220. Sunak's by-election disaster, Reform UK gains momentum, and political crisis in Rochdale

Will the rise of Reform UK be the downfall of the Conservatives? How consequential are Labour's by-election victories? Who will win in Rochdale? Join Rory and Alastair for an impromptu Friday episode of The Rest Is Politics as they answer all these questions and more. Buy tickets now to the TRIP Election Tour now: https://www.aegpresents.co.uk/event/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. 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 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/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 1:58Alastair Campbell?

  Well, welcome to, it's not really an emergency, but a kind of unexpected Rest Is Politics. It's Alastair here. Rory's on a ski slope at the moment, but he and I have just recorded half an hour yabbering away together on YouTube, which you're about to hear. And we do two things. First of all, we give you the details of our pre-election tour, assuming the election's going to be in the autumn, and we tell you where and when, and most importantly, how to get tickets. And also, we're going to react to these two by-election results overnight, where the Tories have been absolutely splattered by Labour. So yeah, I hope to see lots of you on the tour in October, the 6th in Brighton, the 9th

• 2:41Alastair Campbell?

  in Birmingham, the 11th twice in Manchester, 12th in Glasgow, 14th Cardiff, and 15th, terrifying, the O2 Arena. So I hope to see lots of you there. I hope you enjoy the chat that we're about to have. You can get tickets, by the way, frankly, wherever you can find Rest Is Politics, online, social media, Twitter, restispolitics.com, anywhere.

• 3:06Rory Stewart?

  We're here live, which means that, you know, we can't-

• 3:09Alastair Campbell?

  No mistakes!

• 3:11Rory Stewart?

  You can't ask me to show my trousers or anything on the-

• 3:13Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, having already seen them as you took your seat, I'm definitely going to get people to take them. Ridiculous trousers, which I don't think even the toffs of the toffs would wear those on the ski slopes. But anyway-

• 3:26Rory Stewart?

  We're here to discuss this tremendous Labour victories in the by-election, which is very interesting in terms of lots of things, actually, in terms of what that might mean for how Labour does in the election, and in terms of what it says about Parliament. But we're also here, aren't we, Alastair, to encourage people not to listen to us at all, but to take advantage of the fact that the live- Sale of our tickets has just started. So very quickly, before I hand back to you, this is our October election tour. So to remind people, this is our big live tour, which is going to be doing the UK and US elections, because obviously we're betting hard that the UK elections are going to be not in May. So 6th October, Brighton Centre, 9th Birmingham Utility Arena, 11th Manchester Road to Apollo, twice, 12th Glasgow,

• 4:11Rory Stewart?

  SEC Armadillo, queue jokes about Amarillo, 14th October Cardiff Utility Arena. And then the big one in London is we're going to do the O2 in the round. So basically, anybody listening to this live show, please get off this live show and book your tickets.

• 4:28Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, no, no, no, you can do both or you can do both. You can have a, you can have a phone, you can have a laptop, you can have a friend or a colleague. I'd love, I'd love to be able to get the data for how many people watching this are actually at work. Maybe you can tell us, by the way, in the very private chat, which nobody else will see, I'm sure. So I think people should, yeah, I hope people do come. We've, we've actually, because we put tickets up for members only, I think we've sold well over 10% of the whole lot already. And by the way, Manchester and London appear to be where we have the biggest followings, looking at the sales. So

• 5:10Rory Stewart?

  Although we've had a big response, nice response from Cardiff, couple, a couple of Welsh comments in the thing. And somebody who, who describes himself as Stormy Daniels, but is presumably not Stormy Daniels, says, I just got into bed, but this is worth staying awake for.

• 5:23Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it could be Stormy Daniels. I mean, Stormy Daniels presumably goes to bed quite a lot.

• 5:27Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, that's true. This, but it looks like Sammy Stormy Daniels with a beard, looking at the photograph. Sam Wilkins, this bloody queue for O2 tickets, it's like I'm booking to see Taylor Swift. There we are. That's a great compliment for you. Now, let's get to the serious stuff, though. Just to, I'm going to just explain to people what happened, and then we're going to hand over to you for comments. So there've been two by-elections and by-elections of, of seats which the Conservatives held. And by-elections are obviously things that a sitting government wants to avoid if at all possible. But in this case, they lost two MPs for different reasons. In Wellingborough, they lost Peter Bone. Who they had to fire from the party or decided to fire from the party because there were some very serious allegations against him for sexual misconduct and bullying.

• 6:11Rory Stewart?

  And he was then removed by something called a recall petition, which maybe we should talk about a little bit because it's a really interesting development in the British constitution. It allows you to recall your MP. The other seat, which is Kingswood, was an MP called Chris Skidmore, who went into Parliament with me in 2010 and whose seat was being abolished in the election and then decided two months later that he was going to resign on principle about the government's environmental policy and fracking. So in both cases, by elections held, in both cases, Labour come home with an extraordinary result, but even more dramatic, I guess, in Wellingborough. Over to you.

• 6:48Alastair Campbell?

  So, looking, by the way, at the comments, most people do seem to be at work, so I hope their employers aren't all looking at them over their shoulders as they listen to us. As you know, you are one of those people who thinks that the Tories have lost and that Keir Starmer is in office, sort of, you know, all over by the shouting. Even with this result, I think it's important to keep a few things in perspective. That being said, I think they're pretty disastrous for the Tories. The swing in Wellingborough, and admittedly, it is a very odd scene when you have an MP kicked out and his partner stands in for, takes the candidacy. Rishi Sunak didn't campaign either of these.

• 7:31Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, just on that one. I mean, exactly. So Peter Bone, having been recalled for serious sexual misconduct towards one of his male parliamentary assistants, and having divorced his wife, then decided to encourage his current girlfriend to run in the seat. So there's a background here. And of course, part of the background is that recall petition was huge news locally. So there will be many people who are voting against Peter Bone, but it's produced an astonishing result. It's a swing, I think, of 18,000, second largest swing ever recorded in history.

• 8:03Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's the biggest to Labour, it's 28.5%. It's the biggest to Labour this parliament. The biggest before that was Tamworth, which was 23.7. I have to say that the biggest ever... Was a very happy day in my life. It was Dudley in nineteen ninety four and I can remember this very, very well because we were in the United States of America. Tony Blair was speaking at a dinner in the Ambassador's Residence, that very grand building in Washington. And we got the result in. I got Fiona Gordon, who was our regional director, told me the result and I slipped in to see Tony at this dinner. It was, you have to be able to have

• 8:44Alastair Campbell?

  a laugh with your boss every now and again. And I just slipped in as he was sort of pontificating about the future of the world and being very grand with all these senators and congresspeople and military bods and what have you. And I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up and I did my sort of sad eyes look and I said, not as good as we thought. And he said, what do you mean? He said, it's going to be a recount. And for five seconds, I absolutely had him. And then I sort of, I burst out laughing. It gave him the result. He did though tell me straight away, get on to them and say, no complacency, hard work goes on, et cetera. But it is a massive

• 9:26Alastair Campbell?

  swing. If this swing happened nationally, Rory, in a general election, how many seats do you think the Tories would have?

• 9:34Rory Stewart?

  Don't know. What's the answer?

• 9:36Alastair Campbell?

  Four. One, two, three, four.

• 9:38Rory Stewart?

  Four seats? If this happened nationally, the Tories would have only four seats left in Parliament?

• 9:44Alastair Campbell?

  Correct, correct. That's why people should not sort of imagine that that's going to happen. Now, and on the turnout, I mean turnout is pretty low, thirty seven percent in one, thirty eight percent in the other. So almost two thirds of people didn't vote. And again, here's where I would be a bit cautious if I was Labour. A lot of those people, I suspect, are people who ultimately will vote Tory. But the other line that's being spun is about reform. And there was a very interesting survey done of people who, if people say, if the Tories For Reform voters, only only under a third who say they will vote Reform say if Reform weren't there, who would you vote for? Only a third say Tory. So this idea that Tory and

• 10:28Alastair Campbell?

  Reform are together is nonsense.

• 10:30Rory Stewart?

  So this is really critical for us because for the Conservative Party particularly, when Rishi Sunak loses the next election, and it will be a significant loss, there will be a big push from people like Suella Bravman to take the party to the right. But there's also going to be a lot of action over the next few months, something I've just been talking to my friend and hero David Gork about, to push the party to the right. So there will be people inside the Conservative Party looking at these by-election results and saying that that vote taken by Reform, which is the ex Brexit UKIP party, if those votes had gone to the Tories, they would have won. And of course, as you've pointed out, there are two problems with that. One of them is all those votes wouldn't have gone to the Tories. And number two, chasing those votes would put the Tories into a more

• 11:14Rory Stewart?

  and more strange right-wing position and will tempt them, for example, to do stuff on immigration. And as we've discussed, that's a crazy thing to do because there's absolutely no way they're going to be able to make any difference to immigration between now and the election.

• 11:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, you've said before that, you know, the economic situation is so grim that it's hard to see how the Tories can pull this round. And so yesterday was very really interesting. I mean, it used to be that you couldn't do big political news on by-election days. And that whole Perda thing, the rules seem to have completely gone along with a lot of the other sort of standards that we used to take for granted. But so yesterday you had a situation where Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, was out there talking about tax cuts. And meanwhile, the official data came out showing that the economy was officially in recession. And I think this tax cut thing, I think the Tories are trapped in a historical view of the world that goes back to Margaret Thatcher. They just think that tax cuts are the answer to all their problems. I think they're the answer to their problems politically

• 12:12Alastair Campbell?

  with this rump, this well, significant rump in the Conservative Parliamentary Party, MPs who think they have to be able to say tax cuts. But I actually think for Labour, they can win an argument that says that tax cuts at this time are the wrong thing to For the economy.

• 12:26Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. And I think people like me who are more on the left of the Conservative Party would completely agree with you. That the reality is that public services are shot to pieces. And this idea that they're going to be able to cut public services more, public spending more, which is one of the things that's going on with this tax cut discussion. So there's a story from the tax cutters that because interest rates are coming down, it's going to be a little bit more money for the government. They're then going to put five billion into trying to stop a rise on fuel duty. And then they're going to talk about more cuts to public services in order to create room for tax cuts. But it's it's a really daft thing to do. And what we need is more investment in public services at the moment, not less.

• 13:06Alastair Campbell?

  And the strategy for growth. Now, some of the, just look, trying to look at some of the hundreds of questions that are coming in, Roy. And you, you said at the start, oh, nobody apart from my mum will be watching. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of questions.

• 13:16Rory Stewart?

  But you don't know how many of these are my mum under different names.

• 13:19Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I don't think your mum would be dishonest like that. I really think she should put up her own name. And by the way, Stormy Daniels has confirmed that Stormy Daniels is the name of a dog. Okay. And and Stormy is not in bed because she's in Sydney and it's nine P M. Okay. I often go to bed at nine P M. So one of the themes that's coming through in the questions is will this embolden Labour? I hope so is the answer to that. I I think that Labour still needs to give people more of what a friend of mine calls the the the song to whistle to as they go to the ballot box. At the moment, I think you're getting an awful lot of, I hate the Tories, I want to get rid of the Tories.

• 14:01Alastair Campbell?

  And I think Labour really can now put the foot down on the gas in terms of an offer. And by the way, it doesn't all have to be the offer that says more money for this, more money for that. I am more convinced than ever after all sorts of stuff that's been going on, not least the stuff that led to example for the the election in in Wellingborough. I really do think that there's a massive campaign to be fought on standards in public life. And what sort of country we are, what sort of politics we want. And I think that, interestingly, I didn't catch it, but I saw on social media, Keir Starmer on the media this morning, saying that he lost a lot of respect. He felt his relationship with Rishi Sunak changed last week. On the back of the Prime Minister's question exchange about when he said he doesn't even know

• 14:46Alastair Campbell?

  what a woman is and when Brianna Gray's mother was up there. And you're seeing so much, there was a very good example yesterday, the Tories put out a completely misleading clip of something that Sadiq Khan said. And I just think the public are ready. I think they're ready to say, oh, you know, bugger off with your tax cuts. I think they're ready to say, we want real change. And clearly at the moment, Labour is the only party that could form another government. So that has to come from Labour. But I think Labour have to offer more than they are at the moment.

• 15:17Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I really.

• 15:18Alastair Campbell?

  To get a landslide, which is there for the taking.

• 15:21Rory Stewart?

  And I think not just to get a landslide, but also I always felt in government that if you've said things before the election, and ideally put them in the manifesto, but at least made big public statements, it gives you so much more momentum when you come into government to get those things done, because the whole civil service is ready for you. They've read their stuff in the manifesto, they've heard what they've said, they get the point, they will have prepared it. And as you as a minister come in and say this is where they want to go, they don't feel as they often will. If you suddenly change your mind after the election, oh, my goodness, you know, how's this going to work? How are we going to do this, et cetera? So it's good for getting things done. And we've had a lot of good questions about reform. I mean, I think I've counted 10 and I'm sorry, I'm not reading them all out.

• 16:01Rory Stewart?

  But I want to pick up Chicken Pie 113, Ben Habib only got 13% after massive campaigning. Not that impressive. After all the effort they put in, I'd expect 15% plus. So this is to do with this right wing UKIP reform vote. It's not that impressive, actually. Compared to where the party was in 2015, it's not doing that strongly. So quite a lot of people asking questions are worried about reform, but I think you could tell a story that in some ways, as we've discussed on the podcast before, the kind of populist right hasn't really got going yet in Britain in the way that it has in other European countries. One other thing you raised, which I wanted to do a little bit of an explainer on, because I think it relates to something you've been talking about, which is standards in public life, which are these recall petitions.

• 16:46Rory Stewart?

  So often we get questions in question time on what can we do to get rid of our MPs? You couldn't in the past, but in 2015, the Conservative Lib Dem coalition brought in a new bill in Parliament, which I voted for, to allow people to recall MPs. And what happens is if the MP gets a criminal conviction or cheats on their expenses or is suspended for more than 10 sitting days in the House of Commons, the members of constituency, the normal voters in constituency, get to sign up to a petition. And if more than 10% of people vote for this petition, then a recall by-election has been called. And the nice thing about it is that it's actually happened to almost every party. North Antrim against Ian Paisley DUP, which didn't make it through.

• 17:31Rory Stewart?

  Peterborough, where Labour, Fiona Onasania, who'd been lying and cheating on speeding offences in her cars, got recalled and lost the by-election. Brecon and Radnorshire, where a Conservative was putting in false invoices to cheap on his expenses. And then Rotherglen, where we had an SNP MP who'd been breaking Covid restrictions. And some of these things will be familiar to listeners because we've covered a lot of these by-elections on the show. And this Wellingborough election is yet another example of this quite interesting thing, which has meant four MPs already got rid of through this new procedure.

• 18:05Alastair Campbell?

  Also, I think it's worth pointing out, and people do sort of give Keir Starmer quite a hard time. This is now seven by-election wins that Labour have picked up. It's admittedly helped by the Tories and by the circumstances of the by-elections, but you then do have to have the Labour campaign that goes out and then says that, you know, we are, if you like, the only credible party that can take over them. The Lib Dems have won some. What do you make of the Lib Dems' performance in this? Do you think they're just sort of focusing only on those seats that they think they can win? Or, I mean, I can't quite work out what's going on with the Lib Dems.

• 18:37Rory Stewart?

  Well, I'd be interested. I mean, I think, I don't understand, and I don't understand what's happened to the Lib Dems, really. I mean, they just don't seem to me to have the energy or votes that you would expect when people are so disgusted by the Conservatives and where a lot of people are in the centre ground. I mean, Labour's taken a lot of those centre ground voters, which I think if the Lib Dems had been more agile, they would have been able to go. One place maybe to watch. Could be, is there any chance that something interesting will happen in Rochdale? Just to remind listeners, Rochdale's the by-election coming where there's a Labour MP running. And actually, there's been quite an interesting question about that. We've had Samuel Dunn said, can Alistair elaborate on what he said about George Galloway in his Instagram Live when he gets the chance?

• 19:19Rory Stewart?

  George Galloway is a candidate in this forthcoming by-election. Technical question, though. Question about whether Ed Balls defending the Labour candidate shows something about the split between Corbynistas and non-Cobainistas in Labour.

• 19:33Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know about that. Azar Ali, the candidate, was taped, we talked about this on the Q and A yesterday, was taped making some, you know, basically buying into this conspiracy theory that the Israelis knew that the Hamas attack was going to happen and they let it happen so as they could sort of do what they're doing now in Gaza. Because the nominations had closed, Labour sort of said they had no alternative but to sort of, he stays on the ticket, as it were. But now they basically said they're not going to campaign for him. Now, he's still a candidate. George Galloway is, I mean, my first experience and encounters with George Galloway were way back in the eighties when I was a journalist. And he was in charge of a charity called War on Want.

• 20:16Alastair Campbell?

  And all sorts of kind of shit allegations went on there. And I was on The Mirror, did a big story about some of the sort of stuff related to expenses and so forth. And then, I guess my, you know, he's a formidable kind of orator and rabble-rouser, Galloway.

• 20:32Rory Stewart?

  And quite funny, I guess. He's, I mean, I remember seeing him take on Christopher Hitchens and take on the US senators. Am I right?

• 20:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he's a, listen, he's a, he's a, he's a sort of very eloquent rabble-rouser. And he's, you know, we talk a lot about populism. He goes into places. I don't, I don't, I'm sure he believes a lot of things, but he exploits the situation. So this is a classic situation where he can go in, as he's done in by-elections previously. But my, my main experience of Galloway was, was, do you remember an MP called Rupert Allison?

• 21:04Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, who wrote about, who wrote about spies, like writing books.

• 21:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, he wrote spy novels, yeah. And he, he had an absolute sort of obsession with me at a various point when I was in The Mirror. And he ended up taking me to court over a story that I hadn't even written. And it was a very, very bizarre experience. But if I put it like this, his only witness was George Galloway.

• 21:26Rory Stewart?

  And Rupert Allison was a Tory MP and he was bringing in-

• 21:28Alastair Campbell?

  Rupert Allison was a Tory MP, George Galloway at the time was, I think was a Labour MP. And he likewise, I don't know why I attract these people Rory, who despise me so much, but just as Allison despised me, so did Galloway. But it's quite something, how can I put this without reopening the whole thing? It's quite something to sit in court and watch somebody describe scenes which you know, because they're about you, just did not happen. It's quite a weird feeling that. But anyway, anything could happen in this violation because of course, what you might expect is that, well, Labour have pulled the plug on their candidates. So therefore the Lib Dems might pick up, but there doesn't seem to be much sign of that.

• 22:09Alastair Campbell?

  So I think it kind of is anything, put it this way, I don't think on March the first, the day after this violation, I don't think Labour will be celebrating quite as much as they are today.

• 22:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 22:19Alastair Campbell?

  It will be a mess, whatever the result, it's going to be a mess.

• 22:23Rory Stewart?

  Sam at Zigzag Education 1119 says Rochdale has three ex-Labour people running, but not with Labour support. I mean, it's pretty weird because the, Simon Danchook, who's the candidate for Reform, was a Labour MP. George Galloway was a Labour MP and then we have the guy who was until two days ago, the official Labour candidate, so three ex-Labour candidates running.

• 22:42Alastair Campbell?

  Before we leave the Lib Dems, I wonder if that isn't the moment for, for you to show those who are watching on YouTube, the, the Lib Dem trousers that you're wearing.

• 22:51Rory Stewart?

  It is true. So David Ventures Media, Rory, looks like he's in a ski shelly. It is true. I've been doing something called ski touring where I climb up hills and ski down. And I was actually saved from having to do it this morning by the emergency podcast, but I've been doing it last two days. So I'm about to go out after you and here we are.

• 23:06Alastair Campbell?

  Oh my God, they're not, they're not Lib Dem, they're Scottish nationalists.

• 23:10Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, what?

• 23:12Alastair Campbell?

  That is an SNP. I've never skied, I've never skied in my life Rory, I've, I've, this is probably very wrong, but I've always seen it a little bit as a sort of public schoolboy thing. Is that wrong?

• 23:23Rory Stewart?

  No, I think, I think, I don't, I don't think that's still true, but I think I can, I can see why you might think that.

• 23:28Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, in the comments, before we go on, in the comments, we're getting a lot from the Rest is Politics. Team say election tour ticket is selling quickly. Follow the link in the description to buy yours now. Now, and by the way, on the pricing, please don't shout at us. Hopefully it's not. Somebody says this is like Taylor Swift prizes. No, it's not. Have you ever been to a Taylor Swift show? Now let's just give them a repeat. Brighton Centre, October 6th, Birmingham Utility Arena, the 9th, Manchester twice on the 11th, twice. Glasgow, the 12th of October, Cardiff, the 14th. And I hope this will put a stop to the people who say we never go to Wales. I was in Wales two weeks ago and the O2, I'm slightly, I'm slightly panicking about the O2, I must admit.

• 24:13Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I just like that. But no, no problem. We'll definitely filling the O2 would be very funny. Sam Zigzag Education, if people come for O2, I promise to, no, actually it's going to put people off. I say I'm going to do a dance, isn't it? But you might do some music, you might do some music.

• 24:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:29Rory Stewart?

  What I never get you to do is sing. I keep trying to, I keep trying to say, you know.

• 24:34Alastair Campbell?

  This is the way to the armadillo.

• 24:37Rory Stewart?

  Exactly, that's, that's.

• 24:38Alastair Campbell?

  I'm not a good singer. I'm a better singer than you are, but I'm not a good singer.

• 24:42Rory Stewart?

  Okay, quickly, just to give people a sense of what we're going to talk about on stage. It's going to be an amazing moment to do a live show because this has been the year of colossal elections. By the time we're on that stage, we will have seen all the big South Asian elections. Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, we will have seen obviously the Indonesian election, which just to update people who listened to last pod. Prabowo Subianto, the special ex-special forces commander who had his son-in-law coming through, winning that.

• 25:10Alastair Campbell?

  Big time.

• 25:11Rory Stewart?

  Yep. And that's a big victory for authoritarian populism and probably a big retreat for democracy in Indonesia. But by the time we get to October, we will be right in the middle of the UK election, talking about all the details of that. But above all, the US election, which will be coming just in a few weeks' time. And I'm, I'm in the States a lot at the moment. I'm flying back on Sunday. And I hope I'll be able to bring in some of those voices and some of those questions. Listen, Sam Zigzag Education, I'm, I don't know who Sam is, but I'm overly favouring Sam Zigzag Education, she or he. Greens in Kingswood showed some steady growth, doubled their small vote share, albeit to only 5.8%, but above the Lib Dems. Good indicator for disillusion with Labour over green investment and Gaza.

• 25:53Rory Stewart?

  Do you think there's any hope for the Greens or still very difficult in the two-party system?

• 25:57Alastair Campbell?

  Well, we're, we're actually going to be talking to Caroline Lucas on leading in the near future. And I think part of her. Appeal is her and she's standing down. So it's not impossible that the Greens lose their only seat. And I think that will, if that does happen, and if the Greens do do better on the back of, as Sam says, disillusion with Labour over green investment in Gaza, I'd be surprised if they aren't picking up some support over that. But we're back to the whole thing about the first past the post system. There will be tactical voting, there will be a sense, and I think there's been tactical voting in these by-elections, by the way, but I think with the Lib Dems, the reason maybe for their small votes is actually a lot of those people will have voted Labour. And one of the reasons, by

• 26:39Alastair Campbell?

  the way, Rory, I haven't taken up the invitation to rejoin the Labour Party, I want to be able to carry on saying, I think people should vote tactically.

• 26:48Rory Stewart?

  Which you wouldn't be able to say as a Labour.

• 26:49Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think it'd be very difficult as a Labour member to go around and say, you know, vote Lib Dem in wherever it might be. But look, there may well be, the other thing I think was going to happen, Rory, in the near future, I suspect these results will be, you know, lots of these Tory MPs, there must be quite a few sitting there thinking, oh, I can't face this anymore. You know, what is the point of carrying on? So don't you think this is going to lead to possibly more people looking to get out even before an election, which would be more by-elections and looking to get out of the election?

• 27:21Rory Stewart?

  Quite a lot of people have already announced they're standing down. There'll be a lot of pressure on MPs not to call a by-election. I mean, the Whips, the Prime Minister, everybody will be traditionally begging them not to do this. So people were very, very angry when Chris Skidmore announced he was going to do a by-election. Just a moment on Chris Skidmore, because maybe it shows a little bit for listeners about what it's actually like inside the Conservative Party and the kind of divides within it and the journeys that people go on. Chris Skidmore was very much before he joined Parliament, on the right of the Conservative Party, associated with people like Michael Gove. He was one of the people who wrote this book called Britannia Unchained.

• 28:00Alastair Campbell?

  He's the only one who didn't get in the Cabinet.

• 28:01Rory Stewart?

  That's right, Liz Truss and Quasi-Courting. But he then ended up, and this is why it's sometimes quite difficult to read Tory MPs, whereas the rest of those people, Priti Patel, Liz Truss, Quasi-Courting, ended up becoming pretty Ferocious parts, the right of the party. And although Trussed didn't initially vote for Brexit, she got very hard behind it and became a Brexit champion. He voted remain and then became increasingly interested in climate and the environment. And he was the guy who, as the Minister for the Environment, brought in the net zero pledge and then produced some very serious reports around it. He's also, I mean, this, you know, we talk about different people within the Conservative Party that

• 28:41Rory Stewart?

  the splits between, as you can imagine, people who have been very strong, active, local councillors, local businesspeople and people like Chris Skidmore, who went from Bristol Grammar School, Oxford University, got a very good first class degree in history, has written four books on Tudor history and pre Tudor history, wrote a book on Richard III. But then when he left, and this is what I'm leading up to, another MP who joined, we all joined in 2010, called Carl McCartney, who's the MP for Lincoln, tweeted out, "A now former colleague", this is about Chris Skidmore, "who was gifted various positions ahead of many better, well qualified and collegiate colleagues, dumps on us all from a great height.

• 29:21Rory Stewart?

  Once more, another non-conservative, handpicked as part of David Cameron's A-list." So that's really showing you these divides within the party, you know, anti David Cameron, anti A-list, Carl McCartney's a Brexit-voting MP. They joined at the same time, you know, it's a lot of pressure to be part of the same cohort. And then when you call the by-election, suddenly the party turns against you.

• 29:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, look, you've talked before about all these sort of different factions. It's almost like, and they even talk themselves about the five families. I think there are probably more than five factions now, but we'll, we'll talk about all that and more in our live show. There we go again, last time, Brighton, Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, Cardiff and London. The tickets do seem to be going pretty fast. So those of you who are at work, get back to work once you've got your tickets. Those of you at home or holiday, carry on enjoying yourselves and just see the link in all our social media channels and we'll see you next week for our. Normal, rest is politics and our normal Q and A.

• 30:24Rory Stewart?

  And thank you for coming, thank you for joining everybody and we should do more of these. I mean, obviously it's high risk for us because we can get all our statistics wrong and have no chance whatsoever to correct us.

• 30:34Alastair Campbell?

  We should, we should also say, Roy, that we, to let people know that Robert Sapolsky, having gone down so well, we have another American beginning with S on Monday, and that's Mr. Anthony Scaramucci, who I think you enjoyed meeting, didn't you?

• 30:47Rory Stewart?

  I really did. That's an extraordinary, extraordinary character. So, yeah, a lot of, lot of great things to come. Thank you all very much, very much for joining. I'm going to try to climb up a hill and thank you, Alison. Speak soon.

• 30:59Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon. Bye bye.

• 31:02Speaker 04

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

• 31:12Speaker 05

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Ravenette.

• 31:18Speaker 06

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You're strong, you're freezing to death. That's what.

• 31:23Speaker 05

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 31:26Speaker 06

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 31:27Speaker 05

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