105. Question Time: Foreign ownership in football, the BBC vs. Modi, and conspiracy theories

What should we make of the Qatari bid to buy Manchester United? Why is Modi's government raiding the BBC offices in India? And why did Rory's appearance at the Bilderberg Meeting lead to claims he was part of a global lizard conspiracy? TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, 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. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen 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 Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

• 1:44Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:48Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:50Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And Alistair, look, we've got a lot of lovely stuff to get going on. And there's a lovely question from Richie Crichton on Congressman Santos, from the United States, which I'd love to get on to. But the first question I'd like to hit you with is about global ownership of British football before we get on to gritty American politics. Two questions from Andrew. Is it naive to think we can prevent our most venerable football clubs from becoming vehicles for vampiric capitalists and dubious potentates? Are we forced to accept that the people's game could be chiselled away from us like our public utilities, a consequence of open markets? So will you tell us a little bit about what's going on in football?

• 2:31Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm imagining the question is driven, and we had quite a few on this, but by the bid that is in, well, two bids that are in to buy Manchester United, one of the biggest football brands in the world.

• 2:46Rory Stewart?

  And who owned them before? Tell us a little bit about.

• 2:49Alastair Campbell?

  Well, the Glazers, this American business family, the Glazers, who are, there's a slogan amongst Manchester United fans, love United, hate the Glazers.

• 2:58Rory Stewart?

  Oh dear, that's a bit unfortunate. And how long have they owned it for? They've owned it for years.

• 3:02Alastair Campbell?

  Basically, they took the club over. There's a lot of controversy about the means by which they did it, by basically buying the club with the club's money, as it were. And since then, the fans have run a never-ending campaign to try and get them out of the club. Including at one point, there was a point in this story when the predominant colour on the terrace was yellow and green, which was the colour of the team that preceded Manchester United.

• 3:30Rory Stewart?

  But sorry, just for those of you who don't understand, so Ferguson was around from 86 to 2013 or something, some incredible kind of period. Is that right? Alex Ferguson managing Manchester United?

• 3:41Alastair Campbell?

  He was there for a long time.

• 3:42Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. And somewhere in the middle of that period, the Glazers came and have bought it. But actually, it was quite successful under them, right? I mean, it was a good period for the club.

• 3:52Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but how much was that to do with what was already there and whether that is to do? I think that what the fans don't like about the club is they feel that it's been taken away from them. They don't feel the same relationship with the club that they had. They see the Glazers as kind of almost like absent landlords, that the investment hasn't been there. Now, I know that sounds ridiculous because of the sorts of money that they pay for players and their salaries and so forth, but Manchester United have kind of fallen.

• 4:17Rory Stewart?

  Is the same true with Chelsea and Abramovich? I mean, is this just a general fact whenever you get bought by a foreign owner?

• 4:22Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'll tell you what's interesting. If you go through, I'll very, very quickly go through all the clubs in the Premier League. Arsenal, American. Aston Villa, American. Bournemouth, America. Brentford, British. Matthew Benham, Gambler. Brian and Hove Albion, Tony Bloom, Ditto. Chelsea, now American, was Russian. Crystal Palace, Steve Parish is still a big factor there, but he's only now got 10%. The rest are all American. Everton, Egyptian. Fulham, American. Leeds, Italian and American. Leicester, Thailand. Liverpool, American. Manchester City, Abu Dhabi. America and China, China's only 1%, mind you. Manchester

• 5:01Alastair Campbell?

  United, the Glazers. Newcastle United, Saudi. Nottingham Forest, Greece. Southampton, British and Switzerland. Tottenham, England. West Ham United, Wales, Welsh, David Sullivan and Czech. And Wolverhampton Wanderers, China.

• 5:16Rory Stewart?

  Whoa.

• 5:17Alastair Campbell?

  So, to answer the question, is the game being chiselled away from us like our public utilities? It's certainly become a massive global industry.

• 5:27Rory Stewart?

  And just quickly on that, because you know a lot about Germany. My understanding is that traditionally in Germany, the clubs were owned by the fans. And is that not true even for huge clubs like Barcelona, that they're controlled by the fans?

• 5:40Alastair Campbell?

  The fans in Barcelona do have a lot more say. They, for example, elect the president.

• 5:44Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 5:44Alastair Campbell?

  But the club ownership in Germany is driven by this thing called the 51% rule. So the fans do have a stake in the running of the club. And I'm a big fan of German football for lots of reasons, but one of them is that I think that has improved the quality of the clubs. I think it improves the relationship with the fans. And it's also helped to keep prices down as well.

• 6:04Rory Stewart?

  And it's also meant that they've concentrated much more on youth development, is that right in Germany?

• 6:08Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I think, look, most of our clubs do do pretty, you know, they've got pretty good academies and all that stuff. But I just think what we see now with football. So the two people are now going for Manchester United. First guy is Jim Ratcliffe, who is a billionaire. He already runs the Team Ineos in cycling, he owns Nice Football Club. And the other guy is Sheikh Yassim bin Hamad Al Tani, son of an ex-Qatari Prime Minister. And of course, that's leading to, because, you know, I don't think the sort of money that you're going to be talking about to buy Manchester United is a lot of money. We're talking well into the billions. And of course, the Qataris already own Paris Saint-Germain.

• 6:51Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 6:51Alastair Campbell?

  There's still this talk around the place, despite Gary Neville's brilliant protestations against it, of a European Super League.

• 6:58Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 6:58Alastair Campbell?

  That appears to be the direction of travel that a lot of the big clubs want to go in.

• 7:02Rory Stewart?

  Okay, tell us a little bit about that. The idea there is that you put Barcelona, Madrid into a Super League with Manchester United.

• 7:10Alastair Campbell?

  With Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain, the Italian clubs, Juventus, I guess. And the other thing that really sort of upset a lot of football fans was the idea that a bit like the American, the NFL, it would be, you know, you'd be in and then you'd be in the club. Basically, you'd buy your way in. So anyway, I think it does underline the sheer, I can remember way, way, way back when Rupert Murdoch tried to buy Manchester United or one of his companies tried to buy Manchester United. And of course, at the time, he was also the owner of, you know, the main TV company covering live Premier League football. And there was an obvious sort of, you know, potential conflict there. But do you know what?

• 7:51Alastair Campbell?

  I think I'm right in saying that I don't think anybody has ever been stopped from owning a football club on the fit and proper person test. Where Andrew, the questioner, is on to something is this thing about, I think it's almost like the football and the business of football, like a lot of businesses, has kind of become too big to fail. And it's become such an important part of our culture, of our image abroad and so forth. Now, Tracy Crouch.

• 8:17Rory Stewart?

  Yep, who was my colleague, yep, entered Parliament with me in 2010, yep.

• 8:20Alastair Campbell?

  Right, well, I'm about to say something I don't say often. She's a Tory MP and I really like her.

• 8:25Rory Stewart?

  Good, she's, she's great, isn't she?

• 8:26Alastair Campbell?

  And she, she did this review, the fan-led football review, and Gary Neville, who knows his stuff, certainly knows a lot more about football than I do, and he said he thought it was a really, really good piece of work. And one of the things that was being proposed is the idea of a football regulator.

• 8:42Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 8:42Alastair Campbell?

  Now, Johnson's sort of, I can't remember what he did with it, nothing. Trust wasn't there long enough. And I don't know at this stage whether Rishi Sunak is taking an interest. But I think that there's a, I think there is a sense amongst a lot of football fans that football is becoming very, very distant from them.

• 8:57Rory Stewart?

  And part of that is ticket price, isn't it? I mean, so why didn't you as Labour, or why don't you, in a future Labour government, bring in a rule like this German fifty plus one rule, where the commercial people can't own more than forty nine percent, and the fans and the clubs keep control and keep the ticket prices down, keep the attendance up?

• 9:13Alastair Campbell?

  You could do that. You could do that. I think you'd face a hell of a lot of opposition from within the industry. But I think you'd have a lot of support from that within the football, the broader football community. We didn't do it because I think, I don't think that, I don't think we were there. I think it was the, it was the start of this process. I mean, I, I, I do remember when Abramovich bought Chelsea. I remember the, the headline, you know, the obvious one, Chelski, that was sort of all over the papers. But it was such a big thing. But now it's kind of commonplace. When I went through that list. And by the way, when you go down into the Championship and below, you'll see an awful lot of non-British owners there as well, including at Burnley, we've got American owners now. And that's because British football is such a big global industry.

• 9:55Rory Stewart?

  Okay, very good. Well, Alistair, I'm very grateful we got you on that, because it is something you know an enormous amount about, that I know nothing about. And

• 10:02Alastair Campbell?

  Well, believe me, there will still be lots of people coming on saying, God, he was talking absolute rubbish. What he should have said was this, because it's one of those subjects that does tend to provoke.

• 10:10Rory Stewart?

  Thank goodness I get to talk about the Highlands of Central Afghanistan, where I have fewer people coming in.

• 10:15Alastair Campbell?

  Actually, well, I'm going to give you, I'm going to give you a tough one. If you're going to give me a tough one, I'm going to give you a tough one. Nick Simpson, why do you guys believe? That the latest front on the conspiracy culture wars is the fifteen minute city idea of having shops and services near your home. It seems odd that this is what's been targeted. Is this just random chance or are there forces that are threatened by this concept?

• 10:35Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's amazing, isn't it? So fifteen minute city was something I was trying to run on when I was running to be an independent, to be mayor of London. Something that Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, has done a great job. The idea of the fifteen minute city is that everything should be within fifteen minutes walk or at most cycle ride from where you are. And it's a lovely idea. I think of new urbanism, mixed use, and it's something we badly need in London. I mean, I remember meeting Afghan friends up in North London and, you know, I thought we'll go and have a cup of tea, which would be a normal thing to do in Afghanistan. And we had to walk 25 minutes to a Sainsbury's to get a cup of tea. And I realised that there was a complete absence of the sort of dense community structures and life, which make life worth living in a city in many, many parts of London.

• 11:18Rory Stewart?

  So anyway, in Oxford, they're trying to push it ahead. They're also trying to put restrictions on people driving their cars into central Oxford. And people have decided, in a massive sort of global outcry against this, including this slightly creepy figure, Jordan Peterson, who's this right wing Canadian social media advocate, that this is an attempt to lock people in their homes as part of a world governments attempt, which began with Covid, to try to take control of our lives and stop us visiting our mums.

• 11:47Alastair Campbell?

  Yes, the World Economic Forum, they've come up with this dastardly plan. I mean, how, it does seem to be incredible, these, how these conspiracy theories develop and the things that get targeted. Farage was at it. There was a Tory MP in the Commons the other day talking about it.

• 12:02Rory Stewart?

  Nick Fletcher, Richard Sterling's asked about this thing, international socialist conspiracy. So it's very interesting. So restrictions on cars in Europe are increasingly being seen as socialist. Now, that's, again, I think, part of us endlessly just sort of picking up from the United States, where there's a sort of strong association of liberals being the people who are stopping you getting a car and Republicans wanting to have some big gas guzzler. No, it's extraordinary. And the only thing that I suppose you might say, which people pointed out to me in London, which is true. Is that sometimes the restrictions on car use, so restrictions on car use in outer London can have a disproportionate impact on people on low incomes with older cars

• 12:47Rory Stewart?

  that have to pay more because their cars don't qualify for exemptions and they need their cars to get to work and that it is easier for people living in sort of zone two in London to to be high, high and mighty about not using cars.

• 13:01Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but as I understand it, the Oxford thing, where some of these councillors and officials are getting all sorts of abuse and people from around the world sort of getting on at them and saying you're part of, you know, some terrible globalist international plot. We were talking on the main podcast about biodiversity and about the climate crisis. You know, for councils to try to do something to get more people to walk and cycle is not a bad thing and to slow down in cities so you don't knock as many kids over.

• 13:29Rory Stewart?

  Above all, for air pollution. So we're still in a world in which at least 26,000, but maybe 50,000 people a year in Britain are dying prematurely because of air pollution, with a lot of that coming out of the tail end of vehicles. So stopping people doing it is good particularly for our children, for the elderly. But conspiracy theories, I mean, I know whether you've been on the receiving end of them. My big one, I went to, I was invited to the Bilderberg Conference and as soon as this came out, there was questions in the House of Commons where, you know, Ken Clark had to defend at the dispatch box Rory Stewart's attendance at the Bilderberg Conference. And some of my constituents who are more on the kind of BNP UKIP end, started saying that this meant that I was a lizard

• 14:12Rory Stewart?

  king. And I couldn't quite work out whether I'd sort of been a lizard before I was invited to the Bilderberg Conference or whether I'd sort of grown a tail after my attendance.

• 14:22Alastair Campbell?

  I think you have to be a lizard to qualify.

• 14:23Rory Stewart?

  To qualify in the first place. Do you, do you ever get hit by conspiracy theories?

• 14:27Alastair Campbell?

  Um, I don't know, the conspiracies, I don't think so.

• 14:30Rory Stewart?

  Oh, no, sort of quickly, sorry, I've realised people don't know what the conference is. So the conference, conference is a conference which has been going for a number of years. Small conference invites a lot of fancy people, politicians, business leaders, and has the kind of earnest conversations you have in every conference around the world. I mean, you talk about the state of the world, you scratch your head about China, you talk about Taiwan and you get some gloomy economists talking about inflation.

• 14:56Alastair Campbell?

  What do you think it says about people's relationship with the world, though? That they, so many people seem to want these, they want to own these conspiracy theories. I suppose the one I get a little bit is from the Corbynista left sometimes accuse me of having deliberately tried to help the Tories win an election. Is that a conspiracy theory or is that just a sort of insult? I don't know.

• 15:16Rory Stewart?

  Ah, okay, here we are. I'm going to get some quicker questions going. Here's a question for you. Live tweets from the underground. What do you make of Keir Starmer banning Corbyn from standing as a Labour MP and telling people who supported him to leave the party? That's what Boris Johnson did to me.

• 15:29Alastair Campbell?

  It is, and I, I think it's what Rishi Sunak should do to Boris Johnson. Look, Keir Starmer did a speech last week where he set out how far he thought the Labour Party had changed since Jeremy Corbyn, the whole kind of story of antisemitism. The Labour Party has now been sort of given a pretty clean bill of health because of the changes that have been made. And I think the sense is that Jeremy Corbyn still doesn't really get it on that front. I've actually just been reading David Baddiel's book, Jews Don't Count, which is, as you'd expect from David Baddiel, very funny in parts, but it's also incredibly serious. And it does make you think about this sort of, he talks about this hierarchy of racism and that antisemitism is, is almost like sort of the, the racism that progressives don't think is as bad as the others.

• 16:15Alastair Campbell?

  And so I think Keir's basically saying, look, you know, Jeremy Corbyn, whatever his strengths, whatever, you know, good he's done for, in the past, that, you know, he, the way he handled that and the way he allowed the antisemitism. Crisis to develop within the party means that he shouldn't stand as a candidate.

• 16:31Rory Stewart?

  Well, there we are. Okay. I mean, I'm obviously depressed about it because I don't like being chucked out myself. And I think these things should be big, big tents and they shouldn't. I think it's a mistake in British politics to make these groups too narrow. And I think it's particularly brutal to do it to someone who's been that senior. And that's like kicking out Ken Clark. So why don't we take a quick break and then come back and do rattle through some questions after the break, Alistair.

• 16:54Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

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• 18:00Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to Rest is Politics. One thing quickly, just to thank all of you who've signed up the Rest is Politics newsletter. I hope you're enjoying it. And a big thank you to the Trip Plus members who've been making use the 10% discount they get at Kohl's Books on the titles which Alistair and I are mentioning, while supporting independent businesses over multinational booksellers. So please do sign up to our free mailing list and newsletter. Just click on the link in the episode description. Have a look on our Twitter, Instagram, or email [email protected] and we'll sign you up from there. Free mailing list. Right, Alistair, questions?

• 18:34Alastair Campbell?

  Now, we weren't getting through quickly enough, so let's try this one. What Tyler, can Alistair admit to any upsides of being out of the EU? I'm struggling on that one. So that was very, very quick. Done. Here's one for you. MPs expenses, Matthew Wilcox. MPs expenses often written about as if comparable to normal expenses that an office employee might submit. Is this a false equivalence? Can you explain why thousands of expenses might actually be legitimate and valued?

• 19:03Rory Stewart?

  Yes, let me explain that. So there's something actually pretty outrageous there. You often see, and I found this as an MP, so and so spent £160,000 on their expenses. When you look through those items, you'll discover that that, almost all of that, will be the cost of their constituency office. So those will be the people who are working very hard and are processing, in the case of my constituency office, and other people are busy. I think we got something like 25,000 emails and letters a year, all of which needed to be replied to, constituency events organised. It's a serious business. And actually MPs have much, much smaller staffs than their US equivalents would have. So these aren't, as you might imagine, people sort of buying champagne on the company.

• 19:47Rory Stewart?

  These are people using the money to run the basic operations of their life. And it's also true that MPs who are in northern constituencies, people who are up in Scotland coming down to London, need to spend the night in London. And it's very weird for the public to say this is outrageous. Now, there were definitely abuses in the past, definite, definite abuse in the past, and there may still be MPs fiddling their expenses now. But the vast majority of MPs are very, very careful, and a lot of the stuff is just Twitter bait.

• 20:20Alastair Campbell?

  Nicola Bulley case. This is a question from Felix Trimbus, and we had quite a few about this. I wonder if you might briefly discuss the standards of reporting around the disappearance of Nicola Bulley and its subsequent discovery by walkers. The family particularly criticised press intrusion. However, I noticed that the Mail Online omitted those sentences from the statement when they published the statement in full, in quotes, and focused their coverage on alleged failings by the police. Do you think the media have whipped up criticism of the police to draw attention away from the way they have stoked the unwelcome social media speculation? Or will news organisations always be criticised for their handling of this sort of story? And of course, we should also add that two of the TV, two of the broadcasters, ITV and Sky, were also named as having been overly intrusive.

• 21:02Rory Stewart?

  So tell us a bit about this, because firstly, tell us a bit about Nicola Bulli, and then you, you were a journalist, right? So you were right in the heart of the bad old days, the 1980s, when people were accused of a lot of this, weren't they?

• 21:13Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think, I mean, the, it was sort of pre, that era was pre-mobile phones and all the hacking and all that sort of stuff. But certainly, I think there was a lot of journalism through time was often pushed right at the edges. But I think when you've been through the whole thing of the Leveson Inquiry, Millie Dowler's death, and which is what led to the Leveson Inquiry ultimately, and the press constantly saying that, you know, they will get their own house in order. But there does seem to be, in this case, two things coming together. So Nicola Bulli goes missing, it becomes a sort of major media story, and the press, according to the family, and according to the police who've

• 21:53Alastair Campbell?

  been speaking on their behalf, overstepped the mark repeatedly, both in terms of misrepresenting people, in terms of intrusions on their privacy, and now on their grief and so forth. And so, you know, there was an interesting debate on the radio this morning where people were talking about whether the press will ever agree to any kind of genuine regulation. Ipsos is the latest manifestation of the Press Complaints Commission. They've always been, in my view, bodies of the press, for the press, by the press. And I think that's what we have. And but I think it's typical that newspapers would take out, so they're happy to say ITV and Sky have been criticised, they're happy to say that the police have

• 22:34Alastair Campbell?

  been criticised. But criticism of themselves just sort of finds its way nicely to the spike.

• 22:40Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay, now World Bank President Replacement.

• 22:44Rory Stewart?

  The Dogfather, I like that name, The Dogfather. Who'd be the best place to replace the head of the World Bank, David Malpass?

• 22:51Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, it's got to be The Dogfather.

• 22:53Rory Stewart?

  It's got to be The Dogfather himself, very good.

• 22:55Alastair Campbell?

  Can the Dogfather not do it?

• 22:56Rory Stewart?

  The Dogfather could do it.

• 22:57Alastair Campbell?

  What about Gordon? What about Gordon?

• 22:59Rory Stewart?

  Could be Gordon, could be Gordon. That's very good. I'm afraid it's going to be an American. Could be Larry Summers, Larry Summers putting himself up the job.

• 23:05Alastair Campbell?

  Does it have to be an American?

• 23:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, no, but it's an American appointment. It would be very odd for them not to appoint an American. They never done, never not had an American.

• 23:13Alastair Campbell?

  The Americans like Gordon.

• 23:14Rory Stewart?

  They like Gordon.

• 23:15Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one, Rory, Brian Keating. Please, he says, please, can you discuss the new voter ID rules? And I think we should because I'm very worried about these. I think that this.

• 23:26Rory Stewart?

  You've done a bit of it, haven't you? So just, just, I'll do a little explainer and then you'll give your comments. So the government's introducing new voter ID rules. And there's not much evidence, really, of voter fraud at all in Britain. I'm sorry, not, not evidence of that kind of fraud of people turning up and voting when they're not supposed to vote. There's been other types of voter fraud. In fact, there's been a terrible case with an ex-Labour mayor in Tower Hamlets who got up to all kinds of horrible business during elections, but not that kind of evidence. The government's now pushing for much, much tighter ID. And the criticism of it is that this is ID that older people tend to have. And unless you're a younger person with a driving licence or a passport, it's going to become more difficult for you to vote. So I think you asked to see this as a kind of suppression of younger voters.

• 24:10Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think it could be because, look, this is, this is a new law that's been brought in without a problem to address. I mean, the, the problem, as you say, is, is next to nonexistent. And now you've got the electoral administrators saying that they're really worried that they will not be able to bring this in time for the May 2023 elections, which is when it's due to begin. Well, that's, we're talking a few weeks' time. And most people don't know this is happening. Most people will just turn up as they normally have. I'm doubtless the government will pay for a few adverts to go on the television, but, you know, in the end, so what? I just, I can't see the reason why they're doing this, why they're devoting so much parliamentary time to it, so much political capital being used on it,

• 24:54Alastair Campbell?

  unless it's sort of to get the right people to vote and the wrong people not to vote.

• 24:59Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it's odd, isn't it? Or some strange culture war that I can't quite get my head around. Thoughts on national service? So this relates to the interview with David Lammy. John Arthur asked, what are your opinions on national service, or a progressive national service, focused on neglected jobs such as fruit picking, social care, rewilding, rather than military? I was very much in favour of this. When I was running to be leader of the Conservative Party, I tried to push for a citizens' national service. The idea was very, very much not a military type of service, but to go for a commitment, people doing, form a social service. What do you think about it?

• 25:32Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'd be in favour of that. I think military service less so, although I do think, by the way, we're going to have to, there's going to have to be a major sort of strategic review right across the NATO countries, given what's going on in Ukraine. But I wouldn't be in favour of military service. But I, I also think there's a very interesting paradox, which I came across when I was doing the research for this book I've written, which is that young people in general are very, very socially conscious, okay? And yet, they are less civically engaged than when you and I were growing up. And that's, you know, research that shows that fewer than a third of people now aged eighteen to twenty-four say that they would be willing to work together with others on something to improve my neighbourhood.

• 26:17Alastair Campbell?

  And that is well, well, well down on the same question. It's almost halved.

• 26:23Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's also this terrifying statistic, I think you will have seen, that a very large number of young people say that a good military government would be better than the current democracy in Britain.

• 26:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. So maybe they want they want the military kind of national service and we want the the volunteering and doing good things kind of national service.

• 26:43Rory Stewart?

  Congressman Santos, Richie Crichton, would you like to discuss the current situation with George Santos in the US, any comparison to politicians telling fibs about their backgrounds to the UK? So, I mean, people who haven't been following this, which I guess many, many people will have done, but it is the most staggering story. Congressman Santos is a Republican congressman who claimed to work for Goldman Sachs, didn't, claimed to be Jewish and descended from Holocaust survivors, wasn't, claimed to go on to an elite college, which he didn't go, claimed to run a charity, which didn't exist, claimed to know victims of a nightclub shooting, which he didn't. His mother, he's claims, died twice, once in

• 27:26Rory Stewart?

  nine eleven, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, and yet somehow the Republicans are still gathering around him, although there was a great standoff with Mitch Romney.

• 27:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 27:40Rory Stewart?

  Trying to get him to move to the back. Any thoughts on Santos? Any thoughts on US, UK equivalents?

• 27:45Alastair Campbell?

  Well, look, I know it's of a different order when you go through them like that, but I think if you were to look at the life story and the life and times of Alexander Boris de Pfeffer Johnson, there's a guy who doesn't mind telling big fat lies and he thinks he can be Prime Minister again.

• 28:05Rory Stewart?

  That's true. Different type of lie, though, isn't it?

• 28:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Do you know the one that I've spotted a lot in recent years in politics is this this thing about people exaggerating their their academic qualifications and plagiarizing theses. Quite a lot of politicians seem to get dull on.

• 28:18Rory Stewart?

  And Germans particularly, it's a big deal in Germany, isn't it? I think there've been three or four German politicians who've gone.

• 28:23Alastair Campbell?

  And AI, AI is going to obviously make that even more prevalent. Look, George Santos is a ridiculous character. Um. He's truly ridiculous and and there's been some wonderful protests in his um in his district to people basically saying like, you know, you're just so embarrassing. You cannot be our representative, but he just sort of, he just smiles benignly and carries on and goes and makes up more stories. But I guess it's a logical extension of Trump's alternative facts, isn't it? Invent your own story, make your own story.

• 28:53Rory Stewart?

  It's just so extraordinary. I love the mother died twice, once in nine eleven.

• 28:56Alastair Campbell?

  Poor mum, how does she feel about it? Here's one for you, Rory. George Capel, what do Rory and Alice to think about the treatment of the BBC in India after the documentary on Modi? Have they seen the documentary? No, not in my case. What do they think about religious division and Hindu nationalism in India more generally? How should the UK respond to this? And this is, I don't know if you've seen this, but the BBC headquarters were raided.

• 29:19Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, on trumped up tax charges. Yeah. Which relates, I mean, we were talking about Modi and populism. I mean, it's a very, very difficult issue. It is definitely a populist government. Modi has been associated with anti-Muslim rhetoric since these horrifying riots when he was running Gujarat. We talked about that, too. There are Hindu nationalist militia who do these very, very sinister proto-fascist parades in the street. And it's something that I think we need to call out much more. But it's also something which is very tense in British politics. I mean, Modi, when he comes over to Europe, does these huge rallies, France, Britain, where enormous numbers of people turn up. Many

• 30:01Rory Stewart?

  friends of mine who are Indians are cautious about my openly criticizing and calling out Modi for what he does. And I think it's horrifying. And I think the BBC documentary was careful and justified, and this is very unfair.

• 30:14Alastair Campbell?

  I didn't see if anybody from the government spoke up for the BBC. I didn't, I didn't notice if they did or they didn't.

• 30:19Rory Stewart?

  No, I didn't see that either.

• 30:21Alastair Campbell?

  I think the fact that neither of us noticed it suggested they.

• 30:23Rory Stewart?

  Maybe not being as, well, I think that there is a real issue around this because there's a big competition amongst both political parties of courting British Asian votes and much of the British Asian community remains very committed towards Modi. And I think that may be why we haven't heard much criticism.

• 30:37Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. And you've got the government still hopeful of trying to get some sort of trade deal at some point.

• 30:45Alastair Campbell?

  Now, here's one Rory, very personal to all of us, but I think it's a very nice question. James Counter, how have you learnt to deal with the loss of someone close to you? I know this is a mental health, not politics question, but you bridge that gap occasionally.

• 30:58Rory Stewart?

  Okay, I'll start first and then I'll hand over to you. So my, my father died, who I was very, very close to. He died at the age of ninety-two. I was with him when he died and actually I tried to resuscitate him and didn't, didn't succeed. So I was with him when he was alive and I was with him for his last words and then with him as he died. I, I don't know whether there's any strong answer to that. I mean, I felt with my father that I was very, very lucky that I had a very good relationship with him and that we'd spent a lot of time together talking and therefore in a way I didn't feel so much that there was anything that we were, we were missing that had been undone. But, but Alistair, over to you, it's something you thought about much more than me.

• 31:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm a great believer in crying. I think actually letting it all out when you feel like letting it out. And sometimes in the strangest of circumstances, my sister was telling me the other day that we both, we'd lost both of our brothers and she bumped into the, the doctor that was looking after one of our brothers when he was, when he was ill and she just bumped into him outside a cafe and she just saw him and just burst into tears. And it was obviously, that's a form of grief and I'm a great believer in that. I think if you feel like crying, you should cry. I think the second thing I would say is I'd honestly Rory, I think listening to music when you're feeling sad is a, is a great thing to do, even if again, that makes you, you cry. I think

• 32:23Alastair Campbell?

  writing is very good for grief. I think sometimes writing letters to the person that you miss is a good thing to do, even though you know it's not going to go anywhere. And I think the other thing, when my, when my mum died, she, and as you know, I was in Jordan where you live and she died and while she was dead by the time I got back and we found in, in her papers, this poem that she wanted us to read at the funeral. And I now send this to anybody I hear of, including this week. I had an extraordinary situation this year. I think I told you before about a musician called Stacey Kent. Who I came across about a year ago in France. I just heard her in the background in a restaurant and I tweeted about this incredible voice I've just come across.

• 33:09Alastair Campbell?

  We've since become quite friendly and I'm going to see her when she's in Ronnie Scott's in April. And anyway, I sent her a message randomly about Next to Nothing. Um, when I was in Switzerland. Oh, that's right. I'd heard her music in a lift, in a hotel. You won't believe what I've just heard in a lift. And she sent me a version which she has just recorded of Numakita Pa by Jack Brel, who is my favourite musician of all time. And she said, it was nice to get your message out of the blue. I've been thinking a lot about parent and child relationships, father, daughter in particular. And I know you've got a very good relationship with your daughter Grace and because my dad's died recently, very, very suddenly.

• 33:53Alastair Campbell?

  And this is the last song that I ever sent to him. And it was Numakita Pa. It's her version of it. It's out on a new album later this year. It is the most, honestly, it's almost as good as Jack Brel. And Stacy will know for me to say that it's quite a thing. But anyway, so I sent her the, I sent her this poem that my mum had left for us and I can recite it to you now. It's very, very short. It just said, farewell, my family. My life is past. I loved you all to the very last. Weep not for me, but courage take. Love each other for my sake. For those you love, don't go away. They walk beside you every day.

• 34:35Alastair Campbell?

  And I, whenever I feel sort of, I, I, I feel that quite often. I, I feel my people I've missed, not just my parents and my brothers, but other people that I've lost. If I'm in a political situation, I will sometimes, I literally will talk to Philip Gould and I will go for a walk and I will talk to him. So I think these are all ways of dealing with, with grief because I don't think grief is a thing that just goes within days or weeks. I think it stays with you.

• 35:01Rory Stewart?

  Well, thank you. Well, to cheer us up on a slightly, on a different, different note, but I thought that was wonderful.

• 35:09Rory Stewart?

  Catherine Adams, always have good book recommendations. I'm off to Israel soon. So, and Alistair, book recommendations on Palestine.

• 35:18Alastair Campbell?

  Right, if I were to recommend one book going to Israel, I'd say My Promised Land by Avi Sharit.

• 35:23Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Okay, I'm going to go with Rajesh Shahade's Palestinian Walks. And also encourage somebody going to that region to think beyond just the current situation of Israel-Palestine into the older history. So there's an amazing book by Peter Brown called The Body and Society, which is about sexual renunciation and early Christianity, a lot in that region of the world. Maybe read a bit about the Ottomans. If you want a fun Ottoman book, there's a great murder mystery by Orhan Panok with a 16th century detective, which gets you into the world of the Ottoman Empire. And of course Palestine was part of the Ottoman Empire. And then I'd maybe encourage you to read writers who aren't necessarily writing about Israel-Palestine,

• 36:08Rory Stewart?

  but are writers based in Israel and Palestine. So, you know, obviously on the Palestinian side, you may want to read Edward Said's Orientalism. But on the Israeli side, you know, we've talked a lot about Yuval Noah Harari, who lives in Israel, teaches at the university there. And his books are definitely worth reading, Homodeos, et cetera.

• 36:29Alastair Campbell?

  Very good, very good. I am currently reading the proofs of a book by Siddiq Khan called Breathe, tackling the climate emergency. And that's actually, for a political politician book, it's actually rather well written and interesting. He's sort of taken his own experience of developing asthma as an adult into what he's now trying to do to change politics and policies on the climate. And you talked about your dad there, Rory.

• 36:58Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 36:58Alastair Campbell?

  The other book I'm reading, I'm going to hold it up for you. You can see it even if the, if the listeners can't.

• 37:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 37:03Alastair Campbell?

  This is the French translation of a book, a copy of which I have got for you.

• 37:08Rory Stewart?

  Oh my goodness.

• 37:09Alastair Campbell?

  Because it's called Hanoi after the war.

• 37:13Rory Stewart?

  Uh huh.

• 37:14Alastair Campbell?

  And it's a book of pictures by a guy called John Ramsden, who is one of our neighbours out in France. And John Ramsden followed in your father's footsteps in Vietnam.

• 37:26Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 37:26Alastair Campbell?

  And he was, he was deputy head of mission, probably about 20 years after your dad. And when we posted the obituary to your dad, when you talked about him in a previous episode, he said that it brought back so many memories of his time doing the same job.

• 37:43Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 37:43Alastair Campbell?

  In Vietnam, basically going and telling the Americans that this wasn't going very well and that you need to think about a new strategy. So he's given, he's, he's, he's got one for me and one for you.

• 37:53Rory Stewart?

  Good. Oh, well, that's lovely.

• 37:55Alastair Campbell?

  Fabulous pictures.

• 37:56Rory Stewart?

  And I want to finish with a thanks to you because myself, Shashana, my wife and my mother, who you know, Sally, have been watching Only Murders in the Building, the Steve Martin comedy that you recommended.

• 38:07Alastair Campbell?

  What do you think?

• 38:09Rory Stewart?

  I think it's brilliant. It's absolutely brilliant. They're much better podcasters than us. We should start recording in closets. I like the fact that Steve Martin's made to record in a really hot closet.

• 38:18Alastair Campbell?

  Do you see, do you see they are better podcasters? They probably spend, I think they spend more time talking to each other about their podcast than us, that's for sure. Like seven days a week. It is quite funny though, isn't it?

• 38:30Rory Stewart?

  That's beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. All right. Thank you, Alistair.

• 38:33Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.

• 38:33Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

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