452. Question Time: America’s New Martyr and Westminster’s Hidden Spies

Is Charlie Kirk becoming America’s new martyr for the far right? How deep does Chinese spying go in Western politics? And, is Moldova the next target for Russian meddling? 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 ⁠https://www.fuseenergy.com/politics⁠ ⚡ Find out more about how Google’s AI is helping fuel the UK’s growth and transformation and read the report at goo.gle/aiworks. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Josh Smith Assistant Producer: Evan Green, India Dunkley Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:00Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:32Alastair Campbell?

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• 1:39Rory Stewart?

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• 2:31Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:35Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. And first question Rory is from Tom, who's a member in Alice Springs.

• 2:40Rory Stewart?

  Alice Springs, Australia.

• 2:42Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, I've been there. Fabulous place. Charlie Kurt's killing must be condemned, but the reaction is also concerning, says Tom. With the clampdown on anyone who now says anything negative about him, including even quoting him, is cancel culture worse from the right than the left? And is this a Reichstag moment?

• 3:02Rory Stewart?

  Well, let me begin by saying there's a big push from people who are on the soft right to think that we're all being hysterical. So I know I keep quoting my mother, but she has a general tendency to assume that when we're talking about what Donald Trump is doing, or when we're talking about what's happening in Gaza, we're exaggerating and we're undermining ourselves by exaggerating. And of course, comparisons to the Reichstag, to Hitler, Goebbels, gives an engine to my mother's idea that we're exaggerating. But, but, but, it is very, very, very scary. And the Mike Pompeo interview that we did on

• 3:44Rory Stewart?

  leading coming out on Monday, one of the things that troubled me about it is how dismissive he is of any attempts to suggest that America has entered a new world, that threats against Greenland matter, that the contempt for the European Union is a problem. The speech that Stephen Miller, who is Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff of Policy, and the big kind of, I guess probably the big intellectual powerhouse, insofar as there is one of the Trump campaign, at the Charlie Kurt funeral, is completely astonishing. If you play it, and there's many versions available, you can see him saying things which are basically...

• 4:27Rory Stewart?

  Some strange kind of extreme ethnic nationalism of a sort I've never heard from a mainstream American politician. He says Erica, who is Charlie Cook's widow,

• 4:39Rory Stewart?

  stands on the shoulders of thousands of years of warriors, people who built our industry, our civilization, who took us out of the caves into the light. And he keeps talking about legacy inheritance. And the story seems to be our people, presumably white people, are the people who built Athens and built Rome and built Monticello, which is Thomas Jefferson's house, where famously the slave quarters were kept right next to this great classical Palladian mansion. These are the good people. We created civilization and our opponents are people who live in caves, who are barbarians, who are anti-civilization,

• 5:22Rory Stewart?

  and we now need to stand up. It's like the Lord of the Rings. This is a speech taking on the orcs at Mordor. We, you know, the great inheritors of civilization need to fight these barbarians. And who are these barbarians? Well, presumably they're the people who do not come from Europe, and presumably they represent most of the Democratic Party. I mean, what did you make of the speech?

• 5:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I sort of watched bits of it and found it pretty horrifying. It wasn't a memorial. It was a rally. It was a political event. It did remind me, I'm afraid, a bit of the Reichstag moment where something bad happens and the MAGA, they just seized on it. And you almost felt like from the minute Charlie Kirk was assassinated, that they were ready for this. It was to weaponize it. And somebody did a very interesting analysis of Stephen Miller's speech against a famous speech that Goebbels did called The Coming Storm, became known as The Coming Storm. And there were phrases. Almost directly lifted.

• 6:22Rory Stewart?

  Well, Charlie Kirk says, doesn't he, the warrior says, we are the storm.

• 6:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly. So I, and I, and I, and the other thing that Stephen Miller went on to say was that if you aren't of these people, him, Trump, MAGA, Charlie Kirk, you are nothing. You count for nothing. You are nothing people.

• 6:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 6:41Alastair Campbell?

  And so that was pretty scary. I found it quite scary that Tucker Carlson stood at there and basically tried to make a parallel between Charlie Kirk and Jesus Christ. I found it pretty horrific that so many, that there's now these people who bang on about there being a free speech in, problem in, in the UK. I had this with Curtis Yavin, talking about, you know, all these people in Britain who get arrested for tweet, for tweets and so forth. I mean, this is far bigger, a much bigger attack on free speech. Now, okay, Jimmy Kimmel has been reinstated, it seems, because of the backlash. But Trump celebrating the departure of a TV satirist, suing newspapers that came out against him during the campaign for massive sums of money. They do not believe in free speech.

• 7:25Alastair Campbell?

  Free speech is, you, you have free speech so long as you agree with us. If you don't agree with us, you are, as Stephen Miller said, nothing. And the other thing I found alarming about the, um, the whole event was just think of all the deaths that there have been. Think of all the deaths that have been in Gaza. Think of all the deaths that have been in Ukraine. Think of Melissa Hartman, the, the Democrat politician who was murdered with her husband and her dog, about, who Trump said he didn't know about that. Nobody raised that with him.

• 7:53Rory Stewart?

  And, and, and the gun deaths in the United States, which are completely startling.

• 7:57Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody, somebody made the point that this, this was the celebration of the life of a man who believed that, in the right of everyone to carry guns, where Elon Musk and Donald Trump were having a conversation behind a bulletproof glass inside a secure

• 8:12Rory Stewart?

  And I, I think people forget the figures in the US. Directly connected to gun ownership. If you look from sixty, seventies, eighties, nineties, two thousands, the number of people killed each decade in the United States with civilian on civilian gun violence soars. In the UK, the homicide rate actually falls down. And in the US, literally over a million people have now been killed with guns since the Second World War within the United States. It's the most terrifying situation. And the Charlie Kirk shooter is a deeply, deeply disturbed man, many of whom's thoughts, attitudes, behaviours are very, very similar to the way that school shooters emerge and leave

• 8:57Rory Stewart?

  us with the same terrifying sense of being unable to explain them. I mean, one of the things that you notice when you read stories on school shooters, that journalists go out, they they interview the parents, they interview the friends, they read through their diaries, they read through their posts, and and they hit bedrock pretty quickly. Pretty quickly, it becomes inexplicable. You never really manage to understand fully the psychology that leads people to do this.

• 9:23Alastair Campbell?

  But right now, the Trump, Vance, et cetera, crowd, they don't want to understand. There were posters around this event. So it was held in a football stadium. And there were posters there say, they killed Charlie Kirk. They killed Charlie Kirk. They will not kill his ideas. And it's interesting what the ideas were, because Michael Wolfe, who I've done this Murdoch mini series with that's coming out soon, I saw him on his very beautifully filmed Instagram account. And he was saying that this is a really interesting example of where Charlie Kirk is ultimately a religious figure who has been co-opted by politics. And I do find that very, very interesting. And I sent you an article that

• 10:08Alastair Campbell?

  somebody sent me from the Humanist Society about the rise of Christian nationalism. And a lot of what's happening in America. In a country actually where religion is not as prevalent or as popular as it used to be, but where actually there is this deliberate attempt to fuse right wing politics with Christianity, and also partly that is to other, anybody who is not a practicing Christian, and particularly of course Muslims.

• 10:34Rory Stewart?

  And particularly of course Muslims. Very striking, we talked about it with the Tommy Robinson march in London, that there were people carrying crosses and signs saying Christ is King. And Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, and a number of other bishops have written a formal letter rejecting this vision of Christianity.

• 10:55Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 10:56Rory Stewart?

  And of course, what they don't say, because they wouldn't say, but I'm very happy to say, is I'm not sure that any of these people carrying these banners are actually serious practicing Christians at all. I think it's just a pure cover for anti-Muslim sentiment. And that journalists who indulge the idea that this is an expression of genuine religious feeling, what is Christianity fundamentally about? It is fundamentally about getting beyond ourselves. It's fundamentally about the other. It's about the empathy and imagination to see, like the Good Samaritan, a neighbour from another community and look after them. It's about driving ourselves in the words St Paul's to think about slaves, to think

• 11:39Rory Stewart?

  about women, to think about the poor above all, and for it to be co-opted by people who are entirely about selfishness. Look after yourself, strength to the power, the weak can go to the wall.

• 11:53Alastair Campbell?

  Hate the other.

• 11:54Rory Stewart?

  Is so sinister and disturbing.

• 12:00Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I found Charlie Kirk's widow's speech.

• 12:06Alastair Campbell?

  Probably the only one that you felt was even vaguely appropriate for a memorial event. And she talked about forgiveness. She did, and I thought it was profoundly moving that she said, you know, I forgive the killer because that is what Jesus would do. Next up was Donald Trump saying, he almost said it word for word, like when he was with Keir Starmer, talking about Palestinian recognition. This is one area where I disagree. This is one area where I disagree. I hate my opponents. And not everybody, but quite a sizable chunk in that stadium burst into spontaneous applause. I hate my opponent. That is the notion right at the heart of authoritarianism. You hate your opponent.

• 12:50Alastair Campbell?

  If you hate somebody, you want to destroy them. And I think that I was reading up on, just because I knew we were going to be talking about this, on McCarthyism. Joseph McCarthy, the senator, Republican senator, who headed up this sort of witch hunt against people who were engaged in un-American activities, said there were 250 people in the State Department who were communists. Turned out, you couldn't find any, but incredible traction along the way. But if you think back to McCarthy, at least they had inquiries. Now, these people just call other people out. Jimmy Kimmel should get sacked. Jimmy Kimmel gets sacked. Okay, he's come back. People on boats in Venezuela, they're drug dealers.

• 13:35Alastair Campbell?

  We should be allowed to kill them. And they do kill them. And they do kill them. They've done it three times now. No apologies, nothing. So I think the idea this is Christian and the point about the way this debate is developing, I had a message from a Brit who lives in the States who said, I don't know if you're watching Charlie Kirk, but Charlie Kirk's funeral, you should, because this is what's coming your way. And what he meant by that was for, let's take GB News. GB News, okay, not much in the way of viewing, but it's got quite a hold in the political world right now. Um, Paul Marshall, the guy who owns it, former Liberal Democrat.

• 14:14Alastair Campbell?

  And I, I, I said to Nick Clay, why didn't you give this guy a seat and get him a safe seat and he might, might have stayed on the sort of, you know, a decent path. He is a, a sort of, you know, projects himself as a real sort of Christian thinker. And he, his media outlets are coming from this very right wing perspective.

• 14:36Rory Stewart?

  And he knows the spectator.

• 14:37Alastair Campbell?

  Spectator, you know, unheard, GB News, he's, you know, he's become quite a player within the, within the media world. And his view is that we have, I've got the quote here. Traditional British idealism rests on the Judeo-Christian understanding that we are all in moral terms, fallen creatures. Somewhere amid the arrogance of the Enlightenment, Curtis Yavin hates the Enlightenment as well, we lost this sense of fallenness. Now, I don't think that's a majority view in this country.

• 15:09Rory Stewart?

  It's really interesting. It's really interesting. So the firstly, the, that, uh, they're so focused on the Judeo-Christian inheritance. And you can see that this is making common cause because after Charlie Kirk's death, most of the senior figures in Israeli politics came out and made condolence messages about Judeo-Christian inheritance. So that's, that's one thing. The second thing is this fallen stuff. The notion of our fallenness should be driving a sense of, of radical humility, a sense that, um, we're, we're broken and that we all need God. And that that should develop an incredible sense of our empathy with other people who are suffering, other people who are struggling. Instead of which, what it's often used by.

• 15:55Rory Stewart?

  By other people, including my friend Danny Kruger, who's now defected to Reform and who's also has made speeches in Parliament attacking paganism, attacking the Enlightenment, attacking effectively liberal values, is that they use the idea that we're fallen to forgive their rotten allies, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, doesn't matter how much they lie, how much they misbehave, they're like, you know, we forgive them, everybody's fallen, we're all sinful. When it comes to their enemies, boy, there's not much forgiving at all. The enemies are immediately stereotyped as the evil that needs to be eradicated, the darkness, all this Charlie Kirk stuff.

• 16:35Alastair Campbell?

  So this this piece I read about Christian nationalism, he actually quoted quite length from one of Kruger's speeches in Parliament last July, and he said that MPs had to back a revival of the faith, recovery of Christian politics, a refounding of the nation. Christians should destroy, I love that word, banish from public life a woke, modern creed which combines ancient paganism, Christian heresies, and the cult of modernism. And then went on to say, God knows what this means, Rory, maybe you can help me because you went to school with him, to worship human rights is to worship fairies. What the hell does that mean?

• 17:11Rory Stewart?

  Well, so this is an idea that human rights are a complete fantastical invention that has no foundation in reality. And again, human rights matters within the Christian tradition because it's founded on a sense that each one of us is uniquely created by God, is unique in our dignity, is unique in our equality, and our rights are founded on that. That's why there is a very profound Catholic tradition of rights going all the way back to Thomas Aquinas. And this attempt to try to suggest that human rights is simply a kind of liberal fantasy, you know, actually, people are really interested in geeking out

• 17:54Rory Stewart?

  on this. I have a huge argument with Jacob Rees-Mogg where the two of us went at each other for an hour in the House of Commons, where I'm defending the European Court on Human Rights and Jacobs attacking it, but remember also that Danny Kruger is one of the people that JD Vance saw when he came to the Cotswolds. So this is the beginning of the development of this Christian stuff. And I think it behoves Christians to speak against this. And I'm very pleased that the leaders of the Church of England are standing up and saying, no, this is not Christianity, just as the last Pope and the current Pope has called out JD Vance. And they, look, don't listen to me, I don't know anything about this stuff, but the Pope certainly does.

• 18:33Alastair Campbell?

  The Pope is something of an expert on these issues, Rory. Okay, state visit. Davinia, who's a member from Montreal, on a lighter, if diplomatic note, when Rory next speaks with his friend, His Majesty the King, could he ask, A, why was the state banquet menu in French? And B, why there were no English wines on the menu?

• 18:55Rory Stewart?

  Rule Britannia here.

• 18:56Alastair Campbell?

  I think so. Lovely wines from Kent. None of that Chardonnay nonsense.

• 19:02Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, it's, I, I, I'm, I, very interesting. I'll, I'll try to get an answer for you. I'll report back if he's happy to.

• 19:09Alastair Campbell?

  He, I'm going to say, there was some wonderful, uh, stuff on social media of Charles's face during Trump's speech. He did, it struck me, he was stifling.

• 19:21Rory Stewart?

  He did, he did do though, what, what you asked, which is, His Majesty did push firmly on the subject of Ukraine during his speech.

• 19:28Alastair Campbell?

  He did, he did.

• 19:29Rory Stewart?

  It was really interesting, that, really interesting, what it tells us about how a monarchy can operate in the modern world. And, uh, the way in which it takes some of the, both gives the ceremony, gives the event for Trump, takes some of the political energy out of it. No, I, I, it, it reconfirms me, again, and I'm completely party pre on this, that King Charles is doing an unbelievably good job. And we're very, very lucky to have him.

• 19:54Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, so it wouldn't, it wouldn't have, um, I don't think the Queen. Uh, I don't mean Queen Camilla, I mean Queen Elizabeth. I don't think the Queen would have made that speech in quite the same way. I thought there was something truly comical about Donald Trump being wheeled around in a carriage in the grounds of Windsor Park with lots of sort of military personnel hanging around. Quite good bagpipes this time, unlike Prince Philip's funeral. But yeah, anyway, as for the wine, I don't know, because of course, they wouldn't have worried too much about that because famously Donald Trump has never drunk alcohol.

• 20:28Rory Stewart?

  Well, maybe, I wonder whether they're not, yeah, whether they're slightly teasing Donald Trump also by showing their European connections.

• 20:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, like when, like when the Queen wore that sort of Brexit flag hat. Anyway, there we are. Right, that's, that's enough of Trump.

• 20:45Rory Stewart?

  Final question, before the break. To Miri Yads, what does the collapse of the Chinese spying case mean for the credibility of the UK's ability to protect parliament from foreign interference?

• 20:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, again, to plug Mike Pompeo, God, did he give us a hard time about this new embassy, the new Chinese embassy. You're building, you've got this big building, you're going to have 200 Chinese spies in there. I don't care if they say they're diplomats, they're all members of the Communist Party and they work for intelligence.

• 21:12Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and I promise you, they're also, well, look, I, I've never quite got this because the truth of the matter is that we're all very open and very proud about spying on China and doing all we can to recruit agents all the way through the Chinese system.

• 21:24Alastair Campbell?

  On the dark web.

• 21:25Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. And of course, we do an incredible, you know, the British signals intelligence, American signals intelligence, collecting extraordinary amounts of data worldwide. I totally think it's absurd if we start behaving like sort of prim Victorians pulling up our petticoats and saying, whoa, this is shocking, the Chinese are spying on us. However, it's also worth bearing in mind that we need to be serious about the fact the Chinese are spying on us and we need to be careful and we need to protect ourselves against it. But that isn't a moral judgment on China when we have massive agencies dedicated to spying on the Chinese and Russians. Of course, they're spying back and we should protect ourselves against it.

• 22:03Alastair Campbell?

  And, and the, the, the scale of the, I was talking to somebody recently who told me that there were, there were now more than a million people in China who basically work for intelligence. It's a lot of people.

• 22:14Rory Stewart?

  It's enormous. And and and their their cyber attack people into hundreds of thousands. And after the break, we'll come back on Moldova, where we can talk about what the Russians have been doing on this kind of stuff. But it it just just for people who haven't been following the case, Christopher Cash and Christopher Berry were face accusations of breaching the Official Secrets Act. And the case has now been dropped. We covered it in in the podcast when it happened. I was always a bit sceptical, to be honest, about this case and whether they'd ever be able to get evidence to put it together and prosecute. These people were not people with developed vetting, working for our government. They were people who had were running parliamentary organisations

• 22:54Rory Stewart?

  for discussions on China, who may or may not have connections to China. But I couldn't quite see how they were going to put the case together. And sure enough, it's now collapsed. And I also wondered, from the point of view of the Chinese, whether hiring people doing the equivalent of all party parliamentary groups was the best way of spending your intelligence bucks. But maybe I'm being a bit rude about all party parliamentary groups.

• 23:16Alastair Campbell?

  And and the point is, Rory, they they operate at every level that they can. So it'd be very odd not to do Parliament in some way. Anyway, the Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, is very angry about this and thinks that Parliament has to do more to protect itself and that this sends a very, very bad signal. And the point about the embassy is, I mean, it is a big strategic decision, but it's playing into this idea that the Americans have, that we're some sort of basket case. I mean, I think it's a sign of that we're still a serious country, that the Chinese want to build this massive new embassy and stack it full of of their spies. It's just we have to hope that...

• 23:51Rory Stewart?

  But I didn't quite understand that the the the issue here. I mean, what is it exactly that Pompeo is worried about? And Priti Patel's also very cross about this. But it's essentially planning permission for a new huge embassy. Is the idea that somehow, in the current position that the embassy is located, they're not able to do all the signals intelligence they could do from the new embassy, presumably not, right? I mean, so in terms of actual technical ability to spy...

• 24:14Alastair Campbell?

  They are expanding. They're going to get more.

• 24:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, that's a question of visas. That's not a question of buildings.

• 24:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:18Rory Stewart?

  So and we can always expel Chinese diplomats.

• 24:20Alastair Campbell?

  Also, we welcome the speeding up of the planning process, don't we? Planning is a...

• 24:22Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. Except, and we will cover this next week, when it comes to the tearing up of the national parks legislation. Anyway.

• 24:29Alastair Campbell?

  While we're on this subject, before we go to the break, Rory, podcast partner from one of our sister podcasts, The Rest Is Classified, Gordon Carrera, wants to have a word.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Hi Rory, hi Alistair, thanks for the question. There is a lot of shock and concern about the dropping of this case related to China, because a lot of people have been watching it very closely. Now, does it damage the credibility of Parliament, of the security service's ability to stop foreign interference? I think it raises some questions, but only some. Part of the issue with this case, it was under the Official Secrets Act, a very old piece of legislation, which required evidence that information had been passed to someone acting on behalf of an enemy. And so in court, that might have required a British official going into court and describing China as an enemy.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Quite awkward at a time when the UK is seeking trade and investment from China. But since this case was started, we've had a new piece of legislation, the National Security Act, and that has a different bar in which material prejudicial to the British state or the UK national interest is a sufficient criteria for someone to be prosecuted, for doing something damaging to UK national interest. So a slightly different bar. But it's also true, there is still quite a lot of concern about the ability of Parliament to protect itself from what is seen as growing foreign interference. Sometimes it's even parliamentarians who've been warned in the past, well, the person

• 26:01Speaker 02

  you're meeting with is maybe close to Chinese or Russian intelligence. And sometimes parliamentarians themselves have kind of dismissed those concerns. There's also still the concern about foreign money and the ability of money to get into politics. There are supposed to be rules to stop it, but I think there's been concern that some of the loopholes which allow foreign money, and particularly foreign money which perhaps is even linked to foreign intelligence services to get in, that has not been closed by successive governments. So I think the threat remains, and a lot of people would say it's growing, not just from Russia but also China. But I think the hope will be that some of the new tools, including the National Security Act, will make it easier to go after some of that activity without some of the difficulties

• 26:44Speaker 02

  posed by the Official Secrets Act in this case. And of course, we should say that in this case, the two individuals, you know, the charges have been dropped and they've always maintained their innocence.

• 26:55Rory Stewart?

  If you want to hear more from Gordon, The Rest Is Classified, have a series coming out next week for those who want to know more about the wild history of China's security agencies. Let's go to the break.

• 27:06Speaker 03

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

• 27:17Speaker 04

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

• 27:23Speaker 05

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

• 27:27Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 27:30Speaker 05

  I'm not the first then.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 27:37Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by Google. We won't fully realise the potential gains of AI unless we make it accessible and useful for everybody across the whole UK workforce. That's why Google, for example, are working closely with trade unions.

• 27:52Alastair Campbell?

  AI and trade unions may not sound like the most natural of partners, but the union movement has got a proud history of supporting members from across the economy and preparing them for the ever-changing world of work.

• 28:04Rory Stewart?

  That's why Google partnered, for example, with the community union in the UK on a People's First Skills pilot called AI Works. And it's designed to see how AI could help workers and ultimately create productivity benefits across the whole wider economy.

• 28:19Alastair Campbell?

  Just a few hours of training could save members almost a month a year on routine tasks, time-free for the work where their expertise really counts.

• 28:26Rory Stewart?

  One community member, for example, working in a supported living home said Gemini helped streamline paperwork so she could spend more time with residents.

• 28:34Alastair Campbell?

  That's a very powerful story, and it shows the positive impact AI can have on people's lives, making a real difference in the day-to-day.

• 28:41Rory Stewart?

  Find out how Google's AI is helping fuel the UK's growth and transformation at go.gle/aiworks.

• 28:57Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 29:00Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 29:01Alastair Campbell?

  Our first question post-break is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

• 29:05Rory Stewart?

  Fuse are keeping it simple. All customers who sign up for a fixed rate tariff by the 5th of October are in with a chance to win £20,000.

• 29:13Alastair Campbell?

  Now, energy, we have a question from Melissa Walters. Are modular reactors the breakthrough that finally delivers clean, affordable power, or just another big promise slowed by planning rows, rising costs and political delay?

• 29:27Rory Stewart?

  Well, the idea of the modular reactor is the idea that you can build smaller, cheaper standard, hence modular reactors, and it's a way of us generating energy that isn't carbon-based. I guess it raises a lot of questions, which the Green Party and others would be struggling with, about the safety of these things, about the disposal of nuclear waste. I mean, after all, nuclear waste can be radioactive for 100,000 years, which is about as long as we've been around as the human species, and you've got to think very hard about what kind of geological place you put it. And when it goes wrong, I mean, where I was in Cumbria, we're still spending billions of pounds a year cleaning up cellar field because of all the mistakes we made on handling nuclear waste in the past. But you're pro-nuclear, aren't you?

• 30:09Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I am. And look, I'm pro-nuclear. It makes you sound like you're sort of Dr. Strangelove. I'm not pro-Chernobyl, I'm not pro-nuclear waste, I'm not pro-things going wrong. But I think we... I remember Brian Wilson, who was an energy minister for a time in Tony Blair's government. I remember him, he was always very, very out there on the nuclear argument. And essentially, his argument was that we are going to need this fairly quickly. And if we don't face up to that, we are going to have an energy crisis any... sometime soon. And I kind of think that is where we are, is that I think that nuclear, it's for obvious reasons, not least to do with Chernobyl, it's got a sort of

• 30:47Alastair Campbell?

  very bad, a pretty bad global rep. But these nuclear reactors, these modular reactors, they're a form of technology that has been shown to be effective, can be effective. And I just think we've got to face up to the scale of the energy challenges that we face. And this is, to my mind, this is a very, very big part of it.

• 31:10Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. Because there are two totally different types of argument on that. There's the climate argument where... Nuclear is clearly much, much better than fossil fuels. And then there's the more profound environmental argument, which led to this big issue in Germany, where of course they're burning coal because they shut down their nuclear plants.

• 31:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And so we haven't opened a new nuclear station since the nineties. Centrica are backing a dozen modular reactors in Hartlepool. And between them, they will power around one and a half million homes. So if you think of that around the country, relatively small scale, but with job creation attached to it, and then with really big numbers in terms of the energy they can, they can develop.

• 31:51Rory Stewart?

  There's, there's a great phrase though, nuclear, you can build like Lego, but don't get the impression that this is like a small thing the size of a milk float. Uh, popping around where you can build one for a few hundred pounds. I mean, my kids Lego sets quite expensive now, but these things can run into the billions. And uh, there's a lot of questions still because there are many different designs floating around, different types of coolant technologies. A lot of different questions around regulation. Nevertheless, interesting, worth pursuing.

• 32:17Alastair Campbell?

  And also Rory, where Fuse Energy comes in. While governments make plans for decades ahead, Fuse is giving households certainty right now. If you're on a fixed rate with Fuse, you're in. And if you're not, switch before the fifth of October and you'll be in with a chance to win twenty thousand pounds in cash. Just go to fuseenergy.com/politics and you'll be in with a chance to win that twenty thousand pounds. So Rory, Finn Walton, most weeks you both discuss the gradual breaking of the world order. And it tends to be supported by big headlines and geopolitics that would have shocked us 10 years ago. But are there also smaller signs that we're missing?

• 32:55Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 32:56Alastair Campbell?

  Lots of them.

• 32:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, there are many, many of them. I'm afraid, I mean, I was trying to talk to my kids about war and conflict. We'd just been watching a war movie. Um, and they were really upset as eight and 10 year olds by the vision of a, an officer writing to the families of men who died, writing to their mummies and daddies. And of course, it made me think about the fact that while people are celebrating Trump or saying it's all a bit of fun, of course, what I believe they're doing is creating a world that's increasingly unstable and increasing the chance of conflict in our lifetime. And the canaries in the mine is the word that the signs of this are rather

• 33:36Rory Stewart?

  interesting. So this week, for example, Saudi has announced a very, very big formal defence partnership with Pakistan. Now, Pakistan, of course, is the nation which has the nuclear bomb, which A Q Khan brought together. And that's Saudi signalling that they now have a formal alliance with nuclear weapons. And it comes just after the Israeli attack on Qatar. Now, the Saudis say, well, it's been a long time in coming together, but it's an interesting symbol of as people give up on the idea of the US as the global policeman, as the West shrinks, as NATO shrinks, as the US makes it more and more clear they

• 34:17Rory Stewart?

  have no interest in international law, Trump has no interest in preventing Israel from attacking his ally Qatar, countries will begin to, in inverted commas, look after themselves. And that becomes more and more dangerous. Let's look at a one more tiny example people may not have noticed. Australia was about to make a defence and security deal with Papua New Guinea. And they've been some of the similar agreements with other Pacific islands. And that was basically blocked by China. These are little clues of things that we're going to, I predict, find happening more and more around the world over the next two, three years. As America gives up on the United Nations, gives up on the international system, these alliances emerge. And every one of these alliances,

• 34:59Rory Stewart?

  of course, creates more and more of a sense that we are in something that feels a bit like, if not a pre Second World War movement, maybe a pre First World War movement.

• 35:07Alastair Campbell?

  And the thing with Papua New Guinea is fascinating because they, so the Australians had done the groundwork to go into a pretty comprehensive defence treaty with them. And they tried to do something similar with Vanuatu as well. And it kind of virtually at the last minute, it got watered down to a communicate signals of intent. And it seems that was in direct response to pressure from China. And you do get the sense that in all sorts of different ways, China is spotting the places where American alliances are weakening or American power may be waning. And they're thinking, we move in.

• 35:47Rory Stewart?

  And it's no coincidence that, as we were discussing last week, so far, nine months in, Albanese has not yet met Trump. And this would have been a classic moment for previous US administrations that were serious about challenging China and the way that Mike Pompeo said that he was serious about challenging China, to have got in behind Australia, strengthened that. That's what the whole AUKUS deal is about, when nuclear weapons lean in behind these agreements with Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu. And of course, Trump isn't doing that at all. While talking a big game about Europe needs to put fifty, hundred percent sanctions against China, when the rubber hits the road, when it really matters, when he needs to strengthen an alliance with Australia in a key part of the South Pacific, he's not leaning into it at all.

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  You mentioned AUKUS there as well. You and I, we interviewed Peter Malanowski, the Premier of South Australia.

• 36:36Rory Stewart?

  Josie, his name sounds a bit like AUKUS. It's like he's got AUKUS.

• 36:39Alastair Campbell?

  It's brilliant, isn't it? It's just absolutely fantastic how he does that. Malan AUKUS. And he, but when we saw him recently, when he was over at doing all sorts of things in the UK, and he remained very confident that the Americans would stick to AUKUS and that it, because, and he was saying, the numbers for the Australian economy and Australian events are incredible. I mean, it's one of the biggest deals they have ever done.

• 37:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:03Alastair Campbell?

  So they have to rely on this. But as you say, the fact that it's taken Albanese thus far, yet to see Trump is, I'd have thought that's quite a worrying sign. Added to which, the guy that the Americans have put in charge of a review of AUKUS, Colby, he's right out on the, the kind of magnification of, of foreign policy. So I'd be a little bit more worried maybe if I was Australian.

• 37:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, next question coming in from Herrick Colville Shrewsbury. If you were a strategist in the Russian intelligence services, assuming neither of you secretly are. Why would you care about influencing the Moldovan election? And how would you trip hosts most effectively go about achieving your desired effects? Being realistic about tributaries as the Kremlin and realities, the Moldovan context was a really, really good question. So Russia essentially now is running a lot of these operations out of the presidential office instead of out of the SVR, the old KGB. And they're increasingly running it through these slightly arms length political consultancy advisory groups.

• 38:06Rory Stewart?

  Famous one is called A and O Dialogue, which calls itself a social design agency and they call themselves political technologists. And, and this is what's being deployed into Moldova. What you will see in Moldova now, and we'll get on to why Moldova matters and maybe in a second and explaining why it matters to Ukraine and what matters to Romania and Europe. But in this Moldovan election where we have a pro EU, pro Western, pretty incorruptible leader called Maya Sandu, who pretty narrowly won the presidential election, pretty narrowly won a referendum and is now going to parliamentary election. Russia is absolutely determined to take away a majority in parliament. And so they're playing fast and loose with every different political party

• 38:51Rory Stewart?

  in Moldova as they come up the election. There is millions of rubles going in there. I think it was a BBC interview recently where a lady votes as the last election comes out and says, I've done my vote. Where do I collect my money? Right? So genuine sort of proper payments, cyber attacks. I think we can expect when our episode goes out that we'll begin to hear stuff about cyber attacks. The Russians have mounted directly against government infrastructure in Moldova. And there's been an interesting change in the Kremlin, which is Dmitry Kosak, who was very proud of running all this stuff, resigned last week. He's been replaced by a man called Sergey Karayenko, the first deputy head of the presidential administration. And he's used.

• 39:32Rory Stewart?

  These political technologists, these firms who I remember saying to you in 2019, Russian firms and firms that claim to be connected to ex Mossad members turning up in my house, convincing us why to be Lana Mayor, saying we've run campaigns in Moldova, we've run campaigns in the Caucasus. We can use social media technology and fake news to win you this campaign, doing a lot of this stuff in Moldova.

• 39:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, the question, look, Moldova is a very small country and relatively poor country. But it's, the reason why it matters is because it is in their sights. And that was the case of the last election. I've done a bit of work with Maya Sandu and I think she's an incredibly impressive woman. But you can see, when you see her, she's under massive pressure. Because it's so hard to fight back against this stuff. This hybrid warfare, where you have the fear of the military stuff, which is really, really quite scary. But then meanwhile, you have this relentless psychological warfare as well. And the stuff that is being fed in, and it's social media, and it's bots, and it's events.

• 40:40Alastair Campbell?

  And when you were saying about the Chinese, you know, why would they bother with a kind of parliamentary committee? The Russians are doing the same in Moldova, every aspect of public life.

• 40:48Rory Stewart?

  Although I think there's an interesting difference between the way that China and Russia do things. China, it's easier to see the strategy. It's about using their intelligence agencies to pursue Chinese interests. And often broadly speaking, to pursue things that work for the Chinese economy. And in many cases, that's about pro-Chinese figures and that's about stability. Russia, it feels as though Putin's policy is quite literally chaos. I think we were talking to somebody about Trump, and certainly I was talking to one of Trump's appointees when I was in the States last. Who said Trump loves the image of throwing a deck of cards on the ground and just seeing what happens. And you get a sense that that's what Putin's inner office likes to do.

• 41:33Rory Stewart?

  There's evidence that during the Black Lives Matter campaign, that the Russians were both funding pro Black Lives Matter campaigners and people, white supremacists who were against Black Lives Matter, that the view of Putin, a bit like Trump, is that generally speaking, chaos helps them.

• 41:51Alastair Campbell?

  Chaos is good, that's exactly what it's about, but ultimately, the goal is to undermine Moldovan people's faith in their political institutions and their political leaders. That's the goal. And that, if you've got the money that the Russians throw at this, as you say, including their money, but also money from these organisations that they use outside, they don't do it without knowing that there's going to be effect. I still, to this day, don't think we've got to the bottom of the Russian role in Brexit, let alone the Russian role in Trump's first term victory. They do it because they've worked out how to make it effective, and they do it with deniability. They do it because of the arm's length of deniability, but they also do it because they're very happy to say they're not doing it, and they always say it with a smirk because

• 42:35Alastair Campbell?

  they want you to know that while they're denying it, they're doing it to you.

• 42:39Rory Stewart?

  This is Russia that lent money to Marine Le Pen's party, I mean, it's one of the things that she's been investigated for in the past. This is Russia that quite clearly supported the AFD, and the AFD, the far right in Germany, has come out with very pro-Russian statements and tried it in Britain. I think probably not as successfully as they would have liked. As you know, a lot of Russian money went into the Conservative Party, Russians living in Britain, giving money to the Conservative Party. When push came to shove, to be fair, for once in my life to Boris Johnson, he actually took a very, very strong anti-Russian line on Ukraine. But they probably would have hoped that all this money swelling around would have created some of the dissension in Britain, and they'll certainly be hoping that this Tommy Robinson

• 43:23Rory Stewart?

  stuff and other stuff, as you say, undermines people's faith in institutions and democracy.

• 43:28Alastair Campbell?

  And of course, the other reason why Putin, why it matters to Putin is because one of his big, big strategic goals is to sort of break up the European Union, weaken the European Union, and Moldova is one of those countries that wants to become part of the European Union. So the more that he can create the chaos, prevent the leaders who want that access to European, accession to the European Union, prevent them from winning, then that's a win for him. Final question, Rory. Let's have a bit of nostalgia. Damien Hyde, on the 70th anniversary of the first TV advert, I'd love to know what your favourite TV adverts are. Do you know what the first one was, ever?

• 44:02Rory Stewart?

  No, it was a fad.

• 44:03Alastair Campbell?

  Gibbs Toothpaste.

• 44:05Rory Stewart?

  Gibbs Toothpaste? Well, that didn't go very well because there is no more Gibbs Toothpaste.

• 44:09Alastair Campbell?

  Well, you know, brands come and go, don't they?

• 44:13Rory Stewart?

  TV advertising a waste of time. Look at Gibbs Toothpaste.

• 44:16Alastair Campbell?

  Nobody did very, they had a massive spike at the time. And it was incredible. I listened to it last night. It was incredible. This unbelievable posh voice, way posher than you. Sort of say, if you want really shiny teeth, you want them to sparkle, use SR Gibbs Toothpaste. It was really good. So what's your favourite advert?

• 44:36Rory Stewart?

  Tony the Tiger for Frosties.

• 44:38Alastair Campbell?

  Oh.

• 44:38Rory Stewart?

  I absolutely love Tony the Tiger. It's great.

• 44:42Alastair Campbell?

  It's great, yeah. I think my favourite, my favourite advert, I think the most beautiful advert ever made was actually by a friend of mine with whom I ended up working on a party election broadcast on Neil Kinnock, which was Hugh Hudson. He did the most beautiful adverts for British Airways when it was, quote, the world's favourite airline. They were absolutely beautiful. They were like, they were like masterpieces of film. And then I like, what was the one with, I've never used, um, brute, but was it Henry Cooper?

• 45:13Rory Stewart?

  Spread it all over, Henry Cooper.

• 45:14Alastair Campbell?

  Henry Cooper, yeah, Henry Cooper sprayed all over.

• 45:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. If you're drinking Carling Black Label, do you remember that?

• 45:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I remember that one. Do you remember, um, Tetley's make tea bags make tea?

• 45:24Rory Stewart?

  That's good. Yeah.

• 45:25Alastair Campbell?

  Um, go to work on an egg?

• 45:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go to work on an egg. Very good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:29Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, all because the lady loves milk tray?

• 45:31Rory Stewart?

  Yes, milk tray ads, very good.

• 45:32Alastair Campbell?

  These guys doing kind of James Bond style things and then, you know, beating off the baddies and then leaving the box of chocolates by the bed. There was the one for a coffee, gold blend, I think it was.

• 45:43Rory Stewart?

  Where she pretends to percolate the coffee, she makes funny noises in the kitchen, that one?

• 45:48Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think it's, it was like a sort of, it was a series, it was actually an advert series where they did lots, it starts off, you know, boy meets girl, and then bit by bit, they kind of get it together through making gold blending coffee. Kit Kat, have a break, have a Kit Kat?

• 46:00Rory Stewart?

  But if we get, just sort of finish off on a slightly more. One of the fascinating things is that the TV advertising revenue has completely collapsed. And that actually matters for politics. In the big days of the nineties, there were only four American stations. Basically, everybody watching the same evening news, fifty five billion dollars of media advertising revenue coming in. And on the back of that, journalists, reporters, foreign correspondents. And now increasingly, the money flowing, unfortunately, you know, to to us, we benefit podcasts, to social media. Just a little moment of seriousness around TikTok, which is part of the story because Donald Trump has just announced effectively that he is nationalizing and seizing TikTok.

• 46:45Rory Stewart?

  The biggest social media companies in the world that was effectively eating the lunch of its competition, these American companies, Facebook and others, and partly, I suspect, out of their own financial interest. These American companies have been beating a drum, saying this is a Chinese spy operation and we can't possibly have TikTok. So having threatened to close it down, he's basically now confiscated it and handed it over to Larry Ellison's family. Murdoch's apparently won a piece of this too. And it's very dangerous because of course, there's over a trillion dollars worth of US investment in China, hundreds of billions in the BRICS. If America starts helping itself to other people's companies, other people may start doing the same to the States.

• 47:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, the stuff about numbers is really interesting with Trump. So we have this situation with Caroline Levitt, Trump's press secretary, saying that he brought in seven trillion dollars of investment. Now, I don't know what the overall wealth of the United States is.

• 47:39Rory Stewart?

  That's a lot of money.

• 47:40Alastair Campbell?

  And then the other thing he did, the other thing yesterday, he was talking about he's going to lower drug prices by twelve hundred percent, nine hundred percent, five hundred percent, six hundred percent. I mean, these these numbers just come out of his head. They literally have no mathematical sense whatsoever. How do you reduce something by twelve hundred percent?

• 48:00Rory Stewart?

  How'd you do that? You've just got to be Trump. You've just got to be Trump. You've just got to believe. You've just got to make America great again. Our adverts are better than American adverts. Hundred percent. British adverts much better. British TV adverts. You mean Henry Cooper, not you and me? No, no. Henry Cooper. Well, not necessarily Henry Cooper. Oh, come on, Henry Cooper. I mean, American, a lot of American advertising is dross. What about Gorbachev's adverts? Didn't like them. Well, I was a bit, I was a bit worried by, by the great Indian cricketer, Mr. Ganguly, interviewing hair replacement stuff in the tubes. So we have, we see him with his bald head. Shane Warne does that, did that as well before he died, yeah. Would you do a hair replacement advert? Um, I, I've got quite good head of hair, I think. I'm not saying you haven't, but if you were to lose it, would you do a? Worried a bit about Mr. Ganguly, that he should end up having to do that. Didn't, wasn't a very big picture of him.

• 48:45Rory Stewart?

  I once got asked to do an advert for washing machines. Oh, yeah? And it was all, it was like in, in my heyday, after I left Downing Street, and was quite, still quite a controversial figure, and they wanted to do a thing about spin. Oh, I guess it. I guess it. Oh, that's, oh, that's beautiful. Spin, the master of spin. Let's finish with that, Alistair. I think it's absolute advertising genius. You, the washing machine, the master of spin. It was never going to be a yes. Before I became politician, I had a brief moment of fame with my Afghan book. And the two ones that I was asked to do were Johnny Walker, Keep Walking. Oh. And Oakley sunglasses. And in those days, this is the younger version of Rory in my mid thirties, I thought I was too pure to do that.

• 49:28Rory Stewart?

  And I was embarrassed by the idea of photographs of myself kind of advertising Oakley sunglasses. But now I'm beginning to worry, you know, that given, given how, where you've sunk me, whether I shouldn't have been doing that. Diffuse Energy do sunglasses, the Nord VPN do sunglasses, who knows? Okay, well, let's just finish with the master of spin. See you next week. Bye bye.