188. Question Time: What the Covid Inquiry says about Britain

Does Britain’s relationship with the USA prevent independent decision making? What does conservatism mean to Jordan Peterson? How do you disagree agreeably about politics with your partner? Join Alastair and Rory as they answer all these questions and more on this week’s Question Time. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 2:12Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:15Alastair Campbell?

  And me Alastair Campbell. Now Rory, should we kick off with the Covid Inquiry, Renaissance Girl? Watching Martin Reynolds at the Covid Inquiry, I'd like to know exactly what the job of a PPS is. Also, is it credible for him to claim that in February to March 2020, he knew little of what was happening and didn't feel it was his job to speak to the PM about the worsening situation in Italy? PPS means Principal Private Secretary. That's a kind of very senior civil service position who tends to sit pretty close to the Prime Minister, sees all the papers that are going to the Prime Minister, decides what the Prime Minister should prioritise, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And what I think we're seeing at the Covid Inquiry,

• 2:59Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, it's even worse. I mean, during Covid, I was very manic. I now realise I was very manic. I was getting up at four, five o'clock in the morning. I was writing thousands of blogs. I was publishing articles in magazines and newspapers around the world. And I was absolutely horrified by the nature of what our government had become. But I actually realised, watching this Covid Inquiry, it was even worse than I thought it was.

• 3:27Rory Stewart?

  I mean, it's completely shocking. And before we get into the inquiry itself, in my experience of this was because I'd been the Secretary of State responsible for dealing with our Ebola response, I had dealt with Chris Witty then, and I had begun to get a sense of UK disaster preparedness. And I was very, very worried when Covid began, that we were very ill-equipped for it, for a couple of reasons. One is that I was picking up that there was a very fatalistic attitude in British government, that the way in which we had thought about influenza planning and other things was essentially that there was nothing we could do. A lot of the focus was essentially on body bags. The idea was that almost immediately,

• 4:11Rory Stewart?

  we would get beyond the ability to control it. It would flood through the population. And what we were then doing was thinking about how we'd get the bodies out of the hospitals. That was one thing. The second thing is there's this sort of public health mentality that I found really disturbing at the time, which was a tendency to say, Well, yes, if you look at the maths, you know, maybe, I don't know what it was, a hundred and fifty thousand old people will die, but a lot of those people are going to die in two years anyway, so does it make much difference? So it was that kind of sort of statistical analysis.

• 4:37Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 4:38Rory Stewart?

  So I came out very, very early, very hard, saying, look what's happening in Italy. I think we should lock down now. And my belief was that if we acted quickly, lockdown quickly, we could lift the lockdown earlier.

• 4:52Alastair Campbell?

  I remember it was basically, it was basically you and Piers Morgan at the start, wasn't it?

• 4:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that was a pretty, pretty, pretty weird combination. And then I found myself under the most extraordinary attack. I mean, I had the Deputy Chief Medical Officer out on the news saying Rory Stewart is wrong to be suggesting that masks are any use. There's no evidence that masks do any good.

• 5:12Alastair Campbell?

  Was that the woman who did those awful videos with Boris Johnson, explaining why wearing a mask would probably make things worse because you'd, you'd take it on and off and you'd leave germs everywhere and spread it all over the place? Yeah.

• 5:24Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. And, and as, and I noticed how much of a panic the government was in, in those weeks in February, because we ended up in a situation where I was getting very, very angry WhatsApps from Matt Hancock attacking me. Then Chris Witty, very kindly, and I felt a lot of admiration for Chris Witty, but very kindly, spent nearly an hour trying to convince me of his position on the phone. And I was thinking, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you've got better things to be doing than trying to convince me on the phone that you're right and I'm wrong about this. You should be running this response.

• 5:54Alastair Campbell?

  That's really interesting. So, but was he trying to convince you of what he thought, which I imagine was closer to what you were saying than what Johnson was saying? Or was he trying to convince you of what the then government's strategy was?

• 6:08Rory Stewart?

  So, to be fair to Chris Witty, what he said to me in the end of our conversation is, listen Rory, if you were Prime Minister, I can get behind what you're saying here. My job, he kept saying, is to provide medical advice, but in the end, there has to be a political judgment call. Now, I don't think Chris Witty at that stage, and this was true of him and the Chief Scientific Officer, were really on my side, though. I think their instinct in the early stages of this is that it would not be possible or desirable to contain the flow of the virus. And that their initial instinct was that pushing for some kind of herd immunity was almost inevitable, and that lockdowns would be too damaging to the economy. So I, I actually think that

• 6:53Rory Stewart?

  In those early days, Boris Johnson's instincts, which are basically kind of libertarian, take it on the chin stuff, and a lot of the conventional wisdom of public health in Britain were in the same place, which is they didn't think it would be possible to do the kind of lockdowns that we later did. They then changed, and then we ended up, I think, in almost the worst of all worlds. I mean, it's a very difficult thing to explain because people are either pro-lockdown or anti-lockdown. My view is that what we needed to do is lockdown quickly, and then we could lift the lockdowns earlier. Instead of which, I felt we did the worst of all worlds. We were very slow to react initially, and then we kept the lockdowns much longer into the summer than we needed to, doing a lot of damage.

• 7:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, a lot of damage economically and also the schools and kids' education. But look, the bottom line on this, this is what emerged from the evidence from Martin Reynolds. We're recording this before Dominic Cummings gives his evidence. I suspect he will not hold back on the reality of the Johnson creature that he created. But the fact is, if you put in charge of a country as important as the United Kingdom, somebody with the utter lack of seriousness and lack of moral compass that Boris Johnson has, who literally doesn't give a damn about anything but himself, then the country's in trouble. And I did a tweet this morning, listening to the evidence yesterday, I found myself, I try not to tweet about Boris Johnson because I did far too much of that when he

• 8:21Alastair Campbell?

  was Prime Minister, but I actually do think that anyone, anyone who helped that man become Prime Minister should not be allowed near a serious political media or think-tank position ever again, because he's done so much damage. And, you know, ultimately, when we elect Prime Ministers, we have to take into account who and what they are as people, because unless they are basically decent human beings, they are never going to do a decent job.

• 8:51Rory Stewart?

  Well, it was an amazing illustration, wasn't it, of the problems of populism? So, and the basic problem of populism is that it's all about campaigning and it's about campaigning in very simple terms, laying out simple solutions, being hyperconfident. And of course, Covid is the other extreme as a governing challenge. It requires humility, listening to information.

• 9:15Alastair Campbell?

  Expert.

• 9:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, exactly. And that's why, in a sense, Angela Merkel was was so strong. I mean, she was herself, you know, a research chemist. And she was really able to sit down for hours trying to get her head around this and also make some difficult calls. Because, of course, to be fair to Chris Witty and others, there were many things we didn't know at that stage. You know, people like me were saying we need to mask, but there wasn't that much evidence on whether masks worked. Nobody really knew whether lockdowns worked. So it's not simply a question of, as it were, following the evidence. In fact, one of the problems is that populists often made one of two mistakes. Either like Trump, they completely ignored the scientists. Or like Johnson, in some ways, they didn't challenge them enough. They didn't ask difficult questions when they needed to.

• 10:00Rory Stewart?

  The other thing, though, that I think has been the most horrifying bit of this is the revelation of the complete contempt which the head of the senior civil service, the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, was displaying for the Prime Minister through his WhatsApps.

• 10:14Alastair Campbell?

  As was Cummings, as was Lee Kean. And they called him the trolley, for heaven's sake.

• 10:18Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I mean, I think Cummings and Lee Kean, in a sense, we sort of knew about, and they were political appointees and they were eccentric, strange disruptors that had been brought in. And there was no doubt, you know, we could see Cummings and the way that he behaved, that he behaved like that. But the Cabinet Secretary, you know, which is this sort of, these figures like Jeremy Hayward or Richard Wilson, to see him sending WhatsApps. Can I read out the latest one that's now been exposed? And just to explain to people once more, this is the head of the permanent civil service. This is the kind of Sir Humphrey of all Sir Humphreys. Who should be, in every way, whatever they think privately, polite and deferential to the Prime Minister. This is a functioning democracy and you are the head of the professional civil service.

• 11:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think respectful rather than deferential. I think deferential is not.

• 11:05Rory Stewart?

  Respectful, respectful. Okay, maybe not deferential, but maybe speak up, but respectful. Because if you begin to publicly express to other people your contempt and mock your boss, the effect on morals through the system is catastrophic. And this is what he was writing. After this morning's FT-driven performance by BJ, I'm at the end of my tether. This is the Cabinet Secretary. He changes direction every day. Monday, we were all about fear of virus returning as per Europe, March, etc. Today, we're in a let it rip mode because the UK is pathetic, needs a cold shower, etc. He cannot lead and we cannot support him in leading with this approach. The team captain cannot change the call on the big

• 11:48Rory Stewart?

  plays every day. The team can't deliver anything under these circumstances. A weak team, as we've got, Matt Hancock, Williamson, Gavin Williamson, Dido, Number 10, CEO, permanent secretaries, definitely cannot succeed in these circumstances. It has to stop, decide and set direction, deliver, explain. Government isn't actually that hard, but this guy is really making it impossible. Now, let me just stop for a second here. Whatever one thinks of the Prime Minister, and I thought he was a terrible human being, a terrible Prime Minister, as I keep saying, he is the Prime Minister. You cannot have the Cabinet Secretary referring to him as this guy or saying, we cannot support him in leading with this approach.

• 12:30Alastair Campbell?

  But at the same time, what you're getting there is a sense of the utteraries aspiration. Of course, he's now part of a little echo chamber inside Number 10 because he was talking to Dominic Cummings, who was feeding back exactly the same view, that Johnson was utterly incapable of doing the job. My anger with Dominic Cummings is the fact that he knew that. Before he helped get him there, at least when I was trying to get Tony Blair, helped Tony Blair get elected as Prime Minister, I had a very strong suspicion the guy would be pretty good at the job because I saw what he was as leader of the opposition. They all knew who and what Johnson was.

• 13:02Rory Stewart?

  Can I just interrupt saying, why on earth did Johnson not get rid of them? And how can you manage an organisation where your three most senior people have complete undisguised contempt for you and keep saying day in, day out that you're not good enough to do the job and ignore what you say?

• 13:17Alastair Campbell?

  Well, probably to his face, Simon Case would have been very different. He probably would have been quite deferential. But I think that, I think it goes back to the point about Johnson not being a serious person. He didn't probably, he probably didn't notice it. Don't forget at the start of Covid, this is one of the things that was being put to Martin Reynolds. Johnson wasn't even involved. He missed the first half dozen Cobra meetings. He was busy writing his book on Shakespeare or sorting out his private life, whatever he was doing. We had as Prime Minister, this is something that must never, ever, ever happen again. Two things. We had as the choice of Prime Minister Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn. That's a failure of both the main parties. And we then had in Downing Street,

• 14:00Alastair Campbell?

  somebody who was, anyone who's known him for more than two minutes knows he's utterly unfit for that job. And I honestly think if we don't learn the lessons from that, then I think we're in big trouble. And let me put the next question, Rory, because it sort of relates to this and is maybe more one for you than for me. It's from Larry. Given Jordan Peterson is performing at the O2 this week and Johnson is taking on a gig at GB News, can you talk about what conservatism actually is? I went to a Burco lecture, that's John Burco, I assume, and he quoted Oakeshott, that is not Isabel Oakeshott, I assume, quotes, "To be conservative is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried, fact to mystery." That's not today's Conservative, is it?

• 14:43Rory Stewart?

  No, I mean, I think it's something we talk about at loss and it's Yuval when we interviewed him on leading and people who haven't listened to that, I think it's a lovely interview, points out that the right has ceased to be conservative. And so that's Michael Oakeshott, who, if you're trying to teach conservatism, the strange thing about conservatism is it's very difficult to explain it as a political philosophy. Academics tear their hair out. It's easy to teach left-wing philosophy, very difficult to teach right-wing philosophy because it's very difficult to find out what on earth it's about. But Oakeshott's idea there, one of his big metaphors is he says, "A tree growing in your garden has a beauty through familiarity, and you've seen it growing over the ages. And it doesn't make sense

• 15:25Rory Stewart?

  to say, is it objectively a beautiful tree or not, and start from scratch and rip it up, that there's something attached to its traditional existence." So Jordan Peterson, well, most people I think on the pod will have heard of him, but he is the hero of not just the Canadian, but increasingly the US and European alt-right. He's a sort of somewhere between a psychologist, philosopher, and self-help writer, who has taken increasingly radical views, which are very exciting to people on the right. And these will be views, as you can imagine, on immigration, on climate change, on transgender, on all the hot-button issues. And no surprise, his appearance is being funded by Paul Marshall, who's the

• 16:09Rory Stewart?

  man behind GB News and a prominent supporter of Michael Gove.

• 16:13Alastair Campbell?

  Who's also funding some sort of university of the right as well.

• 16:18Rory Stewart?

  And they wrote an article, Paul Marshall wrote an article in The Telegraph yesterday, talking about how conservatism needs to be all about virtue and the allegiance to the common good. And it really disgusts me.

• 16:33Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, sorry. Is this why he's hiring Boris Johnson for GB News then?

• 16:37Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 16:38Alastair Campbell?

  Because it's all about virtue and moral good. These people are revolting.

• 16:41Rory Stewart?

  Completely disgusting. It's totally bizarre that, on the one hand, they pontificate as though they're sort of the pope and that they're standing for moral rectitude. And on the other hand, they endorse the most incredible group of kind of charlatans, cynics, political opportunists, and put them on platforms. It's bizarre.

• 17:01Alastair Campbell?

  But they can only succeed. If they have the normalising, conventionalising media platforms. And the reason GB, Marshall funds something like GB News is he creates it for himself. The problem is the rest of our media treat them in the same way.

• 17:17Rory Stewart?

  And Marshall, I believe, is now bidding for The Telegraph, is that right?

• 17:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 17:21Rory Stewart?

  I'm so I know, I know Paul Marshall. I was actually invited to a dinner, which later turned out to be basically a sort of leadership bid for Michael Gove back in the day, when we were all running in leadership against Boris Johnson. And I was very struck that Marshall really isn't a conservative in that Oakeshottian sense at all, nor is Michael Gove. They're sort of radicals. They would describe themselves as Whigs. In many ways, they sound like sort of Lib Dems. They're right wing economically, but they're not particularly interested in any of the things I'm interested in. They're not interested in the monarchy or landscape or tradition or history or any of that sort of conservative stuff.

• 18:00Alastair Campbell?

  But Saido, in the interview we did on leading with Saido, I asked her, she, she gave a sense of, of Gove as being very much in this Braverman space of trying to divide between peoples and between religions and between colours and between faiths, that that's part of his policies as well. Is that unfair?

• 18:19Rory Stewart?

  I think that may be unfair to him. I don't think he's particularly in the business of dividing, but I think he's also very tribal. And I think for some reason, although I think he barely gets on planes, he doesn't like flying, very early on, he developed a very tribal allegiance to Israel. And he also developed a very, very strong antipathy and anxiety towards Islam. You can see this on the right. Nick Timothy wrote another big article in The Telegraph yesterday, trying to say Islam is the problem and trying to draw direct links between jihadist ideology and Islam as a religion.

• 18:54Alastair Campbell?

  My problem with them is that they're just a sort of political entity. They're, I don't, they're not serious people, is what gets me. And, and they, and they, of course, what these conferences do, they've got another one, this ARC, whatever it's called, and we had something else recently with that Danny Kruger, making a bit of an idiot of himself, and Miriam Cates, and all these kind of new right people. But they only have the platform. Because they own so much of the media space. And of course, what Marshall is about is trying to expand that media space. And of course, they've now got on with Musk in charge of Twitter. And by the way, I don't know about you, Rory, I'm finding Twitter increasingly virtually impossible and useless to use because yesterday I was, I don't know what I've been

• 19:36Alastair Campbell?

  doing on the algorithm to feed the algorithm this, but yesterday, when I was scrolling through, I would say 50% of the stuff that I was seeing were tributes to Mike Pence.

• 19:48Alastair Campbell?

  Why has Elon decided that I need to see endless tributes to Mike Pence? What is going on there?

• 19:54Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. How did they, I mean, well, that's one of the mysteries, isn't it, about machine learning? They, on the one hand, we're all meant to be terrified because we're supposed to believe that these machines know us better than we do. And on the other hand, when I go on my Amazon account, I'm being sort of recommended kind of Mills and Boone novels written for 12-year-old girls, so.

• 20:15Alastair Campbell?

  Maybe that's, maybe that's because they've decided your own book is like a Mills and Boone novel for 12-year-old girls.

• 20:21Rory Stewart?

  This is completely mysterious. There am I thinking I'm this really kind of serious, highbrow person, but boy, does Amazon not think that at all.

• 20:27Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, lots more questions to come. Let's take a quick break.

• 20:33Speaker 03

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• 21:52Alastair Campbell?

  What about, we mentioned the interview with with Saidi. We had a very good week on leading last week because we had her. We also had Arnold Schwarzenegger and both of them to me, it felt they're conservatives, they identify as conservatives, in her case a Tory, in his case a Republican. But the way they talk about the world and about politics and about these people on the right, they're very, very far removed from what the Conservative Party and the Republican Party have become.

• 22:18Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I think that's right. And I was disappointed that, I mean, it's an amazing interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was really proud that we got to interview him and I actually liked him a lot. But I was disappointed that he evaded criticizing Trump. One of the things you'll notice in the interview is he keeps saying, oh, well, it's just hypothetical.

• 22:35Alastair Campbell?

  It's not going to happen. He's not going to win because he's got his legal problems. But he didn't want to say he wouldn't vote for him, did he?

• 22:39Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And I hope that what he's doing is holding his ammunition and that he doesn't want to alienate the Republican base at the moment, but that if Trump actually emerges as the candidate, then we desperately need Schwarzenegger to come out shortly before the election, coming strongly out against Trump. Because if anybody can appeal to that kind of make America great again rump and come across as a kind of spokesman for that, it would be Schwarzenegger. And you feel that right the way through the interview. I mean, his bluntness is extraordinary. He's sort of able to be blunt without being an asshole, but he's very, very straight, isn't he?

• 23:12Alastair Campbell?

  I must say, Roy, I went for a swim this morning and I came back via Dawn's little cafe to get a coffee and Mick, her other half, was there and he said two things. One, I loved your interview with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I wish he was president. Two, I really like Rory.

• 23:31Rory Stewart?

  Oh, what a sweetheart. That's very nice.

• 23:34Alastair Campbell?

  I pay them money virtually every morning for coffee. And he didn't say he really loved me, he said he really loved you.

• 23:40Rory Stewart?

  I think maybe he was taking that as read. Now, here we are. Coming out of our conversation yesterday on the pod about Keir Starmer's statements about Britain's international influence. Mikey, does Britain's relationship with the USA prevent independent foreign policy decisions? Let me just put in here, it's going to be a bit provocative. When I joined the Foreign Office, even back in 1995, I asked an old diplomat what our policy should be on a particular issue around the world. I think it was Indonesia at the time. And his response was, find out what the US are doing and do a little bit less.

• 24:14Alastair Campbell?

  And Theresa May didn't like that at all, if you remember. No, I don't like that either.

• 24:19Rory Stewart?

  Tell us, tell us a little bit about how our relationship with the US does or doesn't prevent independent foreign policy decisions. How often do we make foreign policy decisions? Because of course, you know, one of your understandable defences of Keir Starmer's position on Israel Gaza is that he wants to remain a credible interlocutor with the US and doesn't want to differ from their position.

• 24:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think that, you know, when we did our very long sessions on Iraq a while back, I think I made the point that when, if Tony Blair was sort of analysing the decision-making process for the UK, being close to the Americans on a strategic point for them was also a strategic point for us. But does that prevent independent foreign policy decisions? No, it doesn't. And interestingly, I'm not quite sure on the thinking, but on the United Nations Security Council, on a couple of occasions in recent days on Israel Gaza, the UK has not been in the same position. As the USA whilst at the same time essentially being, you know, voicing support. And

• 25:23Rory Stewart?

  Tell us a bit about that difference, sort of broadly speaking, what was the difference there?

• 25:26Alastair Campbell?

  I couldn't quite work it out, but I think what was happening was that on one occasion, the UK felt that the resolution wasn't sufficiently critical of Hamas. And on the other, they felt that they didn't want to be seen simply to be backing Israel, as it were, giving a blank cheque. So I don't, all I know is that they didn't vote in the same way as the United States, I think, on a couple of occasions. Now, that doesn't change the fundamentals. But if I think, for example, if you, you know, when we talk about an independent foreign policy decision, I would argue that one of the most significant foreign policy decisions that the United Kingdom has taken in recent years was Brexit.

• 26:05Rory Stewart?

  Of course, which, which was not in line with what the US wanted at all.

• 26:08Alastair Campbell?

  Certainly not. And in fact, you know, there was a point at which Barack Obama as president made clear his views and it was immediately taken by the, the Leave campaign as a, as a campaign device for them to use. So, and I, look, there are historically that you go back to, you know, Harold Wilson on Vietnam, you go back through, there have been points in, in history where we've been in a very different position to the United States. But shorthand, does Britain's relationship with the USA prevent independent foreign policy decisions? No, it doesn't. But does Britain's relationship with the USA lend itself to a point where, when there is a balance, when there is a doubt, do you go with the benefit of the doubt towards the Americans rather than elsewhere? Probably.

• 26:52Rory Stewart?

  Okay. Ian Daniels, given the stresses of high office, when you have something troubling, can you discuss it with your wife stroke partner? Where do the rules of secrecy, et cetera, step in? Are there some issues at stake that you just couldn't talk about? Does that create tension at home? So let me start on that a little bit. It's a very difficult balance, this. You do want to be able to talk to your your wife about things. And I think it's very difficult to live an entirely secret life in which you are concealing the fundamentals. But you also have to respect security classifications. So I think the way in which I would deal with it is to be very frank with Shashana about

• 27:33Rory Stewart?

  the fact that there was something I was worrying about. But sometimes I couldn't be specific about exactly what it was that I was worrying about, or I would try to get the judgment right on talking about the structure of the problem without revealing the details of what the problem was. I mean, but to be honest, actually, thinking about it, I'm just gonna hand back to you here. It's not usually the most secret things that wound me up most. The things that keeping me awake at night was not the identity of agents in the field. The things that keeping me awake at night was my fury about some colleague and his behaviour in the tea room. Anyway, over to you.

• 28:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the the last point, part of Ian's question, does it create tension at home? The answer to that is yes. But I think it's the issues that create the tension at home. So, you know, I've said before that one of the worst periods for me for all sorts of reasons was the build up to the Iraq war, partly because I was kind of thrust right into the heart of it. And that was difficult with the media exposure and protesters outside the house and all that sort of stuff. But it was made even worse by the fact that Fiona was basically in her heart on the side of the protesters rather than with me. So that is a massive tension.

• 28:40Rory Stewart?

  Just on that for a second. I mean, that does happen sometimes, doesn't it? And it must be unbelievably tough, particularly about an issue that somebody feels strongly about, because she's balancing her love and respect for her partner with a profound sense, maybe that you're doing the wrong thing. How does that work out?

• 29:00Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it works out very badly. And it worked in. I think it's one of the reasons ultimately why I left, because, you know, I was probably reaching the end of my time anyway, having been there for sort of, you know, around a decade. But at the same time, it just, what it meant was that, you know, it's important that people understand that If you're close to a partner, you're close to anybody, that relationship becomes incredibly important in times of difficulty and times of stress. And when you're working on something like a campaign, or a peace process, or a scandal, or a crisis, then having somebody that you literally can sort of share everything with is, you know, is incredibly important

• 29:42Alastair Campbell?

  to have that. I always feel when I, when we talk to Chris Hipkins, the New Zealand Prime Minister, you know, I remember, you may remember, I said to him, you know, your marriage is broken up. It doesn't that just make life much so much more difficult. And he talked about extended family and all that. But the fact is, I think that those relationships that you have at home with somebody who is normally a political soulmate, that they're incredibly important for your ability to deal with the job on a day to day basis. So when that is difficult, it means that you're not enjoying work, and you're not enjoying home life, and and your whole life just becomes kind of a grind when you're dealing with issues of kind of, you know, life and death and political survival. Not easy at all.

• 30:25Rory Stewart?

  And I mean, this is not not something relevant to you, but I was just thinking about politicians also who get themselves in in scandals and how that feels. I mean, how horrible it must have felt for Hillary Clinton, for the Bill Clinton revelations on Monica Lewinsky to be happening.

• 30:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I I saw that very close up because we, and this is one of the things that, you know, I think some people can say, well, they don't admire them for this. But I really did admire her for this, the way that because she was the first lady, she had a place in the constitution, she was part of the whole kind of White House setup. And, you know, I, we saw moments where before the cameras were there, before they went out in public,

• 31:11Alastair Campbell?

  Where he literally was in the deep freeze. I mean, you know that, you know, when people aren't getting on.

• 31:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Alastair Campbell?

  And you could literally see that there was a separation there that was, it was quite uncomfortable to be with. And yet then out they would go and she would have a hand in his arm and a smile on her face. And, you know, that is, that is quite a thing to have to do. I don't think, I don't think Fiona and I would have been up for that.

• 31:36Rory Stewart?

  No, and I think the, and I think you've put your finger on the fact that very difficult to sort of think through the mental strain that that imposes on someone. I mean, I guess everybody probably has this if they're in, in any work environment, if their relationship is under, under stress.

• 31:50Alastair Campbell?

  I think also, I mean, I can, I can remember situations to do with things like, you know, you talked about kind of intelligence classifications and stuff like that. And we tried to kind of, you know, make sure that we abided by all the rules all the time. But there, there definitely were times when I was maybe in the car on a conference call and, you know, or in bed and discussing things, be that with Tony Blair, be that with Jonathan Powell, whoever it might be, that possibly had you sort of said to somebody who's in charge of classification, should I be having this conversation on an open line? Should I be having this conversation lying in bed next to somebody who's not clear to that level? Then they would probably say no, but it doesn't mean you didn't have them.

• 32:34Rory Stewart?

  No, no, I'm sure you're, you're, you're absolutely right. And I, I remember times in my life over the last 30 years where I felt very worried. And I, I'm afraid it's, it's inevitable. Hence all that, you know, careless talks, cost lies, but it's very difficult to avoid that. No, I, I, I, yeah, I, I, there's really embarrassing moments in my life where I thought, whoa, I was lucky to get away with that.

• 32:57Alastair Campbell?

  Now, last, maybe last question, yeah? Quentin Colburn, can you give us an insight into the informal conversations between the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition, as referred to by Keir Starmer recently? How often does it happen? What sort of things are discussed and what are the benefits to both sides? Do you want to have a go at that one, or should I?

• 33:13Rory Stewart?

  Well, no, I'd love to hear from you. And actually, I've got a Tom Hooper question I'm going to come in with behind you. But tell us about that. When did you begin conversations with John Major, with Tony Blair? And how did that work? And how did the civil service prepare for the transition? And tell us about that.

• 33:28Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think the first thing I'd say is that it's fairly rare. I think a lot depends on the on the personal chemistry between the two leaders. If there is none, I think it's quite difficult to to have the sort of there's quite a famous picture of Tony Blair, John Major, and Paddy Ashdown, who are at some establishment gathering, and they're all clearly having a really good laugh. I don't know what they're laughing about, but, you know, you can tell they're not putting it on. They're all three of them laughing uproariously about something. And I think people sometimes look at pictures like that and think, well, how can they go from being tearing lumps off each other in the House of Commons, or in a TV studio,

• 34:09Alastair Campbell?

  to being at some event together and they're all laughing about something? I'll maybe ask Tony. I'll try and find out what they're laughing about. But then, and then I think that most of these discussions tend to be about about security stuff. So, for example, on Northern Ireland, I think one of the reasons that we were as well prepared as we were was because Tony actually had had some pretty good discussions with John Major about the Northern Ireland situation before he became Prime Minister, and likewise down the levels of the teams as well. And whether I would imagine, I don't know, but I would imagine that Rishi Sunak would be making sure that Keir Starmer was being properly briefed, if not fully briefed, about some of the situations going on with regard to the Middle East now.

• 34:52Alastair Campbell?

  So they're the sorts of issues. And then, of course, you also have the kind of, you know, just being together at establishment events, state dinners, opening of Parliament, the the Armistice Day commemorations. These are all events at which you just happen to mingle together, and inevitably, you have kind of normal human being conversations.

• 35:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's also why extreme populists are a danger, because you do have to be able to trust the leader of the opposition if you're going to share national security secrets with them and try to bring them on board.

• 35:26Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, Rory, see you again soon.

• 35:28Rory Stewart?

  Thank you very much. Bye bye.

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