481. Polanski, Macron & al-Sharaa: The Best & Worst Politicians of 2025

Who deserves the title of UK politician of the year - and who gets worst? What was the most consequential moment of Trump's presidency so far? And can Rory convince Alastair that Christmas isn't so miserable after all? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Gift The Rest Is Politics Plus this Christmas – give someone a whole year of Rory and Alastair’s miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. Just go to therestispolitics.supportingcast.fm/gifts. And of course, you can still join for yourself any time at therestispolitics.com The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Fuse are giving away free TRIP Plus membership for all of 2025 to new sign ups 🎉 TRIP Plus gets you ad-free listening, discounts, and early access to episodes and pre-sale tickets for live shows! To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit ⁠fuseenergy.com/politics⁠ ⚡ __________ Social Producer: Charlie Johnson Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green, India Dunkley Senior Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Tom Whiter For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to ⁠goalhanger.com⁠ Instagram: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Twitter: ⁠@restispolitics⁠ Email: ⁠[email protected]⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:02Rory Stewart?

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• 1:05Alastair 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.

• 1:17Rory 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. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're 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.

• 1:41Alastair Campbell?

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

• 1:47Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:04Speaker 02

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• 2:41Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Christmas Eve special with me, Rory Stewart.

• 2:46Alastair Campbell?

  What's special about it?

• 2:48Rory Stewart?

  Well, you sometimes can be quite grumpy about Christmas, but recently I've noticed you were saying Christmas is all about Jesus, which I thought was something that would appeal to your old friend, the Archbishop of Canterbury.

• 2:57Alastair Campbell?

  That was why I'm grumpy is because we all go out about what it's not about all the time. And it doesn't make me any more or less of an atheist. I'm exactly the same.

• 3:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, I thought we had a bit of hope. Well, you know, I'll try to do a bit of a promotion job.

• 3:13Alastair Campbell?

  I'm perfectly happy with people wanting to be happy, but you know, it's not my favourite time of the year. I'm going to be honest.

• 3:18Rory Stewart?

  Well, I see. Okay. All right. Well, there's lots of things to be said for Christmas. There's the miracle of the birth of God. And then there's all those wonderful.

• 3:27Alastair Campbell?

  Birth of God?

• 3:28Rory Stewart?

  Presents. Yes, he's God.

• 3:31Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 3:32Rory Stewart?

  That's the thing about the Trinity.

• 3:33Alastair Campbell?

  You don't even say that, the miracle of the birth of God. You say the miracle of the birth of Christ.

• 3:37Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's the amazing thing about the Trinity. But where we can get on to that, when we get in more of our theology.

• 3:41Alastair Campbell?

  Christ is God.

• 3:42Rory Stewart?

  Christ is God. And so is the Holy Spirit.

• 3:45Alastair Campbell?

  And he's with us all the time.

• 3:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, three in one, one in three. Yeah.

• 3:50Alastair Campbell?

  Are you back on your Gareth Southgate football tactical permutations again? Well, listen, Rory, Merry Christmas.

• 3:56Rory Stewart?

  Happy Christmas to you too.

• 3:57Alastair Campbell?

  And to all our listeners and viewers.

• 4:00Rory Stewart?

  Have you managed to get on to, I know you opened Presents early, gave you a little book on trees in French?

• 4:05Alastair Campbell?

  I did, and I loved it.

• 4:06Rory Stewart?

  Oh, good.

• 4:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I'm about a third of the way through it.

• 4:08Rory Stewart?

  On the oak. It's quite a technical language. Is that stretching your French tool a lot?

• 4:12Alastair Campbell?

  A little bit, a little bit. As did the, because the great book, The Hidden Life of Trees, which was written in German originally. So I read that and and that stretched my German as well. And Le Chen does, it it some of the French is very, very technical.

• 4:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I found even in English, to be honest, I I I must confess that I've been reading it in English. And even in English, I'm looking up some of the words and trying to work out one another.

• 4:34Alastair Campbell?

  But that's what's that's what's great about reading books in foreign languages or your own language. But in your case, you learn, you stretch yourself.

• 4:41Rory Stewart?

  My own language in my case, very good. Okay, now, Alison, what we were going to do, which we traditionally do every year, and maybe we could look back at what we've done in some of the last years on this. Is we do things like best UK politician of the year, favourite leading interview, speech of the year, biggest political moment, all this sort of stuff. To remind people, we recorded this last year at an amazing moment where we were actually hadn't quite got into Trump. So we were still very much in the top optimism about AOC at the Democratic National Convention. But we were already six months into a Labour government and into a very interesting British politics, which wasn't quite where it was now. But we will maybe already be beginning to see some of the seeds of it 12 months ago.

• 5:25Rory Stewart?

  So let's start with best UK politician of the year. Last year, you chose Kim Ledbetter. Who was taking through her assisted dying act, which is still sort of slightly stuck in the House of Lords.

• 5:38Alastair Campbell?

  In part because the Lords are being incredibly difficult about in putting down hundreds of amendments to try and slow the whole thing up. Which I think would be a terrible thing. I have really, really struggled on UK politician of the year this year, I must be honest. Last year, you chose Nigel Farage, which is a sort of easy populist thing to do.

• 5:57Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's actually, I think I feel a little bit vindicated because although he was doing okay in the polls. We go forward 12 months, my instinct, and of course, in my defence, best UK politician does not mean I support Nigel Farage. I think he would be a terrible thing for the country and we must do all we can to make sure he doesn't become Prime Minister. I'm talking here about technical skills and I think to some extent I've been vindicated. I mean, it's an incredible story, given he only got five seats in the last election. The fact that he is now well ahead consistently of the Tory party and the Labour party in the polls. Shows he's got something despite all his problems, despite being a one man band. Being unable to work with colleagues, people resigning, all of that's happened here, but his rise still seems pretty unstoppable.

• 6:40Alastair Campbell?

  So is he getting your title for the second year running?

• 6:43Rory Stewart?

  No, second year running, I think, again, although I profoundly disagree with him, probably Zach Polanski, as people will have heard on leading. I have a big issue with Zach Polanski, which is that I'm completely horrified by the fact he doesn't think it's necessary to get the most basic economic data, you know, what's the difference between a debt and a deficit? What's the tax rate, all this stuff? But there is no doubting that he has done something unbelievable. He's taken over the Green Party this year and he's tripled its membership, tripled its position in the polls, taken a lot of the left away from Labour. And I think if Farage was the story of last year, I think Polanski is the story this year.

• 7:27Alastair Campbell?

  Right, well, you've stolen my thunder slightly, so I'm now going to go to the second name on my list.

• 7:32Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Was Polanski your first name?

• 7:33Alastair Campbell?

  I was also going to caveat it even more heavily than you. I was going to say that I would never vote for him because if you're going to vote for somebody who's a party leader, you've got to imagine them in a real position of leadership. But I think technically, as you say, to have gone from where the Greens were to where they are now. The only thing I'd say is I think that that is as much to do with the Labour Party and its strategy of having appealed too much, tried to appeal too much to the right and Reform voters. That's what's opened the door to Polanski, but he's gone through the door and he's seized it. So I think that is a fair judgment, but because you've said that, I'm therefore going to pick Ed Miliband.

• 8:09Rory Stewart?

  Ed Miliband?

• 8:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, because.

• 8:10Rory Stewart?

  That's a controversial choice.

• 8:11Alastair Campbell?

  I think it is a controversial choice, but I like, as you know, Rory, I like resilience. I like perseverance. I like people who just keep going. And Ed was one of our leading interviews and actually a lot of people seemed to like it. He's come under a lot of flak internally. There's a lot of suggestions that Keir Starmer wanted to move him from this brief because like you, he worries that the green agenda is being pushed back and the government has to go with that. And even though Polanski in the interview we did with him was sort of pretty condemnatory of Ed Miliband's green credentials, I actually think he has stuck to his guns. And I think if you go through the cabinet, there aren't that many where you can say, I am very, very

• 8:53Alastair Campbell?

  clear about what they're trying to do in their brief. So I was going to go Polanski, but I'm sticking with green, but going for Ed.

• 8:59Rory Stewart?

  Okay, my final one, if I'm allowed, on Labour politicians, I have been very, very impressed by Al Khan's, who just remind remind people, this is amazing full colonel, originally a Royal Marine, who was plucked out of Ukraine, I guess by Keir Starmer, a few weeks before the election, and is now the Minister of the Ministry of Defence, focused on operations. And he's a really, when people are worried about professional politicians, people that real world experience, this is a man with a lot of experience. He joined the military at the age of 18, comes from a straightforward background in Scotland, he is funny, he's wise, he's worked.

• 9:41Alastair Campbell?

  Tall.

• 9:42Rory Stewart?

  He's worked with the most senior American generals. And I was saying, this is this year, I said, you know, he went off this, we have these tiny recesses occasionally in Parliament, and I said, what happened during the recess? And he said, I climbed Everest. And I said, how long did that take you? And he said, well, I didn't have much time. So six and a half days from leaving Britain to getting back to Britain. I would have liked to climb it slower, but you know, our recess is quite, I don't think he's going to be doing it again. It wasn't, as you know, climbing Everest is unbelievably dangerous.

• 10:14Alastair Campbell?

  As I know.

• 10:15Rory Stewart?

  Two of, two of his Sherpas turned back, saying this is too dangerous before the summit. He and his friends, they were raising money for a veterans charity, pushed on through terrifying weather that had driven basically all the other climbers off the hills. They had Everest to themselves. Popped out on the top, sun came out, turned around, straight back home to the voting lobby.

• 10:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, if we were the United States, he would already, just because of his military record, being talked of as a future Prime Minister, President in prison.

• 10:47Rory Stewart?

  And I think could be amazing for the Labour Party to look at him as a really serious thing, because if you're taking on Farage, if you're worried about populism, if you're worried about relating to ordinary people, this is a straightforward hero.

• 10:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I'm all in favour of people in positions of leadership who are owl C. I think it's very.

• 11:04Rory Stewart?

  And Scots.

• 11:06Alastair Campbell?

  I'd said to you in November, that when the Senate test was being filmed on television, they just, the camera, I don't know if they knew it was him.

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 11:14Alastair Campbell?

  But the camera kept coming to this group of Green Beret chaps and he was bang there in the middle. He's a very charismatic guy.

• 11:21Rory Stewart?

  With a lot of medals.

• 11:22Alastair Campbell?

  A lot of medals.

• 11:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 11:23Alastair Campbell?

  Worst UK politician?

• 11:26Rory Stewart?

  Well, last year I said Rachel Reeves, and I'm afraid I feel a little bit vindicated.

• 11:34Alastair Campbell?

  God, we're full of RS vindication today.

• 11:37Rory Stewart?

  And I'm only feeling vindicated because I, obviously, my big misprediction at the end of last year is I thought that Kamala Harris would win the US election. So I'm really falling over backwards, pointing out that I got some things right this year, despite getting that call wrong. Look, I think that she's revealed other bits of weakness that I hadn't maybe noticed before. And I'm afraid the latest budget this year reveals them. I mean, that was extraordinary. It now seems, Robert Peston, our colleague on The Rest Is Money, has pointed out that the entire tax rises in the budget now seem to have been almost entirely unnecessary, and that it was driven purely by trying to buy off her back benches with a policy that she had rejected and that she then gave in on, and building up a bit of headroom. But essentially, that.

• 12:22Alastair Campbell?

  Do you support the building up of headroom?

• 12:24Rory Stewart?

  I do support building up of headroom. I do support building up headroom. But the sense that this was not a budget driven by a big economic idea, or what you would call, I don't know, a narrative, or a story, or an argument, that's one of the less, you like the word argument, right? It's not Gordon Brown saying, this is my argument for growth, but instead something which is buying off the Labour back benches and buying off the bond markets.

• 12:49Alastair Campbell?

  So my worst politician of the year.

• 12:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 12:52Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody that very few people outside whichever prison he's now in have heard of, Mr Nathan Gill. MEP, former MEP, convicted or admitted to charges of bribery. Some argument as to whether it shouldn't have been treason. Bribery Act came in and he was certainly the first politician to be done under it. With a supporting actor, can we give a supporting actor role?

• 13:14Rory Stewart?

  Yes, absolutely. This is like the Oscars.

• 13:16Alastair Campbell?

  To Nigel Farage.

• 13:18Rory Stewart?

  Nigel Farage, you seem to...

• 13:19Alastair Campbell?

  Your former politician of the year.

• 13:22Rory Stewart?

  We've got to get our definitions right here, right? There is the Machiavellian definition, which is like success. And then there's the like moral judgment, which is, do we approve of them? I mean, obviously, let's take Trump, for example, right? In some ways, he's very successful. In other ways, we think he's an absolutely terrible human being, a terrible president.

• 13:41Alastair Campbell?

  Some people would say Trump is the politician of the year because he dominates everything. We'll come on to Trump. But the reason I think that Farage has to be put in the same breath as Nathan Gill is partly because of the way Farage has handled this since. With the help of the media being so supine about the whole story. So that most people still don't know who Nathan Gill is because it was one when he went to jail. It was a sort of one day wonder. But I think that the fact of Nigel Farage's leadership of all these right wing populist parties, Nathan Gill's centrality to Nigel Farage's political rise and political experience in Brussels, where he led the campaign to get Britain out of Europe. I think that makes him a very, very close, more than a close associate.

• 14:26Alastair Campbell?

  So I think that Gill is my worst politician of the year because of what he did.

• 14:31Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 14:31Alastair Campbell?

  But I think it's foolish if we don't realise that there is a lot more to this story than is yet known.

• 14:38Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay, well, we'll keep our eye on that. Now, favourite leading interviews are the jolly things we come into Christmas. We get off to get off politics.

• 14:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think we're going to agree on this one.

• 14:47Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 14:48Alastair Campbell?

  Shall I go first?

• 14:49Rory Stewart?

  Yep, I'll try to be honest. Yep.

• 14:51Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, the ones that came close were Baroness Hale.

• 14:56Rory Stewart?

  Oh, she's lovely.

• 14:57Alastair Campbell?

  Former leader of the Supreme Court. I thought she was great.

• 14:59Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely lovely. People haven't listened to her. She is extraordinary woman. I think, was she the first woman to lead the Supreme Court?

• 15:05Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 15:05Rory Stewart?

  And she did this extraordinary ruling on the parroting of parliament by Boris Johnson, upheld the constitution with a spider on her chest.

• 15:11Alastair Campbell?

  Correct. So I liked, she was terrific. I love the fact that she never arms, never arses and speaks in perfectly formed. Grammatically perfect sentences.

• 15:19Rory Stewart?

  Which some people say about you, you don't.

• 15:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I occasionally go, you know, and like and all that. Alex Younger came close, the former head of MI6. I thought he was stunningly informed, insightful, interesting, et cetera. But I'm afraid I think we have to go to the one that is by some distance had the most listeners.

• 15:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 15:39Alastair Campbell?

  Which was Ahmed Al Sharaa.

• 15:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I can't disagree with that. I mean, that was really exciting. As people will remember, we travelled together to Syria.

• 15:48Alastair Campbell?

  You almost felt like a proper journalist, didn't you?

• 15:50Rory Stewart?

  Proper journalist, yeah. Few weeks, just a few weeks after we got into Damascus, we were one of the very first live interviews, which is why it got such coverage. We did it in this incredible moment where he'd just come back from his first ever foreign trip to Saudi Arabia, which turned out to be completely decisive because actually that led to the US lifting sanctions, the whole recognition of Syria. We got him at a moment where he was being extremely frank in a way that he probably wouldn't today about his past in Al Qaeda and the terrorist movements. And there was the added drama of your and my involvement with the Iraq war, where he'd cut his teeth and been locked in prison. And as you say, that an interview which got an incredible number of listeners in Arabic as well as in English. So.

• 16:34Alastair Campbell?

  It had more listeners in Arabic than in English.

• 16:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, no, so I think that's right. Just to go through some of the other interviews, because I thought it was the most extraordinary list. So, jumping out at me, Ben Wallace, who I thought was charming and funny, the former UK Defence Secretary.

• 16:47Alastair Campbell?

  It's interesting how many former Tories that most of our listeners, many of our listeners loathed, they actually quite liked when they heard them. Jeremy Hunt was another one.

• 16:56Rory Stewart?

  Jeremy Hunt, you liked Jeremy Hunt, didn't you? We should probably get some more Tories on sometime next year. I'm not sure we've got that many in the line. Marwan Barghouti, I thought was very moving, moving Palestinian.

• 17:06Alastair Campbell?

  And just on that, I mean, just to those who haven't listened to that, you should. His dad is a lot of people's favourite to lead a new Palestine should such a thing happen. But he's still stuck in jail.

• 17:18Rory Stewart?

  Right. And I think we would both agree would be a good idea to release him.

• 17:22Alastair Campbell?

  For sure.

• 17:23Rory Stewart?

  Probably the best path. Last couple for me, there may be others you'd think yet. Jonathan Haidt, talking particularly about the impact of mobile phones on children. And then a very, very good listen, scratchy, controversial, two part of a Michael Gove, I thought.

• 17:37Alastair Campbell?

  I'm very sure you haven't mentioned Gareth Southgate, because I thought you had a total

• 17:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, I

• 17:41Alastair Campbell?

  sort of massive crush on him, Rory. I mean, God.

• 17:44Rory Stewart?

  I certainly did. I, as I said to you at the time, the only guy whose number I've tried to get, I'm going to have lunch with him in the new year. And put it in context, the only people I've been having lunch with recently are Church of England clergymen. Which, so I must somehow have my head, have Gareth Southgate in my head as a, as a kind of almost religious figure.

• 18:02Alastair Campbell?

  Are you thinking of becoming a priest?

• 18:04Rory Stewart?

  I don't know. Would I still be able to do the podcast if I was?

• 18:07Alastair Campbell?

  The rest is God. The rest is Christ. The rest is Christmas.

• 18:11Rory Stewart?

  Rest is the Holy Ghost. It's all the same, so I was trying to explain at the beginning.

• 18:14Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, okay. The other one I thought you were going to say was Jonas Garstod, the Norwegian Prime Minister, because you loved him as well.

• 18:19Rory Stewart?

  He was terrific. And he was, he's your friend, right?

• 18:22Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 18:22Rory Stewart?

  And he's quite an unusual politician, I thought. And did you enjoy Jacinta Arden?

• 18:26Alastair Campbell?

  Very much. We've had a great year on the leading front. We really have. But I think Ahmad El Shara, and what was so interesting about it was having done that interview at the time that we did it, and him saying the things that he said, particularly about his goals in relation to getting sanctions lifted, to trying to persuade the Americans that he wasn't still a terrorist and all this sort of stuff. So I guess one of the big moments of the year really was Ahmad El Shara going to the White House and having Donald Trump spraying with perfume, which was a bit odd.

• 18:53Rory Stewart?

  He kept saying this is a male scent. And then he was like, give some to your wife. I got very confused by the whole direction in which that whole thing was travelling.

• 19:01Alastair Campbell?

  Right. Best foreign politician. I don't think it's going to be Donald Trump for either of us.

• 19:06Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 19:07Alastair Campbell?

  Who are you, where are you going?

• 19:09Rory Stewart?

  Um, well, I would probably, here I suspect we're going to agree, unfortunately. Sometimes, sometimes we agree.

• 19:14Alastair Campbell?

  Hold on, hold on. Let me guess what you're going to, you're either going to say Mam Darni or Mark Carney.

• 19:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I was going to say the latter, Mark Carney.

• 19:20Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, he's definitely on my list, but he's not my number one.

• 19:22Rory Stewart?

  He's not your number one. Okay, go on then, give us your number one.

• 19:24Alastair Campbell?

  My number one is Maya Sandu.

• 19:27Rory Stewart?

  Maya Sandu. Okay, talk us through Maya Sandu. So Moldovan?

• 19:31Alastair Campbell?

  President of Moldova. Uh, good news for our listeners and viewers. And by the way, she didn't know I was going to say this, or even that we do this, but she is going to be one of our first interviews in the new year.

• 19:42Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 19:42Alastair Campbell?

  For leading. Um, I think what she's done is amazing because she's a tiny country.

• 19:48Alastair Campbell?

  Feels inevitably hugely at risk because of where it is geographically in relation to Russia. She fought an election with massive interference from the Russians. And she saw it off and she won. Um, and I think she's got guts. I think she's got real leadership skills and I'm really looking forward to interviewing her.

• 20:11Rory Stewart?

  Well, one of the, one of the themes to, to try to get a bit of optimistic Christmas messaging going is that next year we will be interviewing some people on leading. Who actually represent a bit of hope for the kind of progressive centre.

• 20:23Alastair Campbell?

  Which Carney does by a long way.

• 20:25Rory Stewart?

  Carney definitely does and Maya Sandy does. We're also going to be interviewing Rob Yetton, the extraordinary Dutch centrist leader who did so well in the, in the Dutch elections. And I think we should keep thinking about these people around the world who really do give us a sense of hope. I mean, I, I, when I'm think about liberal democracy and where to feel hopeful, I, I often end up in Australia. But I also think there are some fascinating things. I, I, the Greek Prime Minister who we interviewed, I thought was actually a really interesting example of somebody who had something to him. I'm sure some Greek listeners at this point will be throwing their phone out of the window in rage. That's one of the things I noticed that, you know, you and I will think these guys are absolutely terrific, but of course.

• 21:04Rory Stewart?

  Politics remains so divisive that even in the best case scenario, you're always going to have about forty eight percent of the population that thinks you should be in jail.

• 21:11Alastair Campbell?

  So, so you tell us why, why, why Carney? I mean, I, I, look, I, I think Mark Carney is terrific. I'm really happy that he's the Prime Minister. And the thing I like about watching him when he speaks. And I think sometimes, especially if you've known somebody before they've become a politician, as you and I have with Mark. He's just the same person. He's totally comfortable inside his own skin. You see that when he's making a big speech in the parliament, you see it when he's on Instagram messing around with kids, playing football. You see it in his dealings with Trump. Whatever he's doing, he's just the same guy.

• 21:42Rory Stewart?

  And, and I think what's amazing about Mark Carney and the reason I've chosen him as best foreign politician of the year is that. He is a surprise. I mean, there are so many smart, very able technocrats with big brains who communicate very fluently. Who you would have thought could be great prime ministers in a sort of romantic sense. You know, people said this about David Petraeus, who we interviewed last year. They'd said about Gareth Southgate, who we just interviewed, right? But generally speaking, when they become politicians, I certainly felt this with Michael Ignatieff, that we interviewed a couple of years ago, that they struggle, that, you know, and I, it's true for a lot of really, really nice, able people, you know, let's say, for example,

• 22:27Rory Stewart?

  I thought Hillary Ben was wonderful. Maybe if he became Prime Minister, it wouldn't all work out, right? And I don't know, maybe some of the other people I love in the Labour Cabinet, maybe if they became Prime Minister, it turns out to be very, very different. I mean, for example, I was a very pro Gordon Brown person and it didn't really work out as Prime Minister. So I was worried with Mark Carney that we've all fallen in love with this story of the governor of the Bank of Canada and the governor of the Bank of England. But generally speaking, particularly in Europe, when central bank governors become leaders, it looks pretty rubbish. I mean, Italy didn't exactly fall in love with Mario Monti or Mario Draghi, this kind of dry technocratic.

• 23:07Alastair Campbell?

  Is it because it's Christmas that you keep talking about love?

• 23:09Rory Stewart?

  I, I took.

• 23:10Alastair Campbell?

  What was going on in your life at the moment? Some of you, you think you're becoming a priest.

• 23:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Alastair Campbell?

  You're talking endlessly about love.

• 23:16Rory Stewart?

  I'm God.

• 23:17Alastair Campbell?

  And God.

• 23:18Rory Stewart?

  God is love.

• 23:19Alastair Campbell?

  God is love. God is love. That's, why do I, what do I think of that is when you go into Tomomori and some, the father of somebody, I think, I think a child fell and survived and God is love is painted there.

• 23:33Rory Stewart?

  I saw this extraordinary thing. On that, just quickly. I, there's a Buddhist meditation, which the Buddha taught his monks when they were frightened in a forest. It's a love meditation. One of the benefits, the love meditation, because Buddha likes numbers, is he, I think he gives 40 benefits for the love meditation and the tradition.

• 23:52Alastair Campbell?

  He could be the Chancellor.

• 23:53Rory Stewart?

  And one of them is, yeah, exactly, could be the Chancellor. One of them, though she didn't come up with this in the budget, is that if you do the love meditation properly, he says that if you fall off a cliff, you will be caught by a tree.

• 24:05Rory Stewart?

  There we are. So connect to the October morning.

• 24:06Alastair Campbell?

  I think that's what happened.

• 24:07Rory Stewart?

  You see?

• 24:07Alastair Campbell?

  I think that's what happened.

• 24:08Rory Stewart?

  There we are.

• 24:09Alastair Campbell?

  Right, let's leave God and love for a moment and go on to our worst foreign politician. And I think we've got to have a rule here that you can't say Trump.

• 24:16Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 24:17Alastair Campbell?

  Were you going to say Trump?

• 24:18Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, yeah, we could give our normal speech on Trump, but I think that's a bit boring for listeners. Let's take it as read that we think that Trump is a threat and an atrocity and all that.

• 24:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I am going for the deadly duo of Ben Givir and Smotrich. I think their influence on Israeli politics, the Israeli government, the Middle East peace process, and their clear belief that there shouldn't really be one that involves any sort of rights or respect for Palestinians, I think they are terrible people doing terrible things.

• 24:50Rory Stewart?

  I agree. I think they have done more damage than almost anybody conceivable really to the reputation of Israel. But I also think that Netanyahu needs to take full responsibility for including them in its cabinet and making them his security ministers and finance ministers.

• 25:06Alastair Campbell?

  Is he your worst politician?

• 25:07Rory Stewart?

  He doesn't get away with that. No, my worst politician year, of course, is predictably Emmanuel Macron, who I think is the most catastrophic bluffing.

• 25:16Alastair Campbell?

  It's the first time you've ever said, ever said those words without your friend in advance. Mon ami.

• 25:23Rory Stewart?

  That would have been a bit aggressive before Chris was going to say your friend was my worst politician of the year. Um, now, I think Macron has absolutely demonstrated the most catastrophic failure of what could have been the incredible potential of a highly intelligent centrist politician has through sheer vanity and ineptitude blown his position in parliament, blown the power of his presidency, failed to achieve any of the things he should have done in the big picture on Europe.

• 25:57Alastair Campbell?

  Emmanuel, tu sais qu'on a discuté le, le, la possibilité de venir sur le podcast? Je crois qu'on pourrait le faire seul, toi et moi. Sans mon collègue.

• 26:09Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 26:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, you completely blew. I mean, I think he was in for February, but.

• 26:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, you know, I think he should come on and prove me wrong. I think you should come on and prove me wrong. Because I'm sure I'm underestimating him and I and I know how much you admire him. And I know how much the economist correspondent in France admire him.

• 26:26Alastair Campbell?

  So now you are kidding, my friends.

• 26:29Rory Stewart?

  So Macron should come on and prove us wrong because I think he's somebody who again and again and again, I've thought, you know, EM, the great Emmanuel. Oh, come, oh, come, Emmanuel. And he says the right things about Russia and he says the right things about AI and he says the right things about Europe. But when it comes to the real stuff, making the alliance with Starmer and with Mance, really working together. How do you stop Farage getting into British politics? You work ambitiously and bravely to fix the boat issue, which only Macron can really fix and which he's he's half heartedly failed to address again and again.

• 27:10Rory Stewart?

  When you look at the big issues on defence and European security, industrial policy for Europe, reforms on the European budget. He talks a good game, it just doesn't happen. And all of us are beginning to get a bit frustrated with the gap between rhetoric and reality.

• 27:27Alastair Campbell?

  God, you sounded like Boris Johnson then.

• 27:28Rory Stewart?

  The gap between rhetoric and reality.

• 27:30Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, Johnson has to be mentioned in the worst politician of any year ever. And given we had the Covid inquiry this year, I think the latest stage of that, I think we should give him an honourable mention. Look, I'm not going to pretend that Emmanuel Macron has worked out as I had hoped. But I think you're being very, very harsh. There is the point about arrogance and I think that that is something that he's never properly dealt with in relation to people's sense of him. I don't, I don't see him as being arrogant and I've seen him with quotes, ordinary people, where I think he's got far better relationship. With people that he meets than he gets credit for. But I think where you're right is, I think this is, this is a sign of just how bloody hard politics is without making big own goal mistakes.

• 28:14Alastair Campbell?

  The truth is, you were right about this on the day, I remember you said it, on the day that he called that snap election. I could see the logic for it, but I think actually it was one of those moments where he really damaged his own authority and he's never fully recovered for it. I still think he's one of the brightest and we've got one of the best brains in politics, but that took me, that one took me aback.

• 28:35Rory Stewart?

  Speech of the year.

• 28:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I might take you back here.

• 28:37Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 28:38Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going for three in different categories. Most consequential, which I'm going for J D Vance in Munich.

• 28:45Rory Stewart?

  Wow. Okay, just to remind people what happened there, tell us about the J D Vance.

• 28:49Alastair Campbell?

  So J D Vance turned up at the Munich Security Conference, where all the great sort of brains and policymakers and diplomats and military figures turn up to talk about defence and security at a time of kind of peak opportunity as well as threat in relation to the Ukraine war. And he made the most awful speech. But the reason why I think it was consequential, because I think this was at the point at which America's real foreign policy intentions were laid bare. He basically said, you lot think that Putin's your biggest threat, your biggest threat is you don't believe in free speech. Most of the people sat there thinking, what the F are you talking about? He then went off to have a meeting with Alice Fidel, the leader of the Alternative for

• 29:30Alastair Campbell?

  Deutschland, a neo-Nazi party that he basically says should be running Germany and therefore in their minds of the Americans, Europe. So I think that was the most consequential speech. I think the best parliamentary speech, this is where I think I'm going to shock you, was in fact Kemi Badenoch's response to Rachel Reeves and the budget. Now, a lot of people hated it. And we got pushback on the day that we, we did our special episode on the budget. We got a lot of people saying, well, we both said we thought it was a very effective, brutal speech. A lot of people saying it was, it was horrible, it was personal, it was nasty, they're still the nasty party, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But she did three things, actually. The first is important, especially just before Christmas.

• 30:13Alastair Campbell?

  She settled, I think, any doubts within her party that she's tough. And so therefore she might have what it takes. Doesn't mean she has, but she settled that in their minds. The second thing she did was she, and a lot easier when you've been given the budget in advance. But she really, I think, went to the heart of a dividing line that they're now going to drive, which is Labour is putting up tax and putting up welfare, and we believe in bringing both down.

• 30:43Rory Stewart?

  And so she's making an argument to relate to your brand point. She, she had a clear argument.

• 30:47Alastair Campbell?

  She's creating a very clear dividing line.

• 30:49Rory Stewart?

  That argument was.

• 30:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, whether she can then bring forward the policy to deal with it. That being said, my speech of the year. Do you know who Pep Guardiola is, Rory?

• 30:58Rory Stewart?

  Uh, yes, yes, he's a football manager.

• 31:00Alastair Campbell?

  That's the one. He's the manager of.

• 31:02Rory Stewart?

  Manchester City.

• 31:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well done, round of applause Rory, Manchester City. Um, he got an honorary graduate thing at Manchester University and he made a really quite beautiful speech about Gaza. The thing I remember about it most was he had this line, he basically said, this whole thing hurts me. It makes me scared. I hate the lack of humanity that's attached to it. I'm not speaking here about taking sides or ideology. I'm speaking about our basic humanity. And he told this story of this parable of a bird that can fly and fill its, at a fire, fill its mouth, fill its beak with water, fly back, drop a bit of water, fly back, drop a bit of water. Bang on message for what can I do? A great book, as you'll agree, Rory.

• 31:45Alastair Campbell?

  So, you know, the point is we can all do something. So I thought it was, you know, for a football manager.

• 31:49Rory Stewart?

  We can all do something small and that all those little beaks of water ultimately can put out the forest fire.

• 31:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Rory Stewart?

  Oh, beautiful.

• 31:54Alastair Campbell?

  He's my speech of the year.

• 31:56Rory Stewart?

  Beautiful. Well, look, I don't, I don't want to be too gloomy at Christmas time. But following on from your point about, um, J D Vance, I thought the most revealing speech. If you want to understand what's most dark and terrifying about the direction which Trump is leading, not just America but Europe, is for people to watch Stephen Miller's speech at Charlie Kirk's funeral. And this was a speech in which he says that Charlie Kirk and his family, to quote, "Stand on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, of women who raised up families, raised up cities, raised up industry, raised up civilization, who pulled us out of the caves,

• 32:38Rory Stewart?

  out of the darkness into the light. We are the light, they are the darkness." And the implication here goes right back to the rights in America after the Civil War. This is all this language, civilization, warriors. He then goes on, "We are Athens, we are Rome." It's about white European civilization. And originally, this whole language was simply developed to attack African Americans, to say these are people who live in primitive societies.

• 33:08Alastair Campbell?

  I can't remember who did it, but somebody did an analysis of that speech related to a speech that Goebbels had made in the 30s. I mean, when I see Speech of the Year, I'm trying to find the good speeches, but you're basically, you're going with my consequential.

• 33:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I thought it just sort of tore the mask off, because you're absolutely right, yeah. Even the language about "the warrior stands up to the storm, we are the storm", this stuff, as you say, is taken very much from that.

• 33:37Alastair Campbell?

  Did you have a good speech, a nice speech?

• 33:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, I thought Mamdani, in his short snippets on social media, I mean, it's a very different way of doing speeches to the kind of honorary degree at Manchester University. But I guess, yeah, my Speech of the Year is a sort of memory speech from a university acceptance speech, which I talked about at the time, which was the extraordinary Jane Goodall, watching her deliver an acceptance speech for her honorary degree at the American University in Paris, where not only was she modest, funny and charming, but she did a full, I don't know, it felt like minute, two minutes, maybe it was only 45 seconds, full chimpanzee mating call to an audience of two and a half thousand people.

• 34:20Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, it says something about the state of our politics, that we both really quite struggled to go for Politician of the Year. And for our speeches of the year, I've gone for a football manager, you've gone for somebody imitating a chimpanzee.

• 34:33Rory Stewart?

  A primatologist, that's true, that's not very inspiring. I think both of us have been impressed by some of the people speaking in the Senate and the House exposing Trump. We talked about Senator Murphy getting into some of Trump's corruption.

• 34:49Alastair Campbell?

  James Comey did a very, very short speech in response to some of the different stages of the persecution of Trump, by Trump of him.

• 34:56Rory Stewart?

  Smith, who's one of the prosecutors that Trump is going after, did an incredible thing at LSE where he talked about the basic elements, the root of law, which I thought was very moving, that's an American standing up for the root of law. But yes, we're struggling a little bit and we keep coming back to the chimpanzee mating call. I can do a good impression of a white handed gibbon, but I can't do a chimp. A white handed gibbon?

• 35:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 35:19Rory Stewart?

  Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. Like that.

• 35:23Alastair Campbell?

  Sort of owl, sort of owl to me.

• 35:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, I just heard it at the Cotswold Zoo. If people can do better than that, they can.

• 35:29Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Well, we've done the Christmas card competition, let's now have a gibbon imitation.

• 35:37Rory Stewart?

  They're very noisy and their whole chest vibrates. It's one, on your environmental stuff, if you ever have an opportunity to go to the rainforest and to see the gibbons flying through the top canopy with this noise erupting across the jungle, it is just the most exciting thing in the world.

• 35:54Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. Okay Rory, well, on gibbons, let's have a quick break and then when we come back, biggest political moment and we're going to talk about issues, people that are under discussed, under covered, under debated, even on the rest of the.

• 36:07Rory Stewart?

  Even on the rest of politics?

• 36:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 36:08Rory Stewart?

  Okay, see you then. As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and division, one national consensus still stands firm. Roast potatoes.

• 36:22Alastair Campbell?

  Oh God, all this British stuff. If you're wondering, however, what to buy the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to The Rest Is Politics Plus.

• 36:38Rory Stewart?

  It's the thoughtful kind of present. Ad-free listening, bonus episodes, early access to Q and As, book discounts, and perhaps, I think, most interesting, it's our mini-series, available only to members focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics. We've already explored Rupert Murdoch and J D Vance, and we're doing many more subjects to come.

• 36:58Alastair Campbell?

  So think of this as a civilized gift to allow families to disagree agreeably over Christmas. What could be nicer?

• 37:07Rory Stewart?

  And if you've left it until Christmas Eve, as I fear I often do, the great thing is it's digital. No queues, wrapping or panic. The membership lands neatly in their inbox on Christmas Day.

• 37:16Alastair Campbell?

  So spread a little political peace and goodwill. Head to therestispolitics.com and click Gifts.

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• 38:30Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics Christmas Eve special with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 38:36Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 38:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Rory Stewart?

  Are you feeling now more Christmasy now we've made it through the break? Did you spend the break reflecting on, you're becoming a bit like Scrooge. This is kind of terrible.

• 38:46Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'm not Scrooge. Do you know what, it's really strange. It is strange. There's definitely something in my psychology. I don't like things where everybody is meant to feel the same.

• 38:58Rory Stewart?

  Are you sure it's not some sort of grim Scottish Presbyterian anti-Christmas thing back in your DNA?

• 39:04Alastair Campbell?

  Could be.

• 39:04Rory Stewart?

  You know, the Scots, you know, basically banned Christmas for some time.

• 39:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, as you know, I'm not really a party person. I'm not a wedding person.

• 39:12Rory Stewart?

  If you ever found God, would you become a slightly grim Presbyterian minister?

• 39:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Tony Blair always used to say he was really worried I'd become, I'd get God because he thought I'd become an Islamic fundamentalist.

• 39:23Rory Stewart?

  An Islamic fundamentalist, that's another possibility. Yeah, I think the one thing you wouldn't do. The one thing the ministers used to do, which he might not do, which is ban the playing of sport on Sunday.

• 39:32Alastair Campbell?

  No, 100% wouldn't do that.

• 39:34Rory Stewart?

  You wouldn't do that, no. You're allowed to play sport.

• 39:36Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, happy Christmas, everybody. I hope you're having a lovely, lovely, lovely time as we all are because we're all meant to.

• 39:43Rory Stewart?

  Go on, tell us about your biggest political moment of last year.

• 39:45Alastair Campbell?

  Zelensky in the Oval Office.

• 39:47Rory Stewart?

  Oh, wow. Okay, so this is, this is, this brings us not just to Trump, but to J D Vance. So everybody remembers Zelensky. It's the big moment. Trump says he's going to fix the Ukraine war in 24 hours. Comes into office for a few weeks and everybody's a bit off balance. Zelensky's first big meeting, question mark. Is he going to get US financial support? Is America going to support his borders? He comes in, he's wearing his trademark fatigues, walks into the Oval Office and very unusually.

• 40:21Rory Stewart?

  The whole format changes for the first time, doesn't it? Because traditionally, you point out, it would have been a short little thing before a private meeting.

• 40:28Alastair Campbell?

  I think Trump had already sort of set that precedent that he was going to use these as big, press, rolling, rambling press conferences.

• 40:33Rory Stewart?

  And it wasn't just Trump and the president speaking, because the vice president was sitting there like a peanut gallery, weighing in. Ted, talk us through this moment.

• 40:41Alastair Campbell?

  I've, I thought it was truly horrible. I watched the whole thing on my sofa and I felt sick because I think we had kidded ourselves that Trump was going to try to bring this war to an end. Now, in his head, that's what he was doing, bringing this war to an end. Vance lit the fuse, but once Vance lit the fuse, Trump went along with it. And he was, basically, they were doing it by saying to Zelensky, you're little, we're big, Putin's big, you're still little, you've lost, give up. That was the basic message. I don't think Zelensky had any sense that was coming in the way that it did. I did an interview that night on Channel 4 News where I, I almost said the F and even worse because I was so angry.

• 41:24Alastair Campbell?

  And that, I think it was just, I used the word consequential for Vance's speech. I think this was part of that pattern. It was, it was hugely consequential because it was basically saying, you lot in Europe are sitting there thinking we're on your side. We're going to say that from time to time, but this is, this is us, this is really us. And I saw Zelensky behaved as he does so often with amazing kind of courage and dignity. But, you know, to be the leader of a nation at war and this, and essentially get asked to leave the White House because he's not buying this idea that you have none of the cards. And then pushing this line that Zelensky shouldn't have started this war if he didn't, if he couldn't win, as if Zelensky had started the war, playing into the kind of Putin narrative

• 42:08Alastair Campbell?

  that NATO provoked this and all this stuff. So I thought it was, I thought it was horrible. And the thing is about Trump, we'll talk about this a bit more in, in the next episode where we're talking about what surprises about this year. So much stuff happens with Trump that we don't kind of hang on long enough to reflect on these massive moments. He just moves on to the next.

• 42:30Rory Stewart?

  Well, the moments are unbelievable, aren't they? I mean, it's your thinking through. I mean, this, we're talking after this astonishing revelations that basically Whitkoff took the entire Russian talking points on Ukraine and tried to drive into a peace deal. We're talking in a year in which Trump pushed through the ceasefire in Gaza in the most extraordinary, strange, last minute, brutal fashion. We're talking about a year in which Iran has been attacked by American missiles, in which Qatar has been attacked by Israeli missiles, in which Syria has begun to bring itself together, in which Sudan continues to disintegrate, in which military governments backed by Russia all over the Sahel, et cetera,

• 43:12Rory Stewart?

  et cetera, et cetera. But my big choice is that moment at the very beginning of April, just after April Fool's Day, the Liberation Day tariffs.

• 43:21Alastair Campbell?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:22Rory Stewart?

  And again, I think if historians looked back in thirty years' time, this was the big change, because it changed so many things in a single moment. The first thing is it showed suddenly that the American president had a type of power that people weren't really aware of before. He found an obscure law, an emergency power really for war, which allows him personally to move up and down tariffs without congressional approval. Hadn't really been done for decades, right? And it suddenly showed Trump can do stuff, and it was perfect for Trump, because as you point out, it means that every country in the world has to come and

• 44:02Alastair Campbell?

  Just watch him do the signature.

• 44:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and give him weird presents. You know, the Swiss will turn up with gold bars and the Japanese have to give him three hundred billion dollar sovereign wealth funds to spend at his discretion. So, so sort of tribute bearers, but not just countries, American companies having to come and, you know, Apple has to give him special gifts to get changes on whether or not they can do stuff with iPhones in China's power. Second thing is unpredictability. What we discovered is, is, is, is what you call the hokey-cokey. The tariffs go up, the tariffs go down, the tariffs go up, the tariffs go down, and the whole thing is completely bewildering. I mean, so that most people in America and in the world Would still have absolutely no idea whether the tariffs are really up or down.

• 44:47Rory Stewart?

  Right, I mean, but the reality is, the big picture is, at the end of last year, the average tariff rate in the US was three percent. Today, the average tariff rate in the US is eighteen percent. Last year, global trade growth was projected at three percent. This year, it's projected point three percent. So massive consequences for the global economy. And then I think the final thing that comes out of that is tearing up the whole world order. He's broken this whole American idea since the Second World War, that American power was behind certain kinds of multilateral institutions and rules like the World Trade Organization, which tried to balance the interests of small countries and big countries with relatively transparent rules that you could apply to courts, et cetera.

• 45:31Rory Stewart?

  Blown that all out of the water, and he's gone after his allies. I mean, what's so astonishing about it is that everybody assumed that if he was going to go after China, he would correspondingly try to keep allies on side, you know, India, Vietnam, Switzerland, Japan, Europe, because he'd need them. Instead of which, it's turned out that he actually inflicts more damage on his allies than he does on his enemies.

• 45:52Alastair Campbell?

  Partly because China and Xi Jinping has stood up to it in a way that he didn't expect.

• 45:57Rory Stewart?

  I think that's partly because China knew that the United States was its enemy and therefore spent the last ten years making sure they couldn't be taken for right. We thought the United States was our allies, so we opened up our entire economy to the US. We allowed them to do open-heart surgery on us. Consequently, we had no defenses. I mean, it's like letting a virus into your body with absolutely no defenses. We've allowed the United States over seventy years to become totally central to every element of our defense, security, economic life. And so that's what allows the long con, that's the real long con.

• 46:34Rory Stewart?

  It's that America's spending seventy, eighty years being so well behaved that Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, could allow themselves to be that vulnerable.

• 46:46Alastair Campbell?

  Right, but the reason for that is not the United States of America, it's Trump. I think every previous president. Would have not a, I can't think of a president, living or dead, that would be sitting there approving what Trump is doing in relation to their relations with Europe.

• 47:03Rory Stewart?

  No, but of course, the problem is, once Trump has revealed it, once he's really brought out into the open the fact that we are this vulnerable, that America has actually done more damage to Europeans, Japanese, Canadians in the last eleven months, the last year, than the Chinese or Russians. Actually, more damage to our economy, more damage to our security, more damage to our democracies. And the problem is that we've always in the past asked the question, when we're looking at our enemies and adversaries, is this country a liberal democracy? Are they part of the Western Alliance? And if they're not, we think they're an enemy. What we fail to understand is this question of vulnerability. If you integrate too much,

• 47:47Rory Stewart?

  I mean, we saw this in microcosm with Russia, where we integrated too much with their energy. But our dependency on the US is ninety times greater than our dependency ever was in Russia, and this is what Trump's exploiting. And now suddenly, I mean, honestly, if he decided to invade Greenland, we could do absolutely nothing about it.

• 48:06Alastair Campbell?

  Most under-discussed, under-appreciated domestic moment or issue. Last year I went for Brexit and you went for unemployment in the UK. So I don't think, I don't, I think unemployment's looking not too bad at the moment, Rory. Brexit's still a disaster.

• 48:22Rory Stewart?

  Unfortunately, unemployment is a little bit up in the UK. And what I'm really talking about here, which hasn't been fixed, is the million people who just aren't working. And this is people living on different forms of disability benefits and payments, which is, hasn't been fixed. I mean, it's been, it's the one big difference between the UK economy and all our peers, that everybody came out of Covid with a lot of people out of the workforce, but only in the UK, out of the major economies, have all these people remained out of the workforce. And if you don't get those million people into the workforce, the benefits budget is skyrocketing. I mean, this is part of the problem that Rachel Reeves is struggling with in trying to generate growth, get the public finances going. I don't think in the last twelve months, they've really come up with anything to do about it.

• 49:05Alastair Campbell?

  I'm going to go for send special educational needs. And I think this relates to the change in media landscape as well, because the whole kind of internet revolution and the way the media's developed has sort of destroyed so much of our local media.

• 49:20Alastair Campbell?

  Local authorities are trying to do more and more with less. And I think send has grown and grown and grown and grown as a problem. And it was briefly mentioned in the budget in the context of what is now a fourteen billion pound black hole, call it what you want. And this is where there's been this thing called the override where debts that the local authorities are building up and building up, they've not been going on the books. They're now going to be taken over by central government. And it sparked this debate finally about whether if it's not coming from local authority budgets, is it going to come out of education budgets?

• 50:04Alastair Campbell?

  Or are we now going to look at another massive spending cost that the government's just going to have to fix?

• 50:09Rory Stewart?

  And the issue behind it, I guess, is that we've become increasingly thoughtful about understanding how different children are and how many needs they are. So I suppose there are probably two things happening. One of them is a genuine increase in certain kinds of conditions. And the second is more awareness of them and more sensitivity to them. And schools realising that there's a lot more that they can do to help children at different parts of the spectrum from relatively mild, who also benefit from a huge amount of support, through to more serious cases and also the ways in which COVID feeds into that, social media feeds into that in loneliness. People facing serious challenges with their mental health, all this stuff with young people and how on earth you finance this?

• 50:51Rory Stewart?

  Because it's clearly vital if you can get that intervention right in early childhood. It's incredible what you can do with results. I mean, again, I don't want to make this too much personal, but our kid's school has with my eight year old

• 51:09Rory Stewart?

  been so thoughtful about thinking about how to occasionally give him a few more minutes in an exam or just helping him write down what the homework is for the night. And the results have been unbelievable. I was very, very worried in September that he would find it incredibly academically tough. He's come out of the end of his first term so confident, cheerful. He was saying yesterday, it was kind of an extraordinary parental moment, you know, I'm so grateful for the fact I'm learning something every day. So they've turned somebody who could have been incredibly anxious, insecure and was saying six months ago, I just can't do this, I can't do school. Into somebody who feels really confident and these are small tweaks. And we're very, very lucky, but of course this takes funding and backing.

• 51:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I mean, I think the the other thing is you've got all these graphs showing massive rise in in diagnosis, a lot of controversy, debate about reasons for it. Then you have, you know, lunatics like R F Kennedy coming in saying it's related to taking, was it paracetamol or whatever it was? And so you've got experts divided, you've got medics divided, you've got families divided, but it's it's an issue the government is gonna have to grip.

• 52:18Rory Stewart?

  Is it a bigger issue though, just just listening to you, is it, is, can we put this in a bigger issue about how we think about the future of looking after citizens, the welfare state? In other words, presumably there would be an analogy in healthcare too, which is

• 52:34Rory Stewart?

  as the state tries to provide more and more thoughtful, tailored care in education, health. As people's expectations go up, things become more and more expensive. I mean, I, you know, I noticed because I teach in America that in American healthcare, they will do a lot of things the NHS wouldn't do on more minor lifestyle things, dermatology, diet, whereas the NHS is really, really good at the kind of extreme kind of surgery for the acute case. And and this is partly about the fact that to provide the really tailored care for people at every stage on an autism spectrum is a little bit like thinking about the full challenges in somebody's health.

• 53:18Rory Stewart?

  This is the problem. Can we afford to do this? Have we got the tax balance right? You know, one thing we talked about during the budget is that in the UK, we're actually very oddly skewed. The top zero point one percent is paying as much tax as the bottom fifty percent now in the UK. So it may be that we need to also talk about increasing the basic rate of tax.

• 53:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that was, we're now revisiting the arguments that preceded the budget, but I think what this speaks to. You know, you mentioned social care. Social care, we have still not got a grip of. We've talked a lot about there is going to be, whether we like it or not, increasing demand on defence and security because of what's happening in in Russia and Ukraine. Have we really got a grip of that? Have we really got a grip of of this issue? What this said to me is that they're starting to try to get a grip. But the sums of money involved are absolutely astronomical. And I'll tell you who, if he if he manages to crack it, our politician of the of the year next year might be Pat McFadden, because I think he's got one of the toughest jobs in government now.

• 54:25Alastair Campbell?

  Labour tried to do welfare reform. MPs rebelled against it, weren't able to do it. One of the factors behind the the tax rises in the budget. I think there are some really, really big issues here. And I do think the Labour MPs have got to understand it's the easiest thing in the world to stand up and say, no, you can't do that because that's going to affect some of my constituents. Sometimes, I'm afraid, you have to look and you have to really sit back and say, why is this happening? Why is the scale of this problem now so big? There we go. Most under discussed, under appreciated international moment.

• 55:00Rory Stewart?

  I'm going to go with Nvidia stock reaching $5 trillion in October. Nvidia is, of course, the chip manufacturer that's at the core of the AI revolution. And this, of course, brings us to the mini series that I've been doing with Matt Clifford on AI, which, if you sign up, become a Trip Plus member, and I hope some people are considering doing this as a little gift for each other at Christmas, you'll be able to listen to it. Because what we're trying to say is that here is something which in technology terms potentially could change the world more than the industrial revolution and far more quickly. Far more important, basically, than politics. Transform all of employment, all of defence and security, all of the way that our lives work,

• 55:43Rory Stewart?

  and potentially pose a massive existential threat to our politics, our security, our lives. And yet, almost nobody's discussing it. I sat down with a friend of mine in the US Congress just just just two days ago. Who said to me, frankly, none of us are discussing it because none of us understand. We feel very, very insecure dealing with technology issues and therefore we don't want to go there. And which is why the politics of today often can feel as though it's stuck twenty, thirty years in the past. That there's nothing's really changed, that in some sense, the kinds of things that people are discussing in parliament, not very different from what they were discussing in ninety seven, right?

• 56:21Alastair Campbell?

  And in the same way.

• 56:22Rory Stewart?

  And in the same way, yeah.

• 56:23Alastair Campbell?

  Point of order.

• 56:24Rory Stewart?

  So.

• 56:25Alastair Campbell?

  You can't say this, you can't say that.

• 56:26Rory Stewart?

  Um. So anyone who's interested in the bigger argument around this, please sign up uh and listen to our mini series where we really get into everything. We get into what AI is, we get into what it could mean for the economy, what it can mean for defence and security, what it can mean for existential risk, but that for me is the most undiscussed international moment.

• 56:42Alastair Campbell?

  I think this year.

• 56:44Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 56:45Alastair Campbell?

  The UK economy is going to work out as being worth about three point nine trillion.

• 56:50Rory Stewart?

  So smaller than a single American company.

• 56:52Alastair Campbell?

  This feeds into one of my, I don't know if we're going to do a book of the century at any point, but it might be my sovereign individual by Jacob Elise Mogda, because this is kind of playing out pretty much as he said. These tech guys are going to become way more powerful than.

• 57:08Rory Stewart?

  Any country and far wealthier than any person on earth. And maybe there could be the other moment, this is the year in which it was announced, if Elon Musk meets his targets, he will get one trillion dollars. And so to repeat, because Elon Musk is obsessed with this, because he's obviously obsessed with how rich he is. To put it in context, a million seconds ago is twelve days ago. A billion seconds ago is nineteen ninety four. A trillion seconds ago is thirty thousand B C to get a sense of how different a trillion is to a billion.

• 57:36Alastair Campbell?

  Right, my most under discussed, under appreciated international moment. You might be surprised by this because it relates to Gaza. Now Gaza has had a lot of discussion, but my most under discussed episode is what's happened in Gaza since.

• 57:54Alastair Campbell?

  The so-called bringing of peace by Donald Trump. It's almost as if Trump is such a brilliant salesman, con man, communicator. You would think, to all intents and purposes, that he's brought peace to Gaza and the Middle East. Life for most people in Gaza remains utterly horrible. People are still being killed. We're recording not long after the Pope visited Lebanon at a time when Israelis were dropping bombs on Lebanon. So I just think it's one of those things where Trump manages to shape a moment and go bang, that's the end of that chapter.

• 58:30Rory Stewart?

  So Alistair, I think that's a moment maybe to finish.

• 58:35Alastair Campbell?

  I thought you were going to maybe weave effortlessly from that into telling me a story about Bethlehem or something.

• 58:39Rory Stewart?

  Well.

• 58:40Alastair Campbell?

  Something biblical, give me something Christmasy.

• 58:42Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's a great thing. Okay. Well, of course.

• 58:44Alastair Campbell?

  Let's imagine you're a priest. Let's imagine these meetings you're having with clergy or a lead somewhere.

• 58:48Rory Stewart?

  What would they say? Well, I tell you, one of the things that I've got for them, I mean, you're right, you could make a little pivot to the fact that Bethlehem is a Palestinian city in the West Bank.

• 58:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 58:59Rory Stewart?

  With Palestinian Christians, we often forget Palestinian Christians in the story. And a place that's very, very difficult at the moment to access. My wife's charity, Tel Koss Mountain, is working with cross people in Bethlehem. And a lot of the proposals that are coming now from Sumatran about cutting Bethlehem off from Nablus and the other parts of the West Bank. But I think the move I wanted to end on is this, a lot of the people I've been having lunch with recently, these priests, are getting older. And they are.

• 59:29Alastair Campbell?

  So you want to replace them?

• 59:31Rory Stewart?

  No, I'm saying they're going through extraordinary personal challenges. Sometimes their own health, sometimes aging, sometimes tragedies within their own family. And they're having to try to apply consolation to themselves that they've spent fifty years providing to other people. And that is an extraordinarily difficult moment. I mean, what's the moment in which one of them said to me, he's somebody who's a man who meditates a lot. And had a family tragedy beyond imagining.

• 1:00:06Rory Stewart?

  And was saying to me, honestly, he couldn't meditate anymore. And he was literally flattened back on his bed. But then he turned to um, listening to other people he admired. Giving little talks on meditation, ten fifteen minutes listening to it just pulled him back enough to keep going, but I just these. I'm just so moved by um, how at the center of the Christian message is the sense of human frailty and weakness and that nothing's ever perfect. It's not like some of the Buddhist traditions where you pretend there's a moment where you're suddenly enlightened and you become a saint and everything's over that right the way through

• 1:00:49Rory Stewart?

  to the end, people are learning, struggling and sometimes finding that they can't cope.

• 1:00:55Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. We can't end the Christmas Eve episode on the words can't cope.

• 1:01:00Rory Stewart?

  Well, they can't cope and they would say without God and without other people and that they're not alone and that actually it's an unbearable burden to think that you've somehow become a superhero saint who can do it all on your own. That for them, it is other people, other voices. And whatever in different ways people are trying to get at when they talk about God, which in the end provides that final consolation at Christmas.

• 1:01:30Alastair Campbell?

  Well done. You got it back. You wrestled it back. Happy Christmas to you and your family, Rory. And um, because we're just, we never stop. Let's do another episode on Christmas Day. Should we do that?

• 1:01:41Rory Stewart?

  We will. We'll be back on Christmas Day uh, with our message and I'll try to make it a little less heavy. Bye bye.

• 1:01:47Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

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