209. Question Time: What happens when privatisation goes wrong?

Is it possible to be politically active as a civil servant? How did private finance initiatives contribute to the Post Office scandal? Is a transfer of power possible in Myanmar? Listen to Rory and Alastair answer all these questions and more in this week's Question Time. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:06Speaker 02

  This episode is brought to you by Welch's Fruit Snacks. Back to school season can be tough on parents. But choosing a snack you and your kids can both get behind doesn't have to be. Stock up on Welch's Fruit Snacks, made with whole fruit, and now made with no artificial dyes. It's a snack kids already love, and one you can feel good about giving them. Go back to school with Welch's Fruit Snacks, now made with no artificial dyes.

• 1:34Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, big or small. We're here for all of it, celebrating 125 years with new moments still ahead. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

• 2:11Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:15Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell.

• 2:16Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Here we are. What question appealed to you most this week?

• 2:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, there's one that says for Rory, Paul Grindley, how can civil servants become politically active? Now, you've been a civil servant and a politician. And it says after reading Alistair's most recent book, I'm interested in becoming more involved in politics. However, he goes on, as a civil servant, there are limits to what I can get involved in. Does Rory have any advice for active civil servants who want to get politically active?

• 2:42Rory Stewart?

  Oh, I'm afraid.

• 2:43Alastair Campbell?

  Are you worried about that?

• 2:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I'm afraid if you want to get really politically active, you should leave the civil service and either become a, you know, join a party, become a special advisor, stand for election. I didn't, I think it's really important that our civil service is independent profession. We were just talking yesterday in relation to Bangladesh, that one of the great tragedies is the way in which Bangladesh never managed from the 70s onwards to create a fully professional, independent, non-political civil service. It's one of the great crowns and, you know, crown jewels of Britain.

• 3:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I mean, I had an email the other day from not Paul, another civil servant, who said that he was thinking of becoming a candidate.

• 3:20Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 3:21Alastair Campbell?

  But that means to become a candidate, you have to put your name out there.

• 3:25Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 3:26Alastair Campbell?

  So if you have a very, very, very strict view, as you do, it means you're further cutting the gene pool. Because he was saying that if he goes for it and doesn't get it, it damages his career. If he goes for it and gets it, his career as a civil servant's over anyway. Because I don't think, you can be a member of a political party.

• 3:42Rory Stewart?

  You can, yeah. Although I wasn't, and many civil servants don't join political parties.

• 3:46Alastair Campbell?

  For that reason, for that reason. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a tricky one. It's a tricky one. Anyway, Paul, just, you know, work away, wheedle away.

• 3:54Rory Stewart?

  Civil servants are amazing because obviously they have, you know, like all of us, very strong political views. But generally speaking, they are incredibly professional.

• 4:02Alastair Campbell?

  I saw something this week that did slightly alarm me and I think would not have happened under any previous government. It was a, the Treasury put out one of those sort of tax calculator things that was absolutely, to my mind, overtly. Political and I saw that the Labour Party have actually written to Simon Case about it, I think. The Cabinet Secretary. I think the the lines are already blurring too much.

• 4:25Rory Stewart?

  One of the problems is that because politicians get impatient with being blocked by civil servants. There's been a tendency to bring in civil servants who seem to be more on the government's side and more predicated and and younger civil servants, people like Simon Case, who's the head of the civil service. But it's much younger, much less experienced than his predecessors. And I guess one of the questions for a Keir Starmer administration is will they have the confidence to go back to having more senior people who can be quite awkward, who can often refuse to do what the politicians want them to do.

• 4:59Alastair Campbell?

  Probably makes for better government.

• 5:00Rory Stewart?

  But makes for a government, yeah.

• 5:02Alastair Campbell?

  By the way, when I was up in Scotland, Stephen Monroe, regular listener on the Coronation Ferry. He said, you in particular, but also me, that we too often talk about a Labour government as though it's already a done deal.

• 5:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 5:14Alastair Campbell?

  Which you did there when there's a Labour government.

• 5:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I assume it's a done deal.

• 5:18Alastair Campbell?

  Do you really?

• 5:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I also think.

• 5:20Alastair Campbell?

  See, I I I'm not buying that.

• 5:22Rory Stewart?

  Maybe a bit specialist.

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  Did you assume Brexit was going to happen?

• 5:25Rory Stewart?

  Uh, I did manage, I had an argument with a guy who was the former Attorney General of Ireland and then the head of Goldman Sachs. At one of these horrible Trilateral Commission meetings in Rome, you know, where all the great European.

• 5:36Alastair Campbell?

  With Bill Bergwijn, a day off, whether.

• 5:38Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, we're there. So it was, um, it was Count Herman von Rompuy and Mario Monti and all these people bang on. And he said to me, what's going to happen? And I said, it's going to be fifty two forty eight for Brexit, wrote it on a bit of paper, which he kept. And he produced it for me. About three months before, probably.

• 5:55Alastair Campbell?

  Pretty good.

• 5:56Rory Stewart?

  But I was largely doing it to wind him up. I'm not sure I would have put a lot of money on it.

• 5:59Alastair Campbell?

  The bookies.

• 6:01Rory Stewart?

  Okay, question for you. Malcolm Stark, apart from instances involving legal constraints. When is it permissible for ministers and other politicians to respond with, I haven't seen, read, heard of this document, stroke, claim, stroke, statement? Do you think that's a reasonable response if a minister went out and did that in your day?

• 6:19Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think it's great. Uh, I think it's permissible if something is sprung upon you. Um, I guess what that question stands. From is that Rishi Sunak was interviewed by Laura Koonsberg on the BBC and she was asking him about documents which she said she'd seen in which he expressed his reservations as Chancellor about the Rwanda scheme. And she pressed him quite hard on him. I saw the clips on social media and he kept saying, I haven't seen the documents. He didn't answer the question about whether he'd expressed reservations. So I think that is unacceptable because actually he's only answering the part of the question about the document as opposed to his view.

• 6:54Rory Stewart?

  Just just help me because I do. I mean, putting myself in his position, I can see why it might be quite awkward. If when you were Chancellor, you thought and probably maybe continued to think the Rwanda scheme was a bit dodgy. And then as Prime Minister, you're getting behind it. What what's the best way of answering that kind of question? Imagining he actually had been a bit against Rwanda scheme when he was Chancellor and now getting behind it.

• 7:14Alastair Campbell?

  He sort of got there in the end. Look, my job as Chancellor is to analyse policy from every which way, but especially the financial implications. And what discussions took place led to the policy that we now have.

• 7:24Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 7:25Alastair Campbell?

  Now, he kind of said that, but he kept making this point. I haven't seen the documents you're talking about. And it was similarly, I don't know if you've seen that mashup, I believe they're called, of his evidence to the Covid inquiry. Somebody has put together all the moments at which he says, I don't recall, I can't recall, I can't remember. I don't recall, I don't have an exact recollection. I think once you give the impression that you're actually trying to stall or hide behind it, I think it becomes very unconvincing. But it can be a tactic. It's just a straightforward tactic.

• 7:54Rory Stewart?

  John Sunat, how will you keep yourself safe from AI-generated misinformation during the elections?

• 8:00Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't think anybody can honestly answer that question with any great knowledge. I saw another extraordinary, well, it wasn't that extraordinary yesterday. There was one of Joe Biden, he had Kamala Harris at his one side and another woman at the other side. And he did this response to a question and he basically said, well, my answer, I want to answer that in one word. And then he just said this kind of gibberish.

• 8:24Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 8:25Alastair Campbell?

  Now, I watched that and said, that is not real. And and you know, you get a feel.

• 8:31Rory Stewart?

  And that was on that was on X.

• 8:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Rory Stewart?

  And had someone put a comment saying this isn't real into the post because that's one of the things they're relying on.

• 8:37Alastair Campbell?

  They hadn't at the time I saw, but the comments below it were including Elon Musk.

• 8:43Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 8:43Alastair Campbell?

  Including Elon Musk with a comment or a or a question mark or a blimey kind of thing. So I don't know how we're going to handle this. I also saw one of your friend, King Charles.

• 8:54Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 8:55Alastair Campbell?

  Doing stand up comedy. Have you seen that one?

• 8:56Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 8:57Alastair Campbell?

  Quite funny.

• 8:58Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I think it's, I think it's very, very worrying for everybody. I think it's worrying for our constitutional monarchy. I think it's really, I mean, one of the questions is how quickly you can get on top of these things. So if I were in government, I would be setting up a very, very efficient, rapid rebuttal unit. You almost can't prevent somebody loading something fake onto X, but you've got to move within minutes to get, so what I think you need a protocol where, let's say you're Kier Starmer, you're the new prime minister, some crazy stuff goes on. You need a protocol where you can immediately get the leader of the opposition, the key newspapers to come out immediately and say, this is false and have an agreement that you'll do that together.

• 9:37Alastair Campbell?

  Don't you think that some of these newspapers will be wanting things that they might, deep down know aren't real, actually turn them into stories?

• 9:45Rory Stewart?

  Could you try to build that trust? Because remember, it was quite good when, when there was that fake story about Kier Starmer shouting at someone for dropping his iPad. Um, there was a very, very rapid rebuttal from Tory ministers who came out immediately and said, this is, so clearly there'd been some kind of agreement.

• 9:59Alastair Campbell?

  But another one I saw last week was a very sort of slick looking video of, and it was Kier Starmer explaining why he's going to have to put taxes up.

• 10:09Rory Stewart?

  And was it shot as though it had been caught in an iPhone?

• 10:12Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, it was, it was quite slick. It was quite slick. Um.

• 10:17Rory Stewart?

  And it was, and it was completely fake.

• 10:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I've certainly never heard him say that. And what I think that will do, that will just do the rounds on WhatsApp groups and, you know, we were talking about.

• 10:28Rory Stewart?

  So it needn't go on X. A lot of this is spread through WhatsApp.

• 10:30Alastair Campbell?

  And, and, and no, but also your idea that they come together and say, right, we're all going to come out and rebut this stuff presupposes that people are going to be looking out for the rebuttal. They won't, they won't necessarily see the places where it's being rebutted.

• 10:41Rory Stewart?

  The context, the context thing on X is very tough, isn't it?

• 10:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And I'll tell you what, if I were, if I were Rishi Sunak, I would be a little bit alarmed about how many of his tweets at the moment are being contextualised. I don't know whether he's doing them himself or whether he sees them, but an awful lot of them.

• 10:55Rory Stewart?

  Are being contextualised.

• 10:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, there was one the other day that said, this is not true.

• 10:58Rory Stewart?

  Well, I, I guess that. Will become part of the normal political machine.

• 11:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but then, then, then as we, then as we talk about that.

• 11:04Rory Stewart?

  Start employing contextualizing people.

• 11:06Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. But then is the, what that does is it just sort of feeds this narrative that they're all a bunch of liars and you can't believe a word they say. So I think the most important thing is that the parties just find better ways of communicating what they are actually saying and doing. And, and in America, I mean, I can't even begin to imagine what the Republicans in particular, do you see the, did you see the, by the way, this wasn't fake. Did you see God made Trump, the video?

• 11:31Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 11:32Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think we should put it in the newsletter, but it was this unbelievable film made by some of these evangelicals.

• 11:38Rory Stewart?

  About how God made Trump.

• 11:39Alastair Campbell?

  God made Trump, God made Trump.

• 11:41Rory Stewart?

  So I, I know we're often accused of pedultery, but it's quite a niche podcast done by Trish from Harris, who does a lot on AI. Where he's interviewed two people specifically about AI and elections. It's, it's quite a serious, um, uh, listen, takes quite a long time.

• 11:55Alastair Campbell?

  What you're saying, we're not.

• 11:56Rory Stewart?

  Uh, no, no, but I'm, I'm, I'm, no, I'm saying.

• 11:58Alastair Campbell?

  We're not important, we're pointless as I will.

• 11:59Rory Stewart?

  I'm not saying, not, not saying any of that. And I'm, I'm trying to explain that it may not necessarily be the thing that everybody, top of everyone's list. But if you want a bit of a lesson, we'll put, put a link in.

• 12:09Alastair Campbell?

  And what, what conclusions?

• 12:10Rory Stewart?

  Well, one of the things that they're interested in is this question around, uh, whether you can create sort of QAnon style conspiracies. So obviously QAnon, this US conspiracy where, you know, Hillary Clinton's involved and child sex rings, this kind of stuff. That AI is very, very good at doing that kind of stuff. But their big point, and I think this is a central point, is that we are in a critical year, which is the gap between when the US, UK and others have worked out what the regulation is and the gap before the regulation is actually implemented. So this year of big elections is the most dangerous time imaginable. People have identified the problems. They've written the laws, but the companies are not going to begin to respond until next year. So we are in the absolute worst moment for this.

• 12:53Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. And with social media, that is exactly the kind of rhythm that the social media. Companies developed so fast, so effectively from their own perspective, that the politicians, by the time their process got anywhere near on top of it, it had already gone. Now, listen, here's one which begs bitchly, the political situation in Germany, what has happened to such a stable country?

• 13:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go on, tell us about that.

• 13:14Alastair Campbell?

  What have you followed this stuff yesterday?

• 13:16Rory Stewart?

  Go on, tell us.

• 13:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we're very used to seeing the French out on the streets, but the German farmers have, pretty much yesterday, they just blocked virtually every major road in the country.

• 13:26Rory Stewart?

  And this is about?

• 13:27Alastair Campbell?

  It's about subsidies, it's about diesel prices, it's about, you know, traditional farming issues, but it's been pretty heavy, and especially as the government had actually responded to some of their concerns and made some concessions ahead of it. I suspect if Franz Beckenbauer hadn't died yesterday, which obviously is massive, well, it's big story here as well, but massive news in Germany, this has been like a really, really difficult moment for the police, for the authorities, and it just didn't feel very German. And of course, the AFD are desperately trying to get all over it.

• 14:00Rory Stewart?

  Well, tell us a little bit more about that, because one of the things we didn't cover in as much depth as you would have been able to do is the AFD's success in elections in Bavaria. So, give us a sense of what the story's been. I mean, you began talking to us about AFD successes earlier last year, but what's been going on over the last few months with the AFD?

• 14:18Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they've won real power in some places, you know, fairly small communities, but elected mayor elections and so forth. They're steadily now, sort of 20% in some places, 30% in the polls. But the problem, the bigger problem, I think, is that the ample coalition, the traffic light coalition, they're all struggling in different ways. Has Scholz really been able to sort of deliver some of the campaign promises, struggling?

• 14:51Alastair Campbell?

  Are the tensions, the Lintner wing of the coalition actually had a vote over the

• 14:56Rory Stewart?

  What's this wing?

• 14:57Alastair Campbell?

  Sorry, the third part, the Free Democrats, they had a vote about whether to continue with the coalition. Now, it was passed, but there are clearly big divisions there. You read a lot about difficulties between Scholz and Baerbock, who's the leader of the green part of the coalition and who's the foreign minister. And meanwhile, these protests. So Robert Harbeck, who's the vice chancellor, he was on holiday in somewhere up in the north, on one of the islands, and got a ferry back. Word spread that he was on this ferry. And these farmers, no doubt, perhaps sort of ventilated by some of these hard right forces as well, they turned up to greet the ferry and the police turned out and they advised the ferry to go elsewhere.

• 15:40Rory Stewart?

  Goodness.

• 15:40Alastair Campbell?

  So this is ferry with other people on who were, said they were absolutely terrified.

• 15:44Rory Stewart?

  Couldn't dock.

• 15:45Alastair Campbell?

  They couldn't dock because of these protesters there. And they were sort of, basically, they were

• 15:49Rory Stewart?

  A bunch of very angry German farmers.

• 15:51Alastair Campbell?

  They were looking for him, yeah.

• 15:53Rory Stewart?

  So this is quite fertile ground for the AFD and the far right in Germany, which continues to exploit presumably immigration, climate change.

• 16:01Alastair Campbell?

  Cost of living.

• 16:02Rory Stewart?

  Cost of living.

• 16:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:03Rory Stewart?

  And the German economy not doing great.

• 16:05Alastair Campbell?

  Not doing as well as they're used to. And then meanwhile, you've got the European elections. You know, we've had this point that we've said before about François Hollande saying, have we the Brits had our peak populism with Brexit and Johnson? And is Europe now sort of getting there? Now, I don't know whether the, come the European elections, whether the far right will do as well as some of their pollsters suggest.

• 16:26Rory Stewart?

  Coming in June.

• 16:27Alastair Campbell?

  Coming later this year, yeah.

• 16:28Rory Stewart?

  And possible when the European elections happen that we end up with a situation where the AFD does well, where the Swedish Democrats do well.

• 16:36Alastair Campbell?

  Le Pen's party.

• 16:37Rory Stewart?

  Le Pen's party as well, yeah.

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Now, it's possible, it's possible that it goes the other way. But if you see this happening in Germany at the start of a new year, going into that, and then, and then bear in mind, we've just had, well, sticking on Europe, last night, news that Macron, it was politely put as that the prime minister is resigning in due course, he's going to appoint this guy Gabriel Attal.

• 17:01Rory Stewart?

  To talk us through this, what is, what's the prime minister of France resigning and a 34 year old coming in? What, what is this all about?

• 17:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I suspect it's all about him trying to give the government a bit of a refresh. I think she's done a pretty amazing job.

• 17:13Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 17:13Alastair Campbell?

  Considering he hasn't had a parliamentary majority, he's had, she's had to get things through, through the National Assembly. But anyway, Gabriel Attal, he's 34, he's the education minister, he's, he's a very smart, young communicator, background in, I think, communications. He's clearly talking about, it's time to refresh. That's the sort of thinking behind it. European parliamentary elections never really felt in the UK that they were as important as they do in other parts of the European Union. But these are a big deal for Macron and Charles.

• 17:46Rory Stewart?

  The success of the UK Brexit Party in some of those elections was quite important in terms of pushing the Conservative Party and scaring them.

• 17:53Alastair Campbell?

  Also the way that Farage used his position in the European Parliament as a, as a platform. We had a question about Farage, actually. Nick Simpson, what's Farage's game in terms of the will he, won't he be involved with reform during the election? Is he trying to win a place in the Tory party, drum up more publicity, or is he genuinely unsure?

• 18:10Rory Stewart?

  I imagine he's trying to spot all the angles and work out what allows him to go to the election with the maximum impact for Nigel Farage.

• 18:19Alastair Campbell?

  And what do you think? Do you think his impact is, when you say Nigel Farage, do you think he actually has political beliefs that he wants to put out there? Or is it, or is it just a normal tactical game?

• 18:29Rory Stewart?

  Presumably his real dream is to be prime minister, and his best route to be prime minister is to take over the Conservative Party, not to stay with Reform. But it's a very, very long shot. I mean, he's not, you know, he's not an MP, he's not currently going to be allowed to run as a Conservative MP, and it's very unlikely he'd be able to win a Conservative leadership race. So the alternative, I guess, is to try to continue chipping away and build Reform up as a party, but in a two-party system. I don't know how they're going to get the seats.

• 18:57Alastair Campbell?

  Or, or is it just about his own profile now? It's interesting, when we were talking about to Gik Vafstad on, on, on leading, I don't know how many, he mentioned Farage several times, didn't he? He's obviously, he's a big figure.

• 19:09Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 19:10Alastair Campbell?

  Politically. Is it maybe just about him and, and, and, you know, I, I hesitate to say I felt sorry for Richard Tice, I wouldn't go that far, but it was fascinating.

• 19:21Rory Stewart?

  Richard Tice is the chair of Reform.

• 19:23Alastair Campbell?

  He's the leader, effectively, he's the leader of Reform.

• 19:25Rory Stewart?

  And, and Reform is, is what was Brexit.

• 19:27Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly, so the one that's more from going back to sort of Goldsmith and the Reverend and party. And so he did a press, sort of New Year's press conference to which the press went along in fairly large numbers because they were told that we're going to be special guests there. And it turned out that the special guest was that, that woman that I had the rather irate argument with on Newsnight. But they all thought it was going to be Farage.

• 19:51Rory Stewart?

  So they were disappointed.

• 19:52Alastair Campbell?

  I think it's fair to say they were disappointed and all the coverage was about not what they did say, but who wasn't there.

• 19:57Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 19:58Alastair Campbell?

  So I think he's probably playing a game. He loves, he'll, he'll love the fact, somebody will be saying, oh, Alice Campbell, Rory Stewart talking about, he'll like all that bollocks. But Reform, Reformers, the Tories must be worried about Reform, I'd have thought in some of these.

• 20:11Rory Stewart?

  And it's, it's the, it's the question that is asked all the time in every country facing a far right movement, which is, do you try to ignore them or do you try to poach their voters back by playing some of their tunes? And generally, generally, I mean, it's not a hundred percent true because Boris Johnson was a bit of an exception to this, but generally if you start playing their tunes, you're doomed because they can always go further right than you can.

• 20:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Rory Stewart?

  And you end up going down.

• 20:37Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, quick break, back in a minute.

• 21:10Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom Nordstrom. Big or small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at nordstrom.com.

• 21:46Rory Stewart?

  Emma Seaver. Horizon was a PFI initiative. Horizon is the is this system that was used by the post office with this incredible bugs and errors that ended up with people being completely unfairly prosecuted. What are Alice's reflections on PFI, private finance initiatives? Positive outcomes, limitations? Did the nature of PFI contribute to the scandal of what was happening with the post office scandal? Let me just quickly for listeners. PFI is something that the New Labour government went into a great deal, but the Conservatives were doing before. And the idea was that you get the private sector to pay for some of the upfront costs. And then the government pays rent later. So an example would be the private sector builds a spanking new prison.

• 22:30Rory Stewart?

  So it doesn't appear on the government's balance sheets. And then the government basically pays them a rent for the next 25 years for using the prison. They deal with hospitals. In the case of Horizon, Fujitsu, which was the parent company of this bidder, said that they would build this entire computer system for free in exchange for getting the revenue every time somebody swipes through their benefits card. So again, very attractive to the government because it's really good for their public balance sheet and debt. Because it's all theoretically sits with the private sector. And it's all paid for through the current account, not through the capital account. Anyway, over to you on PFI.

• 23:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'd say there were positive outcomes and there are also limitations. I don't think we could have done the scale of public sector investment repair, say in schools and rebuilding of schools and also. Development of hospitals. I don't think we could have done it without BFI. I think if we'd have just sort of gone in and said, right, the only way we can do this is through raising your taxes. Would we have won the election with the majority that we got? Unlikely. Would we, if we just decided to do it that way in government, would that not have led to endlessly being accused of betrayal, therefore wouldn't have won the second term, let alone the third term? So I think that BFI was an important part of the public sector.

• 23:47Rory Stewart?

  But where is the government getting money into the system without raising taxes or borrowing? Because basically the private sector is paying for it and then the government pays them back later.

• 23:56Alastair Campbell?

  In a sense, you're sharing the risk.

• 23:57Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 23:58Alastair Campbell?

  And I think the limitations, I mean, this came out when we're talking about the about the post office, you're dependent in a way on the same standards being applied as you would to a public sector operation, and that is not always going to be the case.

• 24:14Rory Stewart?

  One of the things that I noticed when we were dealing with these things in the Ministry of Justice is that unlike a normal commercial contract, the government is really over a barrel. So when the government decided, this was a Chris Grayling decision, who was this sort of not much lamented Conservative Cabinet Minister, who decided to privatise probation and privatise maintenance of prisons.

• 24:35Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that was quite a rare example of where they went into it and then literally reversed it.

• 24:39Rory Stewart?

  Well, exactly. So when I was in, we reversed it. David Gork and I reversed these things and renationalised.

• 24:45Alastair Campbell?

  What were the difficulties in doing that with the contracts that you'd entered into?

• 24:48Rory Stewart?

  Oh, it was unbelievably difficult and unbelievably costly. But the problem with this type of privatisation is that if the private sector company doesn't deliver, so it doesn't supervise people on probation, so the criminals on the loose who aren't being met, or it doesn't maintain prisons, in the end, it drops back on the government anyway. You can't just say, oh, well, you know, sort it out. You know, you promised to do this. And what we found is the private sector would come in and it would massively underbid. So we were spending, I think it was £185 million a year maintaining prisons. Private sector company comes in and, you know, it's one of these companies that emerged to do this kind of stuff. And they said they would do it for, I think, £45 million. Sure enough, a couple of years later, none of them. Prisons are being maintained, right? Really rubbish, stain on windows, broken, there's filth everywhere.

• 25:33Rory Stewart?

  And the company basically says, well, what do you expect? I mean, you know, you were doing it for a hundred and seventy million, we're doing it for forty five million. So obviously it's rubbish. And we then try to insist on our terms, at which point the company simply decreed bankruptcy and walked away. And it was the same with the probation system. And it then turns out that although they've got, in the case of probation, massive multinational parent companies, these American multinationals have written the law in such a way that their British subsidiary, they're not really responsible for. So we ended up covering tens of millions of pounds worth of debt, having to bring the whole thing back in house. And then, of course, we have to spend the hundred and eighty million on maintenance instead of forty million. So we've got another hundred and forty million pounds a year that we have to spend for. Whole thing goes wrong. So I think the problem with a lot of these PFIs, and it's true with hospitals and schools,

• 26:17Rory Stewart?

  is that in the end, the government has to carry the can because we've still got to run the schools, we've got to run the hospitals. So there's no risk for these companies. They can get the contracts and underbidding, they can underperform. And in the end, if it all goes wrong, we have to take it over. It was the same with Birmingham Prison.

• 26:30Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other thing on procurement is particularly, because I don't think a Labour government, if Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister, if Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister, I emphasise, Stephen Monroe, you're listening, he's going to be in a similar position to the one that we were. So unless you're sort of saying, well, we're going to cut the private sector out of this, some of these public sector projects, there's a lot of stuff that Labour are going to have to do that they won't be able to do. So I think the, if you look at the, one of the lessons from the post office, and I think this goes across our government and it goes across your government, there is a sort of technology and it still has this capacity to kind of, to make people feel that they, they can't challenge it.

• 27:15Alastair Campbell?

  And that does give these companies an awful lot of power. And the other thing is, you're talking sometimes within the procurement process of, if you have a negotiating table, you've got a middle ranking civil servant who earns, I don't know what, but. Way short, well, well south of six figures. Up against people who are bigger in number, bigger in experience and who are better at doing some of the sort of dodgy stuff that maybe you have to do when you're trying to get big contracts out of the public sector. Now, in other countries, that leads to all sorts of wide scale corruption to get deals over the line.

• 27:58Alastair Campbell?

  And I worry sometimes there's been a little bit too much of that in our country as well of late. But the one thing it does do is give these big private sector companies a massive advantage. Now, maybe that means if we are going to continue with this sort of approach to big infrastructure projects, you've got to start thinking about, well, do we need to bring in people? And I'm sorry, but we're going to have to pay them more than a cabinet minister gets. Because if we don't, we're going to be, continue to be reliant on people who are being outplayed the whole time.

• 28:27Rory Stewart?

  And this whole story of procurement is amazing, but the other way in which government really screws it up again and again is it's always changing the spec. So we'll sign a contract to do one thing. And then in the case of the post office scandal, I think it changed 300 times the spec of what was supposed to be delivered, which gives a huge opportunity to Fujitsu to say, well, you know, that wasn't in the contract, we've got to do something new. It's the same with, I was talking to somebody who's a great listener to our programme, who had worked in MOD procurement on a ship contract where the government came along, decided it was going to make a ship that had been used in the Falklands, you know, 30 foot longer and ended up paying hundreds of millions of pounds because everything it did involved changing its mind. And every time it changed its mind, the company could come back and say, oh, well, do you

• 29:12Rory Stewart?

  want a steel hull instead of an aluminium hull? And you want to put 52 tanks on instead of 38 tanks, which is one of the reasons why all these things massively overrun.

• 29:21Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 29:22Rory Stewart?

  Because every senior civil servant, senior civil servants change too much, change every couple of years, comes up with another set of bright ideas. The world's moved on, I will, if we're building this tank, we might as well add another set of bells and whistles because, you know, as new technologies come in. It is horrifying how we get screwed over again and again.

• 29:38Alastair Campbell?

  Maude Barclay, on one of the 2023 roundup episodes, Rory mentioned that he found the movie Barbie disturbing. Could he expand upon why he found it to be so? I thought that at the time, I remember you saying that, and I thought should have probed on that, but then I thought we're not, the rest is entertainment.

• 29:52Rory Stewart?

  Did you, did you love the movie?

• 29:54Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't, and I didn't hate it, but I didn't know if I, I didn't think it was great. I was glad Oppenheimer won the Golden Globe.

• 29:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I thought it was a bit weird, Barbie, because I thought it was trying to do a kind of cute feminist narrative by undermining the old chauvinistic assumptions of Barbie. But in the end, I sort of thought paradoxically, it kind of played into the same kind of narratives. It was just a different kind of cliche.

• 30:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:19Rory Stewart?

  I didn't think it was very interesting.

• 30:20Alastair Campbell?

  But that sounds like you were bored rather than disturbed.

• 30:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, maybe I find getting bored disturbing. Vicky Bamforth, can you talk about what's happening in Burma, please? Ethnic and democratic opposition forces defeat more of the Huns army, and a transfer of power seems possible. How can the UK government support a peaceful transfer of power and avoid a breakdown to ethnic armed states? So, very good question. Shishana, my wife, is in Myanmar, is in Burma as we speak, right in the heart of all this, just been visiting an IDP camp. It is an astonishing story. I mean, we've talked about Sudan, we've talked about Yemen, but Myanmar has been an ongoing conflict ever since basically the military intervened over all the election, put Aung San Suu Kyi, the lady, under house arrest on a trumped up charge around the use of a walkie talkie.

• 31:06Rory Stewart?

  And since then, there has been an explosion of violence, which has included professionals in the Burmese heartland demonstrating against the military, but most dramatically of all, all the minority peoples around the frontiers of Burma, Karen, Shin, Kechen, Shan, finding themselves in a massive insurgency against the Burmese army. And it's something that could be sorted, not by the UK, but it's something that could be helped if the US and China really got together on this. But the US and China don't seem to want to play ball.

• 31:35Alastair Campbell?

  Why do you think it is, I mean, Myanmar is a country which, in particular when she was in opposition, and as a sort of freedom fighter, as it were, was right up there as one of the countries that we talked. About, the media covered, the politics followed, it seems to sort of drop right off the map.

• 31:53Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think of the massive disappointment because this was a thing that had been run by a military regime from the 1960s. And then this extraordinary woman, incredibly beautiful, charismatic, dedicated, who'd been under house arrest for 20 years, leads the democratic movement, brings democracy finally to this country with so much potential natural resources. And then, of course, the terrible compromises around what happened to the Rohingya.

• 32:20Alastair Campbell?

  And do you think she could have compromised in a different way? Or do you think she had no choice?

• 32:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, so this is really interesting. So at the time, of course, we all thought this is absolutely horrifying. Why is this woman not condemning what the Burmese military is doing to the Rohingya? Her defence at the time, apart from the fact I think she's also a Burmese nationalist who didn't have much sympathy for the Rohingya, was, if I challenge the military on this, I'll be toppled in the coup d'etat. She then was toppled in a coup d'etat.

• 32:42Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway.

• 32:43Rory Stewart?

  Anyway, and now we are back to the horror. So I think people, it's sadly become one of these things. Bangladesh is another example, DRC in a more dramatic way is another example. Many of these coups d'etat in Africa that we've seen over the last year, where I just think we're becoming inured to the collapse of democracies and we no longer have the optimism or the confidence to.

• 33:05Alastair Campbell?

  Just on the Rohingya, we should point out, because we were pretty, I think it's fair to say, fairly negative about Sheikh Hasina, the continuing prime minister of Bangladesh. She did get a lot of praise at the time for the fact that Bangladesh took in an awful lot of the Rohingya. Shall we go a bit lighter?

• 33:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go on then.

• 33:22Alastair Campbell?

  Pete B. Could you settle the appropriate number of books by the bed debate? My current value of 15 is, I'm told by the bed's other occupant, 14 too many.

• 33:35Alastair Campbell?

  Where do you stand on?

• 33:36Rory Stewart?

  Well, 15, 15, I mean, that's quite an unstable pile, isn't it? I guess that's about three, four feet.

• 33:41Alastair Campbell?

  We got this question last night and I counted. I know it's just past Christmas, but Fiona had twelve.

• 33:47Rory Stewart?

  Twelve, you see, that's impressive.

• 33:48Alastair Campbell?

  I had one.

• 33:49Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 33:50Alastair Campbell?

  I normally have a lot more, but what I've done, I've got a new system. New year, new system. I've put my bedside pile on a shelf close to the bed.

• 33:59Rory Stewart?

  That's very good.

• 33:59Alastair Campbell?

  So they're not actually on the floor. It won't last more than a couple of weeks, but.

• 34:03Rory Stewart?

  Well, so my answer, of course, is a Kindle, and I'm sitting here with a Kindle, and I have discovered that I have got one thousand nine hundred and sixty one books on my Kindle.

• 34:12Alastair Campbell?

  How many of them have you read already?

• 34:14Rory Stewart?

  Oh, no, no, no, sorry. I'm sorry. Must have more than that. My goodness. It claims to have two thousand three hundred and twenty.

• 34:19Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 34:20Rory Stewart?

  And on this Kindle, I've only read four hundred and seventy six of them.

• 34:23Alastair Campbell?

  Do you buy books that you never read? I know you read a lot, but do you buy a lot of books and then don't read them?

• 34:27Rory Stewart?

  I I tend to read the first few chapters. So for example, this book on politics and governance in Bangladesh, after two, three chapters, I thought, hmm, I'm not so sure.

• 34:35Alastair Campbell?

  What about the post office book? Did you go the whole way?

• 34:37Rory Stewart?

  Post office book, I will get the whole way through. I'm actually only three quarters of the way through, but I think it's brilliant, really, really strongly recommended. Um. Final question for me. S J Tots, have you got a favorite fictional fantasy book or film or television series that you would recommend? Now, I don't know, you maybe don't like fantasy stuff.

• 34:53Alastair Campbell?

  I'm I don't know. Is that a terrible thing to admit?

• 34:55Rory Stewart?

  No, no, I mean, I think it's fair enough. You you you didn't like Game of Thrones or any of that kind of stuff. I didn't like it.

• 35:00Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 35:01Rory Stewart?

  Um. My big recommendation, which is more sci fi, which I just think is just fantastic, particularly on Audible, is something called Project Hail Mary, which is the most wonderful imagined account of a man going off on a mission into space to save the world. And it's actually taught my children more about science than anything you can possibly imagine. Because it's full of really good contemporary science and a really engaging story about an alien encounter. So Project Hail Mary.

• 35:27Alastair Campbell?

  I'm probably going to be revealing something terrible about myself right now, but I didn't really enjoy cartoons as a child.

• 35:34Rory Stewart?

  Ah, you didn't, I I never.

• 35:35Alastair Campbell?

  I quite like Tom and Jerry, but I and I quite like the Flintstones, but I didn't.

• 35:39Rory Stewart?

  I didn't, I didn't.

• 35:39Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't get into them.

• 35:40Rory Stewart?

  I didn't do cartoons either.

• 35:41Alastair Campbell?

  But you but you do do science fiction.

• 35:43Rory Stewart?

  But I do do science fiction, but I've now, I mean, I'm I'm actually worrying a little bit because like you, I've been thinking about writing a book for children. But I realised that as a child, I didn't actually read. That many children's books, I began reading adult books quite early. And I'm reading, if you're looking for a book to read to children, which is an adult book, but really works, I think, for a six-year-old. The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs by Steve Brusatti. It's amazing, he's a professor at a Scottish university, but he writes so well that I think anyone from eighty to six would enjoy it.

• 36:15Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody sent in a message just before Christmas, saying, will you please stop giving book recommendations? We can't possibly read all these books. And then somebody today is saying, can we please have more book recommendations? So should we let's go with more? I think we should go with more.

• 36:27Rory Stewart?

  Zacharia Slater, what are your best restaurants in London? You got a recommendation for restaurants in London?

• 36:31Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, God, I got, I got into real grief recently.

• 36:34Rory Stewart?

  Oh, all right.

• 36:35Alastair Campbell?

  I did an interview with a London newspaper or magazine or something, I can't remember what it was, and they said, favourite restaurants?

• 36:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 36:43Alastair Campbell?

  And I said, we're not very well blessed for good restaurants.

• 36:47Rory Stewart?

  Oh, Lord.

• 36:48Alastair Campbell?

  In our area.

• 36:48Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 36:49Alastair Campbell?

  But then went on to they have a couple, but every other restaurant I've been to since.

• 36:52Rory Stewart?

  Went mad.

• 36:53Alastair Campbell?

  I'm like, so I'm going to say Rosella's.

• 36:55Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 36:55Alastair Campbell?

  In Kentish Town, I'm going to say Mimo La Buffalo.

• 36:58Rory Stewart?

  Yes.

• 36:59Alastair Campbell?

  In South, they agreed, and I'm going to say Revel's. They're all in, they're all very near where I live.

• 37:04Rory Stewart?

  And what are they, mostly, mostly Italian food, right?

• 37:05Alastair Campbell?

  Rosella's, yes.

• 37:06Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Alastair Campbell?

  Revel's is a very nice kind of old fashioned restaurant.

• 37:10Rory Stewart?

  What sort of white table class?

• 37:12Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, and sort of, you know, quite a varied menu.

• 37:15Rory Stewart?

  Somebody brushing the bread off your white table.

• 37:17Alastair Campbell?

  All that, I always have duck on croute and red cabbage.

• 37:20Rory Stewart?

  Duck on croute?

• 37:21Alastair Campbell?

  Always, I never have anything else there. And then Mimo La Buffalo is run by this wonderful, colourful, very charismatic and funny Italian, not been very well recently, but he was a motor racer who, called Mimo, who had a terrible accent and then went into the restaurant trade.

• 37:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, I've got a couple of recommendations. So best dim sum in, in London, you want sort of dumplings?

• 37:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of science fiction for me.

• 37:48Rory Stewart?

  You'd go, either to Joy King Lau in Leicester Square or Jiar in South Kensington, but little niche, if you want to fancy a meal, I mean, a really fancy lovely meal in a very small restaurant, Kitty Fish's in Shepherd's Market, is really amazing treat, but it's only got, I think, about seven tables.

• 38:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm sure that next week they'll have lots of Rest is Politics listeners.

• 38:09Rory Stewart?

  Good.

• 38:11Alastair Campbell?

  Very good, see you next week.

• 38:12Rory Stewart?

  See you next week, bye bye.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  We are getting a statement from Number Ten on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

• 38:30Speaker 05

  The Great Game: Strategic Struggle Between Britain and Russia.

• 38:37Speaker 06

  We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian.

• 38:43Speaker 07

  Holding the Russians accountable is World War III.

• 38:45Speaker 08

  They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people.

• 38:48Speaker 05

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

• 39:02Speaker 09

  We would need to understand the policy context.

• 39:04Speaker 05

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

• 39:12Speaker 07

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• 39:17Speaker 09

  Yes.

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