9. Biggest snakes, Basic Instinct, and meeting Miley

Defeating populism, the way to win a leadership contest, and Boris Johnson meeting Miley Cyrus. Join Alastair and Rory from Scotland in our first ever live episode - it's certainly not one to miss! Go to Instagram and Twitter for our reading list. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producer: Dom Johnson Exec Producers: Tony Pastor & Jack Davenport Goalhanger Podcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:43Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell, in Rory Stewart's house.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  Welcome.

• 1:51Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for dinner last night. Thank you for the pleasure of meeting your mum. Your wife, your children.

• 1:58Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's been great. You're very good with children. I wasn't expecting that. There was a softie side to you coming out there.

• 2:02Alastair Campbell?

  Why were you not expecting me to be good with children?

• 2:04Rory Stewart?

  I don't know. I thought it might be quite tough for them, but you're really kind of charming the seven-year-old. I thought it was good.

• 2:08Alastair Campbell?

  I've always been quite, I'm very good with babies and I'm quite good with kids, I'd say.

• 2:12Rory Stewart?

  That's very good.

• 2:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. No, it's been very, very nice here. And a nice sunny day in Scotland.

• 2:18Rory Stewart?

  Not bad.

• 2:19Alastair Campbell?

  Burnley had a great win on the way up.

• 2:21Rory Stewart?

  Go on, tell us about that.

• 2:22Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, you don't care really. Don't even pretend, don't even pretend that you care about football. Uh, and then just as I was arriving, the news was breaking that President Macron had fairly roundly beaten Marine Le Pen, which was good news. Somebody sent a question, say, as you're in Scotland, could you both say, what is your favourite Scottish delicacy?

• 2:43Rory Stewart?

  Okay, I'm going to go first. So I have oatcakes and porridge every morning religiously. My father was really into haggis, but I think he did it mostly in order to annoy the English.

• 2:54Alastair Campbell?

  I, I like, I do like haggis. Let's fast forward to today and France.

• 2:58Rory Stewart?

  Which you're very happy about.

• 2:59Alastair Campbell?

  I am, well, I was, I don't, I never worried he was going to lose. Um, but I had too many people who were saying, oh God, you know, America had Trump, you had Brexit. Are we going to have that same moment? And there was a couple of days when I just had a kind of slight panic. I think it would have been catastrophic if she'd won on so many levels. And I'm glad that he's won and won pretty well. And I think it's hilarious to have watched the sort of telegraph spectator, right-wing industrial Tufton Street complex, for whom fifty-two percent in a referendum is the most overwhelming expression of the will of the people. But apparently Marine Le Pen really effectively won this election.

• 3:40Rory Stewart?

  And you, you noticed a lot of young people where you were in France being supportive of her.

• 3:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, people who, that, that's the one thing I think that is really, people have got to work out how you'd handle this for the future. I think the younger generation who backed Mélenchon, a lot of them felt nothing about turning that from far left to far right. And I think that's a real problem. It's like, well, why are they voting for? Okay, even if you get why they vote for one extreme, why are they then voting for the absolute opposite end of the poll? And that says to me that they're just attracted by the extremes. And the second thing I think that's really interesting is that she did do a very good job of de-demolization of herself, so that probably there is a generation who's got no sense of what she's been about, what her father was about, where her politics came from.

• 4:29Alastair Campbell?

  And I think you saw there were moments in the TV debate where the mask, the kind of smiling mask slipped a little bit. And I think when she, when she started talking about why she wanted to ban the veil and, and all that stuff, you sort of saw that kind of zealous passion, whereas the cost of living stuff, she was kind of faking the passion maybe. But listen, France is going to be quite difficult to govern. Um, you know, that's a lot of people who voted for an extreme party.

• 4:56Rory Stewart?

  It's very difficult to get the pattern of populism because you get a sense that from, I guess, 2012, 2014 onwards, there's this big wave. Modi in India, Erdogan suddenly goes much more extreme in Turkey, you've got Hungary, you've got Poland, you've got Trump in 2016, you've got Bolsonaro in Brazil. But there's obviously a different story going on here, too. In France, yes, Le Pen's stock is increasing, she's getting more at each time.

• 5:24Alastair Campbell?

  Mm-hmm.

• 5:25Rory Stewart?

  But she hasn't won. And in Slovenia, the populace was defeated.

• 5:28Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think the Slovenia thing is really, really interesting. Um, and it's very interesting to some of the things that we've been talking about in relation to Johnson, for example. Because the guy who's been defeated, who has been prime minister before, um, he got driven out on the back of corruption, then he's come back. Uh, and the, the new, the new winner, this guy Golub with the, and he doesn't call it, it's interesting what Dili Smith said last week, he doesn't call it a party, he calls it a movement, the freedom movement. And they have campaigned on the threat to the rule of law, illiberalism, attacks on the independence independence of the media and of the judiciary. So a lot of the stuff that is attacks on the the bodies controlling the election, like the electoral commission,

• 6:12Alastair Campbell?

  legislation currently going through in the UK. So that's why I took huge heart from that, that a country like Slovenia, from that kind of, you know, Yugoslav base, as it were, where politics is very tough. And he's and and the other thing is, this party did not exist a year ago, and he was a Green Party guy, Golub, the new winner, Green Party who had no MPs.

• 6:34Rory Stewart?

  That's amazing, isn't it?

• 6:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 6:35Rory Stewart?

  And it's amazing, because you also would have thought that campaigning on things like the rule of law, constitution, justice, are not necessarily the kind of things that get voters excited. If I were doing it in Britain, if I was Keir Sama, I think I'd put a written constitution there. I think the point is that we've finally bust through the unwritten constitution. Boris is showing again and again, the fact that he's not paying any attention to the ministerial code. I mean, and he's playing games, saying things like, or his supporters are saying things like, well, the point about the ministerial code is for ministers to resign to the prime minister, so the prime minister can't resign to the prime minister. And the unwritten constitution was based on the idea of, yeah, basically, people being honourable, having a sense of moral restraint. And Burke is very explicit

• 7:18Rory Stewart?

  about this in the 18th century. He says that really the constitution in Britain isn't about the theoretical powers. You know, he says, who knows what the theoretical powers, the monarchy, or the House of Commons, the House of Lords could be. But in practice, the reason why the House of Commons can't abolish the House of Lords, or the monarchy can't do crazy stuff, is they restrain themselves. They've got to send what those unwritten rules are. So I think now that we've seen it with prerogating parliament, we've seen it with attempts to do illegal actions, we've seen it attempts to challenge over lobbying and Owen Patterson, we've seen it now again with all this stuff to do with the ministerial code.

• 7:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we're seeing it as well with the electoral commission, and we're definitely seeing it, I think, with, John Major did an interview not that long ago, where he said that, you know, he found it very hard to imagine that a prime minister could be found to break a law, and that they wouldn't automatically resign.

• 8:07Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, they'd automatically resign. And then we've seen it actually also with things like electoral rules. So I think I was complaining last week that the Electoral rules in London for the election, which used to allow independent candidates some chance of coming through, have now all been abolished. And they just do it on a fifty plus one vote in the House of Commons. So there's no, in every other country, there's a constitutional rule that stops a simple majority changing fundamental things like the electoral system. But the problem started back with Blair and Cameron, because they too used very simple majorities in the House of Commons to change fundamental things like setting up Supreme Courts, and in Cameron's case, trying to abolish the House of Lords, introducing fixed term parliament attacks.

• 8:48Alastair Campbell?

  What about where the manifesto fit into all that, though?

• 8:51Rory Stewart?

  Well, in any normal country, it doesn't matter it's in a manifesto. Every other country in the world, you can only change fundamental things.

• 8:57Alastair Campbell?

  If you've got a.

• 8:58Rory Stewart?

  If you've got a two thirds majority, or two thirds majority in Parliament, or you have a special procedure with your legislature, or you have a referendum. Because these rules exist to protect the public against the politicians. So you can't allow a simple majority, even with a mandate, to change things like the way your court works, or how the House of Commons relates to the House of Lords, or any of this stuff.

• 9:16Alastair Campbell?

  So let me, a question from mediator. With Le Pen losing, and Yan Sertin losing in Slovenia, is this a significant moment of triumph for the renewal of democratic values and a setback for populist nationalism and Putin? I mean, I kind of hope so.

• 9:29Rory Stewart?

  And then we've got the question from Professor G. Given the steady rise of Le Pen and the annihilation of the mainstream parties by the Macron movement, where will French politics be four years from now? So it's told in two ways, isn't it? As you said, the steady rise of Le Pen, or the crushing defeat of Le Pen.

• 9:44Alastair Campbell?

  I think the four years question, I mean, it's very, I think Marine Le Pen, yes, she's risen, and she's done better than the last time. I suspect the person that she'll be most worrying about at the moment is not Macron, but Marion-Marie-Chal Le Pen, who's dropped the Le Pen name, which is her niece, who defected to Zemmour.

• 10:06Alastair Campbell?

  And who is very attractive, very articulate, young by comparison. And I mean, I think has weaknesses, which is, you know, I think it was probably an error that she's made to go to Zamoor. But I suspect she'll go very, very quiet for a while and then come up under the radar. And I think she could be quite a threat. Um, I think what happened, you know, what happens to the, the, the, the currently destroyed mainstream parties, whether they morph into something else. Um, and Macron doesn't have an obvious successor.

• 10:37Rory Stewart?

  No, and the reality of this movement is that it's quite fragile. So that if, we hope he doesn't, but if he really screws up over the next four years, Le Pen is in quite a strong position to challenge.

• 10:51Alastair Campbell?

  Now, should we talk about your friend Boris Johnson?

• 10:53Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, go on then.

• 10:54Alastair Campbell?

  Um, it was slightly alarming that you told me over breakfast that you'd been dreaming about him, but we'll, we'll leave, we'll leave that, we'll leave that. So there's Le Pen, gets defeated.

• 11:06Alastair Campbell?

  So Macron has won and he's, I guess, given the, shown how to take on populism, maybe by sticking to principles and so forth. So you, you fought Johnson to try to win the Tory leadership. What did you take out of that in terms of this debate about how to tackle a populist who's willing to say anything to get elected?

• 11:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think this could become very relevant. I think Boris is now in a very difficult situation. The reason I've been dreaming about him is weirdly, although, um, you know, I have a, a sort of incredible moral dislike of this man. I mean, I find him the most disturbing human being. I see him almost as this kind of monstrous kind of fairy tale figure. But I'm beginning to feel weirdly in my dreams, sorry for him. Uh, because I'm beginning to sense just both how at some level I think he must be very unhappy, but also.

• 11:58Rory Stewart?

  He is being destroyed. People are circling and I think he doesn't have long to go. And I think we're going to be into leadership. So one of the things I'd love to explore a bit is how these leadership battles work.

• 12:13Rory Stewart?

  And how do you run against someone like Boris? I mean, obviously, I tried and failed, dismally.

• 12:17Alastair Campbell?

  Did you, did you, did you think you could beat him?

• 12:20Rory Stewart?

  I thought I could beat him because I thought it was obvious to people that he was going to be an awful prime minister and that he was an awful person. And I thought that it was obvious that Britain would never choose someone like that. I, I felt in Cumbria, for example, that people didn't take him seriously, that they thought, yeah, he's okay for Mayor of London, but that's because they saw it as a largely ceremonial role. But this was a serious country and you wouldn't appoint someone like that as your prime minister. And it was very, very painful for me to realise that people were prepared to go along with someone like that because

• 12:55Rory Stewart?

  I mean, actually, I remember the, the moment where I decided to announce that I wouldn't serve in his cabinet and that I'd resign if he got in.

• 13:03Rory Stewart?

  Was that he'd said to me three weeks before, this is just the start of the leadership in 2019, he'd said to me three weeks before that he'd never consider a no deal Brexit. And then the day that Theresa May stepped down, he said, you know, he, he was pushing hard for a no deal Brexit. And that was the moment where I was just like, okay, so he said this to me three weeks ago, he's now saying this. But I, I realised that moral outrage and saying that this guy is a danger and that he's going to be a bad prime minister isn't enough. If people think he can win. And I think the same is obviously playing out with Trump in the United States.

• 13:39Alastair Campbell?

  So if they no longer think he can win, that is the only thing that will make the Tories move against him?

• 13:45Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, if they think that they're going to lose their seats. And I think that the May election is going to be critical for them. Because many of them are ex councillors, the core of their Conservative Party membership are people who are councillors, often the officers in their associations are councillors.

• 14:01Rory Stewart?

  But that leads us to another thing. I mean, do you think he's going to lose 800 seats in the council elections?

• 14:05Alastair Campbell?

  No, not sure. I think the, I thought, I think two things were recent. There was a question from somebody who said, oh, he's called Alan Crapper, which I thought was a very good name, given that the question was asking me if I could think of anything, anything good to say about this government. And he says, you're not allowed to say nothing and you're not allowed to say they're very good at screwing things up. I think they are very good at driving messaging and narrative. And I think that the, the council election story, I could be completely wrong, and I could be doing a journalist a disservice. I think the story briefed into The Telegraph that they're going to lose 800 seats was a deliberate piece of if we only lose 300, it's not so bad. And they've done another

• 14:50Alastair Campbell?

  one today. The Times is running a story saying that the Sue Gray report is so bad that he will have to resign. And I think it's a bit like a lawyer who's saying to the client, look, you know, I know you're being done for murder, but we're going to try and get you off with manslaughter, and we'll, we'll claim that as a victory.

• 15:05Rory Stewart?

  That's good, that's good. And I apologize for the bit of noise in the background. It's probably my, my, my five year old trying to break into the room to hear more about contemporary politics.

• 15:12Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it is his home. It is his home. And he has had his father describe me as being very good with children. So there you go. Now, listen, just on the, on the mechanics though, you were involved in that contest. And it was an interesting thing because you went in, most people thought, well, that's ridiculous. Nobody's ever heard of Rory Stewart. And then suddenly you actually started to become interesting and you were rising up and you got through the second round. And, and it was a massive field of candidates at one point. What was actually going on in terms of the deals that get done, the discussions that you have? And you obviously were surprised at Johnson's venality. Were they all a bit venal?

• 15:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, let me, let me start by just describing the system, because I think this is going to become relevant. If, as I suspect, after the May elections, they move against Johnson, he goes and there's a leadership thing, we're going to see it all over again. So first thing to understand in basic terms is that it's the Tory MPs who knock it down to the final two.

• 16:02Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Rory Stewart?

  And then it goes to the association in the country, which then selects, and that's only about 100,000 people. So it's very undemocratic. You end up with a situation in which your prime minister is basically narrowed down to two by the MPs and then selected by the, by the associations of the country. Now, That structural change is quite new in the Conservative Party. In the past, it was only the MPs. And I think in the days when it was only the MPs, Boris would have been less likely to make it through. One of the main reasons he was put through to the last two is because people sensed that the Conservative Party members in the country adored him and would vote for him overwhelmingly. In the old days, which people used to criticise, criticise for being smoke-filled rooms and

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  Men in grey suits.

• 16:47Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and old buffers doing stuff. They would have thought, this is a disgraceful human being. We can't possibly have him as Prime Minister, and they probably wouldn't have let him through.

• 16:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 16:54Rory Stewart?

  And actually, oddly, you can make the same story about Trump. It's changes in the way the primary system work and the party system works in the United States that allowed someone like Trump to come through in a way that he wouldn't have been able to in the past.

• 17:06Alastair Campbell?

  Maybe Jeremy Corbyn as well, in the Labour system.

• 17:08Rory Stewart?

  Jeremy Corbyn too, yeah. Because actually, what you're doing is you're taking away from the Members of Parliament who know these people best. With Boris Johnson, everybody knew, because they'd worked with him for years. I mean, he'd first been elected to Parliament in 2001. They'd seen for years that he lied, that he was unreliable, that he couldn't concentrate on a brief. And anyone who'd worked with Jeremy Corbyn for the 30 years, I guess, he'd been in Parliament, sensed he wouldn't make a good Prime Minister.

• 17:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, certainly sensed that he probably wouldn't adapt, change his mind, devise arguments and policies that spoke to the future rather than the past. I think there was certainly that feeling.

• 17:45Rory Stewart?

  Tell us just on that, I want to come back to the Conservative leadership, but

• 17:48Alastair Campbell?

  So do I. You can't just jump around. And no, we're going to stick with the Conservative leadership.

• 17:51Rory Stewart?

  Conservative leadership for a second. I'll come back to Corbyn in a second.

• 17:53Alastair Campbell?

  You avoided my question about whether Johnson was the only one to display venality in deal making.

• 17:57Rory Stewart?

  No, no, they all did amazing deal making, and it was completely fascinating. So Michael Gove, for example, is probably the most notorious exemplar of this. He got in touch with me, I guess, when we were getting into the final five or six. And he reached out and invited me over for breakfast. And at that stage, I had momentum. He'd been stuck. He was, essentially, he was like a plane that its engine had cut out in mid glide. He was barely putting on any votes. And I'd gone, I think, eight, sixteen, thirty seven. So I was doubling each time. So I thought, okay, this is the moment.

• 18:39Alastair Campbell?

  Just to explain to people, that's because the one who loses a round drops out.

• 18:43Rory Stewart?

  Drops out. And then their votes. And almost every time someone dropped out, most of those votes would go to me. And so it seemed at that moment, weirdly, I was leading the opinion polls and I was second in the betting odds. So I go to this meeting in which I imagine what's going to happen is Michael Gove is going to say that he's going to be happy to come in behind me, or at least that's a possibility, that's what we're discussing.

• 19:06Rory Stewart?

  But it's a very confidential meeting. Nobody's to know that this meeting is happening. It's happening in one of his lieutenant's houses, private house in London. We go in and out very secretly for this meeting. Sure enough, about three hours after the meeting, all over the newspapers, Rory Stewart's gone in to see Michael Gove and he's committed to coming in behind Michael Gove and he's throwing in the towel.

• 19:26Alastair Campbell?

  Unbelievable.

• 19:27Rory Stewart?

  So I'm then in.

• 19:28Alastair Campbell?

  I bet it was the Times.

• 19:29Rory Stewart?

  So I'm then.

• 19:30Alastair Campbell?

  The Times is basically his notice board.

• 19:31Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely.

• 19:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 19:33Rory Stewart?

  Then he says to me all through that day, oh Rory, I'm sorry about that, some misunderstanding, I very apologize. You know, very keen to work with you, very keen to work with you. And then the following morning, the Times leads with Michael saying, I would be completely unsuitable to be a prime minister, couldn't possibly serve under me. And again, he's very apologetic, Rory, I'm so sorry, I think I got a bit carried away in that Times article, I maybe took it too far with that. And it was at that point that I realized that he and the other campaigns had decided that they needed to knock me out rather than go against Boris. So that by the time we get to the Tuesday debate, second debate, BBC debate, where I'm assuming that I'm going to be able to have my first great shot at Boris, because he'd refused to turn up to the Channel Four debate.

• 20:17Rory Stewart?

  What I actually discover is all the others have turned their fire on me and I can't sort of dodge their bullets to get to Boris.

• 20:24Alastair Campbell?

  So who was left by then? Gove?

• 20:26Rory Stewart?

  So Gove, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, Gove, Sajid Javid, Jeremy Hunt, me and Boris, yeah. Right, Hancock was out by then. Hancock's out, I think, yeah. So it was, I mean, I I thought again and again, these amazing moments. So there was a man who was my principal private secretary in in DIFID, who I really rated and really trusted. And he went out and he was saying, I'm, you know, trying to decide what to do. I really want to plot with you. I think you could be the future. We go out for dinner together. I lay out my whole plan and how we've got. Next morning, he tells me that he's with Matt Hancock. He's obviously been with Matt Hancock for weeks. So obviously actually told Hancock he's going to this dinner with me to find out what my game plan is.

• 21:09Rory Stewart?

  Or do you think he was even just eating out of your time? Well, with Hancock, I I did worry about that. So when Matt Hancock got wiped out on the Sunday morning, he called me up to, right up to Kilburn, where he lived. And we went for a very, very long walk around around the park in Kilburn, in which he was talking about how he was really tempted to come in behind me. And, you know, maybe he and me could be like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He could be the Chancellor, I could be the Prime Minister. And I was producing this beautiful picture because he still had at that stage, I can't remember, he still had eighteen votes to play for. Bring him all behind me. We were all people who were against the no deal Brexit. We were all very much against Boris Johnson. He was very pro remain, wasn't he? Very pro remain. He'd said that he he found it difficult to imagine serving in a Boris administration.

• 21:53Rory Stewart?

  He'd said that paroing parliament would be betraying the people who died on the D day beaches. God, he did, yeah. He did. Um, so he eats out most of my morning when I'm supposed to be prepping for the debate that evening. And sure enough, he then declares for Boris Johnson.

• 22:11Rory Stewart?

  Which he'd obviously already decided. Which I imagine was in the back of his mind. There wasn't something you you don't. Well, certainly my team were absolutely convinced that he'd wasted three hours of my time with no intention whatsoever of coming in behind me. What a snake. Well, I'd like. Who, okay, go of Hancock, which was the biggest snake in that scenario? I I find, oh, it's a difficult question, isn't it? A difficult question, difficult question, difficult question. They're they're interesting people, though. Oddly, they are both very effective ministers. They're probably in Boris's cabinet were among the two most effective ministers he had. And

• 22:49Alastair Campbell?

  I I'd push back on that. I think I think Gove was terrible. I I think Gove's brilliant because of his relationship with the Times, actually. Because Murdoch basically likes him and he gets such a free run. I think Gove is really good at conveying a media narrative that he's an effective minister. I think he was a terrible education. I think what what he did to schools was dreadful. I think that his role in justice, uh, not having it. And now he's like, he's in charge of levelling up.

• 23:17Rory Stewart?

  So I I came into

• 23:19Alastair Campbell?

  And Hancock?

• 23:20Rory Stewart?

  I I came into, I came in, I came in, I came into, I came into justice after Gove. And I came in as a minister of state, so as a junior minister, and he'd been the secretary of state. And he got in touch with me immediately and he came to see me in the tea room. He spent an hour and a half with me, going through every detail of the department, opening his diary, sharing numbers with me.

• 23:44Alastair Campbell?

  I would put that down as basic competence so far.

• 23:47Rory Stewart?

  Only guy who's ever done it in my whole political career. Phenomenal handover, very generous to somebody who's more junior than him. And immediately after the meeting, following up with more emails, set up for me to meet people from the Prison Reform Trust.

• 24:01Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, what did he achieve as justice secretary?

• 24:04Rory Stewart?

  He managed to get the money for new prisons, which nobody had got in place before. And that was a big deal. That was two and a half billion pounds that he'd managed to extract out of us, maybe even more, out of a system that didn't want to do it. He really committed to putting education back into prisons, which Chris Grayning had put it put stopped. He, I think, had a genuinely humane attitude towards prisoners. I think it was really, actually, the making of him. I think oddly

• 24:29Alastair Campbell?

  He did ask me, I think I told you, he did ask me to do a review of mental health in prisons.

• 24:32Rory Stewart?

  You see, there we are.

• 24:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, okay. So I'm saying I will give you, he's an effective minister politician.

• 24:40Rory Stewart?

  And I think he's got better all the time. I think he's had problems under Boris because he's not allowed to get anywhere near the media, which has been a real problem for him. But he was good at DEFRA.

• 24:50Alastair Campbell?

  Friends close to go still get quoted at The Times very regularly.

• 24:54Rory Stewart?

  But at DEFRA, he was actually very imaginative. He completely embraced the environment, embraced the rewilding movement, which was an unusual thing to do as a Tory minister. So I think actually he's got better and better because I think he's worked out how to make big, clear, bold statements and not get drawn down into technical detail.

• 25:14Alastair Campbell?

  All right, very quick question.

• 25:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 25:15Alastair Campbell?

  Before we take a break, when Boris Johnson is replaced by Jeremy Hunt, Jack seems to know more about this contest than we do, and asks Rory to join his cabinet, will the podcast continue or will Boris Johnson join the podcast?

• 25:30Rory Stewart?

  What do you think about the Boris Sanders to Campbell podcast?

• 25:33Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think it's ever going to happen. I don't think it's ever going to happen.

• 25:36Rory Stewart?

  That could be magical, couldn't it?

• 25:38Alastair Campbell?

  I don't, I mean, I don't, I've actually got a photograph of me with Boris Johnson when he was Mayor of London and I was doing a charity thing for Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research, which is now Bloodwise, and we were riding a bike together. And I've got this look on my face that says, I really want to push this guy off his bike.

• 25:55Rory Stewart?

  Did you ever get on with him?

• 26:00Alastair Campbell?

  I got on with him in that I accepted as a part of that media sort of thing, that he was entertaining, quirky, had ideas and so forth. So that was when we were both journalists. Once I was working in Number 10, I was only really conscious of him as this guy in Brussels who was literally making stories up day after day after day after day. And that gets really tedious. And I can remember him once coming to one of my briefings and it was, I can't remember what the summit was about, it was a huge briefing, about hundreds and hundreds of journalists who were at this briefing and I was doing this briefing. And I can remember

• 26:42Alastair Campbell?

  Johnson walking in at the back, no pen, no notebook, shirt hanging out, and just sort of chuntering and giving a kind of running commentary. And from this, and I remember all the other Brussels journalists literally thought he was a joke and a charlatan.

• 27:00Alastair Campbell?

  So I didn't really have much of a relationship with him. And then I had a very funny moment when I took my daughter. My daughter badgered me to get tickets for a Miley Cyrus concert. And it ended up, we were in the same box as Boris Johnson, who was mayor. And then the guy who had got sorted the, the whole thing out for us. He took us down for a meet and greet with Miley Cyrus. And Boris Johnson, she's sort of, we're all this ridiculous kind of, you know, Jos says, he actually said to me at one point, he said, he said, can you, can you believe this? We, we, we Titans of modern Britain, this is what he says to me. We Titans of modern Britain. And we're hanging around, waiting to shake the hand of a woman whose name we'd never heard of until yesterday.

• 27:45Alastair Campbell?

  Which was quite funny and broadly accurate. Uh, anyway, Miley turns up and of course Grace, my daughter and Johnson's daughter are very excited. And we've got, they've got a couple of friends each and they're very, very excited. She comes up, she's introduced to Boris Johnson, Mayor of London. Hello, Mr. Mayor. And Johnson turns to me and says, this is my deputy, Alastair Campbell. Which was quite funny because it was one of those things where there is, she's about to go on stage. There is no point to try to unpick this. So she's like, hello, Mr. Deputy Mayor, how are you? And so he could, fair enough, he could make me laugh, but, uh, I think any, any humor or sense of liking of his journalistic character has, has long gone. You can't have people like that as prime minister.

• 28:29Alastair Campbell?

  I'm sorry, let's take a break.

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• 30:37Rory Stewart?

  So our sponsor this week is the New European, and I believe you've finally pulled off what you've always wanted, which is the link between football and politics.

• 30:45Alastair Campbell?

  I do it all the time. Yeah, I've got the front cover.

• 30:49Rory Stewart?

  Well, congratulations.

• 30:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I've also, I did it as my German homework.

• 30:54Rory Stewart?

  You've done it in German?

• 30:55Alastair Campbell?

  I've done it in German and English because it's an open letter to Jürgen Klopp. Now, do you know who Jürgen Klopp is, Roy? You're not a big football fan?

• 31:02Rory Stewart?

  No, I'm not a big fan, but you've informed me who Jürgen Klopp is.

• 31:05Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Jürgen Klopp is the manager at Liverpool, and he's, I reckon, one of the top two coaches in the world at the moment, but he's also an extraordinary bloke. He is a leader. He is somebody that brings real spirit and joy to his team, to the community. He was a really credible voice on Covid, on vaccination. He has spoken out against Brexit, which makes him a very good human being in my eyes. He has, he has asked the question, why does this great country, us, why do we give power to people like Johnson and Farage, which again is a very, very good question.

• 31:47Alastair Campbell?

  So I've basically written a peon of praise to his football and to his character. And I pleaded with him to, once he's won the quadruple, to go into politics.

• 31:58Rory Stewart?

  And people can read this in the New European, and I believe there's an offer.

• 32:02Alastair Campbell?

  There's always an offer. It's a special offer just for Rest Is Politics, listeners of the Rest Is Politics. £1 a week for the digital subscription, £2 a week for the paper version as well. You go to the neweuropean.co.uk forward slash Rest Is Politics. It's their best subscription offer anywhere. That's the neweuropean.co.uk forward slash Rest Is Politics. And the other thing, Rory, you know, we talked about food security.

• 32:24Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 32:25Alastair Campbell?

  And I mentioned Minette Batters.

• 32:26Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 32:27Alastair Campbell?

  Head of the National Farmers Union. She and I had a conversation after that, our discussion, and she's now writing for the New European next week about food security.

• 32:35Rory Stewart?

  Fantastic.

• 32:36Alastair Campbell?

  There we go. So the synergy is just awesome.

• 32:38Rory Stewart?

  And a good chance to brush up your German.

• 32:41Alastair Campbell?

  Now, back to the podcast.

• 32:47Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to Rest Is Politics with me, Rory Stewart.

• 32:50Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 32:52Rory Stewart?

  We're now on to questions and John Sands has sent in, I think, probably the best question we've ever had. Did Tony Blair ever consider wearing a short skirt to distract John Major at PMQs?

• 33:06Alastair Campbell?

  No, he thought about long skirt, no. No, and I think this may relate to Angela Rayner. Boris Johnson thinks, and the Tories think that when he's confronted by Angela Rayner at Prime Minister's Questions, when she has to stand up for Keir Starmer, for example, when he had Covid, is that she, Sharon Stone, basic instinct like crosses and uncrosses her legs.

• 33:29Rory Stewart?

  To distract Boris.

• 33:30Alastair Campbell?

  To distract Boris Johnson, who, as we know, is not averse to being distracted by.

• 33:35Rory Stewart?

  Well, they're sort of playing off that, aren't they? They're playing off the idea that he's the kind of guy who's going to be distracted by that. So they're sort of playing into the story of Boris as this kind of wicker chap. Once a now, there's this funny sound going on, which is my little boy reading Treasure Island. Sasha, when you turn the pages, could you make sure we don't make too much noise turning the pages?

• 33:52Alastair Campbell?

  Very quiet turning of the page. The thing that really got my goat about the story was this thing that said, it was actually quoting, claiming to quote an MP, no idea if they make it up or not, and let's just, our listeners may be shocked, newspapers do make up stories, but it quotes a Tory MP as saying that, obviously, he can't compete with his Oxford Union debating skills, but she has other qualities, i.e. her legs.

• 34:22Rory Stewart?

  And then, then as somebody pointed out, actually quite well on Twitter, what are these Oxford Union debating skills? I mean, apart from just basically refusing to answer the question.

• 34:30Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and also, I think most of the, one of the reasons they're probably trying to do her in is because when Angela Rayne has been up against him, she's been pretty good. And I can think of many, many, many working class people with whom Boris Johnson would not last two minutes in debate, particularly if there were no cameras there. So, no, I saw the whole thing eat of sexism, classism, snobbery.

• 34:55Rory Stewart?

  Is there anything that you regret from your time at the Mirror going after, we talk about mail on Sunday, and a thing that you regret about the way that she went after politicians?

• 35:03Alastair Campbell?

  There's a couple of stories actually I remember at the Mirror. There was once I did a story about a pools winner. There's a woman who won the pools and she ticked the no publicity box. Now, the reason it became a story was because it turned out that the guy who collected her pools coupon, filled in the numbers for her, knowing that she always did the same numbers, and then posted it for her. It then turned out that she didn't give him anything. Okay, so we thought this was quite a good story. I go off and I basically harassed this woman into either trying to talk to me, which she ticked the no publicity box, she didn't want to talk to me, or to giving me the story, explaining why she wouldn't give the money, or maybe that she would, right?

• 35:47Alastair Campbell?

  And I, I sort of feel bad about that one, because I thought, you know, she did take the no publicity box, she was an ordinary member of the public, and, you know, whose business was it? I think the only politician that maybe at times I might occasionally lie awake at night thinking, God, did I go over the top, was possibly John Major.

• 36:05Rory Stewart?

  And what happened with John Major? What were the stories about John Major in those days?

• 36:07Alastair Campbell?

  Well, John Major, when he was a rising star, and I was politically editor on the Mirror, I kind of cultivated him, got very friendly with him, and Norma, did a big magazine profile of them at home and. And it got on very well with him. I think when he became leader of the Tory party, I think he found it very difficult to understand that I changed mode. I felt now he's the leader of the Tory party. I'm a validly openly Labour supporting journalist. So I started to be a bit more aggressive and and sometimes I think went over the top. And then probably that continued when I then joined Tony Blair.

• 36:42Rory Stewart?

  And it's fascinating listening to you because I now realise that obviously when I was running for the leadership, I had the Guardian people being very nice about me because I was going up against Boris Johnson, right? And obviously, if I'd been lucky enough to be elected, they would have turned on me in an instant. And my colleagues were probably right, being very suspicious of the fact that I had all these left wing newspapers being complimentary towards me.

• 37:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, when you were showing me your three thousand, the three thousand five hundred trees that you planted in the area last night, and I was saying the last Tory to show me his trees was Michael Heseltine, his verified arboretum. Of course, I had a good relationship with Heseltine, I think precisely for that that reason, probably. But I said, so what's been interesting with John Major?

• 37:22Rory Stewart?

  Are you prepared to tell the story about you going to see Michael Heseltine and and what happened at the end of your visit?

• 37:28Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, Laurie, that's harsh. I'm trying to think of his idiot. Well, how can I put it? So Fiona and I went there, there were all these sort of great and grand Tories who were there. And at the end, as I, they were all signing the visitors book. And I go up to sign, thinking, this is what you do at these posh country houses where these Tory squires all hang out. He's not a real squire, of course. And so I get, I grabbed the pen and he just comes across and he says, I don't see, so I don't think you should sign that. I don't want my friends to know you've been here.

• 38:02Alastair Campbell?

  So they're all tribal, you see. It's not just me who's tribal.

• 38:05Rory Stewart?

  Amazing, amazing. Just for the record, I want to explain about those trees. This is, this is not an arboretum. These are mostly native trees. This is me doing my bit for the environment.

• 38:14Alastair Campbell?

  You're doing a great thing with the trees. We don't have enough trees.

• 38:18Rory Stewart?

  Thank you.

• 38:18Alastair Campbell?

  And you've planted three thousand five hundred. No, so yeah, John Major, and I was actually quite pleased that during the People's Vote campaign, I did a couple of things with him where I felt I was able to.

• 38:29Alastair Campbell?

  Get a more even.

• 38:30Rory Stewart?

  Do you think he's forgiven you?

• 38:32Alastair Campbell?

  Uh, I don't think he'd have done stuff as he did for the people's vote if he hadn't.

• 38:36Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 38:36Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I don't, I think so. I think so. I get the feeling that he has. And also, I also do genuinely think he's been very, very impressive post office. I think the, look, Tony gets it in the neck for, they've all made money, right? Cameron makes lots of money, John Major makes lots of money. Um, and they all do different, I think that Tony and Major in particular is my sense, do public service in a different way. And I think John Major is committing real pub, acts of public service and speaking truth to power at the moment.

• 39:04Rory Stewart?

  I think Gordon Brown's done amazing things since he left office.

• 39:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 39:07Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I was very, very struck and impressed by him when I was the different Secretary of State, coming into campaign on.

• 39:12Alastair Campbell?

  But this goes back to the thing we've talked about so often is what is your motivation to be in politics? Gordon has never stopped being motivated by the things that motivated when he was a minister and when he was a, a prime minister. And Tony's the same. I was, I saw Tony last week and we were talking about Africa and we're talking about climate change and we're talking about Europe and what, you know, and he still sort of wakes up every day. They both do and thinks, you know, what can I do? They can do a lot less than they did because they don't have power and that's both frustrating.

• 39:38Rory Stewart?

  I remember thinking this with Gordon. Um, I, I do remember thinking this. He came in to see me very, very politely. And he was asking for money for his UN projects around education. And he was unbelievably polite, but I also remember feeling, you know, kind of sorry for him in a way. Because here was this very grand figure who'd been Prime Minister not very long before. Sort of coming very politely to try to see if he could get a bit of assistance from some junior Tory minister. Um, and you do get that sense. And I remember actually even, I, I think this sometimes with Dave Miliband, whether he doesn't miss being Foreign Secretary, even though he's doing this great job, amazing job.

• 40:15Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, for sure, for sure. But you see, uh, but I, if you, if you compare that, I, I think people hearing that will think more highly of Gordon for the fact that he doesn't go in saying, like, I used to be the Prime Minister, I'm way more important than you. So listen to what I'm saying. He doesn't, so compare that with Cameron's behaviour during the Greensill lobbying, for example. You know, and I think you've got to ask that, what are people in public life for? Um, and, you know, so I think, I think it's, I think post, because these leaders, there's Macron just been re-elected president, he's still a young man, he's got five years, then he's going to have another 30 years, what's he going to do with his life?

• 40:55Rory Stewart?

  And this is a question for Obama too.

• 40:57Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely, absolutely. Joe Biden doesn't have the same.

• 40:59Rory Stewart?

  No, does not, does not have that problem. But it was a problem for Bill Clinton.

• 41:02Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 41:03Rory Stewart?

  And created a big problem for Hillary.

• 41:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. No, post, post-power life is a really interesting.

• 41:08Rory Stewart?

  But it's partly a problem, they all get in so young. And that began with Tony Blair, but it's, it's become a real fashion.

• 41:14Alastair Campbell?

  Blame Tony.

• 41:15Rory Stewart?

  Everything, it's his fault for everything. But it was, when Cameron came in, he was, I think, the youngest prime minister in 200 years or something. Very weird that it's become such a young man's job.

• 41:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, these things may go in cycles. I mean, you know, Joe Biden is not a young man.

• 41:30Rory Stewart?

  No, nor was Trump.

• 41:31Alastair Campbell?

  America, nor was Trump, and Trump could be next, who knows? But as we're in Scotland, can we do a few Scottish questions?

• 41:37Rory Stewart?

  Go on then.

• 41:38Alastair Campbell?

  Um, I got a really interesting question from Fiona Duncan. Now Fiona is somebody I know, I'll put my cards on the table, and I actually helped her a bit when she was in charge of the independent care review. I helped her on strategy and comms and stuff like that, which is in Scotland.

• 41:51Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 41:52Alastair Campbell?

  So Nicola Sturgeon, care system in Scotland, absolute mess. Terrible, you know, the numbers terrible, the stories terrible. Fiona Duncan did this a really, really good review. And she's now actually, she's now in charge of something called The Promise, which is an organisation that exists to make sure that the politicians, they're now all party support for what she came forward in the review.

• 42:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 42:16Alastair Campbell?

  To make sure they actually do it.

• 42:17Rory Stewart?

  Great.

• 42:17Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. But the question she wanted to ask was, what is the best example we, you and I, have seen of taking a policy vision into reality? And therefore, what do you believe are the essential magic ingredients to deliver transformational change in the public sector?

• 42:36Alastair Campbell?

  Now, while you think about that, I'm going to go with, I'm going to go with Sure Start.

• 42:39Rory Stewart?

  Mm hmm.

• 42:40Alastair Campbell?

  Um, vision, it was about helping the poorest families and, and, and giving them, giving them a chance. Uh, required leadership, both from the top, Tony Blair committed to it, Tessa Gow, a minister that was absolutely rigorous about driving it through. Required cross path, cross departmental.

• 43:01Rory Stewart?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:02Alastair Campbell?

  Coordination, required local government to be properly engaged, required huge recruitment drives and, and so it was operating all these different levels. And it kind of came together. So I think, I hope, if you're listening, Fiona, Fiona, by the way, says that anybody who's anybody in Scottish politics is listening to our podcast.

• 43:22Rory Stewart?

  So very good.

• 43:22Alastair Campbell?

  Let's hope that's true. Uh, but I think that's, that I think Sure Start is my answer.

• 43:27Rory Stewart?

  So, so let me just quickly page you a bit Fiona, because for me, the real test of whether a policy is a really great policy and has really worked politically. Is whether it lasts. So the greatest example, obviously, is the National Health Service. All the odds were against it in the 1940s. Doctors were enraged. The Conservative Party at that stage was enraged. Had every reason to believe that it might not last and it's become completely embedded in our public life. That is great politics and that's really smart politics.

• 43:59Alastair Campbell?

  So Sure Start on that, on that level fails.

• 44:02Rory Stewart?

  Sure Start failed because in the end, the real test of great politics is to make it permanent. And that means doing two things. That means convincing the opposition parties that in the end, this is something untouchable, so brilliant that they're not going to go after it, having the NHS. And the second thing is you've got to convince the public and that's where the failure happened with DIFID. And the point seven percent where the Labour Party and leadership of the Conservative Party agreed on the point seven percent. But never really sold it to the public, never really explained what this thing was. So it was much too easy. For Boris Johnson to come along and cut it from point seven down to point five because 70% of the public went with it. So I think the real genius. Is to make it stick and that requires a lot of humility. That requires not making these

• 44:47Rory Stewart?

  things partisan.

• 44:48Alastair Campbell?

  But you see, I would have argued that, I can't remember what the, how the votes went on the whole Shorstar thing, but up until austerity, there was absolute bipartisan support, wasn't there?

• 44:57Rory Stewart?

  Well.

• 44:57Alastair Campbell?

  I don't, not necessarily in the vote because there's always get people to find a reason to vote against, but.

• 45:01Rory Stewart?

  Somehow, I felt, I remember it happening, being got rid of in twenty ten, eleven, twelve. It wasn't deeply embedded enough. It wasn't, I didn't felt, wasn't loved in Cumbria, the way that other institutions.

• 45:13Alastair Campbell?

  But maybe that's because, was it less needed in Cumbria than the places where it was really thriving?

• 45:18Rory Stewart?

  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

• 45:19Alastair Campbell?

  So that's back to the point about whether people don't really care about policy when it's not directly affecting them.

• 45:25Rory Stewart?

  Maybe, maybe it's about communication, maybe it's about lots of things.

• 45:28Alastair Campbell?

  What about, so that, so on your basis though, so minimum wage?

• 45:34Rory Stewart?

  Minimum wage, great.

• 45:35Alastair Campbell?

  Accepted?

• 45:36Rory Stewart?

  Accepted.

• 45:37Alastair Campbell?

  Never going to be unpicked?

• 45:38Rory Stewart?

  Nobody's going to unpick that.

• 45:39Alastair Campbell?

  Bank of England independence?

• 45:40Rory Stewart?

  Bank of England independence, another very good example. I was about to give exactly that example.

• 45:43Alastair Campbell?

  Scottish Parliament?

• 45:44Rory Stewart?

  Scottish Parliament, the same, yeah. The test of, the test of one of these policies is whether you can imagine it being reserved. On the Tory side, gay marriage, nobody's going to reverse that. It was very interesting that, I remember that very strongly. When I voted for it, a lot of my constituents were very, very unhappy. A lot of people voted against it and the real test of it though, is that now, five years later, nobody would ever imagine reversing it.

• 46:07Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know, I can remember when we did the civil partnerships thing, I can remember, it's interesting how you talk about that, the thing about embedding change. I remember watching David Cameron deliver a conference speech as party leader, when he, you know, and I've written enough conference speeches to know when you're expecting, you're working up to an applause line, and it was when he was committing the Conservative Party to supporting civil partnerships. And even gay marriage, I can't remember whether it was when he did it. And, but it was certainly accepting what we had done. And there was a kind of pause and then they did start clapping. They all looked like they'd swallowed a lemon, but they were clapping. And I remember thinking, that's, that's change. We, we have delivered that change.

• 46:51Rory Stewart?

  Death penalty, another good example.

• 46:53Alastair Campbell?

  I worry about that one. I worry about that one.

• 46:55Rory Stewart?

  Whoa, you think people are going to reintroduce the death penalty?

• 46:57Alastair Campbell?

  I really think that if you're not careful, any.

• 47:03Alastair Campbell?

  Populist who feels they're running out of road. I think that's a way to go sometimes. I don't think so, but I I I I'm not as confident as you are.

• 47:11Rory Stewart?

  So Shane asks, in your youth, well, maybe not even your youth, maybe, maybe, maybe even in an older age. Which books or individuals shaped your politics most? Or in fact, let me turn around. Maybe it's unfair to Shane, but is there a book that really changed your view of something?

• 47:24Alastair Campbell?

  Johann Harry's book on the drugs trade changed my view of drugs.

• 47:31Alastair Campbell?

  And made me realise that this, just constantly talking about the war on drugs. Uh, and seeing it as a kind of purely as a crime issue, effectively. Uh, was not a sensible thing to do. Absolutely brilliant book. Yeah. What about you?

• 47:49Rory Stewart?

  So for me, it's a book by a guy called James C. Scott, and it's called Seeing Like a State. And it's a brilliant book and it looks at everything from. Uh, the planting of German forests in the 19th century to Tanzania and development policies in 1970s.

• 48:06Rory Stewart?

  And in fact, the setting up of standard time in France after the revolution. He's basically an anarchist, Scott, but what he talks about is the incredible cruelty of setting up a central state, the way in which it knocks out all local diversity. The way in which it constrains freedom and the way it imposes a mesh of uniformity. And he calls it seeing like a state because the state needs to count everything, needs to give everybody an exact number. Uh, and it does it in time, it does it in censuses, it does it in the way that you plant trees. And, and I guess we both love trees, but his point is that actually there's a real cost to it because what happened with the German forests

• 48:48Rory Stewart?

  is they planted these uniform forests right the way through the Black Forest, which were catastrophic for biodiversity, which had no resilience. And that's what worries him about the moment.

• 48:56Alastair Campbell?

  So what was it that made, what was the change in you that the book produced?

• 49:00Rory Stewart?

  I think suddenly everything looked different to me. I suddenly, something I'd never seen as a problem before, I saw as a problem. I suddenly saw the state as a problem. I suddenly began to believe in localism in a completely different way. I found a different language for talking about what it was that worried me about bureaucracy and civil servants, why it was that I really believed that Cumbering communities had things that were being crushed. Why I believed that so much of what I loved about beauty, about history, about tradition, was about things that were individual in particular and that were very difficult to countermeasure.

• 49:33Alastair Campbell?

  But so you're not small, are you a small state? Does that make you a small state person? Or are you saying that this?

• 49:38Rory Stewart?

  No, I think it makes.

• 49:39Alastair Campbell?

  Functional state which operates more locally.

• 49:40Rory Stewart?

  I think it makes me have some sympathy with anarchists, basically.

• 49:43Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my God, we're getting it all now.

• 49:48Alastair Campbell?

  And by the way, this is for the, what we call the technical people. Cause I don't, I know I'm not capable of it, you might be, but I, did you notice there were people saying, we do seem to mention books a lot. Can we please post links to the books?

• 50:03Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 50:04Alastair Campbell?

  We'll do that. We could become like the new Richard and Judy of.

• 50:06Rory Stewart?

  We could, we are a bit like Richard and Judy. You're more like Judy, I think.

• 50:11Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. So Rory Stewart thinks he's like Richard Madeley. I will.

• 50:16Alastair Campbell?

  Happy to be Judy. Um, at Smiley Plankton, right? This, maybe we should close on this as we are in Scotland. The UK is our home. If it is to be broken up, shouldn't all UK citizens have a vote in any future independence referendum? Many Scots live in the rest of the UK. Many English, Welsh and Irish live in Scotland. How does one divide the indivisible?

• 50:41Rory Stewart?

  I think it's very, very difficult. When we've been together for 300 years, I think it's unbelievably difficult. I mean, I would have been tempted to say that people who identified as Scots, which probably be people like you and me, should have been able to vote in that referendum. But as he points out, we've been mixed together for so long. There are a million people who identify as English, living in Scotland out of a population of 5 million people. It's so, so difficult working out the rules on this. And this is why I think these things are so unnecessary, why I think devolution is a better answer than independence.

• 51:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I can remember during the referendum campaign, when Alex Salmond, Nicola Sturgeon, fronted a very, very effective photo call, where they had people who lived in Scotland with the colour of their own flag and with yes in their own language. And they were from all around the world. And I can remember looking at that and thinking, okay, I can argue, well, I was born in England, right? But both my parents, born in Scotland, feel 100% Scottish, but because of work, lived in England. So they didn't get a vote.

• 51:51Alastair Campbell?

  And yet I'm looking at people from Moldova, India, Pakistan, Romania, who've all got a vote. And I had, I'd interviewed Alex Salmond once for GQ magazine, after the referendum. It was on the day Tony Benn died. I remember that because I was, we were in Aberdeen. I asked him what his reaction was when Cameron raised the idea that Smiley Plankton is raising, that everybody in the UK should have a view because it's going to affect us all. And to my utter amazement, Salmond said, oh, he never raised that.

• 52:27Rory Stewart?

  The other one that made me very sad is I pushed, tried to push, as quite a junior MP, David Cameron, very hard to say that if we have the referendum, you must agree the rules in advance. There won't be another one for 20 years. And as far as I understand, he didn't raise that with.

• 52:41Alastair Campbell?

  It was like the Brexit thing. He just thought, you know, I'm in charge of this referendum, therefore we'll win it. And I won it in Scotland.

• 52:46Rory Stewart?

  And more confirmation on why we need a constitution, because that can govern rules and things like referendums. Instead of which, the whole thing's being made up. Remember in the seventies, they needed a super majority to go independent. Then suddenly that changed to a simple majority. Wasn't really done with any constitutional process, just the number of, the Prime Minister gets out of bed in the morning and suddenly changes the rules.

• 53:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 53:05Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think on that, time to wrap up. And thank you very much for coming to my home, Alistair.

• 53:08Alastair Campbell?

  My pleasure. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

• 53:10Rory Stewart?

  And I'm going to come and snoop around your home in London next.

• 53:13Alastair Campbell?

  Anytime. So thank you all for listening. Thank you for all your questions, all your kind comments. And just to let you know that both of our shows on May the 25th have sold out. So we look forward to seeing a few hundred of you at those. And we'll see you again next week.

• 53:28Rory Stewart?

  See you next week. Thank you again.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig.

• 53:38Speaker 04

  On October 2nd.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 53:44Speaker 04

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess.

• 53:47Speaker 03

  And Digger's gonna dig us out.

• 53:49Speaker 04

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 53:51Speaker 05

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 53:55Speaker 04

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 53:58Speaker 05

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• 54:00Speaker 04

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• 54:15Speaker 04

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