297. Far-right chaos, Harris’ running mate, and Bangladesh’s power vacuum

What is fuelling the far-right riots spreading across England? Who is Kamala Harris’ new running mate? Why has Bangladesh’s prime minister fled the country? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all this and more on today's episode of The Rest Is Politics. 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. TRIP UK TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producer: Fiona Douglas Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:06Speaker 02

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

• 1:43Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to Rest is Politics. It's me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:46Rory Stewart?

  And me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:47Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we're going to focus very largely today on the awful riots that have been going on in England. Since the awful murders of three little girls in Southport last week, and we're going to talk about Bangladesh. But Rory, I think we should kick off because as we're recording, we are getting lots and lots of messages that Vice President Kamala Harris is about to announce as VP, somebody who has figured a little bit in the speculation as to who it might be, but not as much as Shapiro, not as much as Mark Kelly.

• 2:24Rory Stewart?

  Not as much as Mark Kelly, who was my number one choice.

• 2:28Alastair Campbell?

  But we now know who it's going to be. So why don't you tell us a little bit about a name that's going to become very famous. It's going to be the most, probably one of those misspelt names in politics it will become because he's called Walts and people normally spell Walts with a T, but he's Walts without a T.

• 2:43Rory Stewart?

  So Tim Walts has been selected as the vice presidential running mate and he is the governor of Minnesota. He was not a well-known man, if you put it back two, three weeks. He was seen very much as a kind of workhorse in Congress, spent 12 years in Congress as a Democrat. He was seen in Congress, pretty moderate kind of Democrat. At one point, he was even endorsed by the National Rifle Association. He eventually broke with them because he began to come down stronger after some of the school shootings. He was seen as collaborative with Republicans on Iraq and Afghanistan. He's somebody who is a kind of, in some ways, the story as a kind of absolute, I don't know quite how you'd describe this, but how would you describe someone who left school at 17, joined the National Guard, was paid

• 3:28Rory Stewart?

  to go to university by the GI Bill, became a social studies teacher at his local school, but largely because he was the coach of the local football team that he led to the state championships as the football coach for 20 years.

• 3:40Alastair Campbell?

  You describe that as a pretty regular guy.

• 3:42Rory Stewart?

  That's a pretty regular guy, on the pretty regular guy. And it's a very interesting choice because he's not somebody that has been part of the Beltway chat. He's somebody that, to give you credit, Alyssa, you popped out as a potential VP running mate when we were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. But he certainly hasn't traditionally ever had the profile of Gretchen Whitmer or Josh Shapiro. Or Mark Kelly, or indeed Gavin Newsom. And just to remind people a little bit of those other candidates and why maybe they weren't selected. So Gavin Newsom comes very charismatic, big, good-looking Californian governor, almost certainly not selected because Kamala Harris herself also comes from California, so it wouldn't make sense. Gretchen Whitman, probably they didn't want two women on the ticket, although she's a very effective governor in the key swing state of Michigan.

• 4:27Rory Stewart?

  That then left really Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly as two of the major frontrunners. And the advantages of them is that they are both potential swing states, Pennsylvania even more than Arizona. And famous national figures, Mark Kelly, as you've pointed out, was an astronaut, Josh Shapiro, both from what are potential swing states, Arizona and Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania even more so than Arizona at the moment because the way electoral politics changed. But Mark Kelly, as you pointed out, an astronaut, so real all-American hero, even more than coach the winning high school football team. Josh Shapiro, very interesting because he has been a very successful governor of Pennsylvania and could have delivered what's going to be the key swing state in this election. But she didn't go with them. Why didn't she go with them?

• 5:09Rory Stewart?

  Almost certainly because they had alienated the progressives. Mark Kelly was seen as being not friendly enough towards the unions. Josh Shapiro is Jewish and had been very critical of pro-Palestinian demonstrators. I think he compared them at one point to the Ku Klux Klan. So they were unpopular with the progressives. And Tim Walz, there's been controversy around him. He presided over Minnesota at the time when George Floyd was killed and was seen as slow to deploy the National Guard. That was in his state, the killing of George Floyd, leading up to the BLM protests. But the progressives have welcomed him and I suppose it's a safe choice. Final point before I get back to you. Minnesota is not a swing state. You know, it's never voted for a Republican president since Nixon before I was born in

• 5:54Rory Stewart?

  over 50 years. So it's not really giving the electoral advantage. It feels a little bit like a safe choice that doesn't annoy anyone, but it's not obvious to me what the advantages are.

• 6:05Alastair Campbell?

  I think one of the reasons why she will feel quite comfortable about not picking any of those is that I think in the way that they've been showing that they're very effective communicators, very effective campaigners and very much on the side, I don't think any of that is going to change as a result of this. And I think what she's put together, what she's putting together is a pretty formidable team of third-party outriders who will do a lot of the campaigning. For her.

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  So maybe your point is that even though I'm sort of thinking, woo, it's a pity not to be able to get Pennsylvania. Maybe you're right. Shapiro will deliver quite a lot of votes in Pennsylvania for any way. And Gretchen Whitman will do the same in Michigan. Maybe she doesn't need them on the VP ticket. Interesting.

• 6:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I mean, I think people will be surprised. The American media will be pretty hacked off because I don't know of any of them that have been saying, I think it's going to be waltz. But I, you know, his name has been kind of there and thereabouts. I think it will be seen as a pretty safe option. I I've always thought that this whole thing about the importance of the VP is vastly overstated in the American campaign. Uh, I think that's one thing that Donald Trump said the other day that was right when he said that, you know, people are voting for me, not J D Vance. So he was saying, of course, people were saying, you're beginning to regret the choice, which I suspect he is. But with this, I think you've got a ticket. You've got to remember that the normal process for selecting the vice president and the pick. I can remember talking to one of the American presidential team about this process.

• 7:30Alastair Campbell?

  It was before Bill Clinton's second term. And it was like they they go through this extraordinary process where they have literally sort of massive personality profiles and detailed histories and they go out and interview friends. And it's like a sort of massive job interview or a vetting process. But you've got to remember Kamala Harris has been as known for sure that she's going to be doing this two or three weeks ago.

• 7:56Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 7:56Alastair Campbell?

  And also known, she's had very little time to get this person in place. So I think the question is, what is she looking for? And I think she's probably looking for something that that is safe, supportive, isn't probably going to take too much of the attention away from her. Because that, and I don't mean that in a critical way, because the attention has to be on her because she's building her case, building her profile, building her campaign, but have somebody there who is steady, who has the same kind of political outlook. He's massive on education, this guy, and also. Who is able to take on the other guy, in his case JD Vance. And also, if you look, I didn't expect this any more than anybody else did. But in the time that we've known about it, I had a quick look through some of the things that he's been saying.

• 8:41Alastair Campbell?

  He's a pretty good attack dog. He will say and do the right things about Trump. He will say and do the right things about Vance for the campaign. And he looks very, very reassuring. And bear in mind, one of the things that always gets used against new vice presidential picks is one heartbeat away from the presidency. So he kind of ticks those boxes. And I think it's a safe, quite interesting choice, but which underlines to me that this, the actual choice of the number two doesn't matter as much as we say it does when they make the pick.

• 9:12Rory Stewart?

  Just before we move on to the very serious issue of the riots in the UK. Just a sort of a small reminder of this, that Dick Cheney, I think, was appointed by George W. Bush to lead the search for a vice president. And he was deployed to get out there and find out who the best vice president would be. And obviously.

• 9:31Alastair Campbell?

  Guess what?

• 9:32Rory Stewart?

  Guess what? He eventually concluded that he would be the vice president. There's a good documentary called The World According to Dick Cheney.

• 9:40Alastair Campbell?

  If Dick Cheney's daughter Liz is remotely listening, or anybody who knows Liz Cheney, I have been trying to reach out to say we would love to have her on leading.

• 9:48Rory Stewart?

  That would be great. That would be really good.

• 9:50Alastair Campbell?

  Anyway, so there we are. That is big breaking news. Tim Walts will be the running mate of Kamala Harris and will go literally overnight from being little known outside Minnesota to being pretty much a household name around the world. That shows you the power of the American presidency and American politics still in this strange world.

• 10:12Rory Stewart?

  On which time to turn to the very serious issue of the riots across Britain happening over the last week. So to set it in context, there was an attack in Southport on a group of young girls who were performing, I think, a Taylor Swift dance. And a man entered, a seventeen year old, entered with a knife and managed to kill three of the girls, injure many others, injure some of the adults trying to protect them. And the police initially did not release details of who this individual was, which then provided an opportunity for people to start posting on social media that he was a recently arrived immigrant off a boat, in particular, a Muslim.

• 10:57Rory Stewart?

  A fake name was generated for him, and this then led to a series of protests, initially in Southport, where there was an attack on a mosque. And a lot of the anger, as these crowds gathered, was directed against Muslims and against asylum seekers because they were seen as responsible for killing these young girls. It was then later revealed that, in fact, the attacker was not a Muslim. He was a Rwandan Christian born in Cardiff, so he hadn't recently got off a boat, wasn't an asylum seeker. And his name initially wasn't revealed because you're not supposed to reveal the name of somebody under eighteen, but the judge decided in the interests of public safety that he was only a week off his eighteenth birthday and revealed his name.

• 11:39Rory Stewart?

  But this didn't have much impact, in fact, on the riots themselves, which then spread. So thirty first of July, Aldershot, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Hartlepool. And then third of August, Portsmouth, Bristol, Nottingham, Stoke-on-Trent, Hull, Leeds, Blackpool, Belfast, Liverpool, where also there were riots on the second, Rotherham on the fourth of August, fifth of August, Belfast, Darlington and Plymouth. And these attacks now on mosques, on libraries, on citizens' advice centres, hostels, housing, asylum seekers, and one hundred and forty people have been arrested. And the government is talking about creating five hundred prison places. Over back to you, Alastair.

• 12:15Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, no, it's been pretty horrific. And it's very, very hard to know where to start because we should start, I think, with the horror of the event. I think even without all that has followed, that would have been seen as one of the most horrific child murders that any of us can really recall. But the speed with which it was then weaponised and turned into this cause where is I saw one clip where sort of stop the boats and save the kids were kind of merging into one noise as these people were sort of marauding around the streets. First of all, I'd quite like to tell people what a riot, how a riot is defined. And I think people might be surprised by this.

• 13:00Alastair Campbell?

  A riot is a tumultuous disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled together, acting with a common intent. I think we sometimes think of riots as they have to involve hundreds of thousands of people. That's when we start to talk about riots. But actually, so what you've seen, you've described some of the places where the really big events have been happening, but there have also been isolated incidents of very small numbers of people attacking very small numbers of people. And where I want to start is is kind of when these sort of things happen, people want to say, well, there's an obvious reason why this has happened. So the those who riot and those awful right wing commentators and some politicians who

• 13:42Alastair Campbell?

  try to justify it by sort of saying, you know, well, of course I condemn the violence, but, you know, they have legitimate grievances about this, this, this, this, this. They want to say legitimate grievances are to do with housing, poverty, whatever it might be. That's not the reason for this, even if there is a there might be somebody there who feels strongly about those sorts of issues. People then also want to say it's social media. And there's no doubt that social media has had a role in the speed with which the false rumours are spread, disinformation takes hold, people can organise online.

• 14:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, quickly on that before we we move on to the other things. I mean, so we've been interviewing Nick Clegg and Helen Thornings Schmidt, who were very much because they they work with Meta, challenging the idea that social media and Facebook in particular contributes to polarisation. But it is really striking. I mean, I've been looking at some of these posts on Facebook, for example, just to call out Facebook, there's one from a guy called Glenn Stoddart I was looking at, which runs Ali al-Shakati, an illegal Immigrant who arrived by boat last year has been arrested for stabbing loads of kids on Merseyside. At least two of the children died. You can relax, though. The mainstream media and the government have decided it's not terror related.

• 14:57Rory Stewart?

  And then when you look at the comments going down below, they don't want the public to know. I bet he's older than seventeen as well. Keep his age down. They're not obligated to name him. And then, let's see what all the do-gooders say about this mate. Absolutely nothing can explain why they think it's a good idea to open up our borders to let these animals in. So you can already see, just in a single person's Facebook post, the things that are beginning to generate this. Conspiracy theory, so the government's covering it up and hiding it, the fake Muslim name and the immediate connection to these boats which are letting these animals in. And we've then seen this a lot, of course, on other mediums. So Telegram, a lot of this has been carried on.

• 15:35Rory Stewart?

  Twitter, of course, Elon Musk has now enjoyed coming in. He's allowed Tommy Robinson, so this this far right British activist to-

• 15:44Alastair Campbell?

  Stephen Yaxley Lennon.

• 15:45Rory Stewart?

  Stephen Yaxley Lennon, as you like to call him, to come back on to Twitter and to generate, he's got about nine hundred thousand followers, but to generate many hundreds of millions of views over the last few weeks, apparently at the moment from Cyprus where he's currently on holiday. And Elon Musk has taken to challenging Keir Starmer. Keir Starmer made his official statement on this and Elon Musk immediately responded and tried to challenge Keir Starmer, implying that Keir Starmer was concerned only about Muslim communities and not other communities in Britain and has been tweeting out that he thinks that civil war is about to break out in Britain. Anyway, over to you on the social media bit for a bit before we move on.

• 16:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I mean, I think we should at some point talk about Musk. I mean, I I am seriously sort of thinking that Twitter is now such a cesspit. It's possibly no longer being worth being on there. The trouble with that, of course, is you then just literally leave it to all these people to, you know, use it and abuse it in the way that they do. But Musk is a disgrace, I think. I think it has to be said. And, you know, we should also come on to, well, let's let's park that for now. So social media is a factor, no doubt about that. But I don't think we should let the mainstream media away with decades, literally decades of the sort of coverage about the themes of migrants and migration that has helped prepare the ground for this. You know, you're talking, when you look at newspapers like the Express and the Mail.

• 17:03Alastair Campbell?

  And regularly you see on social media, people posting the thousands, hundreds and thousands of front pages that are basically, they have the same message. You, dear reader, all the problems in your life are being caused by these other people. That is what othering is about. And, you know, it won't take me long to get onto Brexit, you know, Rory, but I think that a lot of this was fuelled by the nature of the debate during Brexit, because that was about othering as well. All of your problems, dear voter, are caused by the fact that we're having to engage with these others who are over there in Brussels, taking your money, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, and then along comes Johnson and legitimises the guy with, you know, who thought it was funny to write about women looking like letterboxes, without for a moment thinking that that might

• 17:48Alastair Campbell?

  actually lead to women who, quotes, "look like letterboxes" wearing burkas, who are then attacked. So then, as that gets sort of normalised, and then to bring in the government, and I don't want to make this a labouratory thing, because I think that's, that's wrong, but I do think we've had a decade now, where instead of a lot of these attitudes and a lot of these people being challenged, they've been pandered to by politics. And the whole debate about antisemitism, Islamophobia, the reluctance with which politicians still seem to find it so hard to say Islamophobia, when you are seeing, you're literally seeing now, people who are attacking. I saw a clip yesterday, Rory, I think it was in Sunderland, a taxi driver, and they've,

• 18:31Alastair Campbell?

  they've announced, by the way, on these channels that you're talking about, that taxi drivers, and in lots of our towns and cities that they claim to be so proud of, that, you know, we've allowed the foreigners to take over our taxis and our food shops, right? So you have people being stopped, forced to wind down their windows, as though these thugs are policemen, and said, "Are you white?", well, you can usually work that out by looking at somebody, "and are you English?". And a clip I saw yesterday of these kids literally jumping all over this car, dragging the, trying to drag the driver out, as he's trying to kind of, you know, scream away in his, in his car. Now, then take that up a scale, and you're talking about burning down hotels, which are full of asylum seekers.

• 19:15Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, just to explain it there for people. So in that particular case, there was a large demonstration. I mean, actually, sorry, large. I mean, these are usually four, 500 people, I think, in that case, outside a Holiday Inn, which was housing asylum seekers. And somewhere at the the back of this is this controversy about the fact that taxpayers are funding accommodation in hotels for asylum seekers up and down the country. And this has been a big issue for the last few years. And in fact, MPs often writing into the Immigration Minister complaining about these hotels asylum seekers. So people in local communities know where they are. Often, actually, these riots are not happening in big cities. They're happening in smaller cities or larger towns.

• 19:53Alastair Campbell?

  Yep.

• 19:53Rory Stewart?

  500 people turn up. We'll get in a little bit into who those people are and the different composition of those crowds. Some of them start moving forward with large planks of wood. The police get between the asylum seeker hotel and the crowd. Some of the crowd break through. They get into these buildings and set things light at the opening to these hotels. And then the police have to evacuate the asylum seekers out the back. I mean, and we don't need to say this is unbelievably dangerous. I mean, they're literally trying to burn people alive inside a hotel. Thank goodness they're not succeeding. Yeah.

• 20:23Alastair Campbell?

  That will include people working in that hotel who will be coming from the same houses and the same streets that these people live in. And while you're on the subject of hotels, we should perhaps also mention Nigel Farage. Because when you were talking about your social media history of this, you mentioned one of the conspiracy theories about this guy. I think being an illegal immigrant who'd arrived on a boat. But the person who got the rumor going, there's a thing we should put in the newsletter, an analysis of the social media and how it developed from a guy called Marco and Jones. And what it showed was that there were certain points where there was a huge uptick. And that was when some of these sort of fake news sites, probably some of them from Russia.

• 21:07Alastair Campbell?

  Tommy Robinson, who you mentioned, when he got involved, Robinson, who had been banned from X, but Elon Musk, the great freedom of speech guru, has got him back on and made them both actually more money through doing so. So, sorry, the point I was making, so Nigel Farage, when he did his first comment, this is a guy who, by the way, has spent a long time trying to get elected to Parliament. When Parliament was called to discuss what happened in Southport, Nigel Farage decided it wasn't worthy of his time. When the, what he did do, however, was to record a video where he started to repeat some of these conspiracy theories. But he did what he often does, you know, if this is true or not, I don't know. But people are saying, and people are worrying that, totally Trumpian.

• 21:47Alastair Campbell?

  And somebody posted yesterday a film that Farage posted a while back where he was driving around in a beautiful, clean, I think it looked like a Range Rover in the back in his smart suit and his lovely shirt and tie and his beautifully coiffed grey hair and looking basically like a kind of businessman, politician, sort of very suave. And he was there doing a tour of some of these hotels. And he said, and he did one of these, I don't know. People say there might be ISIS in these hotels. I don't know. Let's go and try and find out. So he walks into the hotel like some kind of latter day Alan Wicker and gets told, no, you can't film in here. Attack on freedom of speech and all this sort of stuff. So what's happening is that stuff that's been laid over time by, and I'm not saying

• 22:32Alastair Campbell?

  they're all doing it deliberately, I'm not saying it's coordinated, but over time attitudes change, attitudes are allowed. And we're now back in a place where young kids who have been born in Britain, are growing up in Britain, feel scared to go down the street without somebody, you know, using the P word at them, which has come back. That's been legitimised by the sort of Islamophobic, Johnsonian, letterbox stuff. So these things have just been sort of over time legitimised. Now, first of all, is there a problem with radical Islam? Yes, there is. Is every Muslim in this country part of radical Islam? No, they are not. Is every person who cares about immigration, who feels strongly that immigration has

• 23:17Alastair Campbell?

  to be better controlled, are they all racist? No, they are not. But what's happened is that extremists, and in this case, quite a lot of fascists, have been allowed to develop a platform and a profile where now, I mean, let's just take one example of your former colleagues, Rory, Suella Braverman. When you had the Gaza marches on, she wanted these hate marches banned. I haven't seen a word from her about this stuff that's going on. Farage has been out saying, oh, of course, we'll condemn the violence, condemn the violence. But this is what happens when you have two-tier policing, which by the way, doesn't exist.

• 23:52Rory Stewart?

  So two-tier policing is an idea that the police are much softer on immigrant communities than they are on white communities. Priti Patel has come out and challenged that. She said there isn't two-tier policing. She's drawn a very clear distinction between communities protecting themselves against people attacking them. James Cleverly, so just to pay tribute to some of the Conservatives, they have very much distanced themselves. They've not leant into this. They haven't been trying to take up the referal line. James Cleverly has unequivocally condemned the violence. So I think that's good, and I think the Conservatives should be doing much more of that. I think it's a really good opportunity, actually even politically, to make it clear that they differentiate themselves from this. Let's take it back a little bit. I was very struck in

• 24:35Rory Stewart?

  June when we were talking about the rise of reform, that there were articles being produced by right-wing sympathetic journalists, and I sent one to you, saying just two, three months ago, that the phenomenon of the far right in Britain no longer existed, that this was a phenomenon of the 1970s. So 68, Enoch Powell makes this speech. There's this terrifying, this is the Rivers of Blood speech made by Enoch Powell, where there is a terrifying insurrection. And it really feels as though there's a very, very strong racist, big, white opposition to immigration, and it leads to the Labour Government in 68, and then Conservatives in 71, passing these very restrictive immigration acts, which are basically racist immigration acts, saying that you can only come

• 25:19Rory Stewart?

  in if your grandparents born in the UK, and led to almost zero net migration for decades afterwards. Then we had, of course, the phenomenon of football hooliganism, 1980s. We had the 2011 riots in London. Since then, there hasn't been very much. And the general assumption, if you were being lazy, is that these issues had largely gone away, and that the sight of this kind of thing, as this article suggests in June, felt like a throwback to the 1970s. And of course, what's been revealed in the last week is that there is so much more support for this than is expected. Now, one other thing I just wanted to say, it's very common in these things for sociologists and academics to study.

• 26:02Rory Stewart?

  And they will, I absolutely guarantee, be coming back in six months' time, saying, we've all misunderstood these riots. They will have done investigation and we will have got the demographics wrong and the sociology wrong and the motivations wrong. Because the fundamental question of who the people are in these crowds isn't being answered very sensitively or accurately. There seem to be, broadly speaking, four types of people: far-right activists, genuine far-right fascists. Secondly, men, and it's largely men, looking for a fight.

• 26:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, who, often on drugs and drink.

• 26:35Rory Stewart?

  Right. Thirdly, some local people, including some elderly women who you can see in the shots, who are concerned about immigration and cost of living. And fourthly, a group of spectators and teenagers on holiday, challenging the police. And this, sometimes it's a kind of carnival atmosphere. Sometimes people are bringing along their children and encouraging their children

• 26:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:53Rory Stewart?

  to chuck bricks at the, at the police. Give me a sense of your sense of these crowds and, and whether those four types of people represent who you think are there.

• 27:01Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think there's a fifth person that's important, in fact, probably more important than all, all of them. And they are the ones who are not there, but who are promoting, helping to organise and fuelling. And you mentioned one of them who's, you know, been by a swimming pool in Cyprus. I would actually, I'm afraid, I'd put somebody like Musk in there right now. I'm not saying they're doing it deliberately, he's probably never heard of Southport, doesn't care about Southport. But so what I think you're seeing on the, I mean, you mentioned football hooliganism. And when you look at the list of riots through, through British history, a lot of them have been related to football hooliganism. I actually think that one of the factors here is that, as you said earlier, people who just want to have a fight.

• 27:43Alastair Campbell?

  The, the, the fighting around football has, you know, the police, over time, it's taken them a long time, but over time, they've done a pretty good job at controlling violence related to football. Football banning orders, pretty effective policing on match days. You know, I'm always amazed when I go to see, to watching Burnley away from, away from home, how many sort of Police are there from Burnley at away games who basically know everybody. And so they know when somebody who's not meant to be there is there and they just tip off the other police and say, look, that guy's on a banning order, get him out. So they've sort of got that worked out. And the other thing, the media keeps saying angry protesters, Storm Hotel, angry protesters attack mosque.

• 28:25Alastair Campbell?

  I've got to say quite a lot of the time, they look really happy because as you say, they're kind of, it's almost like they're having a day out and it's just giving them the chance to have violence and they've got the cameras there.

• 28:35Rory Stewart?

  Often if you look at the photographs, many, many of them are filming themselves. They're enjoying putting it on social media themselves. Listen, there is also a technical point about public order policing. There was quite a good short letter in the Times yesterday, which we'll share on the feed from a police officer who was part of the response to the killing of PC Blake Lock and the development of two particular things in policing, which the British police learned back in the day, which is keeping a proper gap between the police and the crowd. And secondly, putting the decision making down to lower levels of command. So allowing people on the ground to make more rapid decisions. So I think there's a bit of relearning some of the lessons of crowd control, just some technical bits of policing.

• 29:15Alastair Campbell?

  I think the other interesting thing I've seen in reading what some of the police are saying and talking to some of the police is that amid the debate that we were having earlier about social media and the inevitable cause to ban social media and so forth, which is probably impossible. But even if you try to sort of use that to restrict it, one police guy was telling me that, look, the thing about social media, that is where at the moment we are getting most of our useful information from, both in terms of the organisation and the terms of investigation after the event. So I think, for example, what will be happening now is that these thugs will be going out, causing mayhem, attacking property, attacking people. And sometimes you're looking at the television and people will be thinking, why aren't the police just charging in?

• 29:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, part of the reason the police aren't charging in is they're just working out who's doing this. And then a couple of days later, they'll quietly go and knock on the door. They'll read them their rights and hopefully take them in. You mentioned Mark, Doug and Rory. I just wondered if it's worth talking about Keir Starmer's. Sort of handling of this, because of course, I mean, let's, let's be absolutely frank about this. If ever he's had a honeymoon, it certainly ended because this is a horrific, horrible set of events to have to deal with. But it is interesting, he was DPP.

• 30:25Rory Stewart?

  Director of Public Prosecution. So he was the guy in charge of prosecuting people during the 2011 riots. Yeah.

• 30:31Alastair Campbell?

  And interestingly, before all this happened, I was reading an interview he gave some time back about how that was handled at the time, where he said actually that the thing that was most effective in bringing things under control, until now, by the way, that is defined as the worst English riot, when you go right back through them, because it did lead to people dying. I think it led to 3,000 arrests, something like 2,000 people ended up in court and convicted. And so, but what they did was to have 24/7 courts, bringing people into court very, very quickly. You have to get, and he was involved because you have to get the court system to agree to do that, to agree that the measures, the new measures would be needed. And he said, the thing that, that sort of brought the thing under control

• 31:14Alastair Campbell?

  was the people who were thinking about going out and causing trouble, suddenly seeing on the news that it was no longer they were seeing people having a bit of a laugh, throwing bits of wood and setting fire to hotels. They were seeing people go to jail for quite a long time. Now, you and I both have pretty strong views about sentencing, but on this, I have got no doubt that deterrence will, will actually come from long sentences from the first people who are jailed for this.

• 31:37Rory Stewart?

  I, I think that's right. I think this is a really good example of, of what we're actually called, the judge, I think, in the Brixton riots talked about exemplary sentencing. This is one of the reasons why I still remain cross about the five-year sentences given to the stop oil protesters, because it, it sets completely the wrong bar and the relationship between what these people are doing. Trying to burn people alive in a hotel is a completely different level of violence and requires a much stronger response. I think we may also want at some point to think a little bit about the way in which Keir Starmer has been communicating. I mean, it's a very sensitive subject to the moment, because I think it's the most difficult thing imaginable. But I do think that Keir Starmer is probably learning things about political communication in crisis, which are going to be important to him. And I thought the video that he put out.

• 32:22Rory Stewart?

  Couple of days ago now, which is the one that Elon Musk challenged, where he's looking away from the camera, doesn't quite work. He needs to find the moment to really look the camera in the eye, address people directly, feel like he's really taking control, rather than sounding like he's doing a press briefing as a senior official. He needs to find his inner statement.

• 32:42Alastair Campbell?

  That's interesting, because the one I saw, he's done several now, there's one I thought that was the most effective, was where he did a quite a short, two minutes maybe, which was pretty much direct to camera, and then he took two questions, it might be the same one. And in the questions, and I noticed that he does this, and it's very hard not to do this, he does seem to respond directly to the questioner. I've got to say, I think his communications have been fine on this. I think the messaging has been fine. And listen, the poor guy's probably absolutely exhausted. You come through a election campaign, you take over, you have these massive events you've got to chair, you've got the King's Speech, you've got to, you know, schlep out of the Olympics opening ceremony, you come back, your kids are probably screaming at you to come on holiday, and he's suddenly having to deal with this sort of crisis, which, you know, genuinely has

• 33:26Alastair Campbell?

  the feel of the crisis in the making. So I think his communication has been fine. But as it goes on, then what has to happen is this thing has to be quelled pretty quickly, and then any changes that have to be made have to be made, and ultimately, we all have to move on. Because what's happened in the past, Rory, I can remember, you know, there were riots when Tony Blair was Prime Minister, one of them I remember was in Burnley. And it is sometimes remarkable how quickly they flare up and how quickly they go away. Often, I regret to say it's to do with the weather. I say, you know, and you can guarantee every policeman in the country at the moment is wishing to God, you know, we love cricketers out there hoping it stays sunny, they're all hoping to God it pays down with rain.

• 34:08Alastair Campbell?

  But I think the most important thing is that, as you call it, summary sentencing of people who've been caught, people who've admitted to committing this crime, and that they go to jail and they are seen to do so. The other thing I want to say, Rory, somebody alerted me to, he said, why don't you go and read back the Terrorism Act that you guys brought in in 2000? So I did. And the Terrorism Act 2000, it's been updated several times since to take account of international terrorism in particular, and also of race. But again, I said the definition of riot. So. The terrorism act, this is the covering page of it. And it applies if A, it involves serious violence against a person. B, involves serious damage to property.

• 34:50Alastair Campbell?

  C, endangers a person's life, other than that of the person committing the action. D, creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public. Or E, is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system. And all, if this is within the use or threat designed to influence the government or intimidate the public or a section of the public. Now, I would, I would argue that an awful lot of those people that we've been seeing on ITV screens would need a pretty good lawyer to explain why that doesn't cover them. This is a form of terrorism.

• 35:27Rory Stewart?

  Alastair, one of the really interesting questions, I think, well, there's two things that strikes me. One of them is, of course, real horror, that these things, which are basically pogroms, are happening. I mean, it's, it's like something out of late 19th century Russia. An atrocity happens, there are immediately rumours flying around. In the case of late 19th century Russia, they would all decide the Jews were responsible and go and try and burn down a synagogue. And in this case, an atrocity happens, everybody decides the Muslims are responsible and go and try and burn down mosques. It's very weird. I mean, it's the sort of thing that you wouldn't be very surprised to find happening in many of the parts of the world where I served abroad. But, but in Britain, it really is really shocking.

• 36:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, Rory, they also, as you said earlier, burnt down a library, which is a thing that is exists to help educate people. And tried to burn down and attack a Citizens Advice Bureau, which exists to give legal and other support about how to sort out your problems to people who can't afford lawyers and the like.

• 36:25Rory Stewart?

  Then the other thing that's so striking, of course, is something that's more difficult to talk about, which is the instinctive sympathy towards these crowds and the defence of these crowds coming from many apparently moderate people. And you find it in odd spaces. I was talking to a friend who rides horses and his Facebook spaces of people who ride horses are full of people being sympathetic towards the rioters. When I challenged Elon Musk, it was really striking. How quickly, probably, I think, thousands of people started taking the sides of the rioters and challenging me and blaming me personally. You know, some of it's just sort of straightforward, saying, you know, Elon Musk is a living genius. But people getting a thousand likes, saying it's cheerleaders for multiculturalism like you, Rory, who are responsible for this problem, et cetera.

• 37:10Rory Stewart?

  Right. And belief this is the very, very profound Islamophobia. I mean, we've talked about this, that people claim that it's anti-Islam and it's not racism. This was a deliberate move of Nick Griffin, the BMP leader in 2008. He managed to say, I'm a moderate and I'm going to make the fascist movement in Britain be not against people's skin colour, but against Islam. This became part of the sort of philosophy of fascism in the late 2000s. And my goodness, this is an example of this. I mean, it could not be more extreme. And you're seeing, very, very sadly, a real sense that a lot of people in Britain appear not to like Muslims. And this seems to be much less true in London, less true in Scotland.

• 37:51Rory Stewart?

  But a lot of the north of England, there seems to be kind of really profound problems being exposed. Which then leads me to my final point, which is to pay a bit of tribute to Morgan McSweeney and the work that he did in Barking. And there's been a great article by Tom McTavish about this. Can you tell us a little bit, though, about Morgan McSweeney before I talk about what he did trying to deal with the BMP in Barking?

• 38:11Alastair Campbell?

  Well, he's been sort of Keir Starmer's right hand man strategy wise since before Keir Starmer kind of became Keir Starmer as we know him today in helping him to become the leader of the Labour Party, have the strategy that he pursued in relation to taking a very hard line against Corbynism, for want of a better phrase, responsible for the strategy that led to what turned out to be a very, very successful election campaign. And as you say, Irish, but made his name politically or cut his teeth politically in the UK in fighting the hard right in the East End of London.

• 38:47Rory Stewart?

  So he came into a situation where the BMP was dominant there and like in Blackburn and Bolton. And he decided to try to tackle the daily problems that people were facing and demonstrate that the state, the government Could really help them. And one of his most dramatic things he did as the local councillor was to get the local councils to begin tidying up the gardens and billing the tidying up to landlords and focusing on small policies, showing the state could work, addressing things like loss of car parks, dealing with the largest housing estate in Europe. And by the end of his time, the BNP, right, the far right, had lost every single seat in the council. So Morgan McSweeney's efforts

• 39:27Rory Stewart?

  to really deal with practical problems in these communities led to Labour taking over the whole council. So it's a really good example of practical work, addressing local needs and really turning around the politics.

• 39:39Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory, the reason why the figures on the hard right are often very reluctant to get actual political power is because I can't think of a single instance where they've got actual political power. And it has led to the improvement of people's lives. That's why they try, by most of them, they exist outside of the mainstream politics. And it's been interesting to watch Farage since he actually finally became an MP. He clearly can't stand being in Parliament. He's not the main attraction. He's not a big cheese in there. So he still has to make all the noise outside. And then if you go one extreme further to the Tommy Robinsons, although I thought, I have to say Chris Patton's line that Nigel Farage

• 40:19Alastair Campbell?

  is Tommy Robinson in a cravat. I thought that was a pretty effective piece of communication by an old stager. But then you've got sort of even further outside, they're all terrible. They're all the same. They're all not fighting for you. You've got to let people like me fight for you. There is something else going on about, we talked earlier about who these people are, what they believe. And if you go and look at what's happening in America, the thing that's driving a lot of people there, and I think there's a, there are very strong elements of this within what's happening in Britain now as well, is this whole thing about the great replacement theory. The reason, the reason why some of these people are willing to go up against a policeman. And hit that policeman in the face, knowing that they're on camera, knowing that

• 41:03Alastair Campbell?

  they're probably going to get their collar felt very, very soon thereafter and get banged up for a while, is because they think they're part of this massive fight because they are being replaced by non-white people. And once you've fed a kind of, an ideology as poisonous as that, that is what leads to the kind of sense of hate. So they don't look at a Muslim or a black person and say, oh, let's try and integrate. They think these people are being sent here, or they're arriving in boats, whatever it might be, to replace us. They, it's why in America, Rory, I mean, why do you think they feel so strongly, it could be that they're about to have a president who's not only a woman, but a black woman.

• 41:45Alastair Campbell?

  And if you're one of these men who feels that you're being, quote, replaced. And the reason why I think this has come up now, back to the poli-, you know, this is the rest is politics, back to the politics of this, I think that for the last few years, the reason why it's been maybe harder, or these people haven't felt the need to operate as they've been operating in recent days, is because they kind of have felt the government has been their government. They have had a government that's been banging on the whole time about immigrants. They have had a government that's been saying, let's spend seven hundred million pounds on this ridiculous scheme to Rwanda. They have been able to say, well, you know, at least they agree with me that immigrants are a bad thing. And do you know the thing I found the most offend-, well, there's been a lot that's been offensive

• 42:29Alastair Campbell?

  and upsetting this week, but it was in Sunderland where Filipino nurses were having bricks thrown at them as they arrived for work at an NHS hospital, where later in the day, no doubt, they would be looking after people who had been perhaps hit by a police truncheon or whatever it might be. So I just, I just think that sometimes you've got to call stuff out for what it is. I'm glad that you, you call this out for what it is. It is like Islamophobia.

• 42:57Rory Stewart?

  But we need to keep coming back to this because I think it's a huge issue and I definitely think there's no comfortable answer to this. I mean, Britain is becoming a much, much more diverse society. So at the moment, 14% of the UK's population were born outside the UK. But in 2022, 30% of all live births in England and Wales were to mothers born outside the UK. And in London, it's 66.5%. So there is absolutely no doubt that this is a very, very rapidly changing population. As we've said, one and a half million people have come in in the last two years. So the question of how governments, as much as the Labour government or Conservative government, deal with the issue of immigration, communities, integration is going to be absolutely central.

• 43:41Rory Stewart?

  And, and I don't think it can just get into a culture war. I think it, part of Kier Sama's response, yes, has to be challenging fascism. Yes, has to be the Morgan McSweeney stuff, you know, demonstrating the state can really work for communities. And yes, it involves a very clear immigration policy, which was certainly the way in which this issue was dealt with in the seventies.

• 43:59Alastair Campbell?

  Totally. And that's why, so for, for example, one of the reasons why these hotels have become such a target, I would argue, is that because while there was all this focus on Rwanda, there was insufficient processing done of people who were trying to get into our country. And therefore people were just arriving and then they get put into hotels. And that they, they sit there in a community that starts to feel resentful, feel angry. So I'm not saying there doesn't have to be proper processing around immigration controls. I'm not saying that there are massive social and economic challenges facing the country. But at this stage of this immigration debate, I think we've got to call this stuff out for what it is, which is absolute outright criminal thuggery.

• 44:41Alastair Campbell?

  And I for one, hope that quite a lot of these people end up in jail. I hope that a lot of these media people stop being platformed in the way that they are. I hope a few politicians learn a few lessons from what's, what's gone on. And I do, I do wish the government well in trying to deal with this because as problems go, shortly after you've got into power, this is, uh, this is big.

• 45:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 45:04Alastair Campbell?

  Let's just end on something positive. In virtually every place where these thugs have been out on the streets, the next day there have been greater numbers out clearing up the streets. And they are the best of Britain. They, of course, and our wonderful Olympians.

• 45:19Rory Stewart?

  Let's take a break now.

• 45:22Speaker 02

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• 45:58Rory Stewart?

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

• 46:01Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. And very pleased to see that our interview with David Frum on Leading went straight to the top of the charts. I thought it was very, well, I was very moved by what he said about his daughter. He lost his daughter not long ago. But also I thought he had some very, very insightful observations. He reminded me a bit of you, actually, Rory, because he's, he's basically a conservative, but he kind of feels lost with what's happened to the Republican Party.

• 46:28Rory Stewart?

  Much more right wing than me, Alastair.

• 46:29Alastair Campbell?

  No, I know he's more right wing, but I know he's more right wing than you. But, but I feel that he's, his relationship with the Republican Party, which is bizarre anyway because he's a Canadian, but he has worked in American politics. It felt to me a little bit like yours with the Conservative Party.

• 46:44Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, one of the things I thought was so interesting is that he's one of the few people we've had on recently who's tried to make a real defence for free trade and markets, which is a very traditional right wing position, but which both the right and the left across the world have completely, completely given up on because they've all gone, they've all gone industrial strategy and protection. Alastair, Bangladesh. So we've done a lot on Bangladesh and I think we're right to have done a lot on Bangladesh. It's the eighth largest population in the world, third largest Muslim country in the world. And if people want more, you know, we can refer them. In the notes, back to some of the early explainers we did on the fascinating history of Bangladesh. But here's this country that emerged through a war with Pakistan. It was it was part of an integrated country.

• 47:27Rory Stewart?

  Pakistan got its independence in the 1970s, broke away from Pakistan, was dominated by these two main political families as we came into the 1990s, of which the latest ruler who's dominated the country for 15 years, Sheikh Hasina, was the daughter of the founding independence hero of the country. It's a country that went from being described famously as the basket case of the world. You know, development people looked at in the 1970s as something just stuck in poverty that was never going to emerge into a country which has had consistent growth rates of seven percent a year over the last 15 years. Half of the population of the country been taken out of poverty since 2010. It's a country which now does 40 billion pounds a year of garment, ready-made garment exports.

• 48:11Rory Stewart?

  There's been an expansion of massive bridges. I mean, last time I was in Dakar, there seemed to be cranes and building everywhere, private universities exploding. But this very authoritarian ruler, very authoritarian ruler, who was associated with disappearances, human rights abuses, very unpleasant police militia units, took us into an election, which we covered, of which, over to you to tell us, remind us a bit about the election that happened and then take us to where we are today.

• 48:39Alastair Campbell?

  Well, unsurprisingly, you won it, not least because the opposition boycotted it. And then, post-election, the sort of thing that tipped it from a kind of a very unpopular government that people felt had unfairly announced itself as the victors of yet another election, was that they brought in this thing where they were giving preferential treatment in the job market to relatives of those who had fought in the 1971 War of Independence from Pakistan, which, you know, It kind of sounds, well, why wouldn't you want to support people who fought in the war in violence against Pakistan? But of course, what it was really about was giving preferential treatment to people who were more likely to be supportive of the Awami

• 49:22Alastair Campbell?

  Lee, which she leads. That then led to protests. And it is hard to, when we talk about protests in the context of what we've just spent a long time talking about in relation to the UK, these are people who are literally risking their lives by going out on the streets to protest, and many of whom have been killed in recent weeks. So the death toll mounts, and you think the protests are going to stop, but the protests keep going on. And so now she's fled the country. So this is an example of people power, if you like, protest, working in the extent that a leader who is incredibly strong within the country, has fled that country with her sister, they've gone to India. It'd be very interesting to see whether

• 50:06Alastair Campbell?

  they stay there, because she has very close relations with Narendra Modi, but could become a problem. Modi will have to build relations with her successor.

• 50:15Rory Stewart?

  And Alice, just I'm always fascinated by this, because my first posting as a British diplomat was in Indonesia, where General Soeharto, who'd been the dictator for 32 years, was toppled in 1998 by these huge demonstrations. And I remember it was, they went on for weeks and weeks and weeks. And there were three possibilities. One was that the demonstrations were going to quickly disappear, and he'd continue in rule for many years. The second was that he was going to eventually give up. And the third was, he was going to fight to the last bullet, like some dictator up in the mountains trying to hold out to the last moment. And the dynamics of things are so difficult. So in Bangladesh, it was very difficult, and a tribute to you, I mean, you, you know, got us focused on this two, three weeks ago. But I don't think anyone could have been confident three weeks

• 51:00Rory Stewart?

  ago that these demonstrations were going to lead to Sheikh Hasina fleeing the country.

• 51:04Alastair Campbell?

  No, on the contrary.

• 51:06Rory Stewart?

  So how do you get from demonstrations initially in the University of Dhaka, in the capital city, spreading to other private universities, mostly students, Chittagong, Silet, and then it spills over? To rural areas. So then you get people concerned, not just about the quota system, but about cost of living, corruption. Then you get the opposition political party beginning to move the cell forward. And then the question on how the government responds, if they respond too softly, they get swept out. If they respond too harshly, they get swept out. So in this case, she responded very harshly. So you had people literally being photographed on social media, standing in front of the police with their arms spread wide, being shot in the chest and killed. A national curfew, so everybody was locked up in their houses, the internet went down

• 51:49Rory Stewart?

  for nearly two weeks to try to prevent people moving messages back and forth on social media, became more and more brutal, the adductions and the responses. But instead of quelling the problem, this seems to have just spilled it forward and onwards. And what was the final thing that led her to flee? And at some point, we'll find out, but often in this case, it'll be somebody like the military coming to her and saying, we just don't think we can do this anymore. We just can't keep shooting people anymore.

• 52:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, and also amongst the deaths, there were a lot of deaths, but amongst the deaths, quite a lot of police officers who were being killed in a pretty brutal way. And I think you're right that at some point, it is those forces, military forces, security forces, they start to think this is not going to end well. But the honest answer is Rory, you just don't know, do you? Because this could have gone the other way. It's entirely possible these protests could have been quelled by the action that she took. But this is why sometimes you just have to, if you're on the side of the argument that these students were, you kind of do just have to keep going. The reason why we should admire them in a way

• 52:53Alastair Campbell?

  is because it takes incredible courage to do that when you know that so many people who've done it before have literally lost their lives. And so I think it's just a tipping point where they start to fear for their own safety and they fear for their own safety because the force of protest is getting too close for comfort.

• 53:13Alastair Campbell?

  In terms of the security that's surrounding them. And that's when they start to put in the phone calls and say, hey, Narendra, I'm in a real spot of bother here. If I jump in a helicopter, can I land and will you put me up in a nice place for a while? There is some talk that she wants to move to London.

• 53:24Rory Stewart?

  And pretty soon there'll be obviously criminal cases against. I mean, you'll remember that what happens often is that these people are. Yeah, exactly. Money's moved around. So Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe remained under sort of house arrest. Mugabe, Idi Amin, of course, went to Saudi Arabia where he was given asylum. Pakistani politicians escaped court cases to London. But it's going to be very interesting. And actually, there is a, your MP, I believe, Tulip Siddique is a Labour MP, is in fact Sheikh Hasina's niece. So it's an amazing political dynasty.

• 53:55Alastair Campbell?

  She's the daughter of Sheikh Hasina, who's the sister who was on the helicopter with her. When her father, the first president, was toppled in a coup d'etat, all of the family were effectively wiped out, apart from Sheikh Hasina, her children and her sister. And from that has emerged this new political dynasty, which is now, it would seem, at an end. But I think the diplomacy that follows these fallen autocrats is very, very interesting because she's close to Modi. When Modi won the election recently, she was the first state visit afterwards. They've visited 10 times in the last 12 months. And if she comes to London, or if she does come to London, that'll be, because what's it, there's this guy, Tariq Rahman, who is the kind of main opposition leader. He's already in London.

• 54:39Alastair Campbell?

  He's been kind of being the opposition leader from London. So it's going to be, it's going to be fascinating.

• 54:44Rory Stewart?

  It is amazing. And you can also see how quickly people's reputation changes. I mean, she was known as somebody who was meant to be a sort of very canny political operator, who was very effective at managing the party, led great discipline, provided stability and economic growth. But as soon as things went wrong, the other narrative emerges that she's 76 years old, that she's out of touch, that she wasn't sympathising with the deaths of the demonstrators, that she was sounding blasé, that she was stuck in a palace too far away from the people. So your reputation flips very quickly. Well, lovely to talk to you and let's catch up for question time.

• 55:20Alastair Campbell?

  Speak soon.

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