261. Sunak vs Starmer: Who won?

Who emerged victorious from the first leadership debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer? Was ITV's format too restrictive? Where does the election go from here? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in the wake of the first TV leadership debate. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. TRIP UK TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Election Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

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• 1:33Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics special post-election debate issue with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:40Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell, with the debate that Rory and I had last night about the debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. So if you didn't watch us on YouTube immediately, late last night, here it is.

• 1:53Rory Stewart?

  Looking forward to hearing what you think of it and our reactions, both from Alistair, who tells you about what it's like training Labour MPs to go into these debates by playing the other side, and some rather depressed reflections from me on my experience in trying to perform or not perform in these debates. Anyway, here it goes.

• 2:14Rory Stewart?

  And Alastair, what's your first thoughts?

• 2:16Alastair Campbell?

  My first thought is that it's not going to change much. I thought the format was not great. My heart sank when Juliette Chium said, you have 45 seconds to respond.

• 2:32Alastair Campbell?

  And I think that, I mean, it was pretty obvious to me what both of them were trying to do. And I'm not sure the format really helped either of them. Rishi Sunak desperately wanted to land this, Labour will put your taxes up by 2000. He said it 15, 20 times. I thought Keir was a bit slow to knock it down. And by the time the knockdown came, it's obvious to me Sunak is just going to keep doing that sort of thing. And I think I said in one of our earlier podcasts, that the Tory strategy, I think, is all about, when it comes to television, just getting these clips and then they're bombarding them out onto social media through

• 3:12Alastair Campbell?

  the people that they want to reach. And I thought that Keir Starmer, he wanted to land 14 years. This isn't just about now, it's about 14 years. And I think he did that. I think that Sunak, if I've got a big criticism of Sunak, he was, he was the worst at the talking over and the tetchiness and so forth. And I think if I had a criticism of Keir, it's that there was, he was, he was good at the prosecution against the Tories, but there wasn't enough maybe of the, you know, the forward plan for Labour.

• 3:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it? Because when you watch it on social media, and I've been struck with this, I guess you must have seen this all your life, how we see it through such a prism of prejudice.

• 3:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 3:56Rory Stewart?

  That, that, you know, Tories basically watching it. I was watching it with my, my mother, who's more sympathetic towards Rishi Sunak and with Shoshana, who's more sympathetic towards Keir Starmer. They might as well have been watching different shows. I mean, and I think the same is true. If you, if you go on Twitter, it's very, very difficult. I mean, I think.

• 4:13Alastair Campbell?

  So hold on, what were they, what were they saying?

• 4:16Rory Stewart?

  Oh, well, so.

• 4:20Rory Stewart?

  On immigration, for example, Shishana would be very taken with Starmer's kind of clear defence of the ECHR. Yeah. My mother would be like, um, yeah, but what is, you know, what is Keir Starmer going to do? I mean, to be fair to my mother, I think the bit, the bit that really connected with her as a conservative voter, she's a loyal conservative voter, she's going to vote conservative. The one that worked for her from Keir Starmer was the 14 year stuff. Even she squirmed a bit and thought, well, that's kind of a point. I mean, why didn't we manage to do this? And when, when he said, listen, this national service stuff, you know, you just put it out for the election, haven't you? Won't you do it? And my mother said, well, he's got a point there, you know, he's got a point there. When he said, do

• 5:01Rory Stewart?

  it. So I think that, I think Starmer's fundamental idea has to be the right one, which is, he had that line where he said, listen, you just keep talking about the future because you can't talk about the past. You can't talk about your record. You can't talk about your leaders. You have to keep principles. Yeah. Now, the, the bits though were, I mean, this may be a bit, um, going back to my own debate against Boris Johnson when I was, when I was, uh, got myself in a muddle. It, it's this question of how do you deal? You, you go in there and my strategy with Boris Johnson actually was exactly Rishi Sunak's strategy. I wanted to say to Boris Johnson, how, how are you going to do this, Boris? How are you going to do this, Boris?

• 5:46Rory Stewart?

  But of course, the, in the case of Emily Maitland, she didn't let me. She said, wait a second, you're not here to ask the questions. Every time I tried to come in, I'd get cut off. And, and I tried to, when I'd say, how do you do it? She would treat this as my one minute intervention. I'd lose my whole intervention. So I can see that Sunak will be irritating. And there was a moment where Shishana said, I said, oh, that's a good point by Sunak. And she said, I literally, I'm just stopped listening to him. I missed that whole point. But I also think he needs to do it, even if he comes across as rude, even if he comes across as mansplaining, his only hope is to say, how are you going to do it? £2,000 in taxes.

• 6:23Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, the only thing I felt, though, I mean, I suppose that's right, but I said a couple of weeks ago on the podcast that I feel there's something deeply inauthentic about Rishi Sunak, because it's like he's been given a script, okay? And I really felt that strongly tonight. So, clear plan, bold action. It was in his first sentence, it was in his second sentence, then he got on to the £2,000 and he just kept coming back. Now, okay, I'm the great believer, you land a message, but I feel you've got to sort of believe it. And I just didn't, I just felt the tetchiness there. And also, I actually think that having a woman moderator, I think you've got to be particularly careful about

• 7:04Alastair Campbell?

  the shouting and the shouting across. And I think in the first half, Keir Starmer tried to stay right out of that. But you get drawn into it, but I think that's the fault of the format. So here's you and I, and, you know, looking at the hundreds of questions coming in, we've clearly got quite a lot of people who come on to hear us talk. I would no more think of cutting you down after 45 seconds, that that was the own, you have to get everything into 45 seconds. And I just think that, why can't we have a debate where it's a real debate, where you get real time to explore stuff? It sort of felt at time, and I get the thing you want to bring in the public and, and the, you know, and you can see who's got more empathy, I get all that. But it felt a little bit to

• 7:47Alastair Campbell?

  me like a cross between a political programme and a bit of a game show. The sort of raise your hands and all that stuff. I just, I just wanted something a bit more serious, I think.

• 7:57Rory Stewart?

  So Philistine Orwell came in saying, format's terrible. You can't talk about ideas in 30 second answers. And I couldn't agree more. I mean, you could make it much longer. I don't know, make it a couple of hours long. Give them longer to talk, give them longer to answer. It actually might get more interesting.

• 8:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And also, if you take, if you take the, when they started, at the start, I mean, Keir Starmer's opening remarks, they were about 20 seconds. The ending, actually, I thought the endings were better, maybe by then they'd sort of got warmed up a bit.

• 8:25Rory Stewart?

  And given the personalities, oddly.

• 8:28Rory Stewart?

  They're better and more interesting when you give them a bit more space because both of them actually are quite interested in policy.

• 8:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 8:35Rory Stewart?

  And I think one of the interesting things was that Starmer got going and sounded much more credible and detailed when he got on to education. For some reason, he wasn't putting as much detail on health, but he did well in education. And obviously, he had clear things to say about energy, clear stuff to say about boats. And you've got sense, you gave him more time, he could do more. And Sunak, of course, you know, with all his flaws, he knows his stuff, he's got his facts, he can talk in quite a lot of detail. I mean, so you could have had the two of them talking in much more detail about lots of these issues with a bit more time, and it probably would have been a bit more interesting

• 9:19Rory Stewart?

  than seeing them try to jump down each other's throats.

• 9:21Alastair Campbell?

  What did you think about the national security exchanges when Julietium said to me, Sunak, are you seriously telling us that this guy can't be trusted with national security? And that was the, that was the point where I felt Keir Starmer got most passionate and a bit angry.

• 9:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, that was an interesting one, too. Sorry, that's slightly off the subject, but that was something where Shashana said to me, he can't afford to look that wound up. It doesn't look prime ministerial. And she said it reminded her, there were just a couple of moments when Starmer closed his eyes and was wincing, she said it kind of reminded her of my, taking my tie off. It's a kind of horrible moment where.

• 10:01Alastair Campbell?

  It wasn't as bad as that.

• 10:03Rory Stewart?

  Definitely not as bad as that, but, but that sense, I can completely sympathize with him. He obviously is very, very irritated. He's very angry with what Sunak's saying. He thinks that Sunak is being dishonest. He's saying, thinks Sunak's not facing up to his record. And, and that's showing on his face, but I, I do think there's a sense in which, and this is something that the awful Boris Johnson, of course, is quite good at, is that he projects the kind of happy, optimistic warrior, whatever's coming at him. And I think the public doesn't want to see you looking flustered.

• 10:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I don't think he looked fussed. I think he looked pissed off at the format. I think he felt, my sense watching them both, I quite enjoyed it when there was the split screen. But I think my sense was that he was feeling that Julietium was cutting into him more than Sunak when Sunak was, you know. But did you agree with me? Do you agree, however we describe it, he shouldn't really show that, that in an ideal world? I think if you're standing there to be Prime Minister and the occupant of the post is saying, or trying to say without saying it, I wouldn't trust you with national security. I thought the substance of his answer about I was, you know, dealing with an operation to take, take down a terrorist gang while it was about to sort of. That was good.

• 11:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's the bit that I meant. And so, so I, I thought there was kind of real passion there. That was strong. I was thinking more about the bits, you know, split screen bits where he was just like shocking, shocking. And I just, it doesn't look strong. Doesn't look strong. That reminded me of, I think, was it Al Gore and George W. Bush? When, do you remember the, the, the, the sort of lasting memory of it was Al Gore constantly sighing. Yeah, exactly. At George Bush, there's a bit of that. I mean, it'd be interesting to, it'd be interesting to know what, if anything, people really take out of this that sort of sticks. The Tories will want the £2,000 stick and, and that will be being pumped out now all across

• 11:59Alastair Campbell?

  social media. I think Labour definitely is clear to me, and you can see this as well from, I think, one of the, I saw their election broadcasts on social media tonight, absolutely going on Tory switchers who are fed up with the chaos of the 14 years, living standards, et cetera. The other, the other moment that really stood out to me and sort of, most of it was quite predictable, was actually when Rishi Sunak was talking about his National Service Plan and people started laughing. I thought that was a bit.

• 12:28Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that, that, that, that, no, that, that, that was, must have been very kind of upsetting for him. On the two thousand pounds stuff, I, I felt there was an opportunity for Starmer to shut that down much more quickly. When, when, when I said that on Twitter, and I can see some of this in the, in the chat and the comments now, people saying she didn't give him the chance to. That's not quite true. He, he had five or six things where he chose to talk about other stuff.

• 12:55Alastair Campbell?

  No, I kind of agree with that. Well, first of all, I think they should probably have seen it coming and should probably therefore have, yes, the very first time. He should have done the answer that he did later on when he said, look, let me explain what's happened. They fed in a load of assumptions to the Treasury. The Treasury has, has costed them. They're made up policies. They're their policies, our policies. And now you're going to get that on your Facebook feed and you get that on social media. Just ignore it. It's garbage. And then he could have moved on from it.

• 13:24Rory Stewart?

  And I've, I've got another one he could do. I, I mean, I'd be tempted to turn around and say,

• 13:30Rory Stewart?

  look at the numbers. We will be costing you nine thousand pounds or whatever it is, less than the Conservatives. Because remember, the Conservatives are now pumping out these new ideas, you know, triple dot pluses on pensions, they're signalling on VAT. So he could have produced a counter figure and he said, not only is that bullshit, but actually they're going to be costing us, the Conservative is going to cost you seven thousand pounds more than we will. And that would have, that would have thrown, that would have thrown Sunak on the back foot and he would have been like, where does that number come from? That's rubbish. And then, then you could have said, you've said that you're going to cut VAT. You said you're going to get rid of inheritance tax. You could have just turned it all around on Topman.

• 14:08Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting. There's a, there's a question here from Rob Roy. By the way, Rob, I've, I actually visited your grave last week when I was up in, in Scotland. I'm assuming you're not the dead Rob Roy. Rob Roy says, we who follow politics, I think he's saying people who come on to listen to us talk about this after the event. We're not the target audience. Starmer was making his opening pitch to millions of viewers who don't know him. I think there's something in that. And I, I think that he, because of the format, because of the tetchiness and this talking across each other, I think he probably managed to do less of that than he would have wanted to do. Because it did get, it just got, I think, too, too, too touchy. I thought the other, the other moment that I saw was, he did, I thought he did land a blow on Sunak when he got to the

• 14:53Alastair Campbell?

  numbers about the waiting lists. How could you say they're coming down where they were 7.2 and then they're 7.5? And Sunak's, again, Sunak's answer was met with a little bit of ridicule in the audience. Obviously, it's hard to know if you're not there as well. Because, I mean, Juliette said that the audience sort of reflects the, the country and all that. But you, if you're in the room, you get a sense of the politics of the place. You can see whether they're smiling when they walk in. You can see if there's anybody there who really dislikes one of them. But I, I got the feeling that the moments where Sunak was very controlled and sort of constantly argument, argumentative, putting the point, putting the point, putting the point. I think he will have felt he was doing the job that, as it were, if it was a boxing match, that the,

• 15:34Alastair Campbell?

  you know, the seconds had told him to do. But I, you know, if, if the, if the goal for Sunak and his team was to change the fundamentals, I'm not sure that worked.

• 15:44Rory Stewart?

  No, he's definitely not changed the fundamentals, but he shouldn't have been allowed to get away, I, I'm afraid, with landing that 2,000 pound point, you know, whatever you said 14, 15 times. I, I think, look, it's not going to turn the election around at all. But, but just if, in sofar as this debate matters at all, that's something that was an unnecessary victory for Sunak. And I think with a little bit of thought, a little bit of prep, Starmer should have found ways of shutting that down more quickly. And it's, instead of just kind of getting around, there's some questions coming in, and I, I wanted to bring some of them in. A lot of people asking us now about the English football question. I mean, boy, I would have been completely finished

• 16:27Rory Stewart?

  by the, the English football question. Poor debate encapsulated by the awful football question. What did you think about Gareth Southgate sending in a question?

• 16:37Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I can't believe for one second he would have done it without being asked to do it by ITV. I'm assuming it was Gareth from the England Football Camp. I don't think it added anything to the debate. I think if they wanted to. And again, I think this goes back to my point about, you know, the broadcasters being, well, we have to try and get them to show a human side. That doesn't show a human side. It sort of tries to catch them out a bit and neither of the answers were great. And there was, there's nothing great you can really say in that. And, but, you know, and Sunak, because I don't think he is very quick on his feet in those ways, he actually said, you've got to have a clear, clear plan and take bold action. I think what he said is the last question.

• 17:18Rory Stewart?

  Is that actually good advice in football? I mean, does bold action really sit? I mean, does that, does it apply?

• 17:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, a clear plan is right, but bold action, not necessarily. If you're playing very defensively. No, I didn't, I didn't think that added much to it.

• 17:30Rory Stewart?

  Listen, one more, that Thomas Wicks has just asked a question, this why nothing on the EU? There's been another, I think, nine questions on this. Surely there was a chance, you know, whatever we think about, and, you know, we've talked about this, obviously, Sunak and Rachel Reeves and Starmer are all pushing for these red wall voters. So they don't want to sound like they're anti Brexit. But presumably there was an opportunity to say, whatever you think about Brexit, you guys have got nothing out of it. You've really screwed this one up. How come you're not talking about it? You boasted about it in 2019, you got Brexit done. Why aren't you talking about it? Why isn't, what have you actually delivered? You know, what's the?

• 18:08Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think when, when, when, when, towards the end, when Keir Starmer was doing his, you know, you can't fight on your record. You can't, you can't do your leaders. So you just sort of bang on about, you know, the past is a foreign country kind of thing. I think if you're talking about the big consequential changes of the Conservative 14 years, Brexit is a big one. And I, I do think that, I think again, though, that I think that's a failure of the broadcasters. You know, to my mind, I think two questions, the one on the economy and the one on leadership in the world. I think we're an opportunity for Keir Starmer to take up the cudgels against them on Brexit without, you know, changing Labour policy or anything like that. And I, I also think that the failure of our broadcasters to understand

• 18:55Alastair Campbell?

  That out there, there are millions of people who at least want to see this as part of the debate. There was a very interesting thing on the PM programme this afternoon and it was rather refreshing, actually. They said, we're going to have a sort of election panel. This is normally where we'd bring in a few sort of political correspondents or former Downing Street communications directors. But we're actually going to get three people who've done none of that. And they got Justin King, business, David Omen from the security and intelligence world, and the former children's commissioner. And they sort of talked to them as a panel. And so two of the three said they found it unbelievable, David Omen and Justin King, they found it unbelievably depressing that Brexit is not even on there.

• 19:38Alastair Campbell?

  Interestingly, by the way, Rory, I must tell you this, and if people haven't listened to the main podcast, which you can all see on also see on Channel Four at ten past eleven tonight, you having sort of gone for Ed Davey over all his stunts, Justin King said that Ed Davey was so far the man of the match. The other two, the other two went for Keir Starmer.

• 19:58Rory Stewart?

  And Ed Davey has done some very strong interviews recently, returning to some of the themes that he did in our much longer interviews on Leading, where he talks wonderfully about his family. And there is a sense that neither of them are quite fully connecting. So I thought, let's just go back to the beginning again for a second, because we've had a couple of questions on this. I think Keir Starmer at the beginning was much better connecting with the woman asking about, you know, basically cost of living and her financial struggles.

• 20:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:32Rory Stewart?

  And it was very, very odd that Rishi Sunak wasn't able to just stop for a second and say, listen, Paula, I hear you. That's terrible and I understand how bad this is. I mean, he just sounded contemptuous. But neither of them were that great on the NHS stuff. I couldn't understand why they they really weren't able, because as, as, as, as we know, you know, Rishi Sunak's dad's a GP, his mother's a pharmacist. And am I right that Keir Starmer's wife is a doctor?

• 21:00Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, she works in the National Health Service.

• 21:03Rory Stewart?

  But anyway, I mean, they, a huge opportunity for both of them to really lean into that. And, and actually, they didn't, you know, we've got this interview coming up with word streeting. Where I thought he was so good and it would have been lovely to hear Rishi Sunak say what his shadow health secretary says, which is the fundamental problem in the NHS is that we're spending too much money in hospitals, not enough money at the frontline with GPs and pharmacies. And if you're treating stage four cancer, it's far too late and far too expensive. We should get it at stage one and we're gonna, and he could have done that, right? Might even been able to do that in 45 seconds.

• 21:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, possibly. But again, if you, the, the, the, the reason why I think when we put out the West Treaty interview, people will enjoy it is because it's got time to breathe. And I think that what that debate didn't have was, was time to, to breathe and to, to give people a sense of, of two serious people having serious debates about serious issues. And, and I get, I think that the, the format, I think that these TV debates have just got themselves into a bit of a rut about how they, how they do them. I mean, to be honest, if we go back to, I, I was, I think I've told you before, I, I was David Cameron to both Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband in the, the debate preparation.

• 22:21Rory Stewart?

  I can see it. You're just like him. It's, it's that old Tony.

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  I was, I was okay at David Cameron. I mean, the mess we inherited, I could do a good mess we inherited for you. But I think that, that for, you, you put hundreds of hours into it. I don't know how much time Kier Starbend put into this. You put a lot of time into it, a lot of people working on it. And then I, I think, I can remember at the, at the end of all of the debates, as you say, you go out, the, the law be, there'll be, there's the spin room. I don't know if you know where the whole, the spin alley phrase comes from. It was back in the, one of the first American presidential debates, where you had the, the, the Democrat and the Republican up against each other. I can't remember which election it was, but it was one of the, you know, way back in when television was just starting.

• 23:10Alastair Campbell?

  And so you have the debate and then as they came out of the debate, the candidates went off and then the media, hundreds of journalists there. And there was this thing called Spin Alley. It was actually called Spin Alley. And if you go on the right, you'll find the people who tell you that the Democrats won. If you go that side, they'll all tell you that the Republicans won. And of course, they're lined up there well before the debate takes place. So you'll have that in Manchester now, they'll all be running around rebutting this, rebutting that. John Asher's

• 23:38Rory Stewart?

  And repeating, repeating the central lines, weren't they? So the Conservatives will all be saying, kind of people to listen to us. But if you left us and went into those rooms, you'd have one light saying, well, you know, Labour's going to cost £2,000 and the other side saying, in the end, they've done nothing in 14 years. They've got nothing to say about their record and their leaders. Yeah.

• 23:56Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. So, but so we, we, we didn't have the debates in, John Major wanted us to have debates in 1997. And we said, yes, okay, let's do them. But then we just sort of allowed the negotiations to kind of dribble into the sand. And look, I think it's a pity because I, I think there will be people who are watching those debates who maybe haven't been following things very, very closely. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's a way into the, to the debate. But I honestly would love it if somebody would come along and say, look, let's have a, let's have a really long, serious debate where we don't say answer in 45 seconds. We say, look,

• 24:37Alastair Campbell?

  you've got three, five minutes each. And then we'll have a bit of sort of crossfire. But I think the other thing that they should do, by the way, I think they should silence the microphones whilst the other person is speaking, because that's the only way you'll stop the sort of crossfire.

• 24:51Rory Stewart?

  Well, that, that's right. I mean, that's what happened to me in my catastrophic BBC debate. They silenced me. And so I'm sort of shouting at Boris, how, how are you going to do this for us? And nobody can hear me. And it's, it works very well, except of course, it gives a huge opportunity to Boris to waffle on. I mean, the problem is, it depends who you're debating. And I think some of these people can chew up three, five minutes without saying anything at all.

• 25:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Rory Stewart?

  He talks about the, I was re-watching the George W Bush Al Gore debate. And there's an incredible moment in the centre of it where George W Bush just gets all his numbers wrong on pensions. And Al Gore, you know, thinks this is this great moment and he jumps in and he's like, no, if you are somebody living on the Canadian border and you're on, you know, $23,000 a year, you would in fact find that your pension goes up by, you know, 6,323. And he goes on like, and George W Bush just turns the camera and he says, geez, you know, I knew this guy had invented the computer. I didn't realise he'd invented the calculator. And he wins the whole thing, right? So, so I think that there is a sense, I mean, and that, that's something I was wondering

• 25:54Rory Stewart?

  about watching this, whether they're not both a little bit too sort of wound up and technocratic, whether a much kind of sunnier, more relaxed person mightn't, mightn't walk it.

• 26:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but wouldn't, you, look, you, you know, from the time you did it in the Tory leadership debate, I think even bigger for them when it's just the two of them head to head and the, and the race is to be, is to be Prime Minister. You know, it's a pretty high pressure thing, but I think we could have done with a bit of light relief from both of them at times. I, I thought it was, you know, you said on the main podcast this week, the things that you'd like to hear them debating and standing up for. I thought that Keir Starmer, interestingly to me, and maybe this was just the sort of Labour section of the audience, but I thought the two moments where I kind of heard louder than usual applause, one was when he defended his policy on VAT on private school fees.

• 26:51Alastair Campbell?

  And the other, when he just said, no, we are not coming out of the European Convention of Human Rights and gave the, the, the reason for it.

• 26:57Rory Stewart?

  That was beautiful, wasn't it?

• 26:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 26:58Rory Stewart?

  And it was beautiful because that was one of the really, it was, it was controversial. You know, Sunak just said the opposite.

• 27:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 27:07Rory Stewart?

  It absolutely tied in with his expertise. This is a human rights lawyer talking about ETHR. He really knows his stuff. He's taking a risk because it's not going to be popular with everybody and he's putting his clear principles out there and that's where you get the applause and it would be great if he did more of that stuff.

• 27:24Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I agree and I hope that gave him maybe confidence to do that, do that more. They'll go away, they'll probably, I see that Rishi 245 says Sunak's winning in the polls across social media. YouGov says it's Sunak 51% to Starmer 49. Well, that's, that's basically what we said at the start. It's like, you know, that's what we call a draw. It's interesting. I watched it with Fiona and the real Rory and Fiona was just sort of occasionally laughing at funny things that people were saying on Twitter. I've discovered that she had a bit of a sweepstake going with Callum, our other son, about when Keir Starmer would say that his dad was a toolmaker and when Rishi Sunak said that his dad was a doctor. So, but it

• 28:09Alastair Campbell?

  was, yeah, I think it was, I think it was okay, but in the end, I was, I was a little bit disappointed by the whole thing. And I thought that, I think, I think both of them had clear objectives. I think both of them met those objectives in a very kind of quite clumsy way, but I think both of them will think, ah, yeah, I could have done better.

• 28:36Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I think you're right there. I mean, I think that 5149 though is probably a little, will be a little encouraging to the Tories. I mean, they've had such a dismal two weeks. They're so far behind in the polls. And so, in thinking of my colleagues, it's not, it's not going to make a big difference in the election, but there will be a lot of my colleagues thinking, okay, Rishi Sunak is, was vigorous. He might have been annoying, but he landed his points. He's quite a good debater. And even if it was neck and neck, that's going to feel like a bit of a win to the Tories who fell so far behind for a couple of weeks.

• 29:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I, but I, yeah, up to a point. I think there'll be, you know, it was, it was, yeah, maybe, maybe. Anyway.

• 29:24Rory Stewart?

  I love abolish the monarchy. Starmer was streets ahead of Sunak, no comparison.

• 29:30Alastair Campbell?

  So I'll just go through. We've had loads and loads of people.

• 29:34Rory Stewart?

  Gysraland, Sunak wiped the floor with Starmer. I love the fact that everyone's so confident on both sides.

• 29:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Richard Gilmore says Alastair needs to prepare Starmer for future debates. Reece Nicholson, the crowd helped Starmer. I'm not sure about that. I did think Julie was a bit rougher on, on Keir than she was on, she was on Rishi. There's George Austin, late Starmer one. Yeah, there's Kai Hughes, Alastair needs a minute after the cringey football question. Yeah. Kyren, two words, Ming Vars, Drew Perkins, we learnt nothing from this.

• 30:06Rory Stewart?

  Is Ming Vars a reference to the, the thing in the back of my thing with the lampshade on it?

• 30:10Alastair Campbell?

  I wonder if it is. People are still talking about your thousand pound, whatever it was that you had sent in from somewhere recently. Anyway, there's, there's, there's, there's some very, very interesting comments going through. I would say we had to sum them up. Yeah, there's Mama Rebel, nobody won. Richard Bowen, can't help feeling there were no winners and a big loser here, the British people. I don't think it was that bad. I don't think it was that bad. Quite a few people, I won't tell Tony this, but quite a few people saying, you know, bring back Blair. Anyway, there we are. So listen, I think we're done and, and we, if we're, we'll probably, are you going to stay up and watch us on Channel Four at 10?

• 30:49Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah. Just to remind people, yeah, we've got an episode of the podcast going out 10 past 11, Channel Four this evening, where we discuss Israel, South Africa, and obviously more on the general election. Yep. And we'll be recording another pod live on YouTube tomorrow afternoon, 5.30. Which is also going to touch, yeah, going to touch on India. Incredible results coming in from Modi. So if, if people are a bit bored of the British election, we promise to, to. Expand it up. Show you some of the big stuff.

• 31:16Alastair Campbell?

  And maybe we should have a discussion of what we think about what we think. Um, the, uh, is Phil R. Is Alice the short of cash? And so got the lights off. The lights are all actually on. I don't know what's going on. They're all on, but for some reason I do look very, very, very dark. I think we should have a proper discussion tomorrow about England's strategy for the Euros.

• 31:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I can help you there. I can help you a great deal there. Thank you very much. Bye bye.

• 31:43Alastair Campbell?

  If you've got all your questions, bye.

• 31:45Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  The great game. Strategic struggle between Britain and Russia.

• 32:08Speaker 04

  We assess, uh, Prime Minister.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  With high confidence, it was Russian.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 32:16Speaker 06

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 32:19Speaker 03

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

• 32:32Speaker 07

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 32:35Speaker 03

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

• 32:43Speaker 05

  A Frago that says to kill the president of Russia.

• 32:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

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• 33:01Speaker 08

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• 33:05Speaker 05

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