60. Fear and Loathing in Birmingham

Are we on the brink of Tory civil war? Has Truss painted herself into a corner with her conference speech? What on earth is an 'anti-growth coalition'? Rory has scrambled Alastair for an emergency podcast to discuss growing unrest in Tory circles. Plus Labour's next moves, whether members should elect leaders, and OPEC's under-reported decision to cut 2 million barrels of oil per day in the middle of an energy crisis. Blackpool live show tickets: Saturday 8th October: wintergardensblackpool.co.uk/events/the-rest-is-politics-live/ 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] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producer: Tony Pastor 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/rustaspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustaspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:43Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:48Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And that is a me, Alastair Campbell, who was about to get into the swimming pool this morning. And my phone pinged and it was a message from Rory Stewart saying that he thought that the situation on the back of the Conservative Party Conference was so serious and the future of the Conservative Party in such profound doubt that we should do an emergency podcast. So Rory, this had better be good.

• 2:14Rory Stewart?

  Can I just ask before we get into that, are you sure you're meant to say and me, Alastair Campbell, as opposed to and I, Alastair Campbell?

• 2:20Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, yes, hundred percent.

• 2:23Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good, okay.

• 2:24Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's the most distinguished way to express myself clearly and grammatically. With, the key word is the with, the with me, you wouldn't say with I.

• 2:33Rory Stewart?

  With with me, would you? Thank you, thank you, thanks, thanks. So let's trust this speech, let's start with that one. I thought it was a good speech for that crowd, whatever we think of the content, and I guess you and I don't like what she's doing on tax and borrowing, but she went into that hall in real trouble and somehow she managed to get the applause. It was a situation which 14 Tory MPs had already come out publicly against her and which Gove and Grant said she's only been in a few weeks already manoeuvring against her, but she somehow held it together and delivered a speech which at the very least had very, very clear dividing lines in it. And it had that great line which flattered you so much where they said, define somebody

• 3:15Rory Stewart?

  living in North London, the podcasters, the anti-growth coalition, largely which seems to suggest you've got inside her head.

• 3:20Alastair Campbell?

  The Brexit deniers.

• 3:22Rory Stewart?

  The Brexit deniers.

• 3:23Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not a Brexit denier, I'm a Brexit admitter. I admit that Brexit's been a complete disaster. I also, she, I, I did two things with that speech. I watched it live and then, I always do this with, with big speeches, I also read it afterwards. And I have to tell you Rory, I think when you read it, you will diminish any sense that you thought it was a good speech, even for that audience. I think the only thing that will endure in the politics of the country for the next bit out of that speech is that line about the anti-growth coalition. But when you think about it, I actually think it's a really stupid way to to conduct your politics. Now, it goes back to something we've been talking about a lot. It's deliberately polarising.

• 4:08Alastair Campbell?

  It's trying to say you're either with us and we stand for growth, or you're against us. And if you're against us, that means you don't stand for growth. But that is that is a simply not true. And what it does, are you aware of something called the Millwall Strategy, Rory?

• 4:25Rory Stewart?

  This is all about hating people, right?

• 4:28Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Millwall is a football club, as you may know, and Millwall have a reputation down the years for having quite violent fans. And they sing a song is that basically we are Millwall, Millwall, no, and the key line is, no one likes us, we don't care. Okay, we are Millwall from the den. Now, there's an element of that in this, because once you've lumped everybody together, she was going through all the people who are part of this anti-growth coalition, it sort of came across to me as anybody who doesn't agree with whatever she's saying at the time. It includes Michael Gove, it includes Grant Chaps, it includes presumably Rishi Sunak, who totally disagrees with her economic strategy.

• 5:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, let's get, we're going to the details of the policy in a second. But this point about drawing very, very clear dividing lines. So she drew lines which for a right-wing Conservative audience, and this was a speech which I thought Cameron wouldn't have given, Theresa May wouldn't have given, Boris Johnson wouldn't have given, she absolutely came out and said that she was on the right on immigration, she was on the right wing on Brexit, she was on the right wing on growth, and she just kept hammering defence, all these very, very traditional dividing lines between right and left, and associating herself with the right end of the Conservative Party. That can be quite useful, can't it? Particularly if you can flip it to define your opposition.

• 5:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I think it can be if people think that you have Reserves in the credibility and the authority bank. And I don't think she has. And what struck me, this was more watching the speech than reading it. What struck me was the extent to which there was a relationship of inverse proportion between the self congratulation going on in the hall about how marvelous they were. A wonderful Home Secretary, a dynamic Chancellor, Andy Street, of whom most people outside the Midlands haven't heard, being this sort of great reforming figure. Whereas in the real world, and there were some really interesting pictures in response to the thing about Andy Street.

• 6:31Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody immediately tweeted a photograph of a massive queue for a food bank in Birmingham yesterday. I think there's such a disconnect between the world they're describing. And the other massive tension in her speech, comes back to this point about how the Conservatives have now been in power for 12 years. There was a tension between her saying, there's only one way forward now and it's my way. And we have to embrace these massive, difficult, controversial reforms because the country's in such a mess.

• 7:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:01Alastair Campbell?

  And then at the same time, saying, haven't we been wonderful?

• 7:04Rory Stewart?

  No, I mean, it's obviously ludicrous, right? It's obviously ludicrous because Conservative government's been in power for 12 years. She's been in the government for 10 years as a minister.

• 7:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 7:11Rory Stewart?

  She's been the Chief Secretary of the Treasury. She's been the Trade Minister, she's been the Foreign Secretary. She was very close to Boris Johnson. But again, I have a kind of grudging respect for her political instinct, which is that her only chance after 12 years is to try to pretend it's a new thing. And of course Boris Johnson managed that, didn't he? He won that huge election in 2019, when people would have thought everyone was completely exhausted of the Tories by somehow suggesting that a new leader meant a new party. And he did it by going Brexit, anti Brexit. And she's going to try to do it by saying that she's a much more radical right wing economist than he was.

• 7:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Listen, we talked about this in the podcast we did the week she became leader. The shock and awe on policy, up to and including decisions that have already been reversed, was all about saying, this is now a new government. And of course, parts of the media have fallen for it. They all talk about, you know, this government's only been in power for several weeks. No, they've been in power for 12 years. I thought the other thing I have to say is that goes back to this disconnect point. I mean, look, I've not been traveling around the country much this week. So I'm very much focused on, you know, when I talk about conversations I've had. It's been kind of in the main around here in the in the North London, you know, Brexit denying.

• 8:26Rory Stewart?

  Podcast, Brexit denying anti-growth coalition bubble.

• 8:28Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. We, by the way, did you see that my favourite tweet yesterday, Rory, it was from parody Boris Johnson, asking us why we had founded the Anti-Growth Coalition. So the podcast is clearly seen as the founder member of the Anti-Growth Coalition. But the sense you get from people is just of, and I don't know if you saw that word cloud that one of the polling companies put out.

• 8:49Rory Stewart?

  Well, that was the amazing James Johnson. That was an extraordinary word.

• 8:51Alastair Campbell?

  Is that your friend?

• 8:52Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's my friend. Yeah.

• 8:53Alastair Campbell?

  The one who criticises you for criticising pollsters?

• 8:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. But it's a great word cloud. And it was it was the word cloud, I think, that we talked about recently in relation to Keir Starmer.

• 9:02Alastair Campbell?

  And hers was like incompetent, useless. There's quite a lot of evil as well. And I don't think it was a very good fashion choice to wear the same dress as Emma Thompson wore when she was playing a fascist. I think that was probably not sensible.

• 9:16Rory Stewart?

  Very weird. Although curiously, she'd worn that dress before Emma Thompson wore it.

• 9:20Alastair Campbell?

  Ah, Rory Stewart has been following Liz Truss's clothes closely as well.

• 9:24Rory Stewart?

  So useless, untrustworthy, dangerous, and in the centre of it all was incompetent. And famously, when he did the same, the same word cloud on Keir Starmer, the word in the middle was boring.

• 9:36Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 9:37Rory Stewart?

  But I guess useless, incompetent, untrustworthy is not very helpful. He tried to put up the word cloud for what people thought of her before she became Prime Minister. And of course, she had a very, very different reputation. I mean, what's striking is not just that she's lost ground with the Conservative Party, she's also lost a lot of ground with the general public. Because when you were looking at those polls of Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss against Keir Starmer, when she was running for leadership, she wasn't very far behind him. She was a credible threat to Keir Starmer. It's only the last two weeks that have really put us in this catastrophic position.

• 10:10Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I think I think part of what her speech was trying to do, all that stuff about, you know, her defining moment of being given an air stewardess's badge, she's trying to sort of flesh out a little bit of colour about herself, because most people don't know who she is.

• 10:26Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, the only problem with that one, on that line, do you remember that? So the line for people who didn't listen to the whole speech as carefully as you did was, when she was growing up, she'd been given, you know, a flight attendant's badge and her brothers had been given pilots' badges. And then she's just sort of left it. But what she needed to do was say, and look who's flying now. There needed to be some kind of line at the end to get a laugh. There was nothing there.

• 10:49Alastair Campbell?

  The only, the only real kind of powerful oratorical moment came with one of those triptychs that politicians love, and it was about Ukraine. You know, Ukraine can, will, Ukraine, Ukraine will win, Ukraine must win, Ukraine will win. And that probably got the loudest applause of the day.

• 11:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 11:08Alastair Campbell?

  And what that said to me was actually, there wasn't much in that speech that actually related to stuff that she was directly in charge of. And I think the other thing is, we talked a lot about last week in relation to Labour about, I felt that Keir Starmer had found confidence. And it's true that, I don't think she showed confidence, I think she showed resilience to go out there with a smile on her face. I remember Bill Clinton always used to say, when he was really under the cosh during the whole Lewinsky thing. And I would say, you know, how, how do you keep going? This is like day after day after day. And he said, you've just got to get up every day, put a smile on your face and say, I am the only person in the world who's actually the President of the United States. I've got to go out and do the things that only the President of the United States can do. And she sort of, she was trying to give that sense, I am the leader. And she was

• 11:52Alastair Campbell?

  smiling, she was laughing. Her, her delivery was a little bit better than usual. I thought it was on any level a very bad speech, very badly delivered, but it was better than we expected.

• 12:01Rory Stewart?

  Much better than people expected. And I think, if you think about the fact that, you know, people were almost expecting, remember in the Conservative Party, we, we remember Theresa May going up on stage and actually losing her voice.

• 12:12Alastair Campbell?

  Is that the one when the, when the letters fell off the stage as well?

• 12:14Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, there was awful things would happen, yeah.

• 12:16Alastair Campbell?

  And the guy came up with, with the P45 and yeah.

• 12:19Rory Stewart?

  So let's very quickly, just, just to talk through what's happening in the Conservative Party at the moment. So the fundamental split now is a split between a libertarian conservatism, because the kind of pompous way of describing what Liz Truss is. Remember, she's somebody who comes from a left wing background. She started from a Republican, CND supporting family. She became a Le Dem, made a big speech against the monarchy. So she's come into the Conservative Party, not because she's a kind of shire Tory, she doesn't have any affection for the kind of Traditions of the British Constitution, its history and any of that kind of stuff. She comes into the Conservative Party because she believes in a very particular neoliberal vision of economics, she libertarian economics.

• 13:03Rory Stewart?

  And what she's done is she's revealed a huge split in the party between, as it were, the libertarian right, represented by her and quasi-quoting, and on the other hand, a very different Tory tradition, which I think if she thought about them for a second, she'd probably call the anti-growth coalition. And that's part of the problem because a lot of the things that, you know, made somebody like me a Conservative, and there are people in the Conservative Party who still come from my tradition, is that we believed in prudence, we believed in restraint, you know, love of country, tradition, respect for the countryside, trying to respect traditional

• 13:43Rory Stewart?

  institutions, and are actually often trying to defend those things against rampant free markets. In other words, for example, Tories are very fond of the green belt, although that's something Labour's supported also strongly in the past. But those things which she is a bit kind of casual with and which she sees as an impediment to development are things which are very precious to Conservatives. And you can see, just to finish this point, that a lot of her opponents are people who are calling against development, who are opposing energy projects, who are trying to stand up for environmental projects, which she would see as getting the way of growth. And that will tear the party apart.

• 14:20Alastair Campbell?

  But presumably there was a minister, Brendan, whatever his name is, I can't remember, is it Clark Smith?

• 14:24Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 14:25Alastair Campbell?

  And he was, he was celebrating the fact that they'd seen off some solar energy project in his constituency. Presumably he's now an enemy of growth, but he's still a minister.

• 14:34Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 14:35Alastair Campbell?

  Penny Mordaunt coming out on the record and saying, you know, we've, we, we should uprate benefits in line with inflation. Presumably she's an enemy of growth now. Sunak presumably, Gove. So she named, if you think about the people she named, Labour, SNP, the unions, Extinction Rebellion, they're kind of easy targets as enemies of growth. But I think it's going to become, I think this coalition of growth is going to become a kind of badge of pride, that, you know, people want to be part of the coalition against growth, because it also allows us to point out, back to the 12 years point. The real enemies of growth have been this conservative government that over 12 years is almost at half the level of growth that we had under a Labour government.

• 15:18Alastair Campbell?

  And that we're also back to our friend, the elephant in the room, Brexit. 4%. 4% of our economy has been taken out by Brexit. Well, that's an enemy of growth, if you ask me.

• 15:27Rory Stewart?

  She also said in the speech that she was going to get rid of all EU red tape regulations, I think, was it within a year?

• 15:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, we've heard that one before.

• 15:36Rory Stewart?

  But that's fascinating because I think that really makes people concentrate on what this growth, anti-growth thing is about. Because what exactly are those regulations that she thinks are standing in the way of growth? And of course, it's possible that she thinks many things that people in Britain care about are standing in the way of growth. Workers' protections, 40-hour week.

• 15:56Alastair Campbell?

  Not pumping shit into your sea.

• 15:59Rory Stewart?

  Not pumping shit into your sea. So it's absolutely true that in theory, you could generate more growth if you got rid of all kinds of protections, all kinds of regulations, and created some kind of horrifying sweatshop economy. But I don't think the British people are up for that.

• 16:13Alastair Campbell?

  No, and I saw, I noticed William Hague saying the other day that they underestimate this rebellion against some of the stuff that what they call in the war on nature, the RSPB and the National Trust that have come together and with other environmental organisations. That's all about stripping away regulations, the whole, the focus on investment zones. I wonder if, look, I could be wrong about this, it may be wishful thinking, but I wonder if they, they are just completely misunderstanding the zeitgeist, which has moved in many, many different ways. I'll give you an example of this. I was talking actually to somebody in Keir Starmer's team earlier, who was admitting that they'd been a little bit worried in the past about overdoing the environmental

• 16:58Alastair Campbell?

  agenda, because it was becoming part of the polarisation, it was sort of been wrapped into the whole woke nonsense and so forth. But the thing that energy prices has done. Has made people aware of the fact that we do need to develop new systems of energy. And if you can ally an environmental agenda with a lower price agenda, with a jobs agenda, with a regional agenda of this stuff happening all around the country, then that can become a very, very positive thing. And one thing I was disappointed about with, with, not disappointed, because I know it's very hard for the opposition to get coverage during the Tory conference week, particularly when they're ripping each other to bits. But I, I wanted Labour, after Keir Starmer had launched his, this, this, you know, Great

• 17:40Alastair Campbell?

  British Energy project, I wanted to hear more of that through being rolled out, you know, day after day, week after week. Because I think it's that kind of agenda that Labour's now got to seize.

• 17:49Rory Stewart?

  So maybe after the break, I'd love to get your sense on how Keir Starmer should play this, what your advice to him would be, and how he would think about dealing with this growth, anti-growth, because I wouldn't completely underestimate it. I think it is quite clever. Nobody actually wants to be seen as anti-growth. It'd be very dangerous for a political party to be seen as anti-growth. So it's quite, quite a clever framing. And it'd be interesting to see how you turn that around and jujitsu that back. Final, final thought from me. I think it's worth bearing in mind that the Conservative Party feels as though it's in quite a lot of trouble, not just because it's 30 points behind in the polls, but that really matters, because as we've explained, that's, you know, 250

• 18:33Rory Stewart?

  MPs losing their seats at current, current polling ratings. It's the majority of the MPs losing their jobs, losing their income, losing their seats. They're not, they obviously are not going to want that. But it's, it's also that 14 MPs have come out publicly against her in what are really only her first two weeks in office. And I've never seen, nobody's ever seen that before with the Conservative Party. I mean, usually, although it can be quite ruthless, it usually gives its leaders a bit of rope before it starts moving like that. And the sense of Rishi Sunak sitting up and brooding up in Richmond and not attending, the mistake of driving out people like Michael Gove and Grant Shapps, which when you know that they are really vicious street fighters who are

• 19:17Rory Stewart?

  Going to really punish you if you put them outside the party. Uh, all that stuff, I think, is is means that when Parliament returns, as it's about to. It's going to be a pretty tricky time because the whips are not going to be sure they're going to be able to get the budget through. And that's a very, very big deal to to understand that in the British system, passing the budget is the central thing. And it's the one thing the British governments have always been able to do because it's seen so central to the manifesto and the party. And actually, that's quite important for Britain's international reputation. It's it's not a place like Greece where sometimes the budget doesn't get passed. Along with the Bank of England, with the O B R, with the permanent section, the treasury, all this kind of stuff that they've been chipping away at. Getting the budget through is absolutely central.

• 20:00Rory Stewart?

  If you're in a world where you don't think you can get your flagship economic policies through with a majority of seventy nine MPs, you are in real, real trouble.

• 20:09Alastair Campbell?

  I do have a thing, I I don't know what sense you get, Roy, of how many Conservative MPs listen to our discussions. But I have been surprised by how many of them. I mean, I'm not talking dozens, but I'm talking, you know, more than two or three. How many of them regularly communicate to me what they think, either about the podcast or about the politics around what we're talking about? Um, and so I was in discussion yesterday with one of them. Um, and I said, well, what are you guys going to do? Because presumably you're scared to death by this. And he said, we're going to get more of these policies changed. Um, and I think the next one probably is, um, the welfare uprating. Now, every time you do that, when you put yourself out there as the leader or the chancellor, with your limited reserves of authority and credibility in the bank.

• 20:54Alastair Campbell?

  And you get turned over. And as you say, people like Michael Gove, I mean, if there's one thing people know about Michael Gove, he's a, you know. He's he has he reveled in being compared with Peter Mandelson. He's he's, you know, he's he's quite good at the dark arts.

• 21:08Rory Stewart?

  And he's very clever, very, very articulate and very determined.

• 21:11Alastair Campbell?

  And and and he'll and he'll be feeling that, you know, he's he's been in a position where he's felt quite sort of, you know, we are the masters and now he's not.

• 21:18Rory Stewart?

  And he can't understand why, you know, he was her boss, he was her boss in education and he thought they got on very, very well. And I remember when I used to work with Liz Truss, she was very admiring of Michael Gove, so he will have felt very hurt by this. Probably the the most effective minister in that cabinet and has been probably the most effective minister in every cabinet.

• 21:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we can perhaps revisit his record and education another day. But I also, if you listen to Cummings, he is utterly scathing about trust and has been the whole way through. And I wonder if that started when, because the thing that Gove is very, very good at, he may, he's very good at making anybody he's with feel that actually he's got enormous respect for them.

• 21:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, he's quite, he's quite charming and he's quite two-faced. But let me read out, maybe this is the best way to go to the break. I'm going to read out another message I got from a Tory AP, which I was very, very pleased with. I'm not going to delay because he'd like to stop him from sending me his messages, which are always entertaining and quite useful. He says, I love the way you're dressing down the Tory party at the moment. He obviously went to a public school, this guy. You're like a headmaster, flexing and bending the cave before you deliver a good thrashing. Thanks.

• 22:22Rory Stewart?

  On that vision of public school massacres, and we'll come back after the break. Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 22:36Speaker 03

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

• 22:42Speaker 04

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

• 22:47Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 22:50Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 22:51Speaker 03

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

• 22:56Speaker 04

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• 22:58Speaker 05

  It's me, the.

• 22:59Speaker 04

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• 23:01Speaker 05

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• 23:03Speaker 04

  What about a third time?

• 23:04Speaker 05

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• 23:11Speaker 04

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• 23:13Speaker 05

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• 23:18Speaker 04

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• 23:19Speaker 05

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• 23:21Speaker 04

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• 23:23Speaker 04

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• 23:24Speaker 05

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• 23:25Speaker 04

  Priceline.

• 23:26Speaker 06

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• 24:28Alastair Campbell?

  So, welcome back to the Rory Stewart emergency episode on the decline and possibly even the death of the Conservative Party. I'm overstating it because my heart is telling me to. So, let's talk a bit about Labour then Rory. In a much better position than they were after the conference season. I think Keir will have a bit of a spring in his step when he gets back into Parliament. I think it's very important that I, Keir rightly, we've talked before about how even though it's not watched by millions of people, but Prime Minister's Questions is a very, very important part of the political calendar, week in, week out. But I think one of the things that people say about Keir quite a lot is that they only

• 25:13Alastair Campbell?

  ever see him when he's kind of attacking the government and criticizing the government. And I think this period where the Conservatives really do look like they're going into a period of real economic challenge, political challenge because of all the divisions that we've been talking about, I really think that is a moment for Keir in particular, maybe leaving parts of the Shadow Cabinet and keep doing all the attack stuff which you have to do, but for Keir in particular to be leading on an alternative agenda. And the thing about, you know, the other thing that Keir did a speech a few weeks ago, where he actually said, if you ask me my three priorities for government, I'd say growth, growth, growth. He literally used that line. And because she's the, now the Prime Minister, and because the media will always ventilate conservative messages much more readily than

• 25:57Alastair Campbell?

  the Labour messages, she's kind of literally stolen that line.

• 26:00Rory Stewart?

  So what does he, what does he do about that?

• 26:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he should not move off the growth agenda because to do so plays into this idea that somehow unless you're a trust quarten conservative, you're somehow anti-growth. It's a ludicrous argument.

• 26:13Rory Stewart?

  Just, just to confirm, what, what he shouldn't do is start saying some of the things I'm tempted to say, which is that actually in order to protect the environment, protect workers' regulations, we may have to accept that we're not going to grow at the rate at which she's trying to push us to grow.

• 26:26Alastair Campbell?

  No, on the contrary, on the contrary, he should be saying if we want to build a proper, modern, dynamic economy of the future, it means actually embracing some of the things that she defines as being things of the past. He's got to, he's got to, he's got to own growth. But at the same time, I really, I've got a lot of hopes of this green agenda because I do think it's, it's moving to a different place. I think the energy crisis is inevitably moving it to a different place. And I think Labour should own that. I'd like to see Labour much more high profile with a positive agenda on health, which is not just about saying the Tories are terrible. And by the way, can I just say one thing about trust? Just go back to trust for a minute, Rory. Honestly,

• 27:07Alastair Campbell?

  when I saw her doing that loving with Theresa Coffee, my wonderful Deputy Prime Minister, and saying all the things that she's going to do, I noticed two things in particular. One, there was no mention of mental health, and that really annoyed me. At least Theresa May and David Cameron talked about mental health, wanted to push it up the agenda. And the second thing she says, and we're going to ensure that you will see a GP within two weeks. I mean, it's at the summit of our ambition. When we were standing for election in 1997, we, I think this is right, we had a promise that you would see a GP within two days. And we delivered that, and more. On the health, education, crime, transport, the public service agenda, I think Labour's

• 27:49Alastair Campbell?

  got to do more than just be saying the Tories are terrible. People know they're terrible.

• 27:53Rory Stewart?

  But some of that speech will unfortunately put her in real trouble because she's made these commitments now on health. I think they've now made commitments on policing, that you're going to have a policeman attending every home burglary in England. They're making commitments on education. They've said they're going to increase defence spending to 3% of GDP.

• 28:13Alastair Campbell?

  Good luck with that.

• 28:14Rory Stewart?

  Huge increase in expenditure. And at the same time, they're now committed to balancing the budget. And they're also haven't yet, oh, haven't yet, I mean, their signature policy, the way that she beat Rishi Sunak, was to say that she was going to make these enormous tax cuts, not the 45 to 40% tax cut on income tax, but cuts on a national insurance and cuts on corporation tax. He was going to put those things up to try to balance the budget. So she is in a situation where she's giving away tens of billions of pounds in tax cuts. She's making tens of billions of pounds in spending pledges. She's already borrowing far more than she should at much higher interest rates than

• 28:54Rory Stewart?

  she wanted. And now she's going to be under pressure from her backbenchers to keep benefits payments going up with inflation, which will hit things. And I don't know where she's going to get the money from. And I think this is why the markets are getting panicked.

• 29:08Alastair Campbell?

  But she can't, she won't get the money. And look, to be fair to David Cameron and to Theresa May, I think they had a sense of when they were, every party conference, every party leader is trying to do the big vision, and this is where we're heading, and follow me into the sunlit uplands. They're all doing that to some extent. But I can remember all the conference speeches I worked on with Tony Blair, with Gordon Brown, you were always, we were always answering the questions, yeah, but we have to answer the question, how? How are we going to do that? We've now had three years of Boris Johnson telling us of these wonderful things that he's going to deliver, very few of which he's done. Her speech was just a collection of great things that she's going to do by growing the pie. That was it. There was no how beyond that.

• 29:52Rory Stewart?

  So here, let me try to make the case for a... Centre conservatism or the left of the Conservative Party and what a responsible Conservative should be doing in this situation. What firstly should have happened is they should have realised quasi-courting and less trust, and I have no idea why they didn't, that there was an enormous risk when they came in, that the cost of borrowing was going to skyrocket. They should have realised that they were already sitting on a tinderbox and that they needed to be very careful what they're doing. They needed to take seriously what the Treasury was suggesting, which is that the only way that we were going to make it through this period was going to be to raise taxes. We needed to bring in forty, fifty, sixty billion pounds more in income in taxes in

• 30:37Rory Stewart?

  order to begin to balance the budgets. And that's something Rishi Sunak saw. And if they weren't going to do that, they should have realised they were facing big, big risks going in those markets. And I think finally, there's something that was sort of broken from the very beginning about her economic policy, because of course what she did by capping energy prices, even though you can see the political logic of doing it, is completely against everything that people who believe in her kind of economics believe in. A normal conventional economist, let alone a right-wing economist, would say that you would be much better giving cash to people so they can pay their energy bills than capping energy costs for two reasons.

• 31:19Rory Stewart?

  One is that it encourages them to increase consumption and gives them freedom over how they spend that cash. But secondly, you have a defined liability. The markets know how much money you're giving out. What she's done is she's signed up to a hundred and fifty, a hundred and sixty billion dollar undefined liability. And it's exactly what, very pompously, all of us, I think probably including you, definitely including Tony Blair, definitely including me, been going around the world for twenty, thirty years, telling other people's governments to cut their energy subsidies, saying it's better to keep people cash, that it's very inefficient and very damaging to subsidise energy. But she made that the centrepiece of what she did and blew up her whole economic policy from the beginning.

• 32:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and the other danger for her with making such a thing of growth, and I agree with you that it was clear what she wanted to take out, wanted people to take from the speech, and most people, that is what they've taken, the kind of absolute focus on growth. But once you've done that, you have to be seen to be delivering. And what's more, people have to feel that in their own lives. And I'm not sure she's going to have that much time to be able to do that.

• 32:26Rory Stewart?

  It won't work, will it? Because the other thing is that, I mean, she will feel that she's unlucky. But of course, pinned on her 100% from now onwards is what's happened to mortgage rates. And as I've been complaining on this show, mortgage rates have gone from 4.74% to 6% in two weeks, average mortgage rates. That is an extra £170 per month on a 30-year mortgage on a £200,000 home. £170 a month. That is a lot of money for somebody. And £100,000 mortgages are up for renewal at the moment.

• 33:00Alastair Campbell?

  And one of their big things, which Johnson fought on, campaigned and promised, and she's done the same, is this idea of, you know, giving everybody the opportunity to own their own home and get on the housing ladder. They've made it a lot harder. The reason I think why incompetence maybe came out in your friend James Johnson's word cloud, sometimes, I think particularly when people get to these top positions, there are such things as defining moments. Jeremy Corbyn probably didn't realise at the time when he stood in that church and didn't sing the National Anthem, that that was going to become a defining moment. And he could argue rightly, in my view, he could maybe say, well, it's ridiculous that should have become a defining moment. But you can't always choose

• 33:42Alastair Campbell?

  what becomes a defining moment. Likewise, with Gordon Brown, I think it became a defining moment when it looked like the Labour Party was being marched up the hill for an election, and then they were marched back down again. These things become defining. And what I think has defined Liz Truss and Cali Quasi-Cuarte is that they themselves were directly responsible for the phenomenon you've just described, which has eaten straight into people's pockets. And they can blame Covid and they can blame Putin all they want. But on this one, definably, people know that this happened because they screwed up on their watch in their first big acting government. It's very hard to recover from that.

• 34:23Rory Stewart?

  Your defining moment thing is very interesting, though, structurally, isn't it? That everybody has their defining moment. And for David Cameron, I guess it was the Brexit referendum. For Tony Blair, I guess it's Iraq, right?

• 34:35Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think, well, I think when you said David Cameron, for example, I would argue that for David Cameron, his first defining moment was that speech he made at the party conference where he ended up defeating David Davis. I would argue that Tony's early defining moment was actually in the hall where we're going to be on Saturday, Blackpool Winter Gardens, when he made the initial applause for speech. Then there were further defining moments. I think Kosovo was a defining moment. Obviously, Iraq was part of, became a defining moment. So I think if you've been in power that long, you have several of them. But my point is, the first one is often the most important. So Tony's, Tony's leadership, Tony

• 35:16Alastair Campbell?

  was able to last as long as he did, in part because early on, he was defined on his terms very positively.

• 35:22Rory Stewart?

  What's weird about history is we sort of almost remember Tony Blair's successful, many people do, as that's the single line, tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, as though if you can get that great phrase, that alone can sort of survive for, you know, thirty years. It remains a household phrase. Thirty years later, who produced that? Did he come up with himself?

• 35:42Alastair Campbell?

  No, that, I think I've got, that I think was from when he was Shadow Home Secretary. And I think it might have been Gordon who, but the, but the, but these are, these are the things that are, it's why the words in the end are so important. And what I always felt about Johnson, for example, is that he was good at inventing the slogan, okay? But they didn't really relate to an overall strategy. Education, education, education meant something. Tough on crime, tough on causes of crime, that meant something. New Labour, New Britain, it meant something. And likewise, I feel with, with Truss at the moment, growing the pie. I think it'll become the stuff of comedy rather than strategy. I think her constant, you know, the, the anti-growth coalition, I think it'll become

• 36:27Alastair Campbell?

  a problem for her rather than, because these people aren't anti-growth. The Labour Party's not anti-growth, the SNP's not anti-growth. They're just, they have different policies to the government. It's a different thing.

• 36:37Rory Stewart?

  So if we just step back into the much bigger issue that, that is at the heart of all these problems, which is the structural issue of how people like Jeremy Corbyn or Liz Truss become the leaders of these parties. And at the heart of this, Is the decision to give that choice to the party members, not to the MPs. If the MPs had had the choice, they would not have had Jeremy Corbyn. I think they would have had David Miliband over Ed Miliband. If the MPs had had the choice, they would not have got Liz Truss. They would have gone for Rishi Sunak. I think if the MPs had had the choice and they hadn't had to worry about the party members, I think they might have thought twice about Boris Johnson as well. There's a sense the party members are dragging towards him.

• 37:20Rory Stewart?

  And there is something that doesn't make sense in a democracy. Giving the vote to the whole population makes sense. Giving the vote to the elected representatives, in other words, the MPs, makes sense. But giving the vote to people just on the basis of whether they pay five or 50 quid for a party membership a year makes no sense at all, particularly when there are so few of them.

• 37:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I see. I think that we were always committed to trying to develop towards a process where the membership had much greater say in decisions about who led the party. But I think your final point there is the important one. When party memberships are declining rather than growing. And of course, a lot of people joined the party as a result of Jeremy Corbyn. And, you know, fair play to him to that. Quite a lot of them have left. I think that's left the Labour Party paradoxically in a stronger position. But, you know, we're back to the age old argument about whether the people that we already put in power should have more power or whether that power should be diluted by others. I think we're saying this because Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party and Johnson

• 38:27Alastair Campbell?

  and now Truss became leader of the Conservative Party. But, you know, you've got to, you know, I look at Tory MPs and I think a lot of the public will look at, let's just say that the Tories decide we've got to get rid of Truss.

• 38:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Alastair Campbell?

  But we can't possibly trust the members to do it.

• 38:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Alastair Campbell?

  It's got to be done as a kind of backroom stitch up by the MPs and Graham Brady strutting around.

• 38:47Rory Stewart?

  I wouldn't put it as a backroom stitch up. I would say we live in a parliamentary democracy. The core of the parliamentary democracy is that the Prime Minister isn't a president. The Prime Minister is just first amongst equals from the MPs. Our whole constitutional system has been based on the fact that you elect the MP and then the MPs form the government and one of them becomes the Prime Minister. And the MPs know these people much better. They've spent years with them. They've worked with them. They sit in the tea rooms with them. They spend 10 hours a day.

• 39:14Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, don't you think that if you're, if they get rid of Truss and they say, and maybe the Tory party would go along with it. I suspect they would because they'd think, even they have got to think this is going to be ludicrous, trying to have a, you know, a fourth prime minister in six years elected by the Tory party is absurd. But if you, I think most people are going to think that actually they're only doing this as a way of avoiding a general election yet again.

• 39:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think, and there's another point, which is that we live in an age which thinks very lazily about democracy in a way that is opposed to MPs, doesn't like MPs, doesn't trust MPs and somehow imagines that asking 150,000 people is better than asking the people that are working with them. But the people that are working with these leaders are elected. And that gives them a legitimacy that members of a political party simply don't have. I mean, there's no check on who becomes a member of the Conservative Party or the Labour Party. You just pay your subscription. I was a member of the Labour Party myself. Send him my cheque. I become a member of the Labour Party. Why should that be enough to give me a vote and who becomes the Prime Minister?

• 40:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, in my view, it shouldn't, it shouldn't on any level. I think, I think that, I think we're, we look, we're going to have to take a long, hard look at, at our political processes. I do think the parties have underestimated the extent to which they are now seen as part of the problem. And the disconnect with our politics. But at the same time, you know, the parties have a duty and a responsibility to try to involve more and more people in their running. But the, the Tory party, go back to the point about the disconnect between what was happening in that hall and what was happening in the real world. People in the real world are looking on thinking, what are these people on?

• 40:48Rory Stewart?

  And I'm not sure that many people in the real world were watching. I'd be interested to see what, what the viewer figures were.

• 40:54Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think, I think people are, I get a sense that things like Truss's speech, I know I could be wrong about this, but I think, I think people were very, very interested in what she had to say. But I think, you know that thing, I can't stand that thing at the end where the, the guy's doing the, the packages on the news bulletins and they, they do their pieces to camera as they, as Liz Truss and her husband are walking out in the background. And then they have these sort of clipped interviews with half of the cabinet all saying how absolutely brilliant it was and how absolutely marvellous. And I just scream at them, you know. Try and see this from the perspective of somebody who's watching this, who's in the position that you've been describing of just seeing your mortgage costs soar. Show them humility and understanding.

• 41:33Rory Stewart?

  One thing we did want to finish on was

• 41:36Alastair Campbell?

  OPEC.

• 41:36Rory Stewart?

  OPEC, yeah. So in a very, very, very dramatic decision, which will make a huge difference to everything, to global conflict, to poverty, to the future of the war in Ukraine. Saudi Arabia has led a decision in OPEC to reduce production of oil by 2 million barrels. That's a loss of production loss. To put it in context, in order to try to deal with the energy crisis and insulate the West against what Russia was doing in Ukraine and put pressure on Russia. Biden was desperately trying to extract another million barrels out of the United States and get another million barrels out of Canada, really struggling to do that. He basically went to Venezuela, a traditional enemy cap in hand, trying to

• 42:17Rory Stewart?

  get them to increase production. And he went to Saudi to ask for the same thing. Now, this is a very, very difficult decision because depriving Russia of its income from oil, which is what you can achieve by keeping production and prices down, because it's not economical for Russia to get the oil out of the ground at a lower price, was one of the best ways of putting pressure on Putin. And if the price now moves up above $100 a barrel, Russia can start exporting again and everybody's in trouble. So this is a bad sign.

• 42:47Alastair Campbell?

  No, and also it slightly came out of the blue. And of course, it came on the back of Biden going to to see Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi leader. And he, you know, he'd said some very, very, very harsh things. So even the visit itself was seen as something of a climb down is the wrong word, but you know, it was seen as slightly embarrassing for him. And he went there and didn't really do the tough diplomacy because he was desperate to keep on with what's he's been very successful. The Americans have been much more successful than Europeans in. Keeping price of gas, as they call it, fairly low.

• 43:27Alastair Campbell?

  But essentially, what's done is that the Saudis have put two fingers up and sent a very, quite damaging signal at a time when Putin looked like he was on the ropes.

• 43:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and the reason, I think, that the primary reason they've done it is that they need the money. And you can understand Saudi Arabia turning around and saying to the West, well, that's all very well for you, but we, this is worth tens of billions of dollars a year to us, we need this. And they've got this very ambitious plan called Vision 2030, which Man bin Salman's trying to drive ahead. And the idea is that when the world has weaned itself off oil, or oil's peaked, Saudi has got itself into a new state. So it's building a new city called Neon, this amazing kind of sci fi city. They're spending an incredible amount of money on trying to develop everything from tourism to environmental parks. That costs them an enormous amount of money. And they need to keep the revenue flowing in. So driving the oil price up makes a huge difference

• 44:24Rory Stewart?

  to Saudis. But I think there's another thing, which is that they don't particularly want to be enemies with Russia. And Russia is doing things which the US is no longer doing. It's swaggering around in Africa, it's sending mercenaries in to prop people up in the Central African Republic and Burkina Faso. It's the sort of player, and it's become a kind of ally for the Gulf in Syria against the Iranians. So having initially backed Bashar al-Assad being an enemy of theirs, they've now sort of reconciled themselves. So it's, but it's part of a general story of two things, I guess. It's a general story of the fact that the anti-Russian coalition is, is nothing like as strong as you can sometimes convince

• 45:04Rory Stewart?

  yourself in Europe or the United States. And secondly, that America's power is waning, isn't it?

• 45:11Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. And no, I think, I think, I think that's absolutely right. And, but I, I also thought that Putin was in a particularly difficult place, I thought. He'd had that sort of show in Red Square, he'd had his sort of sham referendums. Ukrainians, as you were talking about in the main podcast this week, you know, really doing even better than people had expected in this, in this counter offensive. And this thing suddenly comes out of the blue and really, really helps him.

• 45:40Alastair Campbell?

  Now, that's not done without a fair bit of forward thinking by the Saudis.

• 45:44Rory Stewart?

  And by the Russians.

• 45:46Alastair Campbell?

  So that's quite, that's a big strategic choice they've made.

• 45:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, a lot of, lot of conversations with Russians and Saudis. Sometime we'll send the pod maybe, but it's a big, big area, but we should get into the sanction busting going on because it's very interesting what's happening with money laundering in the Gulf, what's happening with sanction busting coming out of Iran, the ways in which the Russians are sending oil through Egypt to Saudi Arabia to power Saudi Arabian plants while the Saudis pumping oil and exporting it. I mean, there's every which way that Russia seems to be able to get around some of these sanctions and they've probably been thinking about this ever since 2014, preparing for the moment to work out how they were going to deal with these things.

• 46:23Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think we should close on me saying something that I don't say very often. I think Lestrus has done the right thing in going to this conference in Prague. I think Macron has done the right thing, and I say that quite a lot, in recognizing that there is a need to broaden the scope of the European agenda beyond merely just being the European Union.

• 46:46Rory Stewart?

  Tell us a bit about the conference. Not everyone will know about the conference.

• 46:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's basically thinks that there should be a forum for 44 European countries beyond the 27 members.

• 46:58Alastair Campbell?

  And including, you know, it's a bit like Eurovision. People often say, why is Israel in Eurovision? But they should be there as well. And I think he's, he's sort of got to worry that China and America is the two great powers in the world and there's a real risk, as he puts it, of history passing Europe by. And that you can't necessarily envisage the European Union growing to the extent that it might, particularly Britain having left and difficulty with the accession countries. We talked about the Balkans, for example. I think there's still they desperate to get in and I think some of the Europeans are desperate to get them in, but it's a slow process. So he wants to broaden that agenda and have this kind of broader discussion regularly on issues to do with

• 47:41Alastair Campbell?

  security, geopolitics, strategy, energy policy, environment and so forth.

• 47:46Alastair Campbell?

  So I think it's a good thing that he's doing it. And I think it's a good thing that Liz Truss recognizes the need for Britain to be part of that debate. I just think it's very, very sad that because of Brexit and because our country's politics are currently seen as being pretty basket case. We're just, you know, it's interesting listening to, as you know, I listen to quite a lot of German and French media and, you know, you listen to the British media and you think this was Macron has called this summit to try to sort of, you know, get a better relationship with Britain post Brexit. Britain is barely figuring in the discussion as it's being portrayed in other parts of Europe and other parts of the world. And I think that's just a sad consequence of the decline that we've chosen for ourselves.

• 48:27Alastair Campbell?

  Well, on that incredibly cheery note, Alastair, I'd let you get back to the lie day. Well, no, I've had my swim for the day and I take it you'll be coming swimming in the sea with me off Blackpool after we've done the show. Climb, we're going swimming in the sea off Blackpool in October. I think we should, do you think? You're a hard man. All right, come, I'll go give it a go. I'll give it a go. I won't say how long I'm going to be in the water. See you there. All right, bye.

• 48:52Speaker 02

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• 49:08Speaker 04

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• 49:12Speaker 03

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• 49:16Speaker 04

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• 49:17Speaker 03

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• 49:37Speaker 10

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