatic guy in his own way. But he doesn't have that same charisma and he doesn't have that because the, the economic picture that you painted, where as you say, they take the oil money, farm a lot of it out to poor people, yes, but also huge amounts of corruption, huge amounts of clientelism. And that is what has turned the people ultimately against them. And so the polls now, this woman, Maria Karina Mercado, Mercado, she's on a, if she were able to stand, she has approval ratings that are to die for if you're an elected politician. So they've blocked her from standing. Maduro's down in single figures. The guy that he's up against is not the most charismatic guy, but he just goes around the place not being Maduro.
45:14 Alastair Campbell? She campaigns alongside him. She really, really pushes it. And there've been independent polls suggesting she's got something around 70% support, whereas Maduro's in the mid teens. So this is not like those elections where the polls were in there saying, well, it's kind of 60, 40 against him. And then suddenly he wins and people say, oh, he pulled it off. If he pulls, pulls this off, nobody in the world is going to believe it. So then it's down to what the international community does about whether he stays or goes.
45:43 Rory Stewart? If people are interested in a, a deep read, there is the most beautifully written book by a, I think, former New York Times journalist called William Newman. And it's called Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse About Venezuela. And he starts with the electricity network as a way in because it's a, a really good metaphor for the country.
46:07 Rory Stewart? Because essentially, this was a country that was one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America, as I say, a sort of mini Saudi Arabia, where suddenly it's blackout and it's blackout for five days. And you get Maduro coming out saying, this is because the CIA has mounted an attack, a cyber attack against that electricity infrastructure. And then the next time there's a blackout, it's because a CIA sniper shot, you know, the main thing. Whereas clearly, what's happening is the entire infrastructure of the country is just crumbling through ineptitude, corruption, departure of all the talented people. And it's just story after story of him going to people's houses. And one of the things he, as a journalist, likes to do is
46:51 Rory Stewart? to ask to look in their cupboards. And of course, their cupboards are always bare. And there's a kind of very sense of people eating one meal a day on lentils or beans, of people in shanty towns, literally on top of seeping oil, the oil's very close to the surface. You actually see the oil literally coming out of the ground and these houses on cinder blocks just sort of sitting on top of the oil and this sort of horrible combination of kind of wealth and poverty.
47:17 Alastair Campbell? But how do they, so they've gone from three million barrels a day to under a million? And how does that happen? Is that, is that just mismanagement? I mean, we all know about the corruption, we all know about, and also the thing about, he does still have the support, Maduro, the army. And of course, they get paid more through this whole, this system and the corruption, the clientelism and so forth. But how do you literally go from producing three million barrels a day to under a million?
47:42 Rory Stewart? Well, it's two things. It's massive mismanagement, and they've never managed to really step up their production in the way that places like Saudi have. Saudi gets up to, you know, nine, 10 million barrels when it's, when it's going well. But it's also US sanctions. So when Trump came in in 2016, he really ramped up the sanctions. And you remember, there was an attempt by the US to recognize an opposition president in the face of Venezuela. So Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, became the leading exponent of this very aggressive policy towards Venezuela. And a lot of the rhetoric coming from Maduro is against Marco Rubio. But so it's two things. It's terrible, terrible mismanagement of the economy and its US sanctions. And China ended up
48:27 Rory Stewart? Pumping in money to try to finance Cuba got involved in trying to keep Venezuela alive.
48:33 Alastair Campbell? Turkey, they're very close to the Turks still, aren't they?
48:36 Rory Stewart? Yeah, well, these countries, I mean, someone like Venezuela is very interesting because it's a bit like Iran. I mean, if you're sitting on an incredible, or indeed Russia at the moment, if you're sitting on board incredible amount of oil, even when you're sanctioned, even when the US pushes you out, there will be countries that's going to come in behind you.
48:52 Alastair Campbell? You'll find customers. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. The reason why they barred Mercado from standing was because she expressed support for the sanctions, which they deemed to be kind of anti-patriotic. But because people knew the extent to which this was actually damaging them in their lives, that gave her a massive booster rocket of of support. The other thing just to say about Maduro, he's got, you know, the International Criminal Court looking into extradition killings and torture. The Americans have got a $50 million bounty on his head. But so, and here the thing, I was looking at their ballot papers for the presidential vote. Because they represent sometimes different groupings.
49:37 Alastair Campbell? There are 13 photos of Maduro on the ballot. There are two of Arutia.
49:46 Alastair Campbell? We'll put a copy of whatever in the newsletter. They're just, so if you can't read or write, you just look at this thing, literally the whole top row of the ballot paper is just a picture of Maduro. And then you sort of down in the middle, you find the guy who's actually leading the opposition.
50:00 Rory Stewart? And we're not, and I think just as we finish and maybe hand back to you on Britain. I mean, the reason I'm very grateful that you've raised it is that it's not just a sort of eccentric example of a kind of strange, late populist socialist country.
50:16 Rory Stewart? If Venezuela manages to transition, it's so important for the whole region because Venezuela, those millions of refugees. The crime, the poverty, the instability has had a massively destabilising effect on the whole region. And so there will be so many people in Latin America praying at the moment that Venezuela gets back on a sensible path. And of course, it's got this incredible resources, if only it could begin to return to some sort of sensible government.
50:47 Alastair Campbell? Well, they had a meeting, didn't they, a while back with leaders of Brazil, Colombia? And essentially, they, quote, agreed to free and fair elections on condition that some of these sanctions were eased. And there is a lot of pressure for both sides in the election to commit to absolute statement that they will stand by this, see it as a free and fair election. I think the mechanics will be broadly free and fair, other than the opposition of no access to media. A lot of their people have been banged up. But the, just to maybe get a little bit of hope, if you look at recently, Chile, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, the Philippines, there have been elections where autocratic figures,
51:31 Alastair Campbell? or certainly very powerful figures who looked like they were trying to rig an election, lost and then moved on.
51:37 Rory Stewart? Poland as well.
51:38 Alastair Campbell? But Poland is not necessarily in Latin America, Rory.
51:43 Rory Stewart? No, but I do think, I mean, when we're trying to be optimistic for our listeners, the populists of this sort try to stack everything in their direction. They take over the media, they take over the universities, they put their rivals in prison. And it's really encouraging because we've seen, obviously, with Modi in India, we've seen with Erdogan's local elections, how populists are not doing as well recently. And we've seen in Poland, where there's been a real reverse. And as you say, these are great examples from Latin America, so.
52:14 Alastair Campbell? Yeah. So let's see. So I think it's on July the 28th, the election, and we'll doubtless come back to it. Final election point, Rory, Rwanda. We have to congratulate Paul Kagame. I mean, 99.16% of the vote. This is, I mean, no wonder we were looking forward to having this great deal with Rwanda. Enough said. Now, let's just briefly close off with the UK. Actually, Rwanda, Yvette Cooper was in the Commons yesterday.
52:42 Rory Stewart? Can I quickly on Rwanda, just put in the other point, which is worth remembering? Unlike Venezuela, the important thing in Rwanda, of course, is that there has been the most extraordinary economic development and security. So I spent quite a lot of time in Rwanda, and Rwanda is, of course, an example of an authoritarian government, which has been very, very successful at helping lift people out of poverty, deliver economic growth. And of course, people are still very much traumatized by the genocide, by the killing of the Tutsi particularly. And so Kagame is a different type of government.
53:22 Rory Stewart? I mean, clearly, that is an electoral result, which is bizarre. But it's a context which I think you need to understand more from my point of view, like other authoritarian regimes, which are delivering for people, rather than something like Venezuela, which is complete sort of chaos.
53:39 Alastair Campbell? No, I get that. In fact, you know, my old friend and boss, Tony Blair, is always quite flattering about Kagame. But I mean, I don't think in the modern world, Rory, any politician gets 99% plus support, do they? Let's be honest.
53:53 Rory Stewart? Unless you're able to run, of course.
53:55 Alastair Campbell? Possibly. Evil as, Rory, evil as, evil as.
53:57 Rory Stewart? So Alastair, thank you so much for the Venezuela stuff. Just before we go on, and I really want to hear from you about how you think the Labour Government's doing. A quick piece of information, quite interesting. This evening, which is Wednesday, the 24th of July, 7pm, is the closing time at which you can join the Conservative Party to join and vote in the next leadership election. And we've often talked, both of us, about how the Conservative Party membership tends to be much older and more right wing than the general population. And that's what's produced prime ministers like Liz Truss. This is a chance for different people to join the Conservative Party and bring in more moderate, centre-ground membership. So an opportunity to join the Conservative Party
54:41 Rory Stewart? before 7pm tonight, a few thousand could make a huge difference, because this is a pretty small party without many members, a real chance to bring change to the Conservative Party, and through them, hopefully, in the long run, to Britain. Now, over to you, Alastair, to tell us more about how you think the Labour Government is faring.
54:59 Alastair Campbell? Well, you know, like you, I've been following America very, very closely and I've also been out of the country. But I watched Yvette Cooper in the King's Speech debate.
55:10 Alastair Campbell? And she was absolutely lacerating about this Rwanda scheme. She revealed that the cost so far, and she's obviously seen the checks now, 700 million. And what's more, that they had been prepared to spend up to 10 billion on trying to make this scheme work. Utter insanity. And I also watched Rachel Reeves' speech and, you know, we had Rachel on leading recently and, you know, you were, I was quite positive, you were less so.
55:38 Rory Stewart? I absolutely guaranteed that my, my, oh, I apologize.
55:41 Alastair Campbell? That's all right. I love your clock. I love your clock.
55:43 Rory Stewart? But as my clock comes, yeah, that was my great envy where I absolutely guaranteed that my fantasy that I would be brought in in a cross-party capacity to chair some commission for Labour was blown out of the water. Yeah.
55:55 Alastair Campbell? It's amazing. Another of our leading guests, Mark Hardy, he was put in charge of that instead of you, Rory. Amazing. No, but I'll tell you what, I think if you watch her speech in the King's Speech debate, it's about half an hour. And a little bit like Keir Starmer, I think, looks a lot more confident now he's become, he's become Prime Minister. I felt exactly the same about Rachel Reeves. She's got a very, very clear script, which is an obvious one. You know, you lot left us a complete mess. We're going to have to clear it up and here's how we're going to do it. I thought at the time, is that real? Is that when she announced in the campaign? The Covid Corruption Commissioner, but she made a big deal about that. This is taxpayers' money. It's been abused. It's been given to the wrong people. We're going to get it back.
56:40 Rory Stewart? The thing that I'm still looking for and that I'm anxious about is I still believe this Ken Clark line, which is that you've got to do the brutal unpopular reforms in the first year or two. And then show the results when you go back into the election in five years' time. And Britain is in such a mess. Our public services are in such a mess. Our economy is in such a mess. I think what we're looking for from Labour is to see them do some very brave unpopular things now, which are going to potentially annoy unions, challenge junior doctors.
57:18 Rory Stewart? Challenge, I don't know, could be challenging businesses, but they need to do things now which are tough and difficult, rip the Band-Aid off. So in five years' time, they can show the NHS is better, the economy is better. And what's worrying me is the steady-as-you-go stuff is fine, but unless they become more radical, they're not going to get the changes in five years' time.
57:41 Alastair Campbell? I mean, I think the thing that was coming back from, not so much from Jeremy Hunt, but from the Tory interventions, was very much on this planning and infrastructure stuff. And Mark Francois, for example, said, I've heard all this before, you're not going to be able to do it. Everybody says they want to do planning. Everybody says they want to build more homes. You're not going to be able to do it. I think that's where they are, they are gearing up to take on a lot of vested interests. And I wonder whether they're, they're almost like gearing up for that as the first step in this. It has been interesting. You're right in relation to the National Health Service, for example, and education, both West Streeting and Bridget Phillips, and they're pretty high profile. They're making some interesting sort of commentaries and interventions, but nothing at this stage
58:26 Alastair Campbell? that is really going to kind of set people running to the barricades. I guess what you're saying is for big change to happen, you have to have stuff that has people running to the barricades.
58:36 Rory Stewart? Yes, that's what I think. But Anissa, thank you. And thank you particularly for bringing us to Venezuela and look forward to speaking again on Question Time.
58:44 Alastair Campbell? See you soon.
58:45 Rory Stewart? See you soon. Bye bye.
Previous 290. JOE BIDEN DROPS OUT Next 292. Question Time: China’s army in Europe, Just Stop Oil behind bars, and Andrew Tate Page updated October 26, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated
