190. Question Time: Should WhatsApp messages stay private?

What makes Parliament the most poisonous place to work? Should MPs listen to their SpAds? Was the Freedom of Information Act a mistake? 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.

• 1:05Speaker 02

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• 1:36Speaker 03

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• 2:12Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:15Alastair Campbell?

  And with me Alastair Campbell.

• 2:18Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Where do you want to start us off?

• 2:19Alastair Campbell?

  What about, I mean, we don't like talking about him because he's just so awful, but Mark Haynes wants to know, why did Boris Johnson and the former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison go to Israel? What could they possibly achieve there? And is this their role? What did you make of it?

• 2:35Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think their visits will be welcomed by the Israeli government. I mean, I think the Israeli government made a great deal of their visits because they saw it as a sign of solidarity. Yeah. And they, there were a lot of photographs put out and not the kind of newspapers you'd read, but The Telegraph, for example, page three had sort of half the page showing Boris Johnson walking through Jerusalem, looking anxious with Israeli ministers with him. I think it's something that Israel is looking for big public symbols of solidarity. And sure enough, he came out and gave a very strong pro-Israeli statement. So I think it's largely symbolic. What did you make of what he's up to?

• 3:09Alastair Campbell?

  I was slightly turned off it when I saw that he did a quote exclusive interview with GB News.

• 3:14Rory Stewart?

  Which he's just got a job at, hasn't he?

• 3:16Alastair Campbell?

  His new employer.

• 3:17Rory Stewart?

  And I noticed The Telegraph, although it carried the photograph, had very little about him because I imagine they're a bit irritated that this person who they used to pay £250,000 a year to is now GB News and a column in The Mail.

• 3:27Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. I just find Johnson and Morrison to a lesser extent, but they both to me are just the symbols of the populism that we should be getting rid of and not giving them that much of a platform. So I don't know. I must tell you, by the way, I spoke at the Mansion House the other night at a dinner and the catering was provided by the Clink, you know, the Clink charity?

• 3:46Rory Stewart?

  Yes, it is a wonderful charity.

• 3:48Alastair Campbell?

  Fantastic.

• 3:48Rory Stewart?

  Started in Brixton. So quickly remind people about Clink if you want to support it. So lovely idea. And the idea is to train prisoners up in different bits of catering. They run a prison, they run a restaurant in Brixton Prison called the Clink where you can go and eat. But also when prisoners who've been through the programme leave the prison, they're often met at the gate, they're helped into a job, they have catering companies who help employ them.

• 4:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, they do city and gills while they're there. So the dinner that we had, the Mansion House, the catering was done. By guys on day release.

• 4:18Rory Stewart?

  Amazing.

• 4:19Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, what it meant was that I was able to start my speech by getting everybody to thank the caterers and say that by the time we get to our comfortable beds, the chef who's just cooked us that wonderful meal will be back in his cell in Brixton. And wouldn't it be marvellous if in a year's time, the same function was performed by Dominique Cummings and Boris Johnson?

• 4:39Rory Stewart?

  Ah.

• 4:39Alastair Campbell?

  And it went down very, very well.

• 4:41Rory Stewart?

  I got told off, actually. I gave a speech at St Martin's in the Fields and got slightly told off for referring to Boris Johnson in my speech. Somebody said to me, your speech would be more powerful if you hinted that that's who you were referring to, but that you discredit yourself.

• 4:53Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, should we have, unless something dramatic happens to him in the next month, shall we not mention him for at least a month?

• 5:01Rory Stewart?

  Very good. That's very good. Okay, excellent. It's a very interesting question from Russ McNorton. What do you make of the idea that Robert Malley was steering the US towards allowing Iran to be a more dominant power in the Middle East? So this is a real inside Washington baseball story, I would have thought, for 99% of listeners. Rob Malley is somebody that I know a little. He was an American diplomat. He was the special envoy for Iran. He played a very important part in Obama's negotiations around the nuclear deterrent. He ran the international crisis group as the predecessor to Comfort Eero, who we are about to interview on leading. And Rob has been suspended, and there's not much clarity around why he was suspended. And it appears to be suggestions going around

• 5:46Rory Stewart?

  that he'd mishandled classified documents. But at the heart of it all seems to be a disagreement within the administration around the way that Rob and various people that Rob was working with were reaching out to Iran and dealing with the Iranian media and with Iranian ex-patriot groups. But fascinated that this is the story that Russ McNorton's got his fingers around. And it is interesting because Rob Malley was one of the most trusted central parts of the Biden team, and it's very interesting that he's been suspended.

• 6:13Alastair Campbell?

  Are you hinting there that he was possibly thought to be getting too close to the Iranians?

• 6:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that seems to be the implication, yeah.

• 6:19Alastair Campbell?

  Because one of the things I've been reading, I can't remember where I was reading about this, but it was where Netanyahu, in the Israeli context, celebrated. What he saw as the demise of the Arabists in the Foreign Office. You know, the Foreign Office traditionally has been seen very much as Arabs.

• 6:33Rory Stewart?

  Sorry, I'm just broken your rule, but I do remember when I'd just become the Minister of State in the Foreign Office. Boris Johnson was the Foreign Secretary.

• 6:41Alastair Campbell?

  Three minutes.

• 6:42Rory Stewart?

  No, but it relates to it because it's always struck with me. Boris Johnson invited me to breakfast in the Travelers Club, just around the corner from where he was living. And Carlton Terrace was the Foreign Secretary's house. And he turned up late with his bodyguards and there was no real breakfast available. But what he did was rant at me about Arabists in the Foreign Office. And the implication was very strongly, you're an Arabist or you're part of this Arabist thing. And I'm going to make a speech. And he was essentially suggesting to me over breakfast that he was going to make a very punchy speech about Islam, Arabs, terrorism, calling out the Arabists, making the case for Israel. So this thing about the Arabists, which goes all the way back to Lawrence of Arabia,

• 7:23Rory Stewart?

  and was at the heart of the problems, the British mandate in Palestine, when Britain was trying to balance very, very unsuccessfully, Jewish and Arab movements within Palestine during the 30s and 40s. But the accusation was always that the British Arabists were too much on the side of the Arabs and not sufficiently pro Israel. And it was interesting to hear Boris Johnson leaning into that quite as hard.

• 7:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, and I think there's something in it. I can recall after one of the, during one of the kind of big crises in the Middle East, when we were in power, I can't remember the guy's name, but there was somebody there from the Foreign Office that was, I mean, you couldn't get him to say anything really positive about Israel or indeed about the United States in relation to their handling of this issue. So there was maybe something in that, but, but it was interesting that Netanyahu saw that as a significant thing, that the Foreign Office, as he saw it, was cleansed of these people.

• 8:18Rory Stewart?

  Dramatic because by the time, and this was partly under New Labour actually, that you broke the link between the language training, the area expertise and the ambassadorial jobs. So by 2010, 12 out of the 15 ambassadors in the Middle East couldn't speak Arabic. Whereas a generation before, they had all. Been through Arabic language training, often in a language school in Lebanon. And the Foreign Office really prided itself on people who spoke really beautiful Fusa. The last legacy of this is someone we've spoken about before, who you appointed was Gerard Russell, who was the spokesman on Al Jazeera. Very excellent man, who does speak very beautiful Arabic, but there definitely was a period where that was broken.

• 8:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I think you can get through this one without mentioning Boris Johnson, because you've now, you've got one mark against your name and we've got months to go now. Katrina Riddell, the Covid inquiry has raised massive issues about the roles of civil servants and special advisers. But what exactly is the difference between the two? And who do and who should politicians actually listen to?

• 9:18Rory Stewart?

  The difference is that civil servants sit the civil service selection board, join and serve a full professional career, traditionally of 40 years, ending up with an index linked pension. And they remain regardless of which government comes in and which government goes out and they work their way up. Eventually become directors, directors generals, permanent secretaries. And that's really 99.9% of the government are these professional civil servants. But sitting at the centre of government are this very small collection of people, of whom the members of parliament who become ministers are one lot. And the other lot are these special advisers who are appointed by the ministers, by whichever political party happens to be in power.

• 10:00Rory Stewart?

  There will be a number of them in number 10 and then each minister will have one, two or three of these people. Usually somebody focusing on press and somebody focusing on the more political side. And people who enjoy a yes minister or yes prime minister. There's already the beginnings of one of these figures who pops around the corner. Anyway, give us your sense on the difference between the two and how you see the use of the special advisor and how you think about them.

• 10:24Alastair Campbell?

  I think the significance has grown probably. I was a special advisor and I was appointed by Tony Blair and the big difference.

• 10:31Rory Stewart?

  And you came in from the outside, you hadn't been a civil servant all your life.

• 10:33Alastair Campbell?

  No, no been a civil servant, Jonathan Powell had been a civil servant. Most of the special advisers were from different sorts of backgrounds. We had a, I can't remember how many we had in total, you know, it wasn't hundreds, it was in double figures, but it wasn't hundreds. Gordon had quite a few in the Treasury. I think we're limited in most ministers.

• 10:49Rory Stewart?

  Ed Balls was one.

• 10:50Alastair Campbell?

  Ed Balls, Ed Miliband was another.

• 10:52Rory Stewart?

  Often their roots to becoming MPs.

• 10:53Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 10:54Rory Stewart?

  George Osborne, David Cameron was special advisor, Matt Hancock's a special advisor.

• 10:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, if I go through some of ours, Andrew Adonis went to the House of Lords, Pat McFadden, hopefully in the next cabinet, James Pennell, who went into the cabinet, David Miliband. So a lot of them did go that route, but the big difference is that we, in a sense, were allowed to be political. Now, I wasn't allowed to represent the Prime Minister in a political capacity. I couldn't go and do a number 10 briefing and start, you know, slagging off the opposition, but we were allowed to give political advice as well as, as it were, policy advice. I think that's the big difference. And I think that the politicians, it depends on the politicians, I think they probably do listen more to special advisors in that the special advisor is probably in their ear more. The special advisor is

• 11:36Alastair Campbell?

  probably likely to be at all the meetings, whereas a civil servant would dip in and out according to what it was that was being discussed. But there were some ministers who actually, if their relations with the civil servants are very, very good, the special advisor might play a secondary role. But I think in most cases, I don't know what it was like when you were in government, but I think in most cases, the special advisor was probably the one that the minister listened to most.

• 11:58Rory Stewart?

  What I noticed is that it can be tricky because often the special advisors are very young, bright, but not often deep specialists in the particular area they're working on. And so I remember as a backbencher, being pretty frustrated with the special advisors in Defence, the Foreign Office, DIFID, talking about things like Afghanistan because they were, you know, bright people in their late twenties.

• 12:22Alastair Campbell?

  And they'd probably been somewhere else five minutes earlier.

• 12:24Rory Stewart?

  Exactly.

• 12:25Alastair Campbell?

  Because their minister just moved in.

• 12:26Rory Stewart?

  And yet, you're absolutely right. Often the minister listened to them very carefully and they really processed the papers for the minister and whispered in the minister's ear. There's a tradition in the Conservative Party also that frustrated me, people like Prithvi Patel would do it, of bringing in special advisors from things like the Taxpayers Alliance, which was a sort of Tufton Street setup. So when I was in DIFID, she brought in a special advisor who was very much there to make the radical case against aid, the sort of, so I think people can use their special advisors as sort of disruptors to challenge the civil service.

• 12:58Alastair Campbell?

  Now, there's a question here from somebody called Matthew Taylor. I don't know if that is Matthew Taylor, who was a special advisor. I suspect it's not. What are your views on how to better support the mental health of politicians, given the significant abuse they often face? And how can we break down these barriers to encourage and support more young people to get involved in seeking elected office? I was very interested in the, you read one of the adverts recently for BetterHelp, and I was interested that you said that you'd been getting therapy for the first time. Do you think that's something you'd have benefited from when you were actually an active politician?

• 13:31Rory Stewart?

  Yes, probably. I mean, I think I definitely benefit from it.

• 13:34Alastair Campbell?

  What made you decide to do it?

• 13:37Rory Stewart?

  Oh, that I was feeling very unsettled and partly trying to process my experience as a politician. I mean, I think my book, Politics on the Edge, says he, plugging it again, is largely about trying to describe why it is such a bizarre, horrifying, strange environment.

• 13:52Alastair Campbell?

  Did you find the, this is my motto, think in ink, did you find that writing the book itself helped?

• 13:57Rory Stewart?

  Yes, really helped, really helped me clarify and really dig into why I found it such an odd profession. I mean, I was thinking about this last night. Somebody was trying to say to me, what's wrong with it? The example I came up with was Liz Truss, that I remember arriving as the Environment Minister. I'd been in the job for a few hours and I thought, this is unbelievable. It's so wonderful. I'm now the Environment Minister and this is my chance to really make a difference, to plant another 300 million trees, to clean up our air, to clean up our beaches and water, what a privilege. And Liz Truss came to see me and said, Rory, I want you to produce a 10-point plan on the National Park. And I thought, that's fantastic, I'm the National Parks Minister, okay. So I said, Secretary of State, great, I'll get the chief executive's National Parks

• 14:40Rory Stewart?

  and we'll spend a few weeks working on this and I'll be able to come up with a vision for the next 20 years, the National Parks, the United Kingdom, imagine how wonderful that is. And she said, no, no, I want it by Thursday evening. It was Tuesday. And I said, what are you talking about? And she said, come on Rory, how difficult can it be? I can tell you, you know, number one, get young people into nature. Number two, clean up the National Parks. I don't know, get seven together. And sure enough, Daily Telegraph, Friday morning, Liz Truss's seven-point plan for the National Parks.

• 15:03Alastair Campbell?

  See, that is probably a classic example of Liz Truss thinking she needs something and has said to her special advisor, I'm having lunch with the Telegraph, I want to give them a story, what would it be? Classic.

• 15:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and she then didn't think about national parks ever again. I don't think she ever visited a national park again. And I thought it's so odd. I mean, this is part of the sickness, the whole thing, that that she wouldn't feel what an amazing opportunity to really think hard about national parks.

• 15:27Alastair Campbell?

  And what about this question about supporting mental, supporting mental health politicians? I had several MPs, not all Labour, but mainly Labour, several MPs who contacted me before the last election, saying that they couldn't face the campaign and they were thinking of jacking it in or what advice did I have to get them through psychologically, et cetera. And I didn't realise, having worked there for so many years, I didn't realise there actually is a psychological support network within Parliament, but so many of the MPs don't want to use it because they're worried about the stigma attached to it.

• 15:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think the stigma is going down a bit.

• 16:01Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah, it's going down a lot, no doubt about that.

• 16:03Rory Stewart?

  But it remains the most poisonous work environment. I mean, we'll see more about this, but there's some horrifying revelations about the Conservative Party now coming out, where it looks as though the party may have been paying victims who were raped by a serving MP and that this is all being covered up. I mean, it's so horrible. The combination of lack of seriousness, genuine kind of bullying and brutality, running from the former speaker right the way through the backbenchers, the sexual assaults and the sexual assaults and allegations, I mean, it is the most bizarre.

• 16:36Alastair Campbell?

  When you read, I don't know if you've read Chris Bryant's book, but when he lists all the kind of personal life scandals that there have been in this Parliament, and I think the chapter is called, is this the worst Parliament we've ever had? And he reaches the conclusion that it is. And some of these things now, it's almost like they just come and go in a day and people just move on to the next one.

• 16:53Rory Stewart?

  I don't think there's any environment like it. And of course, one of the things that we should be thinking about is, people talk about it, they never do anything about it. What would it mean to have some sort of induction process for MPs to try to share values with them, to try to set up standards, to try to provide some kind of HR system in a light touch way to guide people? And the problem is, everybody, every MP is a sole trader who thinks they're accountable and their constituents and they don't really have a boss, which allows them to behave in these completely Horrifying kind of.

• 17:24Alastair Campbell?

  When I was at the Dorset Britport Book Festival doing the Q and A, there was a question which has been sort of troubling me ever since. It was a woman who was talking about abuse in social media and so forth. And she, if I paraphrase her question, she said, you know, how have you managed to go from being a kind of national and international hate figure to somebody that we all quite like? And I've thought about that a lot because I think I definitely said to myself, I have to develop a really thick skin and it has to be real. And developing a thick skin whilst remaining sensitive to things that do matter, sensitive to people, sensitive to opinion, sensitive to the needs of others, which I think you need in in politics. I think it's very, very hard thing to do. I think a lot of MPs could

• 18:07Alastair Campbell?

  do with actually thinking about how they do that. I definitely did it by by saying to myself, I am not going to care what most people think about me. I'm going to care about what the people I care about think about me. And that's it.

• 18:19Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 18:19Alastair Campbell?

  And I find that's the only way I can deal with it.

• 18:20Rory Stewart?

  That's the problem, isn't it? Because the the risk is you develop a thick skin and then you end up lacking empathy for everyone. Yeah.

• 18:25Alastair Campbell?

  But I think as long as you care for the people that you care about, you will hopefully

• 18:28Rory Stewart?

  You'll be able to keep selling your life.

• 18:30Alastair Campbell?

  Have the empathy. Yeah.

• 18:31Rory Stewart?

  Well, Alison, I think we should take a break.

• 18:36Speaker 03

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• 19:54Rory Stewart?

  Question for you, Jim McGuinn, if Labour win the next election, what are the top three things they must do on day one? Give us a stat, or give us two out of three.

• 20:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well, day one, the first thing you have to do is appoint a cabinet, appoint a government. That's the first thing.

• 20:09Rory Stewart?

  Day one is also when you dropped your independence of Bank of England thing?

• 20:11Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think it was day two. I think it was day two.

• 20:14Rory Stewart?

  Right, but pretty quick.

• 20:15Alastair Campbell?

  Pretty quick. It might even have been, it was very, very soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:18Rory Stewart?

  So you'd kept that up your sleeve to do immediately?

• 20:20Alastair Campbell?

  I suspect that, so let's say Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister, he goes outside Downing Street, he makes a speech, setting out a sort of the big picture thing. I think, I think actually being clear about a strategy for growth has got to be the first thing, and probably indicating that this is a long-term plan.

• 20:36Rory Stewart?

  Am I right that the Bank of England thing you'd kept secret until that moment? And so it was a sort of surprise to people or not? Or maybe just surprised me, you don't remember it as being kept secret particularly?

• 20:45Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think it was. Yeah, it was. We talked a lot about, you know, the importance of economic stability.

• 20:49Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 20:50Alastair Campbell?

  And, you know, we just interviewed Mark Carney on leading. It was, that's why I was very interested to ask him whether he felt that it was surprising that the country took so long to get an independent Bank of England. And he basically said yes. But no, that was very much Gordon Brown wanting to arrive with a really big moment. And my God, it worked politically, economically.

• 21:11Rory Stewart?

  So good for Labour to find one of those things, although they're not going to reveal it on the rest of its politics because they need to keep it secret to day two.

• 21:17Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, what I think it should be Rory is to say, well, look, you know, we've basically got the message from the public. The reason we've been related is people realise that Brexit is a total dead duck. And we go back in. And we think reverend Lums are so divisive, we won't bother having one.

• 21:32Rory Stewart?

  There we are. That would really wake people up.

• 21:33Alastair Campbell?

  That would certainly wake people up.

• 21:34Rory Stewart?

  And boy, Alison, you'd be very excited about that. Tom Huetzinger, does Rory ever get frustrated at Alastair's informality towards guests stroke distinguished colleagues? I.e. Rory referring to Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor versus Campbell's Arnie?

• 21:51Alastair Campbell?

  Well, shall we, what was the person called who asked this question?

• 21:53Rory Stewart?

  Tom Huetzinger.

• 21:54Alastair Campbell?

  Tom Huetzinger.

• 21:56Rory Stewart?

  Mr. Huetzinger, do you?

• 21:57Alastair Campbell?

  Mr. Huetzinger, OBE, I'm going to throw in an honour for him. You don't know Tom, if I may, is that before we started recording, I said to Governor Schwarzenegger, what do we call you? Arnie, Arnold, whatever. And he said, you call me whatever you want to call me.

• 22:16Rory Stewart?

  But you you don't think that actually asking that question is very difficult for someone to say, I want you to call me governor?

• 22:22Alastair Campbell?

  No, but he could have said, well, most people call me governor, right? But I don't buy this thing about, I think with American presidents, if if I were to meet Donald Trump right now, I'm not comparing Schwarzenegger to Trump. There is no way in the world I am calling him Mr. President.

• 22:36Rory Stewart?

  But what do you think, what do you think he'd reply if you said to him, what do you want me to call you?

• 22:40Alastair Campbell?

  Trump?

• 22:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:41Alastair Campbell?

  God. Your Majesty, your highness. No, I probably am more informal than you. I never called Tony Blair Prime Minister.

• 22:49Rory Stewart?

  That's true.

• 22:50Alastair Campbell?

  I don't, I don't, I mean, in the job, I didn't go into him and say, would you like a cup of tea, Prime Minister?

• 22:56Rory Stewart?

  I actually, when I text Rishi Sunak, I've stopped saying Rishi, I now say Prime Minister.

• 23:01Alastair Campbell?

  Do you?

• 23:02Rory Stewart?

  Even in a little text.

• 23:02Alastair Campbell?

  Can you show me the last text you sent? What did he reply?

• 23:04Rory Stewart?

  I think he replied, thanks. I think I congratulated him or something.

• 23:08Alastair Campbell?

  Creep. You told me, you told me that you realise when you become an awful politician is when you started congratulating David Cameron on his speeches.

• 23:16Rory Stewart?

  Genuinely, he done, which impressed me.

• 23:18Alastair Campbell?

  What, the AI summit?

• 23:19Rory Stewart?

  I'm not going to get to that now.

• 23:20Alastair Campbell?

  So you can't just expect me to put my whole life out there.

• 23:24Rory Stewart?

  I've got a lot of.

• 23:25Alastair Campbell?

  Why did you call him governor then?

• 23:26Rory Stewart?

  Speaking of that, actually, we've got a question on this, given what you've just done to me.

• 23:30Alastair Campbell?

  What?

• 23:31Rory Stewart?

  Steve Henderson, given that Westminster and Scottish politicians get away with deleting WhatsApp messages, what's the point of a public inquiry? Should the law be changed to make it an offence for a politician to delete messages? Or should Alistair have a right to read my little text to Rishi Sunak?

• 23:45Alastair Campbell?

  He is the Prime Minister. You are an active political figure, even if you're not a politician. You might be influencing decisions, for all we know. You're being very secretive about these secret discussions you've never told me about. Unless it was, Rishi, you may think we give you a bit of a hard time on this podcast, but we'd like to have you on as a guest.

• 24:02Rory Stewart?

  That might be permitted, that might be permitted, yeah.

• 24:05Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think the WhatsApp thing, the culture has moved, but I think that as the culture has moved, if you're in public life now, I think, other than for personal family stuff and what have you. I think you've got to be very, very careful about what you say.

• 24:19Rory Stewart?

  One of the problems, though, is that you brought in, New Labour brought in this Freedom of Information Act, which means that anything that you say and write down in a formal civil service process is liable to be released to the public. So it drove people partly to WhatsApps.

• 24:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it drove us to Post-it notes a lot of the time.

• 24:35Rory Stewart?

  Post-it notes, okay. And that is problematic because actually that's less good for government because it means there's not a proper record of things, they're not documented in the right way. But some of these allegations, extraordinary, Helen McNamara said that her texts and WhatsApps had been deleted by the civil service. They'd asked for her phone and they'd just deleted them. Nicola Sturgeon has deleted all the WhatsApps that she exchanged during the Covid inquiry. But I think the problem is that if you then go after the WhatsApps, the politicians will then be driven to even more desperate measures.

• 25:04Alastair Campbell?

  Look, Tony, I think Tony Blair says in his book that he kind of thinks that freedom of information broadly was a mistake. And I don't think it was a mistake. I think that there should be kind of as much transparency as you can afford. But in a serious political culture, which we don't really have, there would be a general understanding that that does mean that there has to be a process where there can be division and disagreement as policy is being developed, without every single exchange over a decision being hung out for.

• 25:30Rory Stewart?

  And of course, the problem is that you want to encourage politicians to admit when they don't know things, ask stupid questions, come up with controversial ideas. And of course, you freeze all that if there's a risk that that is immediately FOI-ed and there's a front page story saying, you know, Rory Stewart asked where exactly is Cameroon when he was the Africa minister?

• 25:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, which actually is not a terrible question.

• 25:53Rory Stewart?

  Not a terrible question. I didn't know exactly where Cameroon was when I was the Africa minister, but I wouldn't want that all over the front page in the newspaper.

• 25:58Alastair Campbell?

  No, you wouldn't.

• 25:59Rory Stewart?

  Now, Earl Hague, Alistair, when did you meet Quentin Tarantino and Ian Duncan Smith? And this is an extraordinary photograph, apparently in front of what looks like a sort of Christmas tree and a rather nice column. And actually, it isn't a picture of Quentin Tarantino, it's a picture of Dominic Cummings, Ian Duncan Smith, and a very youthful, smiling Alastair Campbell. And Earl Hague is presumably the descendant of General Hague.

• 26:25Rory Stewart?

  Yes, he's an Earl, isn't he? He's the descendant of Hague who commanded us in the First World War.

• 26:29Alastair Campbell?

  He might just be somebody who's called Earl Hague.

• 26:31Rory Stewart?

  No, no, he isn't. No, no, there is only one Earl Hague. He's a member of the House of Lords who's descended from the general in the First World War.

• 26:36Alastair Campbell?

  Right, so the picture is of me with my hair a bit of a mess, and I think that's Fiona's head over Dominic Cummings' shoulder. Yeah, I think it is. I'm shaking hands with Ian Duncan Smith, who at the time was the boss of Dominic Cummings. And do you recognise the the building?

• 26:53Rory Stewart?

  No, only because you told me. You told me it was the US Embassy.

• 26:55Alastair Campbell?

  It's Wingfield House. It's the American Ambassador's residence. It was an Independence Day bash. Dominic Cummings was there with Duncan Smith and Dominic Cummings basically said, you know, well, do you have a picture with Ian? Or IDS or whatever he called them those days. And yeah, it's a bit of an odd picture, really, isn't it?

• 27:11Rory Stewart?

  So the the story that I got yesterday, walking past my house, was that in the other picture that we've been discussing.

• 27:16Alastair Campbell?

  So, Hallman, walking past your house, you got this story?

• 27:19Rory Stewart?

  Well, I was, yeah, well, because I was walking, well, why was I walking past? It was a bit weird. But anyway, I was walking the kids, I think, to school. And I was stopped by my neighbour and she's listening to the podcast. And she said, her father was an MP. She said that the reason why John Major, Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown were laughing so much is that John Major was explaining that one of his goldfish had got sunburnt and was describing how his brother and he had to remove the second goldfish in tank and try to coat it in sun cream before putting it back in the tank.

• 27:44Alastair Campbell?

  I think that rings a bell now. After I mentioned the photo, I did send Tony a WhatsApp message and said, with the picture, do you remember what you were laughing about? He said, no idea. John Major was obviously telling a funny story, but he couldn't remember. But did John Major mention that, maybe?

• 27:58Rory Stewart?

  I don't know where she'd.

• 27:59Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we should put that picture again, but also the one of me and Dominic Cummings and Ian Duncan Smith in the newsletter.

• 28:05Rory Stewart?

  The one thing we haven't got a picture of is a picture of me and Governor Schwarzenegger. Instead of which, we have a picture of the two of us sitting in the studio with him slumped in the chair with me because I'm much larger than him.

• 28:15Alastair Campbell?

  He looks massive compared to him, yeah.

• 28:17Rory Stewart?

  I know, but I wanted a photograph with the governor, but.

• 28:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that was a picture with the governor. You wanted a classic handshake.

• 28:22Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, or an arm wrestle like you and me.

• 28:24Alastair Campbell?

  I think the arm wrestler, I think you might have lost. I mean, bench pressing 560 pounds. I think you might have, yeah, that one. Quite interesting how many Conservative leaders Dominic Cummings has had considerable contempt for. No, I suspect he's got contempt.

• 28:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so Ian Duncan was the one who he said was thick as a.

• 28:43Alastair Campbell?

  Thick as a plank?

• 28:44Rory Stewart?

  Thick as a plank.

• 28:45Alastair Campbell?

  Thick as mince. Was he thick as mince? Or was that David Davis? I think David Davis might have been thick as mince. He certainly, I've never heard Dominic Cummings say a flattering word about it. I wonder what he thinks about you.

• 28:53Rory Stewart?

  So he actually did, um.

• 28:55Alastair Campbell?

  He said recently he'd said something sensible.

• 28:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, he said, I don't really agree with Rory very much, but some of the stuff that he'd said recently about, oh, I think I was grumbling about civil service, which obviously he likes.

• 29:04Alastair Campbell?

  He loves doing that.

• 29:05Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So here's a question from Tom Hooper. Now, Tom Hooper, if it's the same Tom Hooper, is a great film writer, film producer. His question is, whose job is it in government to think about and plan for the long term, ten, twenty, fifty years ahead? How can the system be improved to help the government think further ahead and ensure that we are prepared and resilient for what is predicted or unknown? Now, that's a really big, important question. Tom, actually, also, we talked about King's Speech. I think he directed that film, which I think called The King's Speech, about how George VI learnt to overcome his stuttering.

• 29:37Alastair Campbell?

  With, um, with Colin Firth.

• 29:39Rory Stewart?

  Colin Firth, yeah. Um, so ten, twenty, fifty years. I mean, it's something the Chinese obviously really pride themselves on, being able to think in these much longer timeframes. The monarchies in the Middle East are very proud of being able to think in much longer timeframes.

• 29:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think China is a very good example, isn't it? They, they have, they don't just have five-year plan. They do have kind of ten-year, twenty, fifty-year plans. But of course, they're not democracies. Is this a related question from Lloyd? It'd be really interesting to hear your thoughts on the Well-being of Future Generations Act in Wales, which is doing politics differently by making politicians focus on social and environmental issues over short-termism and quick wins. This is a whole different way of doing government. The answer to Tom's question, I guess there is nobody with that responsibility in government. It would be the Prime Minister if the Prime Minister decided that was a thing to do.

• 30:21Rory Stewart?

  That'd be something the Cabinet Office would probably have to do with.

• 30:23Alastair Campbell?

  Take the lead on, yeah, yeah. Because most of those long-term challenges would be cross-cutting. It wouldn't just be sort of, you know, for one department. Look, there was a period of our term in office when Tony was very, very focused on this thing about, you know, ten-year plans for all the big public services. And that even ten years felt within the context of running a government felt like a long time. That is a very, very good question. Maybe when we do our ChatGPT Rest is Politics manifesto, we should feed that one in.

• 30:47Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 30:48Alastair Campbell?

  Have a long-term thinking czar.

• 30:50Rory Stewart?

  Final one for you, from the World of Lard. Extraordinary name, the World of Lard. I appreciate this might be seen as a hot take, but are our MPs and ministers paid enough compared to people with similar responsibilities in the private sector? Would we attract more higher quality candidates if the rewards were greater? So to put it in context, when I was the Secretary of State for National Development, I had a budget of 13 billion, so 13,000 million pounds a year to spend. And I guess we were paid just over a hundred thousand pounds a year. Not bad. Do you think people should be paid more than that?

• 31:24Alastair Campbell?

  Well, one of the best governments in the world is reckoned to be the Singapore government, where the average salary for ministers, the cabinet is about a million dollars. And they go out and get the best people and put them in there. I think politicians probably should be paid more, simply because I think done well, it's a very, very difficult and very, very important job. I think the problem at the moment is not many of them are doing it that well. Look, I'm sure you didn't go into politics to get rich. I am sure I'm not alone in that when I jumped from media to politics, I took a very, very large pay cut. But I do think that one of the reasons why the gene pool has narrowed so much is that a lot of really bright people, smart people, you know, they realise that they can actually make a lot of money doing different things. The other worry I have is that we make politics, yet again, as it was in the olden days,

• 32:09Alastair Campbell?

  something that only people of independent wealth can actually do.

• 32:13Rory Stewart?

  Either people like Jeremy Corbyn, who have this very ascetic kind of view of the world, or people like a lot of the Conservative front bench, who are people who've made money before they've gone into politics. Which is true in the US, I mean, their senators are almost all millionaires.

• 32:27Alastair Campbell?

  And also because they have to raise so much money to fight campaigns. And then if you don't have access to money, it's quite hard to raise it.

• 32:33Rory Stewart?

  Equally, I think it would be totally electorally, or feel electorally very difficult.

• 32:38Alastair Campbell?

  Nightmare, absolute nightmare.

• 32:39Rory Stewart?

  So Keir Starmer is not going to suggest that MPs should be paid more, is he?

• 32:42Alastair Campbell?

  Let's not pay nurses more, but let's pay MPs more. That is not going to help anybody. But yeah, when we were coming out from Bridport, we were talking to somebody who said that as you go out through this town, you'll drive past the wall of Richard Drax's estate.

• 32:55Rory Stewart?

  So he's extraordinary. He was a TV news presenter, very good looking. An army officer comes from this extraordinary parliamentary family where one of his ancestors, and he's got a quadruple-barreled name that I'm not going to attempt, but it's got Earl and Ernley and Plunkett and Drax in various different directions. But he had an ancestor who was in the House of Commons in the late 19th century, direct ancestor, who I think didn't speak for something like 20 years, and then eventually got to his feet and everyone was incredibly excited that Drax was about to speak. And he said, "Mr. Speaker, it's a bit hot. Do you think somebody could open the window?" And then sat down and didn't speak again for his 40-year parliamentary career.

• 33:36Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Richard Drax MP, MP for South Dorset, which is where we were, his name is Richard Grosvenor Plunkett Ernie Earl Drax.

• 33:46Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 33:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And why is he so wealthy, though?

• 33:49Rory Stewart?

  Well, he did write back to the slave trade.

• 33:50Alastair Campbell?

  Slave trade, yeah.

• 33:51Rory Stewart?

  So I think in the interests of context, I think the Drax family would acknowledge that they made a lot of money in the 18th, early 19th century from their plantations in Barbados, which were dependent entirely on slavery. But they also are descended from many other aristocratic, sub-aristocratic landed families in Britain, going back to the Middle Ages and had huge land. I mean, he's very unusual because you don't want to get the impression that the modern Conservative Party is dominated by these people. He's one of these things who literally is like a figment out of the 18th, early 19th century, still somehow sitting in the British Parliament.

• 34:25Alastair Campbell?

  So anyway, the war is like you drive past it for ages and every few hundred yards, there's a sort of vast statue of an animal, a stag or a lion or something. So, so what I don't want is a House of Commons full of slave-trading Tories.

• 34:40Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 34:43Alastair Campbell?

  I think if you social workers, it'd be really good.

• 34:46Rory Stewart?

  Not himself personally, so. No, but I agree. And it's, I think it's very unfortunate. But the only way of addressing it is if some politician has the courage to think about increasing salaries, which I think is very, very difficult to do. Meanwhile, people will feel that they can earn much more money, have much less abuse, much less stress.

• 35:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 35:05Rory Stewart?

  See more of their families doing something else.

• 35:07Alastair Campbell?

  He's, according to, I'm now looking at Dorset Live, he's number three on the Dorset rich list. And as of December 2020, according to The Guardian, he was worth £150 million.

• 35:19Rory Stewart?

  Yes, well, I mean, it's one of these very, very grand, sort of sub aristocratic landed families that have been owning Dorset for 300 years.

• 35:26Alastair Campbell?

  It's quite interesting looking at him because he's not the person I thought he was.

• 35:29Rory Stewart?

  One of his ancestors in the 19th century was particularly sort of evil and cruel and put an enormous amount of the family money into building an enormous mausoleum, like a sort of pharaonic pyramid to himself, so they're quite an eccentric group.

• 35:40Alastair Campbell?

  So let's end on Richard Drax and I'll see you next week.

• 35:43Rory Stewart?

  Goodbye.

• 35:43Alastair Campbell?

  Bye bye.

• 36:32Speaker 06

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