78. Question Time: Nigel Farage, proportional representation, and mandatory ID cards

Who would Rory elect as the next Prime Minister? If Rishi Sunak had not kept Jeremy Hunt on, what would the budget look like? And how come both Rory and Alastair have lost followers on twitter? Listen to this week's Question Time to hear Rory and Alastair answer these questions and many more. Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producer: Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:44Alastair Campbell?

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

• 1:48Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:49Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, I know... Some people think I bang on about your old school too much, but I think, given that it was the second most raised subject amongst our listeners this week, no, third actually, World Cup and Brexit were one and two, and third was Eton. Let me just give you a flavour of some of them. Lorna, this is for you Rory. As a former Etonian, what are your thoughts of the behaviour of those pupils who verbally abuse visiting students? Is that type of behaviour commonplace? John Sheeran, given the behaviour of Eton students this week and that my vox pop within an admittedly small demographic of a village pub, were not in the least surprised by it, I was wondering if that behaviour gels with Rory's experience

• 2:31Alastair Campbell?

  of the institution. Simon Walken, Rory is a fellow boarding school survivor, do you think the British boarding system has overall done more harm or good when its contribution to our nation's story is considered? And there were lots of questions about whether Eton should have invited Nigel Farage. I don't have a problem with that at all. Nigel Farage is a significant political figure, whether we like that or not, and I think it's right that students should hear from him. But Rory, they booed and abused state students who were invited to the event.

• 3:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it was very, I mean, it's, it seems to be very sad. Everything I've read about it is very disappointing. I think it's not something I recognise or remember. It seems very, very unpleasant. I guess the only kind of context you could put is a bunch of...

• 3:23Alastair Campbell?

  Oiks?

• 3:24Rory Stewart?

  A bunch of oiks.

• 3:25Alastair Campbell?

  Upper classing titled arrogant oiks? How about that?

• 3:28Rory Stewart?

  That's right. And I guess, I guess, I suppose you might say, if you were trying to make a defence, you probably don't want to make a defence, but you might say that it's part of the general coursing and reckoning of our politics, that basically what they were doing was paying support for Nigel Farage on his comments on migrants and his comments on, I guess Brexit was his other thing, wasn't it?

• 3:49Alastair Campbell?

  Even Farage said that he found the behaviour somewhat riotous. I don't know whether in his views riotous is good or bad, but I don't think he was terribly impressed by it.

• 3:58Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, no, that was not, not a good moment in Eton's history, but schools apologise profusely and it's taken disciplinary action against the students, but it's obviously something that is not good.

• 4:08Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think those that they've disciplined will or will not one day be members of the Bullingdon Club? I suspect they probably will. And the head teacher, the headmaster Rory, who's we know is a listener to this podcast because he's sent you rebuttal before.

• 4:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Alastair Campbell?

  He's more than welcome to send us rebuttal. In fact, I think he'd be quite an interesting guest, actually.

• 4:27Rory Stewart?

  Would you like him as a guest?

• 4:29Alastair Campbell?

  I'd love him as a guest. Yeah, I'd love the. So this is an open invitation to the head teacher Eaton to be a guest on our podcast.

• 4:36Rory Stewart?

  Sure, he'd be delighted to be on the show. Right. Now, here's a question for you. House of Lords. So Keir Starmer seems to have stated that he's very interested in radical reforms to the House of Lords. And it looks as though, at least the way The Guardian reported it, that he's interested in a elected second chamber. So here are some questions around it. Chris Taylor, is the Labour commitment to abolish the Lords a deliberate distraction to avoid electoral reform of the Commons? Ian Coolshaw, with Labour coming out saying they would abolish the House of Lords, how would they accomplish that? Would they need the Lords to vote for the abolition of themselves?

• 5:11Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. That is a very good question. The answer today is yes.

• 5:16Rory Stewart?

  No, no. Well, not really, because we, I went through this with Cameron. I mean, they, in the end, the House of Commons can force it through.

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, no, hold on a minute. But, but only if it's a commitment in the manifesto.

• 5:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it would, it'd have to be a manifesto.

• 5:28Alastair Campbell?

  So they'd have to, they couldn't just do it like that. They'd have to say, I mean, I was really interested in that, but you know, I've often said to you before that I think that you have to have a kind of overall strategy on these big issues. And it's sort of, it felt to me like it was dropping out of a bit of a clear blue sky. I suspect it's related to the work that Gordon Brown is doing. He's coming up with a bigger constitutional review. I do think that, you know, we talked about, if you remember, we talked to Keir Starmer on the podcast and, and you were very disappointed that he wasn't seized of what you saw and I see as the need for pretty profound constitutional reform. And this said to me, he's at least moving in that direction.

• 6:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he's moving that direction.

• 6:08Alastair Campbell?

  I can remember, by the way, when we, just getting rid of the hereditary peers, my God, that was a struggle.

• 6:15Rory Stewart?

  Almost, almost, yeah, incredible, incredible. Well, I was very much involved in pushing back against Cameron's proposals on reform of the House of Lords and. The concern, I mean, many, many concerns then, but one of the biggest ones is that if you have an elected second house, and Keir Starmer's tried to say, he's sort of gestured in this Guardian article, the idea it's going to be elected, but he's also said, well, of course, it's going to be just a revising chamber, it's not going to threaten the primacy of the House of Commons. That, I think, is very difficult, because if the second chamber is elected, they will, quite understandably, being politicians, stand up and say, oi, we're elected, we have just as much right to be here as the House of Commons, and we're not going to put up with just being a sort of rubber-stamp second chamber, and they'll

• 6:59Rory Stewart?

  start flexing their muscles. And that's where you're going to end up with the risk of more of a US system, a gridlock between Senate and Congress.

• 7:07Alastair Campbell?

  But you do have, there are, there are examples around the world of, you know, we're talking to Julia Gillard, and, you know, they have, they're sort of based on our system, but, but they're both elected, aren't they? There are elections to, to both houses. So I think you could work that out.

• 7:20Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I don't know how much power, how much power the Australian Senate has.

• 7:23Alastair Campbell?

  Nor do I, nor do I.

• 7:24Rory Stewart?

  Seventy-six senators, doesn't it?

• 7:26Alastair Campbell?

  I think, look, I, where I agree with you, as I, I think the House of Commons has to be the superior house, but these are, no, this is, without a doubt, this is one area where there will be a lot of devil in a lot of detail, but I, I just took at least some heart that the, the issue of constitutional reform was on the agenda. And of course, PR, I sort of blow hot and cold on PR. Some days, I think it's so blindingly obvious that we should do it, and other times I think, well, you know, I saw the other day Nigel Farage in favour of PR, and I thought, oh, what's that about?

• 7:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, the, the reason I'm, of course, in favour is that I think it's the only way to break up the sort of death grip of these two very, very weird political parties that we've had dominating our political system for the last hundred years, is to give a chance for new parties to come through. And, and I, I've got a lot of friends currently standing, actually, a lot of them standing to, to be Labour candidates, and my goodness, the pain of trying to get selected as a Labour candidate.

• 8:24Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 8:25Rory Stewart?

  In association, and the madness of fighting sort of relics of momentum Corbynistas, getting stuck in very weird fights about who was a local councillor, who wasn't, incredible sort of weird internal politics, and it, it's just as bad in the Conservative Party, but. Both of them, I think one of the real weak points of both the Conservative and Labour Parties is the way that the candidates are selected and this kind of death script that these small numbers of party members have over the people who eventually end up being our ministers.

• 8:56Alastair Campbell?

  Andrew Fieldwick, one for Rory, although I think I'd like to answer this one too. How do you feel about the approach of your former party on voter ID and the fact that ID will be acceptable for one group of voters is not acceptable for another group? And this is, I think, related to travel cards, that if you're a pensioner and you have a photo ID, Oyster card, whatever it might be, you can use that to vote. If you're a young person with something similar, you can't. And I do feel this is about suppressing the vote.

• 9:25Rory Stewart?

  I think that there's a very, very good answer to this, which is we need ID cards. You know, this idea that we don't need ID cards, I think, dates back to a world, a much earlier, more innocent age, and I think ID cards would solve a lot of problems.

• 9:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yet again, you're in the same agenda as Tony Blair, my god!

• 9:43Rory Stewart?

  And we're given also that the governments are now able to, as it were, monitor us in every single way, and these telephones we carry in our pocket apparently are giving Google more information than you can believe about every one of us. I find the idea that people should have ID cards would solve so many problems. It would solve these problems to a large extent. It would also actually be very, very relevant for debates around immigration, relevant for debates about crime, so I'm for the ID card.

• 10:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's one of the reasons the French say why people who get to France then want to continue the journey is because, of course, in France they do have ID cards and more people can sort of disappear into the shady ends of the economy if they come over here. But this scheme Rory, this photo ID scheme, the other thing I do not understand, it's going to cost, according to the Cabinet Office, one hundred and eighty million pounds per decade. Now, how it adds up to that, God knows, but that's their own estimate. They say fifty, fifty-five million on more detailed polling cards, twenty million on more poll cards, nine million for the electoral commission, twenty million to people, tell people it's happening, seven million on training, two million on equipment.

• 10:54Alastair Campbell?

  And this is a, this was a move designed to deal with what, it turned out, there was one case of somebody who had actually used somebody else's identity to vote. And I do, I do think there's a sort of bit of this sort of Trumpian suppression of the vote going on here, Rory.

• 11:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I, well, okay, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm less convinced, I'm less convinced by that.

• 11:14Alastair Campbell?

  Why are they wasting, why are they wasting, they talk about people's priorities, that is not a people's priority.

• 11:18Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's, there's sort of two things going on, and it is true that there are cases of voter fraud, there were horrible voter fraud in Tower Hamlets, where actually the courts had to intervene in order to deal with extraordinary cases of corruption of voter fraud.

• 11:32Alastair Campbell?

  I know, that was covered by law, that is already a criminal offence. We're talking about here, about the use of somebody else's photo identity to, somebody else's identity to cast somebody else's vote.

• 11:41Rory Stewart?

  It, it, it is, it is true that compared to many other, I mean, like you, I've been seen lots of other elections around the world and used to go around monitoring elections, it is surprisingly easy to vote in a British election. So I think it's fine to say that you need a system. I think the reason I want ID cards is I'd like to give a system which is perfectly fair to everybody and every young person would have an ID card and they'd just turn up and vote in the normal way.

• 12:06Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 12:07Rory Stewart?

  And, and of course, you're, you're right also, that there is a right wing thing going on, which is that this is a very, very politicised issue in the United States and often these things spill over from the United States because DeSantis, of course, made it a big question.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 12:30Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 12:36Speaker 04

  What would happen if I start brewing? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 12:40Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under seventeen, not a middle without parent.

• 12:55Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. Now, we covered, we talked a fair bit about the World Cup in the main podcast, but there's some interesting questions. One here from Saif Ahmed. As a British Muslim, I found it saddening to see the BBC not broadcast the opening ceremony of the Qatar World Cup, especially as it involved the recitation of the Quran. What do you make of the BBC's choice not to broadcast it?

• 13:22Alastair Campbell?

  Interesting. I was a bit surprised that I turned on the telly and it wasn't on.

• 13:26Rory Stewart?

  Your friend and my friend Gary Lineker defended it, saying the BBC doesn't usually broadcast the opening to the World Cup. But given how much energy and razzmatazz goes into it, I mean, it is really like a mini Olympic opening ceremony and a lot of energy went into the performance. I think it was strange they didn't televise it.

• 13:42Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think you should call him our friend and colleague. He's our boss.

• 13:45Rory Stewart?

  He's our boss.

• 13:46Alastair Campbell?

  He's our boss, yeah. He sits above us and he's sitting in Qatar now, sort of checking the data, making sure that we're filling out the Al-Burh, night after night and, you know, so we have to, we have to, we have to bow down in respect. He is a very, very, very good broadcaster. I think we have to say that, don't we?

• 14:01Rory Stewart?

  Extraordinary broadcaster, yeah. That's absolutely right.

• 14:03Alastair Campbell?

  Now, what about this one? M M Kwanga. Curious to know your thoughts, this is to both of us, I think, on Sunak putting a stop to ministers doing the daily round. Will this stick? Is this a bit like Blair changing the frequency of Prime Minister's Questions, something that will become the norm even if Labour come into power? It's quite interesting this. I'm trying to remember whether we always had somebody to go up and do the rounds. And I know when I was presenting Good Morning Britain, there was like, you know, you had the Labour person at this time and the government person at this time. And I did, I don't know if it's right, but Sunak apparently is the number 10 operation is saying that we shouldn't just put people up every day to, to do the round. And I have some sympathy because I

• 14:44Alastair Campbell?

  think that, you know, I think ministers should expose themselves to proper scrutiny. The best of that ought to be in Parliament. All too often it's not, but that's where it should be taking place and ministers should be putting themselves up there more often as well. But I think the idea that ministers are just kind of commentators who should go out and sort of talk about what's in the papers every morning, I'm not sure that's right.

• 15:06Rory Stewart?

  So, yes, exactly. So just explain the daily round. That's when, there was a tradition where number 10 would literally, and I used to do this. You do Good Morning Britain, you do BBC Breakfast, you do the Today Programme, and you just sort of go back to back. And you have a little briefing to go out. No, I can see why they want to move one of those. Hey, a small opportunity for me to plug, small opportunity for me to plug, which I'm going to hook off a very nice question, which has come in from somebody who's been reading my book, The Places in Between. So it's from somebody called Kiran. He says, would love to hear Rory talk about his writing more and push him into yet more embarrassing plugs. So here's my plug.

• 15:43Rory Stewart?

  My Radio 3.

• 15:45Alastair Campbell?

  That was pathetic. That was pathetic.

• 15:47Rory Stewart?

  My Radio 3 programme on Basil Bunting, the great Northumbrian poet who wrote this amazing work called Brig Flats in the 1960s, early 1960s, will be on on Sunday evening. So anyone tuning in, Radio 3, just after six on Sunday evening, read about it in the Radio Times. But we had a lot of fun travelling around Northern England, researching this remarkable figure who basically, I mean, he's the sort of inspiration to all of us. Basil Bunting was working as a junior editor on a regional newspaper in Newcastle in his early 60s, in his tweed jacket and going back and forth on the commuter train.

• 16:23Alastair Campbell?

  This is a very, very long plug, very long plug.

• 16:25Rory Stewart?

  On the commuter train, he managed to write this incredible masterpiece called Brig Flats, which was one of the great poems of the 20th century. And suddenly, at the age of 63, launched into international stardom and put Northumbrian poetry on the map.

• 16:39Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, given the time that you invest in the podcast and flying backwards and forwards to the Albert Hall and the Palladium and these radio programmes, when do you have time to do your day job?

• 16:53Rory Stewart?

  Well, this programme, to be fair, I recorded before my day job, in defence with all the employees of GiveDirectly, the charity, listening to the show, who will be worrying about that too. This was recorded before I took up my job. Less time now for Radio 3 programmes.

• 17:09Alastair Campbell?

  Here's one we can play. I'm sure Rory, now that you're a massive football fan, hooked on the World Cup and loving every twist and turn, you probably play fantasy football as well, don't you? And I'm going to let you play Fantasy Prime Minister with this question from Ellis Davis. And it's really an interesting one. If Sunak had not been hamstrung.

• 17:29Alastair Campbell?

  To keep Hunt on as Chancellor, who do you think he would likely have appointed to number 11? And what would the recent financial statement have looked like? That's a good question, isn't it?

• 17:40Rory Stewart?

  It's a really, really, really, really good question.

• 17:42Alastair Campbell?

  So who do you reckon if Sunak had had a free hand as opposed to Hunt as the guy who stabilises the markets?

• 17:47Rory Stewart?

  I think that's a really good question.

• 17:49Alastair Campbell?

  Who do you reckon?

• 17:49Rory Stewart?

  I think possibly Sajid Javid.

• 17:52Alastair Campbell?

  But he's not even there.

• 17:54Rory Stewart?

  Remember, he and Rishi Sunak resigned together, and that was really the beginning of the end of Boris Johnson. Boris Johnson was gone two days later. So I think there was a good chance, and Sajid was an early supporter of Rishi. So I think something happened there. I don't know what the story is, and I should catch up with Sajid and try to understand more. But my assumption is that probably Sajid was hoping to come back as Chancellor, and given that he didn't get it, probably didn't want to take a more junior role.

• 18:23Alastair Campbell?

  What about Mel Stride?

• 18:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I'm a big Mel Stride fan, big Mel Stride fan. I'm also a big, big, big fan of a guy called Damien Hines, who's now the Prisons Minister, but I would have liked to see back in the Cabinet.

• 18:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, Rory, you're talking about the people that you like. We're talking about here. Who does Rishi Sunak?

• 18:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, he clearly, I mean, one of the people that he clearly rates is who we've been more critical about on the show is Dominic Raab, who he's made Deputy Prime Minister again.

• 18:53Alastair Campbell?

  I think his days are numbered, you know. I think these, I hate doing the no smoke without fire stuff, but yet another story today I see about Raab's behaviour and his conduct with civil servants. Not good, not good.

• 19:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, you did predict Gavin Williamson, didn't you?

• 19:07Alastair Campbell?

  I did, I did. And here's another one, Rory. Greg Brown, your friend Gillian Keegan's getting in the neck again. What stops Conservatives from telling the truth and demonstrating integrity? Please see the attached, a letter in the local paper pointing out that Keegan, Gillian Keegan. Had referred to investment in Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton as quotes "one of forty hospitals being built by 2030 as part of the government's new hospital programme", when in fact it's actually just one building as part of a hospital. What do you say to that Rory?

• 19:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, I don't know what to say to that, except I still think that maybe I'm getting into a difficult ground here, but I think Gillian Keegan is a much, much better person than many of the other people I've served with in the House of Commons. And it may be that many politicians are not perfect people, but she definitely was somebody who I thought had energy, integrity, and I thought was a good thing. So I'll continue to defend her to the hilt, and I'd like to see her Prime Minister.

• 20:06Alastair Campbell?

  Oh wow, you want her to be Prime Minister?

• 20:08Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 20:09Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, Rory, Rory, do you really, really think, let's just think this through. I know we've been lowering the bar, right? Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, Liz Truss became Prime Minister.

• 20:19Rory Stewart?

  She's upping the bar.

• 20:20Alastair Campbell?

  That's what I'm saying, do you really think she's...

• 20:23Rory Stewart?

  She's definitely, no, she definitely is upping the bar. She'd be a big improvement, definitely on Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. I agree, that's a pretty low bar.

• 20:30Alastair Campbell?

  What about on Rishi Sunak?

• 20:33Rory Stewart?

  We've been disagreeing about this a bit, haven't we? And I think it's nice to be able to disagree agreeably a bit about this, because we obviously agreed ferociously on the fact that Boris Johnson was terrible and Liz Truss was terrible. I've been reassured in some ways by Rishi Sunak. I don't think he'll win the next election. I don't think you need be threatened about that. I think it's almost impossible to turn the situation around.

• 20:55Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I don't agree with that.

• 20:56Rory Stewart?

  He definitely represents a more intelligent, thoughtful conservatism. And one thing I will say for him is that I knew people who worked for Liz Truss and for Rishi Sunak when he was Chief Secretary of the Treasury, and my goodness, they preferred working for Rishi Sunak. The civil servants found him a much, much better boss, which I think is a sign of a good character.

• 21:19Alastair Campbell?

  There's a question here, Roy. Have you noticed your Twitter following falling?

• 21:25Rory Stewart?

  And is my Twitter following falling? Is my Twitter following fallen?

• 21:28Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Annie Redmond says, I'd really like to understand why I appear to have unfollowed you and a number of others involved in highlighting the current gross political situation without any action on my part. So I've lost a few thousand

• 21:41Rory Stewart?

  Have you?

• 21:41Alastair Campbell?

  followers. Yeah, yeah.

• 21:43Rory Stewart?

  Well, I might have. I'm on 496,000. Maybe that's right. Maybe I was closer to 500,000. I haven't lost that many, though.

• 21:49Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I've got double. I'm still double. I'm still double you.

• 21:51Rory Stewart?

  You're you're close to a million. I'm just only on half a million.

• 21:53Alastair Campbell?

  This is a this may be another kind of Musk thing going on that.

• 21:57Rory Stewart?

  Well, I obviously have lots of conspiracy theories about this, and I thought that he was inserting himself in my feed. But actually, it turns out that, in fact, he's not really doing that. Apparently, he hasn't yet got around to changing those sort of fundamental algorithms. So I think a lot of what we're seeing is probably more to do with the fact that so many staff have been laid off, that basic maintenance isn't taking place on the site. One of the big things he's done in all his companies, he did it with Tesla, he did it with his space companies, to go in very, very hard and get rid of a lot of staff. So I think it's more about the site creaking and less about him putting in innovations.

• 22:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but this is this. These are specific people who have written to us saying that we they have unfollowed us when they didn't.

• 22:37Rory Stewart?

  Okay, now, sorry, here. No, I haven't asked you enough questions.

• 22:40Alastair Campbell?

  Go on then, Roy.

• 22:40Rory Stewart?

  So here's a question for you. If you're comfortable with this, it'd be a question. Opinions on the Sinn Féin rise in Ireland. Is that something you've been thinking about much?

• 22:51Alastair Campbell?

  I think you have to think about it because I think there's it's not impossible that they well, the rise is happening both north and south. Now, I think that I saw an interview with Leo Varadkar, who will be the next Taoiseach, and he was very, very clear that he could see no possible arrangement between his party and Sinn Féin because he saw them essentially as very left wing and all sorts of he had very fundamental differences with them. But if you if you think about what's happening in the north, I mean, Sinn Féin, they have risen. And the reason that politics is now in such a mess in Northern Ireland is a little bit like, you know, when we did the Scotland Act and we created the Scottish Parliament,

• 23:36Alastair Campbell?

  and we developed an electoral system. That was specifically built, designed so that no single party ever had a majority. And of course, at that point, it was because we, the Labour Party, were so powerful. And of course, since then, the SNP have become very, very powerful, and they have had periods with that majority. And likewise, I think when we did the Good Friday Agreement, and we had this kind of inbuilt, you have to have the two, there's essentially a kind of an inbuilt veto, one over the other. And I think that was, even if only at the psychological level, we probably, our thinking was driven by the idea that the unionists are probably going to be in charge for quite a long time, which of course they have been.

• 24:19Alastair Campbell?

  And now, of course, Sinn Fein have risen, to use the Questioners' word, and it's created real difficulties, which the DUP can dress up as being about the protocol all they want. But actually, it's about their psychological inability, I think, to accept that rise. So it poses a lot of problems for all the parties. And they are a very, very different sort of party. And of course, because they've been debated and covered mainly because of their role in the bigger picture.

• 24:49Rory Stewart?

  Well, their connections to terrorism, too.

• 24:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 24:52Rory Stewart?

  Well, gosh, on that serious note, time for a close, and thank you very much for a great Q and A. Speak soon.

• 25:00Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 25:17Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 25:23Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 25:30Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 25:31Speaker 03

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a middle without parent.