519. Trump's NATO Threat & a Critical Election in Hungary (Question Time)

Following Trump's threats to remove the US from NATO, is the alliance effectively finished? After nearly two decades in power, could Viktor Orbán finally be unseated in Hungary's upcoming election? Has Keir Starmer learned the lessons from the Democrats' 2024 loss ahead of May's local elections? Join Dominic Sandbrook and Alastair Campbell as they answer all these questions and more. __________ Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus: Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. To sign up and for terms and conditions, visit fuseenergy.com/politics. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Adam Thornton, Lorcan Moullier Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter 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.

• 0:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Is NATO finished? I don't think it's necessarily finished, but I think it has never been more embattled. Trump is the first president to really call it into question. And the longer that the second term has gone on, the more dicey its future has looked.

• 0:14Alastair Campbell?

  He was asked if he was reconsidering membership of NATO. He said, oh, yes, it's beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger. And get this, Putin knows that too, by the way.

• 0:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  I know. So unsettling. How do you answer the anxieties of people? Because they're not just economic anxieties, are they? They're cultural anxieties about people who are frightened by change.

• 0:36Alastair Campbell?

  Too often, we're liable to say, oh, because you're being exploited by populace, somehow your grievance isn't real. Whereas what we should be doing is your grievance is real and we have to do something about it.

• 0:48Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 0:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  And with me, Dominic Sandbrook. Hello.

• 0:53Alastair Campbell?

  Hello, Dominic. So stepping in for the absent Rory Stewart for the second time. Thank you very, very much indeed. Lots of questions and one of them relates to something we discussed on the podcast. We had a lot of questions on these lines. This is from Harper, from Sandwell in the West Midlands. Is NATO finished?

• 1:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Wow. I mean, I didn't think you had any listeners in the West Midlands, but I stand corrected.

• 1:14Alastair Campbell?

  We've got listeners everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I mean, we're not like the history of history with your little sort of cultural cliques around university cities around the world. We, we spread far and wide.

• 1:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. Every time I go and do a show at the Sydney Opera House, I really lament the fact that our, our audience is so limited at the Rest is History, as you can well imagine.

• 1:32Alastair Campbell?

  I said, university cities around the world.

• 1:36Alastair Campbell?

  Carry on, is NATO finished?

• 1:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  NATO finished? Is NATO finished? Uh, I don't think it's necessarily finished, but I think it has never been more embattled. From the 1940s, when NATO began as an alliance, as an anti-communist alliance to keep the Americans in Europe and to hold the line against Stalin, Soviet Union. NATO, ever since then, has actually been pretty solid, I would say, as military alliances go. Trump is the first president to really call it into question. I think he clearly has no emotional investment in NATO. And the longer that the second term has gone on, the more dicey its future has looked. Obviously, the stuff with Canada and Greenland could have been toxic, absolutely toxic for NATO.

• 2:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  And his rage, his anger and resentment at what he sees as the lack of European support for his... To my mind, very misguided war in Iran. I mean, I think that poses a real, a real problem for NATO because it's pretty clear now that he wants revenge, that he wants revenge in some way on the European countries that he thinks have abandoned him. What do you think?

• 2:43Alastair Campbell?

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• 2:45Rory Stewart?

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• 3:28Rory Stewart?

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• 3:42Rory Stewart?

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• 3:52Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 3:54Alastair 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, managed to watch it. There you go.

• 4:06Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, and of course, the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're 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.

• 4:30Alastair Campbell?

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

• 4:36Rory Stewart?

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

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• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  Let's just imagine that something happened to Estonia tomorrow. Now, when nine eleven happened, that's the only time ever that Article Five, an attack on one is an attack on all, was activated. It was activated of the United States, even though he's since then insulted all the British, Australian, Denmark and other troops who were involved by saying they stayed away from the the front line. And he said something very interesting in all places this week in the Daily Telegraph. He was asked if he was reconsidering membership of NATO. He said, oh, yes, it's beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger. And get this, Putin knows that too, by the way.

• 6:03Rory Stewart?

  I know. So unsettling.

• 6:04Alastair Campbell?

  Even there, he's he's kind of, he's speaking for the Putin worldview. And who who has had as a strategic objective, almost top of his list, Putin has been break up the European Union and get America out of NATO. And he's now doing that. It does sort of beg the question that Rory and I, and the Mooch especially speculate a lot about is what has Putin got on Trump? Because the worst thing in a way, because Trump has always been very skeptical about NATO, is Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, who's always been very pro NATO, even got a thing passed in Congress that no president could unilaterally pull the US out of NATO. He now, as another mini me, is

• 6:47Alastair Campbell?

  kind of saying, saying the same thing. And I think it's important that we that we understand. I had a spat this week with Ari Fleischer, who was my opposite number with George Bush when I was with Tony Blair during the Iraq War. I don't know whether he's desperate to get in with the MAGA crowd, but he did a really offensive, to my mind, tweet. Basically saying that England, as he called it, I pointed out that we are the UK, Scotland, Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish troops were also involved in the wars that we helped them with in Iraq and Afghanistan. Us, Spain, Italy, above all France, he said, we're going to pay a big, big price. We've always been weak. We've always relied on America. It was a really kind of offensive sort of thing. And I just reminded him of that, that,

• 7:29Alastair Campbell?

  you know, when push came to shove in nine eleven, at considerable political cost, which some would argue, we still pay Tony Blair and his reputation and how he's treated around the world. I get the same thing, get abuse about it every single day on social media. We stood by the United States. That was NATO, the only time Article Five. And then I was saying that because these countries, us, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Albania, all of them said, no, this is not what NATO is about. This is not a sensible thing to do. Suddenly, NATO itself is a threat. And America gets a huge amount out of NATO. Yes, they put in the most money. Yes, they put in something like four billion into European defence. But

• 8:13Alastair Campbell?

  the fact is, the economic stability that we all want, a lot of that has been built on post-war safety and security in Europe, which is one of America's most important markets.

• 8:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  I agree completely, Alistair, but I think something that people don't appreciate as much as they should, outside America, there's been a strain of American opinion that has always been extremely critical of any form of foreign entanglement. And that goes right back to, you know, to people who didn't want to join the First World War, people who didn't want to join the League of Nations and the, after the Treaty of Versailles in the early nineteen twenties, people who didn't want to get involved with the Second World War in the nineteen thirties and then the early, and then right up to Pearl Harbor in nineteen forty one. And then actually all through, I mean, it's, people don't notice it outside America, because we tend to visit the coasts, you know, you go to California or you go to New York or something. You don't go to the heartland, you don't read the kind

• 9:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  of Reader's Digest, National Review, kind of publications that appeal to conservative Americans. But there has always been a strain of American, particularly on the, American thinking, particularly on the right, but not just on the right, there's also a kind of isolationist left, which has been, why do we get involved in these things? America should be sovereign. We shouldn't be part of the United Nations. It's part of a drive to set up a world government and overthrow our freedoms and all of that kind of thing. And I think we were lucky. In the West, in that between, let's say, the 1940s and the 2000s, we had a succession of American presidents who were committed to the kind of Atlantic Alliance and to

• 9:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  America's role in the world and to sort of responsibly upholding that and seeing America effectively as hand in glove with Europe and that relationship as being central to American identity. And what's actually happened from Trump onwards is that we have a different and perhaps in some ways older American way of looking at the world, which is the rest of the world contaminates us. We want to be the city on shining city on a hill. Why should we get involved? You know, basically, his point about Estonia, I think, is dead right. If I was Vladimir Putin, I have to say that's what I would do. Not because I'd want to seize Estonia particularly, although there are a lot of Russian speakers in in the east of Estonia, but I would do it to break the alliance. I would just, you

• 10:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  know, you just go over the border, take the first town or something, and you would say, what are you going to do about it? And then you just watch as NATO tore itself apart. And as Donald Trump said, you can just see him and Hexeth and all these guys, Vance, going on TV and saying, why should people in Wisconsin care about Estonia? The Europeans should sort it out themselves. They've never been there for us. And all of this kind of thing. That's what would happen.

• 10:59Alastair Campbell?

  That's why last week, and I don't know whether you've had this on your book club yet, Dominic, but my book of the year last year was Carlo Masala, If Russia Wins, where it's a scenario, as he calls it. And that's what it's, the story is Putin takes a village in Estonia just to see if NATO and the Americans react. And and they don't. I think the other thing, I've I've spoken to two or three European leaders this week, and it's really been interesting talking to them. I think that the iron which started to enter the soul over Greenland.

• 11:36Alastair Campbell?

  Has now solidified into iron in the soul. They now know, I think Mark Carney was the first really to understand this is not normal presidency, this is not a normal president, we are in a completely new age.

• 11:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 11:50Alastair Campbell?

  We all have to deal with it as best we can. It's why I keep arguing with Rory that, you know, Keir Starmer can't say he's a blathering idiot, is a liar, is a crook. We can say that, but prime ministers and presidents can't. But it's why Sanchez feels so emboldened. It's why Macron this week, when Trump made that disgusting comment about, you know, Macron and his wife and his wife gave him and beats him up and all that stuff. And, you know, Macron just went back and says, this is an unworthy of leadership. This is not a reality. This is not a show. So I think Europe is getting, you know, somebody in the pool said to me this morning, starting to put up two fingers. But the truth is, we are still so reliant economically. In our case, the nukes, the

• 12:32Alastair Campbell?

  intelligence, the air defenses. And in Ukraine's case, my big, big worry is that the combination of Iran and Trump pissed off with Europe, he just in the end says, you know, fuck it, out of Ukraine, including our intelligence and our, and the rest of the stuff we give.

• 12:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  I could totally agree with that. And if you remember when we did the election night broadcast in New York with Anthony Scaramucci and Marina Hyde and Rory, we were talking a lot in that broadcast about what this meant for Ukraine, about what Trump's victory would mean, about the threat. Because I'm still very much of the view that if Ukraine is allowed to fall, or is dismembered in some way, that that would be a catastrophic moment for European security.

• 13:13Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because if you were Vladimir Putin or Viktor Orban, you would think, well, you know, these people are complete paper tigers. You know, you cannot rely on them at all. And Europe, still, I think, partly because of our economic weakness as a continent, I mean, it's sad to say, but our lack of productivity and all of this kind of thing, which is not generating enough money. And for that reason, we are not investing as much in our own defenses as we should be. And Trump, in this case, I hate to say it, but he's not wrong.

• 13:40Alastair Campbell?

  No, he's got a point.

• 13:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  He's got a point that Europe has been too content to, I don't like using the word, the words that he used, like freeload and all of that kind of thing, but to coast, to coast, thinking that the American shield would always be there. And that was great folly, I think. So talking of Viktor Orban, I know you're a huge fan of his work, Alastair. We have a question from Lexi in Portsmouth. You'll be delighted by this question. After nearly two decades in power, could Viktor Orban finally be unseated? And a really good point, even if he was, would he actually leave? So what do you think?

• 14:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, one of the reasons I'm not a fan of Viktor Orban is that I think he follows the far-right populist playbook pretty closely. It's why MAGA love him. It's why Putin backs him. And I think he follows Putin playbook as well. The day before we recorded this, there was what I imagine was a false flag exercise. They found an explosive device on a gas pipeline between Hungary and Serbia. Orban summoned his emergency defence council, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. He controls most of the media, so this was big news. Alongside, if you go to Budapest at the moment, Dominic, you will see more posters of Volodymyr Zelensky and Ursula von der Leyen than you will of Orban.

• 15:00Alastair Campbell?

  Because their message is vote Magyar, the opposition guy, and your kids are going to fight for Ukraine, not for Hungary. So it's a very, it's a nationalist message, it's a populist message. I think he can lose, and I think if the election is free and fair. There was an amazing documentary that did the rounds last week. It's called The Price of a Vote. And it was exposing a lot of the buying of votes. Mayors in villages who decide so much about who gets firewood, who gets a parking place, who gets medical appointments, basically. And the other thing, we had all that nonsense with Matt Badlos, the Gorton and Denton loser Nigel Farage's mate.

• 15:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Is that what you call him? Is that his official name now?

• 15:45Alastair Campbell?

  That's his official name. But that proves you don't listen to the podcast. I've done it for the last four weeks.

• 15:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, so there's the whole thing there, wasn't there? People call him Matt GPT because there was the claim that he used AI to write his book.

• 15:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, which he has denied in such a convincing way that The New World managed to cover it in three pages this week. But you remember all that stuff about so-called family voting, where people were, you know. Taken into the booth and shown how to vote. In Hungary, there is quite liberal. Uh, I don't mean liberal liberal, I mean quite sort of relaxed rules. If you are illiterate or if you have a health problem, so you just have to turn up and say, I can't read and write and your mate from Fidesz can take you in to show you how to, how to vote. But I'll tell you why I think it's really, really interesting here. This is the dynamic that I hope is playing out and that I hope will follow around Europe. If you think of the, the way that populist leaders come to power,

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  they present themselves as men of the people against a corrupt ruling elite. Okay.

• 16:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, of course.

• 16:44Alastair Campbell?

  The corrupt ruling elite in Hungary is Orban and the Fidesz party. And especially the young, I think they now see them as that. So populism has always depended on the ability to, of the leader to project the sense that they, the people, are the victims of the elite and I am one of you. It's amazing that Trump pulled it off, but he did. It's amazing that Johnson pulled it off, but he did. And Orban's pulled it off for sixteen years. I think this is his fifth election. If he wins it, it'll be his fifth election win. And of course, when you have Trump and Putin backing you, when your best friend, a guy called Lorinc Mishaos is a gas fitter who has become the richest man in Hungary,

• 17:27Alastair Campbell?

  it kind of, word gets around that maybe there's something a bit dodgy going on in the way that you rule this country. So I, look, I think if the, if it's free and fair, he's lost. The question then does become, how big does that win have to be?

• 17:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 17:42Alastair Campbell?

  For him not to play the game that Trump played with Joe Biden when he lost in twenty twenty, that this has been stolen.

• 17:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  So I was thinking about precedents for this and I think there's a good one in the neighbour of Hungary, so just Serbia. So Serbia and Hungary are not so different in this regard that in both cases you had, so you had Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in the nineteen nineties. And in both cases, you have a country with a profound sense of kind of historic victimhood, a country that thinks it is surrounded by enemies. And Hungary, you know, they will circulate maps showing how Hungary was reduced and dismembered in the Of course, the 20th century and they were felt very hard done by. They once owned Transylvania and Croatia and whatnots and they've they'd lost it so much and Hungary is smaller than it's ever been and all of this kind of thing.

• 18:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  Of course, they speak Magyar, they're surrounded by, you know, people who speak Slavic languages. So they feel isolated. There's a kind of isolationism to the Hungarian mentality, which explains why Orban has been able to appeal to it. Much as Slobodan Milosevic appealed to Serbs in the 1990s. Slobodan Milosevic was a populist leader, nationalist leader, who became the embodiment of a corrupt establishment and then was beaten narrowly in an election by Voyslav Kostunica, who was another nationalist, but an independent one and an outsider in 2000. And the Serbia, you know, the Milosevic people who were controlling the election apparatus basically lied about the result.

• 19:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  They tried to claim that he hadn't been beaten and that he would have to go to a second round where they were clearly going to rig it. And at that point, young people in Serbia.

• 19:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 19:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  Said enough. They went out on the streets and Milosevic fell. And I just wonder whether that could be the the answer to Lex's question. You know, that's what Orban would presumably try to do. If it was a very close race, he would say, well, actually, we've narrowly won. You know, Magyar hasn't won, I've won. And at that point, what do all the students and whatnot in Budapest do? Do they go on the streets as their counterparts did in Belgrade in 2000? And that, I mean, that would be a really, really interesting scenario because then, of course, we know what Orban would do. Orban would say, George Soros has paid them to go on the streets. The usual thing is you blame the CIA and whatnot. He would probably blame Brussels, wouldn't he? He would say they're all working for the EU. And these people all want your children to become transgender soldiers fighting for Ukraine and whatnot.

• 20:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  But would that work? I don't know. I think there's a point where people see through you, don't you? That where people get sick of it.

• 20:11Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other thing that's fascinating about this. So we're recording at a time where JD Vance is on his way to Budapest to campaign for Orban. Now, one, that shows the extent to which Orban is completely plugged into this international far-right populism. I have a hunch, even with the war going on, that if they thought Orban was nailed on to win, Trump would go. So that he could claim that he swung it in the last few days. But Vance is going to go. Rubio has already been. The idea that now the European Union leaders, all of whom frankly want to all want to lose, pretty much, apart from the Slovakian probably, maybe one or two others, but they basically all want him to lose. But none of them are getting involved in the election.

• 20:55Alastair Campbell?

  The Americans are openly interfering in this election. The other point that I think I'd like to make is about polarization. We talk a lot about polarization, the way that populists use it. And I was just looking at a poll. You have Fidesz supporters on one side and Tishy Magyar Party supporters on the other. On the question, do Hungarians have a lot of freedom? Fidesz, eighty eight percent. Magyar people, seventeen. Do do Hungarians believe that our elections are honest? Eighty four V twelve. Are you optimistic about economic conditions? Fifty two versus eighteen. Do you approve of Brussels? Seventy four against thirteen.

• 21:39Alastair Campbell?

  So, you know, I think the that's the other way around. So Fidesz supporters, obviously. Do you think that Fidesz supporters, do they see the government as corruption? Ninety four percent of Magyar people, thirty eight percent of Fidesz. Now, anybody who lives there knows it's corrupt. You you virtually have to take part in the corruption to get get through your your daily life. Good point here before we go to the next question, maybe to plug our mini series. This is a series I've done with Liam Byrne, the Labour MP. And we've had a really extraordinary feedback on this because I think that we talk a lot about populism. But I think what Liam done is is really gone into in depth. And I don't know if you've listened to it, Dominic, but it's one of the most intelligent analysis of populism that I've ever heard.

• 22:24Alastair Campbell?

  We've had lots and lots of people on right and the left who are who are saying that, so.

• 22:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  That sounds good. I'll actually look at it.

• 22:31Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, so just to go into this film, The Price of a Vote. I mean, lots and lots of kind of different examples. People are saying how it works, how the, you know, the different people get given money. When we were in Moldova interviewing President Sandu, we were told that Putin would literally order one oligarch.

• 22:52Alastair Campbell?

  We were given the name, but given I know how litigious he is, I think I might might just leave the name, leave the name in the intro for now. But a very well-known oligarchs, put it that way.

• 23:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 23:03Alastair Campbell?

  And they basically have to hand over the money. And then the mayors essentially worked out how it goes. And so, and you're talking, you know, you're talking between a hundred and ten, hundred and thirty, hundred and fifty pounds per vote. And this is in this is in places where child benefits about twenty six, forty three quid per child per month. And the other thing that happens is that they, the, the, the film claimed that they were using drugs. They were giving people, you know, this cheap, very addictive synthetic drug, which is widespread. This in a country with some of the toughest anti-drug laws in the world. But they're using drugs to sort of say, here you go. You vote the right way

• 23:44Alastair Campbell?

  and we, we'll look after you in this way as well. Foreign interference off the scale. The Washington Post ran a story recently that were going to do a false flag assassination attempt.

• 23:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  I saw that.

• 23:56Alastair Campbell?

  Putin's money all over the place. That's why you see these massive post campaigns, massive online campaigns. So I don't know whether this film has been subtitled or whether it's just in Hungarian. But, and of course, because he controls the media, you only know about this stuff if you're following Magyar's campaign online.

• 24:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  But just a question for you, Asda. So these are often people in kind of rural areas who feel alienated from change. They're very anxious about Brussels, for example. I mean, Orban hasn't, Orban is tapping these feelings and he's amplifying them, but he hasn't created them, right? They're, they are there for a reason. And I wonder whether what you and maybe what Liam Byrne would think about, how do you answer the anxieties of people? Because they're not just economic anxieties, are they? They're cultural anxieties about people who are frightened by change. And I was talking to, you know, the pollster, Sir John Curtis.

• 24:49Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  And he's, a couple of weeks ago, and he said he still thinks the biggest issue in Britain, in British politics, the dividing line. Is cultural and educational. So it's whether you went to university or not. And it's how you feel about cultural issues like the flag and all that kind of statues and that. And he said, they're still the best determinants of how people vote. And populist politicians or politicians of any kind, they exploit those issues, but they don't necessarily create them. Those issues would exist anyway.

• 25:18Alastair Campbell?

  I think Liam Burma here, he would say, he would agree with the premise. And he would say that the first step is actually to understand that. That too often we're liable to say, oh, because you're being exploited by populists, which you are. Somehow your grievance isn't real. Whereas what we should be doing is your grievance is real and we have to do something about it. And that's why, of course, at a time when, you know, the global economy is in trouble, when Europe has been stagnating economically. When kids are feeling that their opportunities are being taken away from them, denied. Can't get to university, can't afford a house, can't afford university, whatever it might be, can't get a job.

• 25:57Alastair Campbell?

  Then wide open to a Trump or a Farage to come in and say, come to me, I'm a strong man, I can sort all this out for you. And but I think then what Liam goes on to say is that, so we have to understand the grievances are real. We have to understand where they're coming from. But we also have to understand that within that, what we call a populist population, there are gradations. There are people who are angry for different reasons. There are people who are culturally offended, economically weakened. And some of them, he says, are just, they're, as it were, gone. They're gone.

• 26:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 26:32Alastair Campbell?

  The centre right, the centre left are never going to get them back. But he actually thinks a good forty percent, for example, of people who are currently saying they're going to vote for reform. He thinks they are, they can be brought back, but only if we understand why they got there in the first place.

• 26:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  That makes total sense to me. I think you have to, my view has always been on these things. That that people, these are not contrived grievances necessarily. So when people say, you know, I don't like people slagging off our history, I don't like people slagging Britain off. I don't like people, you know, I don't like Jeremy Corbyn saying we're always in the wrong in every conceivable historical issue or whatever. These are not contrived or confected grievances from these people. They are genuine, what they feel, but you can't, but you don't necessarily need to reduce people to that. So the people might have, people think lots of different contradictory things at once. I think you have to, you listen to people, you respect them, you don't pander to them, you don't have to agree with everything they're saying to you, but you treat their, you make them feel hurt.

• 27:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  And often that's the mistake that politicians make is they don't make people feel hurt.

• 27:34Alastair Campbell?

  That's a very interesting way to set up a question that we're going to take in the second half about who uses history better, the right or the left. And I say that, you mentioned statues that a week where Donald Trump has chosen to resurrect the big Christopher Columbus statue that was taken down. And we know why he's resurrected it, because it was taken down. Okay, let's take a quick break.

• 28:03Speaker 04

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• 28:33Speaker 05

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

• 28:44Speaker 06

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 28:47Speaker 07

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 28:50Speaker 08

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

• 28:54Speaker 07

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 28:57Speaker 08

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 28:58Speaker 07

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

• 29:09Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest of Politics Question Time with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 29:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  And with me, Dominic Sandbrook.

• 29:14Alastair Campbell?

  Right, God, I nearly called you Rory there.

• 29:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, no, don't do that.

• 29:18Alastair Campbell?

  I won't, I promise you.

• 29:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Who would be more offended there, me or Rory? Hard to tell.

• 29:23Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not going to go there. Sunny in Lincolnshire, this relates to what we were just talking about just before the break. Why does the political right often seem more effective at utilizing history when constructing political narratives? I feel, take the UK, I think that the, the way that, I mean Churchill is an obvious case in a way. But I think even Thatcher, the way that the right has turned the legend of Thatcher, I think, into something far more powerful and effective than on so many levels she was. And yet we, I would argue that, you know, Tony Blair has a, a record every bit as defensible as Margaret Thatcher.

• 30:02Alastair Campbell?

  But the left has contributed largely, in my view, not just the right who are entitled to do that because there is political opponents. But the left has played a big role in, in a sense, sort of downplaying

• 30:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 30:18Alastair Campbell?

  His kind of historical strengths and historical achievements.

• 30:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  Such an interesting question, actually. And I think there are a couple of possible reasons. I think if you're on the right, you probably tend to be a little bit more invested in history. There may be, you are, so for example, if you're a conservative, if you're a member of the Conservative Party or Reform in Britain. The chances are that when you're asked about Britain's history, you say you're very proud of it. You're quite invested in it emotionally. You think more about preserving the glories of the past than you do about building a better world in the future. I mean, that's just a sort of very basic point. Then on the way that people react to individual political heroes. You know, the Tory Party, for example, has always been very good at. Putting people on a pedestal and creating a slightly simplified Hollywood

• 31:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  version of them and turning them into political heroes. So Benjamin Disraeli, Churchill, obviously, Thatcher and so on. Why don't the left do that? I would argue, and maybe, I mean, you will know much more about this than me, Alistair, but I would say there is a tendency among the more fervent left-wing activists tend to believe that their leaders have let them down.

• 31:28Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  That they have betrayed them in some way because they have.

• 31:31Alastair Campbell?

  It's a betrayal thesis. Yeah.

• 31:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. I was just gonna say that, you know, the Labour, how many people in the Labour Party, random Labour activists who shouldn't really care about 1930s politics will suddenly start muttering to you about how Ramsay MacDonald sold out the Labour Party in 1931. And that's what they all do, you know, Attlee didn't go far enough, Harold Wilson was a waste of space, Tony Blair, well, of course, he was just America's puppet and he was really a Tory. You know, they'll rush to do that in a way that people on the right don't really do. I mean, there are some people on the right, some Tory prime ministers, so you'd, Ted Heath, for example, people would say, oh, Ted Heath was really a socialist. Or they would say of maybe, you know, Cameron, oh, Cameron wasn't really a, you know, because

• 32:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  he was Romaine and all this kind of thing. However, I think people on the right tend to be much keener to celebrate their, their election winners. Whereas by and large, the surest way to get yourself a place in the Labour Party's Hall of Infamy is to win lots of elections and make decisions in government. Because then your supporters will say, well, you were just a Tory and you've let us down.

• 32:37Alastair Campbell?

  The betrayal is the key. And I also think you're on to something about the, you know, it's like the slogans of the right, take back control, make America great again. Whereas, as Bill Clinton always used to say, you know, elections have always got to be about tomorrow. But if today feels pretty shit, then projecting that tomorrow can be, can be quite difficult. Listen, it's sort of related to this, Dominic. When Donald Trump won, you argued that many politicians throughout history failed to understand that most voters don't follow politics closely, tend to vote based on how their lives feel day to day. Do you two think Keir Starmer has learned the lessons from the Democrats' loss? And looking ahead to the May local elections, what are your predictions for Labour's performance?

• 33:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, this is a big question. And now I would say, I think you and I will disagree about this because I think Keir Starmer is useless. I think he's a useless politician. And I think he hasn't learned the lessons. And I think, I mean, I wrote a column about him in The Times this weekend, and I said the politician he reminded me most of in British history was actually Ted Heath. So Ted Heath, rather like Keir Starmer, technocratic.

• 33:39Alastair Campbell?

  Took us into Europe.

• 33:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, which Keir Starmer talks about doing but hasn't delivered on. Anyway, so dogged, dutiful, does all the, you know, does all the paperwork, prepares for the meetings, you know, you just know that the school swat kind of person is going to stay up at night doing all the red boxes and whatnot. But in both cases, really, really poor communicators. And I know it drives Keir Starmer and his partisans bonkers when people say this. But a politician just has to tell a story. A politician needs to have, you know, Tony Blair, your old boss, was brilliant at doing this. David Cameron was pretty good at doing this. Your absolute bogeyman, Boris Johnson,

• 34:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  was quite good at doing this, at saying, this is what I'm going to do, this is what I stand for, leaving the conversation so that the voter with whom they were talking kind of had a smile on their face and they were like, oh, that was a nice guy. I knew what he's, I know what he's about. Do people know what Keir Starmer is about? Not at all, I would say. I, even I, you know, I, I read a lot about politics. I don't really know what makes him tick. I don't know what his end game is. I don't know what his vision of Britain is. And I think that the failure, his belief actually, that that is trivial and tawdry, and he doesn't want to get dirty his hands with it, I think is colossal folly not to construct a story.

• 35:03Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. I mean, I don't disagree with every word of what you've said. I disagree with. Quite a lot of it. And, and, and, and I, you're back to the point you made on the main episode, my tribalism does make me say, and I think this is true, by the way, of all the current potential prime ministers across the parties, I'd rather have him there right now than Badenoch, Farage, Polanski, Davey or anybody else. But I think the point, listen, I make this point all the time about the lack of a compelling narrative that people feel the country's going in a certain direction. I think the point about the, the lessons from the Democrats though, because Democrats have pretty much, you know, you could argue about Michael Dukakis, but have always had pretty charismatic leaders.

• 35:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Alastair Campbell?

  Kamala Harris, for all her weaknesses and her faults, she could tell a story, she, she had an energy, she had a charisma about her. But what I think Keir Starmer's hoping, and it may be a forlorn hope, is that actually your point, most people are not following politics closely.

• 36:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 36:02Alastair Campbell?

  His hope is that come the next election, they've been able to turn the economy around, made a lot more difficult by recent events, obviously, turn the economy around, get the country moving in a different direction. So they think, yeah, well, say what you like about him, but I trust him to, to carry on.

• 36:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 36:17Alastair Campbell?

  See, I think there are lessons that we can learn from the Republicans that we're not learning. And one of them, I'm afraid, is about communication. Trump at the moment is seen as a, pretty much as a global monstrosity. But the reason he there and he got back is because he's a genius, modern age communicator. Now, Keir Starmer, as you have pointed out very, very eloquently, is not a modern age genius communicator. But around him, you then have to turn what he says and does into the genius, modern age communication.

• 36:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  Agreed. I agree completely.

• 36:51Alastair Campbell?

  Now, on the May local elections, what are your predictions? I think they're going to be bad. I was in Scotland last week. Rory and I interviewed Anna Sawa, Scotland's Labour leader, that'll be coming out fairly soon. And he was obviously fighting hard, campaigning hard. But, you know, you talk, talk to people on the streets and they're basically saying, oh, it's pretty tricky for Labour. Wales, I think, could be really bad for Labour. The elections are going to be really bad. So I don't know on numbers, I think predicting the numbers is pointless, but I don't think any Labour supporters are viewing these elections with massive confidence.

• 37:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  So I think we're in uncertain waters precisely because of the, the fragmentation of the political system. So unlike, you know, maybe local elections, when you were in your pomp in Downing Street. It's going to be very hard to impose a single narrative on these because there'll be such a fragmented picture across the United Kingdom.

• 37:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, totally.

• 37:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  But just on Labour, things look really tough for Labour. And the reason is that for the first time, really, they're being squeezed from different angles. So Reform on one side, let's say Wales, you've got Reform and you've got Plaid Cumbrie.

• 37:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  In London, let's say, you've got Reform, but you've also got the Greens. By the way, I'm not a fan of Zach Galansky at all, but it's the first time the Greens have had a spokesman that most people have actually heard of.

• 38:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  You know, and that seems to have cut through particularly with voters in their twenties.

• 38:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 38:18Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, for reasons that frankly, I find utterly baffling.

• 38:20Alastair Campbell?

  But with respect, Dominic, you're not in your twenties?

• 38:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  I'm not, no, not certainly not anymore.

• 38:25Alastair Campbell?

  Haven't been for some time.

• 38:27Dominic Sandbrook?

  Ah, that's harsh. I don't come on this podcast to get abuse.

• 38:30Alastair Campbell?

  I am, I am somebody with very young at heart, very young in mind, and I get the vibe of the twenty year old, of course.

• 38:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Of course, you do.

• 38:38Alastair Campbell?

  Now, listen, here's what I really want to ask you, and I know you're going to be appalled by my contribution to this discussion. This is from Samantha in Michigan. Dominic, as a well-known lover of the Lord of the Rings, what is your perspective on the contemporary tech rights fascination with Tolkien? And here is where I have an admission to make, Dominic, which will

• 38:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Alastair Campbell?

  truly appall you. I have never read Lord of the Rings, and I think that the fact that it has played such a big part in the mindset of Teal and Musk and Zuckerberg and all these awful people are ruling the world, I don't intend ever to read it either.

• 39:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, the first thing to say, Alistair, is that what you clearly need to do more of is you need to listen to our new book club podcast.

• 39:19Alastair Campbell?

  I've already plugged that.

• 39:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  You can educate yourself about the world beyond Westminster, which I know you'd, you'd really enjoy doing. Now, as for the Lord of the Rings, it's absolutely right that the people on the right have taken this up. So Maloney, Georgia Maloney, is a massive Lord of the Rings fan, and she makes references to it. There is a Lord of the Rings festival in Italy that people on the right go to, you know, extraordinary.

• 39:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Gerard Tolkien himself was a very reactionary person. You know, he was a small C conservative. When I say reactionary, I don't mean in a sort of bigoted way, because he definitely wasn't. But he was somebody who genuinely, you know, loved the world of the Middle Ages and whatnot, wished that he could turn back the clock.

• 40:03Alastair Campbell?

  He was Daily Telegraph before it became today's Daily Telegraph.

• 40:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  I suppose a little bit, although he wasn't really interested in politics. But he had a, he had a sort of fantasy in his mind of a sort of Middle England, unspoiled by industry. He'd grown up in Birmingham. You know, he'd grown up in a village that was actually swallowed up by Birmingham when he was a boy, as in the Edwardian period. And he sort of had a horror of, you know, the city and change and technology and all of this kind of thing. He had a horror of the, I mean, he fought in the Battle of the Somme. His sons had been involved in the Second World War. He hated, you know, Nazism, totalitarianism, fascism and whatnot. And he worried that the Allies were using totalitarian methods.

• 40:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  And so he has a sort of hatred of power and modernity and technology and all of this kind of thing. And technology, I mean, this is the weird thing, right? He hates technology. And actually, the tech bros have taken this up. I think there's perhaps a slight element of, I mean, Tolkien himself was absolutely not a racist. And I think when people say Lord of the Rings is racist or whatever, they are wrong. But I think there is something about it that clearly appeals to the sort of white supremacist wing of the tech bro movement. It's an English book. It's about white people. It's about fighting dark skinned people, all of this kind of thing. They like all this. But I think they're completely wrong to see it as a, as a book that endorses their worldview.

• 41:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, the whole, I know this is bonkers that I'm having to explain the plot of The Lord of the Rings to you, Alistair. Something I never, ever imagined I would be doing. But they have this incredible, this super weapon, this technological super weapon. And the whole point of the story is they have to destroy it because it will corrupt them if they use it. You know, and obviously you can see how that would be inspired by the nuclear bomb that was in the news when he was writing it. Do Peter Thiel and all of these people think like that? They do not at all. They have a super weapon in AI, which they are proposing to roll out and they don't care if it, you know, what the implications for the world are. So I think they are misunderstanding the message of the Lord of Rings, undoubtedly.

• 42:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I will happily listen to this episode as long as you promise me also to do Balzac, Zola, Thomas Hardy and possibly a little bit of Dickens as well. Would that be okay?

• 42:23Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, you're naming a lot of very good authors. Now, the thing is, you're hiding your lights under a bushel here because you read in German, don't you? You read fiction in German, which is very impressive. So have you read Thomas Mann?

• 42:33Alastair Campbell?

  I have read Thomas Mann. I've read Thomas Mann. I read the Buddenbrooks a few months ago in Alte Deutsch, yeah.

• 42:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  God, that is so impressive. That is genuinely.

• 42:42Alastair Campbell?

  Dominic, what you're exposing here is the British arrogance about languages. Why is it impressive that I read a book in German? Every German reads English books pretty much every week.

• 42:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  I agree with you. I did French at university and I used to read, I read Zola, Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert in French. Could I do that now? I'm not sure because I've actually, my French is atrophied. Yeah, it's become, I've let it go.

• 43:06Alastair Campbell?

  The reason I've become obsessed about reading in German is because my German atrophied. And during Covid, because Fiona knows I'm not very good if I'm trapped in the house all the time, she got me, she bought me these courses at the Goethe Institute to relearn German and I loved it. So you should do the same with your French. Happy to help.

• 43:26Alastair Campbell?

  Je serais très content de t'aider.

• 43:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. Alastair Campbell, life coach, brilliant.

• 43:32Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. Now, Dominic, the final question, I think we have to, one of the, look, there are many, many, many joys of doing the podcast with Rory Stewart. But one of the the non joys, if I can put it like that, is he doesn't really get football.

• 43:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right.

• 43:50Alastair Campbell?

  So we can't really talk about football, but I think football is so important, including in politics. So a couple of questions to close. Felix in Glasgow, what are your thoughts on the extortionate ticket prices at the World Cup next summer? And here's one from Graham, Southampton Football Club, rest is politics and rest is history fan from Weymouth. As a Saints fan, he says, it's really disappointing. We won't be able to welcome your two teams, Wolves and Burnley, to St Mary's next season as we pass each other and go up into the Premier League while you both go into the Championship. Would you like recommendations on the best half time food? It's worth pointing out, they're seventh. They might not get in the playoffs. They're all, they're gonna, they're in the FA Cup. They did very well against Arsenal.

• 44:34Alastair Campbell?

  But I think there's a bit of hubris there, Graham. I think if you don't get promoted, you're gonna get the blame. Well, how do you feel about going down, first of all, Wolves?

• 44:43Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, we were down in August, which is very unusual, which is very unusual. So I've had a long time to get used to it. I think it's very depressing. I think there is actually, for a politics podcast, there's a lot to talk about here because we are a Chinese owned club, Wolves.

• 44:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  We're historically, we're one of the founder members of the Football League. We are, we have become a symbol of the globalization of football because we are Chinese owned. And we came into the Premier League and did really well, finished seventh two years in a row.

• 45:12Alastair Campbell?

  But that was when you had George Mendes, the famous Portuguese super agent, bringing you all these amazing players from Portugal. He basically ran the club.

• 45:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Exactly. But post Covid, the Chinese government basically said to Chinese companies, stop blowing money on Western projects, dissuaded them from doing so. So Fosun, the conglomerate that owns Wolves, have become very semi detached. So I think our relegation was probably always coming. I think.

• 45:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  But frankly, because they want to make their money back, they will invest to try to get us back up because always they're going to lose a lot of money. But isn't it, I mean, here's the thing, you know, when you're following a club like Wolves or Burnley, the tragedy of football now is that you know you can never do what Nottingham Forest did in the 1970s.

• 46:01Alastair Campbell?

  Leicester did it a few years ago.

• 46:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  But it was such a freak though, it's just never going to happen again. I mean, the tragedy is, you know, I know that in the last few years, we had as good a Wolves team as we've had in my lifetime, easily, arguably the best Wolves team we've had in my lifetime in 50 years. But there was a ceiling beyond which we could not break. And it was obvious that once we'd finished seventh twice in a row, we would end up selling all of these brilliant players, Ruben Neves, or Pedro Neto, or Jota, who went to Liverpool, or Raúl Jiménez, or whoever, that they wouldn't stay forever because the nature of the finances now, and financial fair play and all of these kinds of things, have enshrined a cartel at the top of football. And if you're not part of the cartel, now you will never break in. And I think that's a tragedy for clubs like ours.

• 46:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I can't wait to talk to Rory about this because I think his views will be very, very, very similar. But this is, this underlines why he's missing something, not just in why football is a wonderful game to watch and get involved in, but also it is so political. And briefly on Felix's point, by the way, Dom, just to remind you, only two clubs in history have won all four divisional titles. Did you know that?

• 47:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  There are two clubs, aren't there?

• 47:10Alastair Campbell?

  Burnley and Wolves.

• 47:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, well.

• 47:12Alastair Campbell?

  Because we go up and we go down, and we go down a bit more, and then we come back.

• 47:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, that tells you something about the trajectory, that the nature, the size and the nature of our clubs. They will always bounce back because they're really resilient, but they're not quite big enough to establish themselves on a permanent basis in the top flight.

• 47:29Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. So Felix wants to know what our thoughts on the ticket price of the World Cup. Well, I'm not going to the World Cup because I'm boycotting America for four years because of the decision they made to get Trump. And I'm very sad about it because Scotland have qualified. But I, never mind the ticket prices, I was looking the other day at the parking prices.

• 47:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, my God.

• 47:48Alastair Campbell?

  Some of the parking prices are into the, well into the hundreds. I think it's Scotland, Morocco, you need, you can't get there by public transport. And I think the parking places were something like 800 quid, $800. The the the price of a ticket for the final, which they said at the start was wasn't going to be above fourteen hundred dollars, it's already up to ten.

• 48:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  Wow.

• 48:08Alastair Campbell?

  And then you look at Infantino, the head of FIFA, sort of going around the world on one of the biggest Instagram tours since Liz Truss. Every day he's kind of, you know, spreading goodwill, spreading this, that, the other.

• 48:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  And he made up that prize, the peace prize, and gave it to Trump, didn't he?

• 48:25Alastair Campbell?

  We've seen how deserved it was. We've seen how deserved it was for the, over the last five weeks.

• 48:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  The other issue with the World Cup, the World Cup has completely and utterly sold out politically and commercially. It's expanded beyond, you know, the realms of, beyond the realms of average. So now it has forty eight teams. It will last longer than ever. The entire first stage of it is really superfluous. You know, how many people really want to watch, you know, Jordan versus Uzbekistan or whatever it might be?

• 48:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I can't imagine there are going to be that many people want to see Cape Verde against Saudi Arabia. The parking for that one's only eighty five dollars.

• 48:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  God, I mean, has there anybody ever who said, I'd like to see a match between those two teams? I'd like to see it. I'd like to see it in America in punishing heat.

• 49:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, no, I think it's a real shame because I used to love, so when I was a student, I can remember my friends and I were like, let's watch every game. And we watched every game, you know, the most obscure games. But now, you know, you physically can't do it, for one thing, there are too many. But also, there are too many dead rubbers. They've really, they've really, they've really destroyed the romance of the tournaments. I think it's a massive, massive shame.

• 49:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think football's going through a very, very bad phase. I've probably been to fewer games this season than most seasons in my life. Now, partly it's been travel and work, illness and stuff like that. But no, I'm not, I'm looking forward to Scotland being there, but I'm not really looking forward to the World Cup as an event. And Trump, and I'm convinced, by the way, let's go back to the first part of our discussion on the main episode, I have a horrible feeling Trump's going to use it like Hitler used the Olympics in nineteen thirty six.

• 50:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, it depends how well the United States team does. And thankfully, they've got a rubbish team.

• 50:05Alastair Campbell?

  That's true. Anyway, listen, Rory, Rory, if he's listening, will be falling asleep by now, Dominic. So I think we'd better call it a day.

• 50:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, he hasn't listened to all this, surely.

• 50:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, thank you very much again for stepping in. It's been a pleasure to watch you again.

• 50:17Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, thank you for having me.

• 50:18Alastair Campbell?

  We'll do it again one day.

• 50:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  I hope so. All right. Bye bye, everybody.

• 50:21Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon. Bye.

• 50:28Speaker 05

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

• 50:31Speaker 07

  On October 2nd.

• 50:32Speaker 05

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

• 50:37Speaker 07

  Tom Cruise is.

• 50:38Speaker 06

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 50:42Speaker 07

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 50:44Speaker 08

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

• 50:48Speaker 07

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 50:52Speaker 08

  I'm not the earth, then.

• 50:53Speaker 07

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