530. Is Starmer the Next Joe Biden? Rory and Alastair React to Local Elections

Will Keir Starmer survive presiding over seismic Labour losses in the local elections, and if he doesn’t who should replace him? Do historic Reform and Green wins for Farage and Polanski confirm the death of two-party politics in the UK? Did the Ed Davey’s Lib Dems and Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives actually perform better than expected? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Our new university student discount: Get TRIP membership for just £20 per year when you sign up using your university email at checkout on therestispolitics.com⁠ Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:01Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:04Rory Stewart?

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  So if bills are meant to fall from April, why would anyone bother switching?

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• 1:01Rory Stewart?

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• 1:11Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 1:14Alastair 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.

• 1:26Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, 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.

• 1:50Alastair Campbell?

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

• 1:56Rory 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.

• 2:10Rory Stewart?

  And the link is in the episode description.

• 2:13Speaker 02

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• 2:50Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest is Politics. It's an emergency podcast on the local elections with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:55Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. Is it emergency or is it live? It's live. Is it also an emergency?

• 3:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, live emergency. Anyway, it's not one of our normal things because we're having this amazing local election in Britain, which just to remind people, could be huge change for the way the British electoral system works.

• 3:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I guess the we're recording this, we're doing this one o'clock on the day after the vote. And the main focus so far has been elections in England. Wales, I am reliably informed by Labour people in Wales, is going to be a disaster for Wales. I was talking to somebody who was in at the count at one of Labour's historically safest seats ever, who said that they were going through the boxes and in every single one of them, Labour was coming third behind Plaid and Reform, and it was very neck and neck between Plaid and Reform. In Scotland, I think the SNP are going to win. The question will be whether they get a majority. Some sort of optimists in the Labour camp are

• 3:53Alastair Campbell?

  saying it's going to be slightly better than we expected. We shall see. And then I think the story-

• 3:58Rory Stewart?

  Slightly better, I guess, is that John Curtis was looking, the famous Sir John Curtis, the great pollster.

• 4:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:05Rory Stewart?

  Seem to be suggesting that his polls were thinking SNP will do very well in Scotland, but they won't quite get a majority, which won't be enough for them to push for a referendum on independence. But he thought it's possible reform could come second and Labour and Conservatives neck on neck on about seventeen seats. So doing better presumably would mean Labour coming second rather than equal third.

• 4:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think Labour doing better would mean probably gaining some seats and certainly not falling behind reform, which you'll see. And then the votes in England, again, complicated because the places where the Greens and the Lib Dems might expect to do a bit better, many of them still to declare. So the overnight headlines were very much about this, what the BBC seemed delighted in calling the reform surge. And they're looking to be around about one in four of those who voted, voting reform. I actually think for those who, I suspect most of our viewers and listeners are kind of not necessarily natural reform voters, we do have some, but not that many. I think to those who are not, there is quite a lot

• 5:10Alastair Campbell?

  of comfort to be taken in that because the turnout is higher than usual, but still less than half. And but it means that one in three out of four did not vote for reform. This is not, this vote does not say to me that Nigel Farage is the next Prime Minister.

• 5:26Rory Stewart?

  The one in four is interesting also is because broadly across Europe, the parties on the right, so parties like the AfD in Germany, Le Pen, I mean, further right than the conventional right wing parties, tend to be getting between twenty and thirty percent, don't they?

• 5:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 5:44Rory Stewart?

  And at the moment, of course, people like me who are very disturbed by the rise of the AfD in Germany, very disturbed by Fraser Nelson reporting that Robert Jenrick was talking about essentially tracking down and getting rid of two million people from Britain, presumably predominantly Muslims, who reform don't like, take comfort in the fact that they're getting twenty five, thirty percent of the vote, that they're not the majority of the vote.

• 6:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and but I think if you look at the the polls and if you look at the expectations that they were trying to create, I'm not quite sure that they've they've hit the mark. Look, I'm not getting away from the fact, it is a much, much better result for them, certainly than the Tories, certainly than than Labour and probably the Greens as well, because the Greens, I think, are underperforming against what their expectations were.

• 6:32Rory Stewart?

  Just quickly on expectations, there was some very odd reporting over the weekend that Nigel Farage was not doing your famous Ken Baker trick of setting expectations very low. In fact, he was doing the opposite. He was doing something that you almost never see in local elections. He was going around saying, this is going to be an amazing win, this is going to be a great Bonanza win, which of course gives people at the Conservatives the opportunity, say in Harlow, for example, where there were eleven seats up and where Reform seemed to be talking about getting seven or eight, the Tories have got a clean suite.

• 7:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and and so it will be, local elections are always a mixed picture. You always kind of, there's a sort of battle for the narrative and overnight Reform won that battle without a doubt. But I think there's something very interesting as well about if you look at, because the story of the election coverage, insofar as there's been that much coverage, has really been all the way through, this is like a big opinion poll on Keir Starmer, we'll come on to that, but then the other two parts of the story have been Reform doing very, very well and high expectations and Zach Polanski doing the same. And I think there's been something interesting. I think the last few days of the campaign, some of what you call the, well, certainly Zach Polanski's had a pretty

• 7:43Alastair Campbell?

  bad last few days, Nigel Farage has had a bad last few days. The difference, I think, is that the the relentlessness of the attacks on Zach Polanski appear to have had an impact, whereas I'm not sure that the attacks on Farage have.

• 7:57Rory Stewart?

  And remind us the two. So with Polanski, I noticed there was a front page article in The Times saying that he'd not paid council tax on a canal boat that he'd been living on.

• 8:07Alastair Campbell?

  There was fake, something fake on his CV about being an ambassador for the Red Cross.

• 8:11Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 8:12Alastair Campbell?

  And then there's the rerunning of all the other stuff and he was getting a bit kind of, you know, he wasn't getting a, he wasn't getting, and he of course says this is all the right wing media against him, blah, blah, blah. I think with Farage, though, there's there's two things which I think Labour have got to really, really be, understand the importance of this. This five million pound donation wasn't getting much coverage, but it was getting through to the to the public.

• 8:34Rory Stewart?

  And this is Chris Harborn, based in Thailand.

• 8:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, crypto billionaire who's given tens of millions already, or over ten million already to the party, gave this five million pound donation, which Farage claims is for his lifetime security. And what that, so the worry for Labour is that even when there are, what we, you and I would say, and most people would say, genuine scandals attached to Farage, partly because the media doesn't really drive them, because most of the right wing media want Farage to do well. They they're sort of priced in, and it's a bit like Trump, he can get away with more than conventional politicians. The second thing also related to Harborn is that Farage and the Reform Party now have a lot of money.

• 9:19Alastair Campbell?

  I can't remember whether we ever did front page wraparounds on evening newspapers. But yesterday, if you got on the Tube in London, now I don't think Reform would do very well in London, but it was just a way of signalling how much, you know, they've got, the cash they've got in the bank. A wraparound of the Evening Standard, front page and back page together was an advert for Reform and a full page inside. That's a lot of money.

• 9:45Rory Stewart?

  I'd I'd be interested also, I don't know whether anybody's polled Reform voters, what uh the range of opinion is about Farage taking five million pounds, personal donation. Somebody's pointing out to me when I said, you know, why did he take it as a personal donation rather than, you know, speaking fee or something? Apparently the answer is income tax. If Chris Harborn had decided to pay him five million pounds to give a speech, he'd have to pay income tax. Gifts, there's no tax on it, so it's worth twice as much to him.

• 10:12Alastair Campbell?

  Look, the story, I don't believe the story stacks up, um but the point is, and then today he was asked about it, and so we can talk about that other guy.

• 10:19Rory Stewart?

  But he'd need to earn effectively ten million pounds to end up with five million pounds in his bank account as well as he has now. Which is sort of uh money well beyond a kind of partner in a fancy law firm or any of this kind of stuff, well, well beyond. So so he's putting himself not into the category of I want to be financially secure and live a middle class lifestyle. He's trying to put himself in the category of. You know, I suppose the top point zero one percent of the British population.

• 10:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, when we talked, when we did the mini series with Liam Byrne about populism, one of the points he made is that these right wing populists have got to, you know, they're really, really attracted to using politics to get very, very wealthy. So with Aubame, we've seen it with Trump, we've seen it with Trump's family now. But I, so I, I think that from Labour's perspective, see, I think there are, maybe this is a good pivot into, into Labour and we can come on to Keir Starmer, his own position in a minute. But if you think about it, a lot of the problems that the Labour government's got itself into are from decisions that were made that didn't seem to reflect what people thought they were electing. So for example, we talked about it hundreds of times on the, on the podcast, the winter fuel payment.

• 11:28Alastair Campbell?

  But effective government has to be about seeing in advance the sort of changes that actually might be to the benefit of the country. And if you can benefit the country in a certain way, then longer term, you get a benefit to your party seeking reelection after, after a parliamentary term. Now, I would argue, and I argued with some of the people at the Labour Party about this at the time, you and I both felt in opposition. They should be acknowledging that our politics and therefore our democracy itself is facing serious profound threats. I would argue that one of the reasons why Nigel Farage does as well as he does is because he's been allowed to create

• 12:09Alastair Campbell?

  a TV channel, a bit like Fox News did for Trump in America, GB News, which pumps out propaganda day after day after day. Yesterday, if you turned on the BBC, we've talked about Ofcom on the podcast. If you turn on the BBC yesterday, the BBC rightly said, obviously on election day, we're not allowed to talk about politics. Okay. Well, don't be surprised therefore, if anybody who's interested in politics turns you off and goes to their phone and finds the whole bloody world's talking about politics and it's being flooded with advertising and if you've got the money. So if this money, the money that they've now got. Most people are not following politics through newspapers or through the the radio or through the television.

• 12:52Alastair Campbell?

  Lots of them maybe through podcasts, but actually an awful lot, they're doing it through that and the election times, if you've got money, you bombard them.

• 12:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so you you're pointing to something which is uh about structure. So there are different ways to think about populism. One of them is about the underlying drivers of people voting for the far right and the far left, which is anger about immigration, anger about cost of living, anger about what's happening to local communities. But another way to think about it is in terms of the structures of social media, electoral systems and campaign finance. So if you were a man that we both admire a lot, Premier of South Australia, Peter Manoskas, you would say, look, if you're bold and serious about this, let's take two of these things. Let's take social media and let's take campaign financing.

• 13:44Rory Stewart?

  And let's say we're going to fix the structure. And actually, if you're going to be Australian, you go further. You'd go for an Australian electoral system, you'd go for compulsory voting. All of this makes it less likely for extreme parties to come out of nowhere, take donations from people who are living overseas, exploit the social media landscape. And so let's have a level playing field. And I think the safest level playing field is to stop all these bloody parties taking money. That's what I like about Manoskas's approach, right? Stop Labour taking it from the unions, stop the Tories taking it from business, and stop Reform taking five million or fifteen million or whatever the whole thing.

• 14:22Alastair Campbell?

  Instead of which, instead of which, because the decision was taken not really to get into that, they're getting into it belatedly through the Rycroft review that we talked about a few weeks ago, where there'll be limits put on donations and also limits from from overseas. But because they haven't set that out early on, if they were to do that now.

• 14:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it just looks like they're sore losers.

• 14:43Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. In the mid in the middle of what people is being described as terrible results, and there was suddenly to do that. So I think that's why you've always got to set this inside a kind of a bigger picture, where you're where you're delivering things over time. So I think now, so again, you know, what happens now for Labour?

• 15:01Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, around, around the country today, a lot of Labour councillors who are losing their seats are going to feel really pissed off. A lot of MPs who are looking at the councillors who are pissed off and have lost their seats are going to think, well, if they're losing their seats in this scale, I could do the same. That is, and I, I think I said the other day, it's always worse when it happens, no matter how.

• 15:21Rory Stewart?

  How much you anticipate it.

• 15:22Alastair Campbell?

  It's always worse. So today we'll be feeling really, really bad for a lot of people.

• 15:27Rory Stewart?

  And you'll be getting, and if you're, if you're a Labour MP, you'll be getting very, very angry texts and messages from very loyal party members who've been campaigning for you for years, out on the doorsteps and all weather, with the leaflets, you've been going to the Labour Party events with them, and they've all lost their council seats.

• 15:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and they're going to be pissed off.

• 15:45Rory Stewart?

  And they will be blaming Keir Starmer, probably.

• 15:47Alastair Campbell?

  A lot of them will, a lot of them will. And, and of course, no, I, I, I think the whole Keir Starmer thing.

• 15:52Rory Stewart?

  Most of them will, I think, probably. So it's not, not to be mean, but I mean, my, my, my experience when Tories, local councillors lost their seats, they blamed David Cameron or Theresa May or whoever that it was.

• 16:01Alastair Campbell?

  And, and that's partly because there is such focus on the Prime Minister and the party leaders in our, in our politics. Same as some people will be saying, you know, Kemi Badenoch, the Tories is a very mixed picture. It's not, not a great local election. They're, they're meant to be the main opposition party, but nobody's really talking about them because they've, they've not done that well. So leaders inevitably get blamed. So then that is inevitably giving rise to the question about whether Keir Starmer stays or goes. And, you know, and, and this is, this is, this is really, really difficult because I think all the different, there, there is, if you look at results as bad as this, you're bound to say, well, look, if everybody's saying it's about Keir Starmer, got to make a change.

• 16:41Rory Stewart?

  And, and just sorry, just, just for listeners who aren't completely following the micro details, one of the big things here is there are just so many more Labour seats up than was true last time. So the narrative a year ago was, you know, Chris Mason's, the rise and rise of Reform. So last year was the moment where Reform really seemed to break through and it took the mayoralty in a couple of places and it took six councils and it was a kind of huge explosion. But Labour only. Lost something like four hundred seats last time round because there weren't that many seats up. This time, Labour almost certainly will lose well over a thousand seats because there are over two thousand of these Labour seats up for grabs.

• 17:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:22Rory Stewart?

  So just in, I mean, forget about percentages and absolute numbers. This is going to feel like a unbelievable hammering.

• 17:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Rory Stewart?

  For the Labour government. And then you add to that, that we were saying shortly after Starmer was elected, that Labour looked like it was in with a good chance in Scotland. It's definitely not going to win in Scotland. Anna Sawa is not going to be the first minister in Scotland. So put all of that together. People are going to be thinking, hmm.

• 17:46Alastair Campbell?

  And and and just just to underline that, um, Anna Sawa, who called for Keir Starmer to resign, thinking that was the way for him to get a kind of break between the damage that he felt UK Labour were doing to Scottish Labour. Um, it might have helped him a bit. I don't know. Whereas in Wales, it seems like for some time now, they've just kind of given up on imagining any chance of winning. So my point about what now happens to Keir Starmer, sometimes what might seem obvious doesn't always happen. And I think in this context, there's there's various reasons for this. So the first is that there's no doubt

• 18:28Alastair Campbell?

  there there there is a a sense within a lot of the people you talk to, including people who really criticize Keir Starmer, who will say, God, you know, one of the Tories, one of the reasons the Tories got absolutely shafted is because they kept changing the prime minister. So a lot of them will be thinking, including, by the way, the people who you think that they might be in with a shout, uh, will be thinking, do we make it better or worse? And then they'll be thinking, do we make it better or worse to do it now? I'll be honest, most of the people you talk to inside the Labour Party, MPs, ministers, et cetera, sort of say, well, nobody really thinks Keir is going to be there at the election. Okay. Now, I'm not sure Keir Starmer thinks that.

• 19:05Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 19:05Alastair Campbell?

  Because I think that he he he can't be enjoying this. He'll be hating today.

• 19:12Alastair Campbell?

  But you didn't see a guy who was going out sort of setting out a plan for departure today.

• 19:18Rory Stewart?

  This is why I said to you a couple of days ago.

• 19:20Alastair Campbell?

  You think he's Joe Biden?

• 19:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he's rapidly becoming Joe Biden because he's basically in a bunker with his wife saying it's all going to be fine.

• 19:26Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, you can't do the Lady Macbeth thing. You can't do that. It's just totally unfair.

• 19:30Rory Stewart?

  We can go into the next election. We'll win. It's going to be lovely, Keir. Everybody's always underestimated you.

• 19:34Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know if you're saying that.

• 19:35Rory Stewart?

  Everyone's always read Tom Baldwin's books. Everyone's always underestimated you. And now, you know, you're going to prove them wrong and you're going to win at the next election. Just give them time to really understand the real Keir. Yeah, and and and nobody buys this. So the problem.

• 19:48Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, can I just interject in Victoria Starmer's defence? I'm not sure she says that at all, Ben.

• 19:53Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay, let's let's work. So somebody around him must be saying that. There'll be flatterers around him saying, Keir, come on, you know, you're much better than these other people. You've got to stay because, you know, for the country and for the party. I mean, obviously, you know, Angela Rayner or West Streeting is going to be a disaster. So we need you. We need you to hold the party together. Um, but working backwards, if he cannot run at the next election,

• 20:20Rory Stewart?

  it seems to me that your only hope really is to get rid of him and hope that someone else does a better job.

• 20:29Alastair Campbell?

  As Mark Carney said in Davos, hope is not a strategy.

• 20:32Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's your only option because the the the the the reality is that they may be disasters. Angela Rayner may be a disaster. West Streeting may be a disaster. Al Khan's could be a disaster. Peter Carl could be a disaster. Who knows? But give them a shot. Let them run at it and hopefully have a process that is a bit better than the process that produced Kamala Harris. Bit more of a kind of brutal primary process that really brings out who these people are. Let's see them. Let's see who's got the talent and who sounds more like Prime Minister. And then give them a chance because. What Mark Carney's proved is that if you actually can dominate the stage and communicate, you can take over a pretty horrible situation. Canada is not objectively in a good situation.

• 21:16Rory Stewart?

  The Canadian economy is under huge pressure. He was inheriting a very difficult legacy. He's turned it around. So you could do it. And the one person who obviously isn't going to be able to do it, this is my Biden analogy, is Starmer. Starmer can't do it.

• 21:33Alastair Campbell?

  But look, I can completely understand why you're saying that, but even as you describe that process, you say, give them a shot, give them a shot. So that means you're asking, you're asking Keir Starmer, Keir, do you mind hanging around being a prime minister for a bit? While we sort of all fight it out, at which point the country starts to think, well, hold on a minute, are you not a government? Or are you just another leadership election? How does that process even happen? So this is my point, but you have, in the end, you have to live in the real world. So all these ministers who are briefing, I said this to him and others have said this to him, and I think this. In the end, this stuff only happens if he makes a decision to go, or he gets forced out.

• 22:18Rory Stewart?

  And strategic.

• 22:18Alastair Campbell?

  And I don't see, at the moment, rightly or wrongly, I don't see either of those things happening.

• 22:23Rory Stewart?

  But what's your definition of strategy again? You got a vision?

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  My definition of strategy is the big argument by which you reach an objective that you've set and set out and understood.

• 22:33Rory Stewart?

  Okay, seems to me that the objective that needs to be set out and understood is to do a hell of a good job governing Britain for the next three years.

• 22:42Alastair Campbell?

  Correct.

• 22:43Rory Stewart?

  And second objective is to win the next election.

• 22:45Alastair Campbell?

  Correct.

• 22:45Rory Stewart?

  Okay. I think if you take those two objectives, Keir Starmer is not the answer to governing Britain brilliantly with conviction over the next three years, and he's not the answer to winning the next election. And once you've seen that big strategic picture, the conclusion's obvious.

• 23:02Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Well, you say the conclusion's obvious. It might be obvious in terms of the decision that the Labour government, the Labour Party has to make, but the outcome of that decision is not obvious. And that's, that's why I still think it's, it's important to hold back from thinking that, because this is what the Tories did. Get rid of something that's not working, because nothing can be worse than this. That's not a strategic approach.

• 23:26Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's, let's look at the Tories a little bit more sympathetically. I mean, my guess is hanging on to Theresa May. Probably wouldn't have worked. They brought in Boris Johnson. I mean, I happen to think, you know, obviously a terrible human being.

• 23:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and he won an election.

• 23:40Rory Stewart?

  He won an election.

• 23:41Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 23:41Rory Stewart?

  Won an election against all the odds. You know, when I was running against Boris, the basic story was winning that 2019 election would be very, very difficult. He managed it. Again, they couldn't leave Boris in. It was the right move to get rid of him. Partygate scandals, the incompetence around Covid. Check him out. Nor could they leave Liz Truss in, for goodness sakes. So.

• 24:01Alastair Campbell?

  But that's my point.

• 24:02Rory Stewart?

  They they had to move. Now, it didn't work for them because unfortunately Rishi Sunak got many, many talents, but he wasn't a great communicating, strategic, big-thinking prime minister. Um, but the other option, which I call the Biden option, which is to be so aware of all the risks and the difficulties involved in getting rid of the leader, that you stick with someone who clearly cannot be your long-term leader. Can't be the answer.

• 24:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. So let's just stick with the Tories there. And let's just imagine who a Labour character might be. Excuse me, that fits that journey that you just described. Um, so David Cameron's the prime minister.

• 24:45Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 24:46Alastair Campbell?

  And Theresa May comes in.

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:48Alastair Campbell?

  Keir Starmer's the prime minister.

• 24:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 24:50Alastair Campbell?

  Let's just say.

• 24:51Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 24:52Alastair Campbell?

  That there's, they suddenly decide there's going to be an election. Let's say Angela Rayner comes in.

• 24:55Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 24:55Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Um, I'm not comparing Angela Rayner to Theresa May, other than the fact that she comes in.

• 25:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Alastair Campbell?

  Um.

• 25:03Alastair Campbell?

  I'm all, I can already think of all sorts of things that can go wrong quite quickly. The tax thing.

• 25:07Rory Stewart?

  Sure.

• 25:07Alastair Campbell?

  Not resolved.

• 25:08Rory Stewart?

  Sure.

• 25:09Alastair Campbell?

  Um, the, the, the, the, the, has she got the vision? Has she got the talent?

• 25:14Rory Stewart?

  Sure.

• 25:14Alastair Campbell?

  We don't know.

• 25:15Rory Stewart?

  Sure.

• 25:16Alastair Campbell?

  Let's say she comes in and doesn't last.

• 25:17Rory Stewart?

  Sure.

• 25:17Alastair Campbell?

  Okay?

• 25:18Rory Stewart?

  Sure.

• 25:18Alastair Campbell?

  And then people say, well, we've got to get Andy Burnham in now.

• 25:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:21Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, now, and Andy Burnham, here's a question for you. Here's an issue for you. The, the Manchester results that are coming in suggest that the Greens might actually win in Manchester. Having already won that by-election. In Angela, a Thameside Council, which is Angela Rayner's part of the world, Labour is getting absolutely whacked. So people are making assumptions about things that could happen. Now. So, so what I'm saying is the only possible means of getting to what you're saying.

• 25:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:53Alastair Campbell?

  I think.

• 25:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:55Alastair Campbell?

  Is if Keir Starmer actually looks deep into the soul and says. Maybe I was good for that, but I'm not as good for this. And for some reason, the public have taken it against me. And I've got to admit, you and I both talked about this, that there is, I think I told you at football matches recently, when the crowd started singing Keir Starmer's a wanker. Sort of apropos of absolutely nothing. There was nothing political going on at the ground. That's bad. And every, you know.

• 26:18Rory Stewart?

  It's just a football match. You didn't tell us this, actually. No, they don't know.

• 26:22Alastair Campbell?

  It was Fulham against Burnley. It was going through a dull phase. And suddenly, it wasn't thousands, but a few hundred.

• 26:28Rory Stewart?

  All right.

• 26:28Alastair Campbell?

  Keir Starmer's a wanker. It happened at the darts the other night. So what that says, yeah, what that says is that it's become a thing.

• 26:35Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 26:35Alastair Campbell?

  To quote hate Keir Starmer. It's one of the reasons why the front page, back page advert that Reform did. What was their slogan for these elections? Vote Reform, Get Starmer Out.

• 26:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:44Alastair Campbell?

  So it's all a negative thing against him.

• 26:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:47Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I think whoever is Prime Minister at the moment in our current culture and climate where things aren't great. They're going to get that. So.

• 26:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 26:55Alastair Campbell?

  I'd, so I'm, I'm not minimizing either the disastrousness of this result.

• 27:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  Or the fact that there is a real doubt about Keir Starmer. But I think it's particularly in government. It's such a big thing as the Tories found to say, let's get rid of the Prime Minister. And it underlines the idea that you just care. You're all caring about yourself and not about us.

• 27:16Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Look, of course, you're right. And I'm, I'm, it's all very well. I'm sitting here in this strange, beautiful studio, I noticed with three of your books and only one of mine behind me here.

• 27:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that's because I've written twenty one.

• 27:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's right. It's a percentage, percentage point, isn't it? Um, uh, so you're completely right. It will feel brutal. And you're totally right that the two main reasons this doesn't happen is people are very worried about who these alternative candidates are. Are they going to be any good?

• 27:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:44Rory Stewart?

  Which is what I would call the, you know, the issue around Gretchen Whitner or the issue around Kamala Harris, right? And the second thing, which is the boss himself doesn't want to go, which is why I call the Joe Biden problem.

• 27:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:57Rory Stewart?

  Biden doesn't want to go.

• 28:01Rory Stewart?

  Historically, also, let's add to that, that Labour has historically been much less good at getting rid of leaders.

• 28:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 28:08Rory Stewart?

  Than the Conservatives. We're going to say you managed to hold on to Jeremy Corbyn for years, right? So, um, I, I can see all that. And equally, I think if you.

• 28:20Rory Stewart?

  Weren't as close to it as you obviously are and you were really stepping back. You know, if I to ask some nerdy large language model, these are the facts, what should happen? I think the conclusion is obvious. You you it can't, I mean, in in a sense, a scenario where Starmer tries to cling on for another three years. He doesn't know how to communicate. It doesn't matter how many speech coaches he's got, how many new speech writers he's got. He doesn't know how to communicate. Secondly, he's really struggling to generate a stable team in number ten. I mean, he's losing them like you can't believe. I don't know the number of chiefs of staff he's had, heads of press he's had. Let alone the number of permanent secretaries in the civil service the guy burns through.

• 29:06Rory Stewart?

  Heads of the foreign office, he's not got any loyalty in the civil service. I mean, they're all, I got a joke from a friend today saying, oh, yeah, we see it. Yeah, local elections goes wrong. Keir Starmer's, you know, taking full responsibility, civil service drawing lots on which one of them is going to have to resign. Right? So and and what has he actually done in policy terms? He's not really managed to work out what the message was before the election. It's the problem of the Mingva strategy. He didn't come in saying, here's my big bold message and I'm going to tell the voters before. I'm going to tell my MPs before and I'm going to tell the MPs after.

• 29:40Alastair Campbell?

  I've always said that is the big weakness about the whole thing, the lack of a compelling narrative. The fact that, and I think these results in London and some of the ones that we're seeing in Manchester. I have always felt that the strategy is basically focused on what they call hero voters. And they basically mean people who voted reform. I've always felt was a mistake because I think Labour is at risk of losing far more support to the left. At the moment, they're losing both to the right and to the left because of that lack of a story that brings them together.

• 30:09Rory Stewart?

  Let me speak as a Labour friendly right winger.

• 30:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:13Rory Stewart?

  There are obviously two narratives that they could pursue.

• 30:16Alastair Campbell?

  I think you're less Labour friendly than you were, less right wing than you were as well.

• 30:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, probably both. I actually think that one of their problems is that when they think about the right-left divide, they're fixated with Reform and Green. Actually, I think there are a lot of Lib Dem Tory voters who could be potential Labour voters, right? So there is, there are a lot of the people that we go to talk to when we go to business events and talk about geopolitics, who actually were very excited by Labour before the election, thought the Tories, particularly under Liz Truss, had blown their credibility on the economy. Here was the Chancellor coming in saying, I care about growth, I care about deregulation, I'm going to keep taxes low, I'm going to be sensible in borrowing. So there was a story, the grown-ups have taken over, we're serious, we're pragmatic,

• 31:03Rory Stewart?

  we're going to run a serious economy, we're going to get it under control. That unfortunately, I'm afraid, was very damaged by the fact that instead of accepting when they saw the financial problems, that they would come up with a pragmatic fiscal policy, they thought they'd do something cute, putting up employers' national insurance while claiming they wouldn't put up tax. That made a lot of people sad. And they haven't felt business-friendly, deregulation-friendly. I know people like Peter Carl really want to do it, and I want to hear more from him, really want to see him saying, here are the big supply-side reforms, here are the big deregulation, this is how we're business-friendly, this is how we're entrepreneurial, right?

• 31:40Rory Stewart?

  Or with the Lib Dem voter, let's see the kind of values, let's see the position more clearly on Trump, on geopolitics, on Europe. You know, you've talked a lot about the fact that there was a huge opportunity to get us all back by saying, let's, you know, be radical about Europe, you know, let's rejoin Europe. Let's say Trump and security threats and Ukraine and all this has changed the whole world. This is a big direction to go in. But if your narrative is only, I'm going to cut one to feel that, then I'll put it up again. Now, I'll cut down, you know, farmers' inheritance, I'll knock it up again, I'm going to hit, oh, you know, it's just, who the hell are you appealing to? Who are you exciting?

• 32:19Alastair Campbell?

  I, just on the point about Europe and Brexit, the other thing that's been really interesting about the results so far, and this may sound obvious, but seats where, wards where there is a high leave vote historically, have gone very, very strongly to Reform, okay?

• 32:39Alastair Campbell?

  In wards where there was a very, very remain, high remain vote, Farage has got no chance.

• 32:46Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 32:46Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely no chance.

• 32:47Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 32:47Alastair Campbell?

  And that's why I think some of those people who voted Leave can be won back by a strategy that improves the economy, improves their public services, and also calls out Farage's role in making every single one of them poorer. They've just never done that.

• 33:03Rory Stewart?

  So one classic example, which I think confirms this point, that Labour's missed a whole trick in the centre ground, is what's happened with Westminster Council. So I voted Kensington Chelsea yesterday, Pont Street Church, going to the polling station. These are voters who delivered Labour MP.

• 33:23Alastair Campbell?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:23Rory Stewart?

  Westminster Council was lost in 2022. And broadly speaking, if you go into that polling station, you would have felt that you were going back to 1980s. It was a very, very nice, quiet, respectable Conservative lady, I don't quite want to call her blue rinse, standing there politely with her peach paper.

• 33:40Alastair Campbell?

  Did you, did you vote for that party?

• 33:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't tell you who I voted for.

• 33:43Alastair Campbell?

  Why not?

• 33:43Rory Stewart?

  No, I don't want to tell you who I voted for, partly because I'm going to ruin your whole podcast if I start revealing the fact that I actually tend to move my vote around more than, more than you'd like to hear.

• 33:52Alastair Campbell?

  I did. I moved it once, the spell from the party.

• 33:55Rory Stewart?

  But what I would say is that that kind of middle of the road, remain voting, pro-business Tory, who went over to Labour in the general election, will have been tempted to come back towards the Tories, even if they feel political.

• 34:13Alastair Campbell?

  That's why the Tories are one.

• 34:14Rory Stewart?

  And certainly will not be excited by Labour. And not going to vote Reform.

• 34:17Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 34:17Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 34:18Alastair Campbell?

  And they're never going to vote Green.

• 34:19Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 34:19Alastair Campbell?

  See, this is the other thing, which I think, the other, the other element of all of this, since the election, let's go back to the election, you mentioned the Mingvars, they come in, they make a few mistakes, they do a few good things, gets drowned out by all sorts of other stuff. But what they've never done really is project to the country a sense of optimism, a sense of we can get through this, we can do it. They say it, but it's like that point I made about that Steve Parish, the Crystal Palace chairman, congratulations on getting to the final of the European thing, is this the thing that he says every time they come on television, they look like they've just lost a football match that they should have

• 35:00Alastair Campbell?

  won. There's got to be big messaging and big policy that excites people and makes them think the country's going somewhere. You can't just manage, you can't just manage crisis. Keir Starmer, I think, has done pretty well on some of the international stuff, although I still wouldn't underestimate how much Gaza, first steps, these big, big moments. And yet, back to the point about Farage gets away with it, Farage completely cocked up in relation to the the start of the Iran war by wanting to get into bed with Trump, but he sort of he gets away with it. Listen, we've had some lots of feedback, but one interesting one, which I think-

• 35:33Rory Stewart?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. And I've actually got some polling in our WhatsApp group coming in here. All right. So coming in our polling-

• 35:40Alastair Campbell?

  Who would best replace Keir Starmer?

• 35:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So Andy Burnham, seventy two percent. Angela Rayner, sixteen percent. Wes Tretting, eleven percent. Remember, this is the people who happen to be watching our podcast.

• 35:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:50Rory Stewart?

  Um, who's most likely to win a general election? Nigel Farage, sixty six percent. Keir Starmer, twenty one percent. Zach Planck, eight percent. Kemi Badenoch, five percent.

• 36:00Alastair Campbell?

  Those are the current leaders.

• 36:01Rory Stewart?

  Um, who is the biggest winner of this local election two minutes ago? Reform, eighty eight percent, Green, twelve percent. Look, this is not a national polling, this is people who are interacting with us live, but it's interesting. So just just to sum that up, they basically think regardless of what you and me say, Reform's done very well and that and that and that it feels like the next prime minister is likely to be Nigel Farage.

• 36:29Alastair Campbell?

  But these results don't say that. They don't say that. They say that he's they say that he's leading in a- A multi-party system.

• 36:37Rory Stewart?

  Five-party system, six-party system.

• 36:39Alastair Campbell?

  Five, six-party system, which is not yet getting used to the fact that we no longer have the two parties, we have, we no longer have the dominant two parties in a system that's still designed for it. I still, I think on this, what you will see, I could be completely wrong, and we've always got to be mindful of, you know, not sort of wishful thinking or thinking that what you said would happen then happens, but I, if I'm genuinely thinking about this from a reform perspective, I think there is the case to be made that this is about high watermark. Apart from that, the one exception I'll say to that is they are now going to be so well-funded in terms of campaigning, and that does make a difference.

• 37:19Rory Stewart?

  I, I.

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  I'll lay you a bet now, Nigel Farage is not Prime Minister.

• 37:24Rory Stewart?

  Very good, very good, okay.

• 37:25Alastair Campbell?

  Only if you tell me how you voted.

• 37:27Rory Stewart?

  Oh, no, I'm not going to tell you how you voted. Um, the, um, uh, Cammy Badenoch's got a problem. I mean, she's going to be happy that she's done quite well in some of these local elections, but the question of how she positions herself against Farage, I'm still mesmerized by. You know, for example, today, she wasted time in the middle of the local election attacking my friend David Gork, who just got a knighthood. Now, David Gork is very much a Conservative from the old centre of the Conservative Party. You know, he was Lord Chancellor, Justice Secretary under Theresa May.

• 38:05Alastair Campbell?

  He got a license for doing that review.

• 38:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, reviewing to the criminal justice system as an independent guy, and he is somebody who I think most mainstream, I, I'm toxic with some Tory MPs. David Gork shouldn't be. He was one of the most decent, serious public servants we ever had. And for her to be giving out interviews saying she's spitting mad that he got a knighthood, that's not a good sign, because she too should be trying to re-win the centre ground.

• 38:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, um, well, you know my views about the honest system, but anyway, so, but I, no, I, I thought, let's just think about the Cammy Badenoch.

• 38:41Rory Stewart?

  Spitting mad with anyone getting a title or whatever, yeah.

• 38:44Alastair Campbell?

  No, I just.

• 38:44Rory Stewart?

  Regardless of who they are.

• 38:45Alastair Campbell?

  I used to be spitting mad, I'm more indifferent, but I can't get too excited about it.

• 38:49Rory Stewart?

  Is it not okay with a football manager getting a knighthood, is that?

• 38:51Alastair Campbell?

  Not that bothered, not that bothered, no. But I think, I think the Tories, I, I listened to, um, I saw James Cleverly on the television. And he was doing a kind of a modernized version of the ones that ones who are

• 39:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:05Alastair Campbell?

  Westminster thing. But I think I think it is important that the the reason why these people who are watching us and listening to us are saying this all says Farage is the next prime minister because that's what you would take out of the way this debate is being held today. It's a long, long time to go. I think, let's just take the five million pound thing, the donation. I think if that had emerged in week one of a four week general election campaign, by the end of that campaign, it would have done real damage to Farage, real damage.

• 39:37Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. And I also think as, you know, somebody going into the polling base thinking this through, I think the way that many people will vote in a general election, if the question is, is Ki- uh, is Nigel Farage going to be prime minister?

• 39:52Alastair Campbell?

  Or Zach Polanski?

• 39:53Rory Stewart?

  Is going to be, or Zach Polanski is going to be very different to what you're doing in a local election, where you may be trying to kick the two main parties. But if somebody actually asked you, do you want Nigel Farage to be prime minister? I'd I'd be interested in what the polling is. I reckon that will be considerably below what the reform voters.

• 40:09Alastair Campbell?

  And I think you mentioned Boris Johnson. I think what Farage has done, helped by the other parties making the mistakes that they've made. I think he has kind of reconstituted in a certain way the coalition that Johnson put together.

• 40:24Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's why it's no accident that you get a lot of the Johnson people going over to him. Danny Kruger was Boris Johnson's chief of staff, effectively, he's gone over to to to to Farage. And you can see a lot of Boris's messages seem to be very much on a Farage line. Oh, Nadine Doris, who was a great Boris Johnson fan, also gone over to Farage. So, yeah, Nigel Farage is the sort of Boris Johnson party and he's appealing to the same sentiment, which is the kind of, you know, he's a bluff, straightforward guy who I can trust and he's going to be able to make the radical moves. And and of course, what it turned out with Boris is it wasn't true.

• 41:03Rory Stewart?

  Boris Johnson did not make radical moves. He wasn't pro business. He didn't deliver on any of his promises on immigration. In fact, he did the reverse. Pretty weird. He's having got an anti-immigration run. He brought in about a million people. So it's. People need to understand that the idea that someone is a good media performer and can be quite funny. It's not the same as them being sort of radical reforming prime ministers who's going to improve the country.

• 41:25Alastair Campbell?

  Well, let me say that is exactly what would happen if Nigel Farage ever did become prime minister. I mean, just, let's just understand. I mean, this is a guy, you talk about the immigration thing. The, one of the reasons, and the current government gets the blame because they're in charge and I understand that. But one of the reasons why immigration is sore, as you say, is because of Brexit. And one of the reasons why the economy has been screwed up is because of Brexit. I find it utterly insane that anybody would think that the architects of Brexit should be even considered. And yet, and yet, there he is.

• 41:58Rory Stewart?

  And yet, their moves are so interesting. So I've been watching Dominic Cummings, right? And obviously Dominic Cummings has been having a bit of go at two of us, right? Criticize you for the Iraq war, criticize me for backing Kamala Harris. He doesn't own Brexit at all. He doesn't own Boris Johnson at all.

• 42:12Alastair Campbell?

  Nor does Farage.

• 42:13Rory Stewart?

  No, he's completely done. Brexit, Boris Johnson, forget that. You know, all the disasters that happened during the time when he was in charge of the matter. What he's now talking about is basically Muslim rape gangs is what he wants to talk about. And it's a very, very interesting, you'll see it with Farage. Shift the conversation on to trying to appeal to something completely and not take responsibility for what they did when they were in office.

• 42:35Alastair Campbell?

  Right. And then the difference at the moment, uh, I don't want to sit here and just sort of, you know, blame the media the whole time. But the truth is, as, as that Mark Gatiss, the actor said on the New Statesman podcast last week, you know. Keir Starmer gets covered like he's Vlad the Impaler. And Nigel Farage gets covered like a cuddly celebrity. We do have a real problem with our media culture and our political media culture. There's a couple of.

• 43:00Rory Stewart?

  Yep, I I got one here.

• 43:01Alastair Campbell?

  Go on.

• 43:01Rory Stewart?

  Start then. Mark, who's listening, thank you, Mark, for listening. Thank you, everybody who's joined us. Does Starmer really want his legacy to be the PM who ushered in one of the most far-right governments in UK history? Does he not have the self-awareness to see how he is a big part of the problem, right or wrongly? Surely he has to understand the only chance Labour have is through starting fresh. So this is, again, the Biden critique, right? The problem with hanging on is you end up with Trump. The problem with hanging on is you're taking the risk of ending up with Farage.

• 43:29Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Look, the answer to the first part of Mark's question, does Starmer want his legacy to be the PM who ushered in the most far-right government history? No, he doesn't. Okay. But he will be, he will be thinking that that does not have to be his legacy if he gets his act together, if the government raises game. And I accept their big F's. And it may be, what these results may show, I don't know. It may be that the country has just decided not having him. That sometimes happens.

• 43:54Rory Stewart?

  Here's another question for you from Hester.

• 43:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 43:56Rory Stewart?

  Thank you, team, for sending it to us. Will Labour, Greens and even Tories wake up and start forming a pact against reform, calling them out for what they are, pointing out their failures, frauds, single policies, Trump-supporting rhetoric, et cetera? This is what the Dutch parties did so well with Heidvildus. It's also what, to give him credit, the German Chancellor has done by refusing to make a pact with the AfD. So that's why I'm very disturbed to see Kemi Badenoch.

• 44:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and it's.

• 44:22Rory Stewart?

  Giving the impression that she's sort of leaving that out.

• 44:25Alastair Campbell?

  It's also, it's a version of what Majjar did in Hungary by persuading all the other parties to kind of unite as one. We have, our gremlins have also been polling on this as well. Should Labour form a pact with the Lib Dems? Yes, sixty-two, no, thirty-eight. Did you notice, by the way, that Ed Davey wasn't in your list that you read out? Is that because he got no point?

• 44:48Rory Stewart?

  That's a bit depressing.

• 44:49Alastair Campbell?

  I hope it wasn't like Abba in Brighton back in the seventies when they got no points in the UK.

• 44:53Rory Stewart?

  Can we just pause on that for a second? Because we don't talk enough about the Lib Dems. And actually, there are substantial figures. I mean, you know, what have they got? Seventy-something seats in Parliament?

• 45:02Alastair Campbell?

  They've had some amazing results today, like total Vipers in some places.

• 45:06Rory Stewart?

  Doing well in the local elections. So we talk about why Farage gets covered and why the Tories don't. What's the story about the Lib Dems? I mean, why, given that they have a historically huge representation of Parliament?

• 45:20Rory Stewart?

  Given that, you know, a lot of people in Centigrade, why have the lib Dems not really cut through in the right way in the last year and a half?

• 45:27Alastair Campbell?

  I guess because, sorry to keep banging on about the media, I think we've got a trivial media. So they prefer, oh, Zach Palansky, didn't he once hypnotise a woman and say that he could make her boobs better? Let's keep going on about that day to day.

• 45:43Rory Stewart?

  Is that right? Or is it that when they report Ed Davey, actually, it's almost the reverse. It's that because of that, they're reporting Ed Davey because he's doing some weird thing, some stunt.

• 45:52Alastair Campbell?

  I think the stunt thing is at its day. But I, look, they, we.

• 45:56Rory Stewart?

  And was that not an error, that stunt?

• 45:58Alastair Campbell?

  It might have been, but it's.

• 45:59Rory Stewart?

  For the long term. I mean, the short term, fine. But don't you think in the long term, it's what people will remember him for is doing jolly stunts?

• 46:06Alastair Campbell?

  I think.

• 46:06Rory Stewart?

  And how do you then tilt from that to being the moral voice against Donald Trump? It's quite tough, right?

• 46:13Alastair Campbell?

  Because he has been very tough against Trump.

• 46:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, but it's not taken with the same gravitas. It's not like, you know, Hillary Ben or Gordon Brown suddenly starts talking about Donald Trump.

• 46:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 46:22Rory Stewart?

  Because Gordon Brown's not to be found, you know.

• 46:24Alastair Campbell?

  Gordon Brown is definitely not going to go down a slide into a swimming pool. No, he's not going to do that. If he did, he'd definitely be wearing a suit and tie.

• 46:32Rory Stewart?

  I think if you're trying to present yourself as like the graves.

• 46:34Alastair Campbell?

  Possibly. I also think that they, the lib Dems have had the historic problem they have is that they are appealing to different constituencies in different parts of the country. I think they should have led the way much more volubly on Europe. That's what Palansky has tried to do. And by the way, the European thing is a risk. But the whole point about the Mingva strategy is that I think it bred in the Labour mindset, well, that was really successful, so let's not take too many risks. I think politics now is not just about the need to good communication, it's the need to have big things to argue about.

• 47:05Rory Stewart?

  Well.

• 47:05Alastair Campbell?

  And win the arguments against your opponents.

• 47:07Rory Stewart?

  Also, you can't be a cautious Mingva's status quo, easy as you go party today. I mean, Trump is basically exploding the world. AI is upturning all our economies on their head.

• 47:26Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 47:27Rory Stewart?

  Populism is on the rise. I mean, your only hope to survive in a world in which volcanoes are going off and earthquakes are everywhere is not to stand still and say steady as you go, but start dancing around the lava.

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• 49:02Alastair Campbell?

  Just to cheer up any of our Lib Dem listeners, they did say, I think the council that I was thinking of, not a single councillor from another party was elected in Richmond upon Thames.

• 49:13Rory Stewart?

  There we are.

• 49:14Alastair Campbell?

  That's, that's, we're talking one party state.

• 49:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, no, Richmond's very one party state. Yeah, yeah.

• 49:19Alastair Campbell?

  And they also, and three Green councillors got the boot and the Lib Dems have also gained Portsmouth and Stockport and they've held, they've held easily. The, the Gremlins are texting again, bloody hell, honestly, it doesn't stop, does it?

• 49:32Rory Stewart?

  In our Sunday read this weekend, they pointed out-

• 49:34Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, it's for a plug, here we go.

• 49:35Rory Stewart?

  We'll be covering the local elections in lots of details, lots of interviews with local councillors across the country. So, yeah, Sunday read, worth looking at our newsletter if you want more details, really detailed interviews with local councillors. So to receive it, sign up to our free newsletter through the link in the bio.

• 49:51Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Lord.

• 49:52Rory Stewart?

  But Mark's got a question. On the doorsteps, Labour canvassers reportedly encounter a visceral dislike of Keir Starmer.

• 49:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 49:59Rory Stewart?

  Do these reports concur with what you're hearing? If so, does this mean Keir's got a- It's interesting, visceral dislike, I mean, I find it like a sort of slightly- Disappointing kind of accountant, but I I not not someone I'd get visceral dislike on.

• 50:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. The the hate thing is real and and isn't that just part of our culture? I we I said, you and I discussed this a few weeks.

• 50:22Rory Stewart?

  What do they hate him for?

• 50:23Alastair Campbell?

  But I'll tell you, I'll tell you why I've I've thought about this a lot and I went, I was in a school recently. And I sensed that some of them were in this kind of, I really hate him sort of category. And some of them, and I said, look, you can say, as you say, you're disappointed, it's not exciting, it's not this and that. But hatred is such a strong thing.

• 50:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 50:41Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, there are people in the world I hate.

• 50:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 50:43Alastair Campbell?

  But not many of them.

• 50:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, sure.

• 50:45Alastair Campbell?

  There aren't that many.

• 50:46Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 50:46Alastair Campbell?

  But, you know, a lot of people clearly do hate him and that did come up on the doorstep.

• 50:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 50:50Alastair Campbell?

  A lot. And this young woman, she was probably about seventeen, voting for the first time and she said, oh, she's, I've thought about this, she said, we understand. He, when he stood to be leader, he said he was one thing. And then he came and he was something different. And then when he stood to be prime minister, he was one, he was giving one sort of impression, then he came in and he gave another. And if you're my age, you think they're all shit, but he's the guy in charge.

• 51:23Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so that's one one story, which is that he's he's inconsistent, he says one thing, does another. And if you were to talk to the guys in the stands who are chanting, let's say you were talking, I don't know, let's say a thirty five year old guy in Burnley who told you they hated Keir Starmer. What might they say about why they hated him?

• 51:39Alastair Campbell?

  Well, while I was speaking there, I just had a message, not from our team, but from somebody else says Burnley have lost all seats. Labour have lost all seats in Burnley. Just on your your question about why were they singing that? I think for the, look, in the end, they're at a football match.

• 51:54Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 51:55Alastair Campbell?

  Might have had a bit to drink.

• 51:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 51:57Alastair Campbell?

  And but I think the mood around discussion of politics in a lot of working class areas is.

• 52:05Alastair Campbell?

  They're not doing anything for us.

• 52:07Rory Stewart?

  Tell us, tell us a bit about Burnley then, sorry, I keep pushing on. What sort of place is it? Where is it?

• 52:11Alastair Campbell?

  Former mill town.

• 52:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 52:12Alastair Campbell?

  Um, has got some industrial development, but it's struggled. Unemployment pretty high. Historically racial tension quite strong.

• 52:20Rory Stewart?

  Up in Lancashire?

• 52:21Alastair Campbell?

  In, in East Lancashire, yeah. Uh, transport links been talked about forever, never really improved.

• 52:27Rory Stewart?

  Okay, and was, and was the Labour safe seat and then went to Lib Dems briefly, then back to Labour?

• 52:32Alastair Campbell?

  And now? Well, now currently a Labour MP.

• 52:35Rory Stewart?

  Yep, and in the local elections.

• 52:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't know whether this is one of the, this, if they've lost every seat, I don't know whether this is one with just the third going or the whole council.

• 52:42Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 52:43Alastair Campbell?

  So, but look, there's no, there's no doubt.

• 52:45Rory Stewart?

  Reform is the implication, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:47Alastair Campbell?

  But the, but the, so the point is, in those parts of the country that have been historically working class Labour, clearly reform has managed to present itself as the party that cares for the working class. Now, I would argue, to let them blue in my face, that is not the case. That he does really care more about the crypto billionaires than he does about you. But while that is going on, Labour and the other parties have to do a far, far better job of saying, yes, I do understand your problems. I'll tell you another thing, which I was talking to a minister this morning. And he was gonna be doing media a bit later on and telling me what he's sort of thinking of saying, what have you. And, and I said, listen, the problem with a lot of you is you,

• 53:30Alastair Campbell?

  the first five minutes that you're talking on television, you're like commentators, you tell us what the problems are. We know what the problems are. Your, your job is to sort them and to give hope and optimism that they're being sorted.

• 53:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 53:44Alastair Campbell?

  So I think that sense of.

• 53:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, it's a bit like, sorry, I don't want to be boring, but I sometimes feel this, like, if you get the plumber in and the plumber spends the first five minutes saying, oh, it's all very difficult and there's this, that and the other and this happening with the pipes, they're saying, you actually want them to say, here I am, this is the solution, this is what I'm doing, I'm gonna get on and do it.

• 54:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:01Rory Stewart?

  Even better, actually, maybe they get on, do it without talking too much.

• 54:05Alastair Campbell?

  But you're, and your point earlier about, about growth, again, we're repeating ourselves here. So I felt right from the word go, they said growth is the big thing.

• 54:13Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 54:14Alastair Campbell?

  But here we are, almost halfway through the parliament, you know, nearly two years. And if you were to say to any of those people who voted Reform in Burnley, but more than that, probably any small business person or any big business person. Right, I'm going to put you on the spot, define for me the four key elements of Labour's growth strategy. Not sure what they are. Now, you mentioned, you know, Gordon not doing stunts, but I, I have to say, back in, you know, when Tony and Gordon were around, we had some bad local elections, don't get me wrong, we did, but.

• 54:47Rory Stewart?

  He could definitely tell you.

• 54:48Alastair Campbell?

  We'd definitely be able to tell you.

• 54:49Rory Stewart?

  Gordon round, definitely be able to. And what's more, not even four points, seventeen points, probably.

• 54:54Alastair Campbell?

  And what's more, you'd have heard it through the campaign as well.

• 54:57Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 54:57Alastair Campbell?

  And you'd have known that's what it's about.

• 54:58Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 54:59Alastair Campbell?

  So when you talk to Labour, if you talk to Reform.

• 55:02Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 55:02Alastair Campbell?

  What was their message for the campaign? They're basically saying, vote Reform, get Starmer out. This is like, this is a referendum on Keir Starmer.

• 55:09Rory Stewart?

  Let, let me come in.

• 55:10Alastair Campbell?

  You said it to Labour.

• 55:11Rory Stewart?

  Okay, la- last time though, because I, imagine you're a Burnley voter who hates Keir Starmer. And you're like forty year old guy from East Lancashire.

• 55:22Alastair Campbell?

  Because the guy's aged five years in two minutes.

• 55:24Rory Stewart?

  Okay. What is, what, what would he say, unlike your seventeen year old at school? What, what might he say about why he hates Keir Starmer?

• 55:33Alastair Campbell?

  Well, if I, if I recall, one conversation that I did actually have.

• 55:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Alastair Campbell?

  He wasn't forty, he was a bit younger than that. But he, I mean, a lot of it, I fade was a lot of the mythology, which of course gets pumped out the whole time. He's posh, well, he's not. Uh, he's a sir. Well, yeah, he is, but that's because he was the D P P. But I think the main thing actually he'd say is he doesn't really understand my life.

• 55:55Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 55:56Alastair Campbell?

  And they're not, and I don't think that, and of course, this is exacerbated when all he ever sees, there he's getting on a plane, he's going to Armenia. You and I would argue, he needs to do all that foreign policy stuff. But if your life is not great.

• 56:09Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 56:10Alastair Campbell?

  And you want somebody to blame, then blame the guy who told you he was going to change things and make your life better. And actually spend his whole time on a plane. That's what they, that's what he said.

• 56:19Rory Stewart?

  And weirdly, he wouldn't.

• 56:22Rory Stewart?

  Think of Farage or even Boris Johnson as being posh in the same way. I mean, it's kind of weird kind of thing, because obviously in such, you know, Boris, I mean, I had this recently, actually, two days ago, a very, very wealthy business person came up to me and said, of course, Rory, you're not going to like Nigel Farage because he's not not enough for Toff you, he's not posh enough for you. And they'd obviously decided that Farage was, you know, proper kind of voice of the working classes, kind of public school educated.

• 56:53Alastair Campbell?

  City trader.

• 56:54Rory Stewart?

  Met city trader, et cetera. So what is it about the way in which Farage and Johnson communicate that might make the man in Burnley feel, completely wrongly, but feel that he relates to the Maures in the summer?

• 57:08Alastair Campbell?

  I guess it is a sort of form of charisma. It's like, you know, it's just the same. You and I maybe never understood it, but the truth is, I used to see it when Boris Johnson walked into a room, people, oh, wow, it's Boris Johnson, you know, sort of excitement. I think there's a little bit of that with Farage, not quite the same. And I do think, by the way, I still do honestly believe Farage has peaked.

• 57:30Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 57:31Alastair Campbell?

  Because I think he's started to make mistakes. He's got away with it for now, but I think he's going to really struggle. Uh, I, one of the reasons why I think I'm not even convinced he'll be there at the next station, because I think what's happening now, you've got these other people who consider themselves as quite big beasts.

• 57:48Rory Stewart?

  Like Robert Jenrick and Peter.

• 57:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Richard Tice, Robert Jenrick, you can no longer, no, Farage would say, well, I've done that strategically.

• 57:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 57:56Alastair Campbell?

  They always said I was a one man band, I'm not a one man band. But I think you've seen the, the, I saw a very interesting thing on social media the other day. It was a guy who was dressed up in a, a Union flag suit, okay. And he was going around interviewing people.

• 58:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 58:11Alastair Campbell?

  Asking them about reforms policies.

• 58:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 58:13Alastair Campbell?

  And pretending to be a reform candidate.

• 58:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 58:15Alastair Campbell?

  So he was, he was saying things like, you know, um, so why, you're voting for reform? Yeah, yeah, I like Nigel. Uh, well, Brexit was good or whatever. And then the guy would articulate some of their policies.

• 58:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Alastair Campbell?

  Or a version of them. So he would say, um, well, you know, are you happy that we're going to be privatizing the health service? And they go, oh, okay, okay. And you know, by the way, we're going to fight for the billionaires. We think the billionaires are people you defy for. You'd get these guys who would like to say, yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. So I think it's the job, given the media isn't going to do it, it's the job of the other parties to make sure the public understand the reality of who these people are, what they're offering and beat them.

• 58:58Rory Stewart?

  And, and.

• 58:58Alastair Campbell?

  And I don't think it's that difficult.

• 58:59Rory Stewart?

  And I guess my final, we should wrap in five minutes, but my, my final.

• 59:02Alastair Campbell?

  We don't want to go Joe Rogan and do three and a half.

• 59:04Rory Stewart?

  No, my, my, my final point then will be, let's hope there's a new primus soon and let's hope they start doing stuff. Let's hope they demonstrate on growth, on immigration, on AI, on values, because probably the best way to defeat Farage is not just being slick with the communication, but actually improving people's lives.

• 59:29Alastair Campbell?

  Make the country better. Hundred percent. I've, I, I, I, I, I can see why you think and why so many other people think. It's clearly about the guy at the top's got to change. I think the problems run deeper. I think the whole cabinet has to step up. They spend far too much time talking about themselves, talking about their internal battles.

• 59:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, we haven't, I mean, it's maybe a bit uncomfortable because you're friends with them. I mean, I worry that it's actually pretty weak, that cabinet. It's not a great front bench.

• 59:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 59:57Rory Stewart?

  And that, you know, I'm not like looking at Ernie Bevan and Nye Bevan and being like, whoa, these guys. I'm not looking at Wilson's cabinet. I'm afraid, you know, we were pretty rude about a lot of the Tory cabinets, but person for person, I can name six or seven people out of Cameron's cabinet, May's cabinet, Johnson's cabinet, who are probably stronger performers than a lot of this type of cabinet.

• 1:00:19Alastair Campbell?

  Including yourself.

• 1:00:19Rory Stewart?

  Definitely, including myself, definitely.

• 1:00:21Alastair Campbell?

  No, but no, I, I'm not going to deny that. My, my, my point is, I think that, and that this thing doesn't help. I mean, every time I see bloody journalists on television, I've just had a WhatsApp from a member of the cabinet, they want to, what are you doing WhatsAppping? You know, get on with your job. So I, but, but my, my point is, I think that that underlines the point I made earlier. Unless you can see that there's a really good and obvious field, you're going to do better, it might be best for Labour to wait. It might be best.

• 1:00:51Rory Stewart?

  Um. But, you know, we're clearly, we're not, we're going to agree.

• 1:00:55Alastair Campbell?

  And I, and sometimes.

• 1:00:56Rory Stewart?

  Disagree agreeably.

• 1:00:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, and to be absolutely frank, Laurie, I sometimes disagree agreeably with myself.

• 1:01:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Alastair Campbell?

  Because I, I think, I think sometimes, yeah, it's obvious. And I think, hmm.

• 1:01:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Alastair Campbell?

  I think through the possible consequences, I worry about it.

• 1:01:07Rory Stewart?

  So we haven't got the full whales of Scotland results yet. Thank you all very much for listening. Um, I'm pretty sure knowing, knowing my friend here, that he will probably be putting out some more reporting and social media stuff as we get more results coming through.

• 1:01:20Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:20Rory Stewart?

  Um, this time next week, our interview with Angela Rayner, uh, which is part of the Gen Z Members series.

• 1:01:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, which is really good.

• 1:01:28Rory Stewart?

  We're gonna make it free for everyone. It's great that. We, we haven't often put out a series which isn't forwarded by you and me. But you've done a pretty good job. I was talking to a friend who was playing in the car and, and he was describing, you know, his wife interrupting him and saying, I disagree with that. And he was like, wait, wait, wait, they'll get to that. And sure enough.

• 1:01:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you listen to it twice.

• 1:01:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:49Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent.

• 1:01:50Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:50Alastair Campbell?

  Um, no, and I'll tell you, just on that, by the way, talking about Gen Z. So what's happened is Vicky Spratt has done these, this series and then part of it, she and I sat down with Angela Rayner, because she's done a lot of the sort of renter stuff and housing, what have you. But I actually do think that the, a Gen Z package and an understanding of this, and maybe getting into the whole intergenerational inequality thing. Maybe when it's about big, bold things, maybe actually Labour coming on and saying, look, this triple lock thing's got to go.

• 1:02:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Alastair Campbell?

  We've got to actually, you know, spend less on all the people, apart from those who really need it.

• 1:02:24Rory Stewart?

  Dear Cammie Badenoch, if you're listening, if you're trying to present yourself as the great economic realist, triple lock's got to go from the Tory manifesto too.

• 1:02:30Alastair Campbell?

  So, you know, I, I, and then have a proper argument where you can get out and say, look, is that Planck, he can't do any of this for you because he's not going to be Prime Minister. So, anyway, yeah, so Vicky Spratt, excellent mini-series, Angela Rayner, looking forward to putting that out in the next few days. Um, and there we go. I can't pretend that it's been the most. What's the opposite of depressing? Happiest discussion. Reform currently on five, six, one. Lib Dems three, three, seven, Tories three, oh, seven, Labour two, nine, two. Three hundred and eighty seats lost. Green one, oh, six.

• 1:03:06Rory Stewart?

  And, and just for those of you who have been pointing out the slight irony that our Gen Z series requires paying, we've got a student discount running twenty pounds for a year. And so you can hear not just the Gen Z series, but actually some mini series we're very proud of. Alastair did some great stuff and Rupert Murdoch, we did stuff together on J D Vance. I've done an A I mini series, which is still ongoing, which I really would love people to listen to, so. But mostly, thank you very much. Thank you for listening. And this is Rory signing off.

• 1:03:33Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon. Probably be back cloudy soon, I don't know. There you go.

• 1:03:38Rory Stewart?

  Bye, bye, guys. Thanks again.

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