204. Scotland's pivotal role, the moment everything changed, and whether to serve under Starmer (Part 1)

Would Rory serve in a Keir Starmer Labour cabinet? How important is Scotland in the next election? What was the most under-appreciated political moment of 2023? Join Rory and Alastair for an end of year TRIP special, as they answer all these questions and more. Part 2 out Thursday - but TRIP Plus members can listen right now - sign up at therestispolitics.com 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ 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/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month.

• 1:08Speaker 03

  It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 1:13Speaker 04

  Botox on botulinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have 14 or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's Disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert-Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 1:58Speaker 03

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 2:05Speaker 05

  A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty, crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, wrapping you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 2:28Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with an end of year special with me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:34Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart, and hope everybody's recovering well from their Christmas festivities.

• 2:39Alastair Campbell?

  So Rory, we're gonna, as we did last year, whizz through 2023, maybe also all the time thinking about looking forward to 2024. But by going through a few categories and giving out a few nominal honorary awards.

• 2:56Rory Stewart?

  Very good. And can I firstly pay tribute, Alistair? I'm very, very flattered. You are wearing the Christmas present I sent you. So that's the first bit of sort of Christmas cheer.

• 3:06Alastair Campbell?

  Shall I describe it?

• 3:07Rory Stewart?

  Yes, please. Yeah.

• 3:08Alastair Campbell?

  Those who came to the Alba Hall may have noticed that when I struck up ode to joy on the bagpipes, Rory dug into a huge carrier bag behind his chair and pulled out this Stuart tartan jacket, although I think, and they call shackets or jackets, what do they call them? When they're sort of part, I don't know, Fiona's got work for them. And unbeknownst to me, Fiona afterwards said to you, oh, God, Alistair would love one of those. And the next thing I know, Rory, it arrives in the post this morning. That's very kind. Thank you very, very much.

• 3:42Rory Stewart?

  Very happy Christmas.

• 3:43Alastair Campbell?

  Thank you. Happy Christmas to you and your family.

• 3:45Rory Stewart?

  Thank you.

• 3:46Alastair Campbell?

  Let's start positive with the best, our best and worst UK politician. Best first.

• 3:52Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's a lovely question. So one of the two standout things I thought that we did this year, which I really enjoyed, was our two Andys leading interview, where we talked to Andy Burnham and Andy Street, who are the mayors responsible for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands. And I thought they were a really interesting example of a new type of British politics with a strong sense on what was particular and local about their own economies and industries. They weren't too tribal. They interacted well in the room and I was really charmed and won over by them.

• 4:25Alastair Campbell?

  So they are your UK politician of the year jointly?

• 4:28Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's actually some other people. I mean, if I was gonna make, just before I hand over to you, because I know you'll have a lot of thoughts. I'm gonna make a little shout out to, because my worst UK politician of the year, as a sort of spoiler, is a Conservative politician. But I want to try to pay some tribute to some of the Conservative politicians who I think I had a better year. Ben Wallace, for example, who was the Secretary of State for Defence, who I think Completed a really good tenure as a Defence Secretary, probably will go down as one of our probably most memorable Defence Secretaries in the last 20, 30 years. And really showed how somebody who had been a veteran politician, started as a Member of the Scottish Parliament, then a long-term Member of the Westminster Parliament, wasn't

• 5:12Rory Stewart?

  a high flyer, basically overlooked by David Cameron, didn't make it into the Cabinet until pretty late in his career, turned out to be a really compelling thoughtful Defence Secretary with a real grip on the details. David Cameron, of course, who I often grumble about, but has made quite a good start so far, at least at the moment that we're recording, as a Foreign Secretary, where he's done some quite interesting stuff on challenging settlers, the West Bank, while also trying to play his part in finding his way towards a compromise on ceasefire in Gaza. And finally, my friend Alex Chalk, I know it's always an absolute death whenever I praise one of my friends in the Cabinet, but he has made real progress, he's the Lord Chancellor

• 5:57Rory Stewart?

  of Secretary of State for Justice, made real progress on trying to address something we talk about a lot, which is this IPP sentences, which are these sort of indefinite life sentences that people have received. He's the first Secretary of State to really try to make some real efforts on that for more than 10 years. And he's also made the first moves towards getting rid of short sentences, which should relieve some pressure on our prison system. Over to you.

• 6:21Alastair Campbell?

  It was also when I got back from Edinburgh after Alistair Darling's funeral, I got back, turned on the TV, it was Channel 4 news, and there was your friend Alex Chalk doing a park run inside the grounds of a prison.

• 6:36Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 6:37Alastair Campbell?

  And there were interviews with him and also some prisoners who were doing this park run inside the prison, and he was talking very well about the importance of exercise as part of any prisoner's life. Hats off to him for that. He is not, however, my UK Politician of the Year. I'm going to pin you down, though. If you had to name one of those people who is your UK Politician of the Year, I'll allow you the two Andes as one, but I'm going to demand a name.

• 7:06Rory Stewart?

  I will go for, yeah, I'll go for the two Andes. I think they're a very interesting perky representation for new politics in Britain.

• 7:14Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I, I hope I'm not being too tribal here, Rory. I'm going to, I'm also going to go for a conservative as my worst UK politician. I've got a horrible feeling we're going to choose the same person. But my politician of the, my UK politician of the year, I'm going for Anas Sawa.

• 7:30Rory Stewart?

  Ah, tell us a little bit. So, so somebody, we both had lunch with him in Edinburgh not so long ago. Tell us a little bit about why you've been particularly excited by Anas Sawa.

• 7:38Alastair Campbell?

  Well, first of all, I think you'll find it was Glasgow.

• 7:41Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Thank you so much.

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  So Glasgow's at the west of Scotland.

• 7:46Rory Stewart?

  Apologise, I'm still in Utah. It's very, very early in the morning.

• 7:49Alastair Campbell?

  So I think Anas Sawa, who I've, I've known for some time, but I think he's really, really risen to the, the job of leader of the Scottish Labour Party. So he took over in 2021. Scottish Labour was in a complete mess. I can remember once being sounded out if I would go and do an event for Scottish Labour and they, they basically said, it wasn't just that they were getting, they were struggling to get speakers, they were struggling to get anyone who could go to this, this fundraiser. And I talked when I was up at Alistair's funeral, Douglas Alexander, uh, who, as you know, was a member of the new Labour Cabinet and is now going, lost his seat, but he's now, he's, he's standing for Parliament again next time around.

• 8:33Rory Stewart?

  Which is a bit of an inspiration for me because it's, it's a, he was Secretary of State for International Development.

• 8:37Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 8:38Rory Stewart?

  He left Parliament for some time and is now trying to come back in again as a backbencher. So yeah, very interesting.

• 8:43Alastair Campbell?

  Slovenian. It just shows you how the importance of, of character and personality, whether we like it or not. He said that Anas's character and personality had really changed the mood inside the party. And that when they were campaigning in the Rothergill by-election, which is one of the big successes for Labour in, in recent months, winning that back from the SNP. He said that people like him, and you will know this, you know, you you get inundated with off demands to go and help the cause, et cetera. He said people were loving rushing into Rotherglen to help. And it wasn't just that they felt that they might win, it was because the mood in the party was so good.

• 9:21Rory Stewart?

  My sense of him is two things. One is that he's an extraordinary sort of part of a political dynasty now. You know, his father was a Labour MP and then went on to be, I think, the chief minister in the Punjab. So he then went into Pakistani politics. But also, he says his son is very interested in politics, his young son. But he's also, I think the second thing is, along with really loving politics, really enjoying it, he's got a great kind of humour, hasn't he? He's a very sort of jolly cheerful person. He's very good at kind of ribbing Tories like me, very good at kind of keeping the conversation going, keeps it quite light, knows when to be serious. But I mean, he's, I mean, I really enjoyed sitting next to him. I thought he was, I can see why people enjoy campaigning with him.

• 10:03Alastair Campbell?

  He's got, I think he's got real empathy and he's got real confidence and he kind of fills a room. And that thing you were saying about ribbing Tories, he also knows when not to rib Tories. So in the the event, there was a marquee, in fact, the best line, there were some wonderful speeches at Alistair's funeral. But his son Callum, I thought it was the the best line of the lot. He said that his dad would have been horrified at how much they'd paid to rent a marquee in the grounds of the cathedral for the do afterwards. But Anas and I were talking and a lady that I'd met before but don't know at all well, a Conservative peer, I think she's called Baroness Mubarak. And she came over and started talking to us and I started ribbing her about how awful the Tories were and she's lucky she doesn't have a vote because, I mean, who the hell could, honestly, who

• 10:48Alastair Campbell?

  could vote for this lot, blah, blah, blah, blah. And Anas was the one who kept stepping in and saying, you know, just ignore him, he's he's far too tribal, he's this, that, the other. He's very, very funny, he's very, very charming, he's very, very empathetic. He was also, he's managed to, one of the problems that Labour leaders in Scotland have always had, is how do you manage having a good, close relationship with the Westminster leader of the Labour Party, the UK leader, whilst at the same time, being able to project yourself as being your own man. And of course, he did call for a ceasefire in Gaza before Kiev, but he did it in a way that it wasn't sort of Presented as a sort of massive split because I think he's established they have this close relationship.

• 11:30Rory Stewart?

  It's very, it's clever that, isn't it? Because that was always something when Ruth Davidson was running the Tory party in Scotland. There were always these moments, and particularly it became very, very clear when Boris Johnson came in because she was very much from my part of the party, the sort of left centre of the Conservative Party. That rift became very extreme. And when people went into the 2019 election, Scottish Conservatives were of course absolutely terrified because however popular Boris Johnson might have been in some parts of the country, he was not at all popular in Scotland. And that was the moment where we started all this talk about a Conservative Liberal Unionist party.

• 12:03Alastair Campbell?

  Slup.

• 12:04Rory Stewart?

  Sluts.

• 12:05Alastair Campbell?

  The other thing, of course, that why, why this is as well as the fact that I like Anas and rate him, but also the revival of Labour in Scotland is fundamental to the possibility of there being a return of a Labour government in the UK. If Scotland don't recover from the SNP's dominance, and of course, he'd be the first to accept.

• 12:23Rory Stewart?

  That's a really important point, Alistair. And, you know, somebody can ultimately check the precise stats, but roughly speaking, if Labour performs well in Scotland, and I heard this actually from Anna Sawa, Labour will only need a 5% swing in the rest of the country to be able to form a decent majority. But if Labour performs badly in Scotland, Labour will need something closer to a 20-point swing in order to achieve the same results. So Scotland is absolutely critical for Labour's ability to win the next election with a comfortable majority. But it's also, and I, this is something that both of us, I think, care about, it is absolutely critical for keeping the United Kingdom together because having big United Kingdom-wide parties, healthy Labour parties, Conservative parties, Lib Dem parties in Scotland and England are

• 13:08Rory Stewart?

  very, very important. If you end up in a world in which the SNP dominates endlessly, that's, that increases pressure for independents, of course.

• 13:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, the other point I would make about about Anas is that I think he would recognise that just as Keir Starmer has been helped by the Richard Johnson and by Truss's kamikaze budget, so Anas has had the, if you like, the good fortune politically to be there leading Labour at a time when you've had the Salmon problems, you've had the Sturgeon arrests and so forth.

• 13:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, again, again, for listeners, just to remind people, all these references are not to fish, they're in fact references to the fact that the leader of the Scottish National Party two times ago, Alex Salmon, ended up in extraordinary court cases and fights with his own party, including allegations around harassment. And then Nicola Sturgeon has ended up connected to police investigations, particularly targeted most clearly against her husband, which include allegations of large amounts of funds going missing, of camper vans, and now allegations yet to be proven in court that that electric Jaguars were purchased off the money. And all of this has really hit very hard, somebody who was a central figure for the SNP.

• 14:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And so I think Anas Star will recognise that has been to Labour's political advantage. But in a way, you have to be the right man in the right place at the right time. And I think that's what, what, back to this point about his warmth and empathy as a, as a human being, I think it's, I think it's a lot of the credit goes to him for that transformation of Labour in Scotland. The one black mark against him, Rory, just to show I'm not 100% tribal, I wish he didn't use private schools, but there we are.

• 14:47Rory Stewart?

  He uses private schools, very good. Okay, well, listen, and good, interesting also that we both chose figures who are from devolved administrations, I mean, or work in Scottish politics, or Manchester and Birmingham, the other cases. I don't think we need to waste much time on the worst UK politician, because let's say together, one, two, three, Suella.

• 15:08Alastair Campbell?

  Bravon, there we go. Who was your second choice? Because I had another Tory woman as my second choice.

• 15:16Rory Stewart?

  Go on then, who's your second?

• 15:17Alastair Campbell?

  Well, in fact, I had two, Liz Truss or Nadine Dorries. And I felt bad that there were three women, but they have been pretty awful, a lot of them.

• 15:23Rory Stewart?

  It was pretty awful. The Covid inquiry gave me so much material for thinking about just what was going wrong, not just sadly with some of the elected politicians, but also sadly some of the senior civil servants in the room. Anyway, let's let's move on to foreign affairs. Give us your best foreign politician.

• 15:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, my best and worst are both called Donald.

• 15:42Rory Stewart?

  Oh, go on then.

• 15:44Alastair Campbell?

  Donald Tusk.

• 15:45Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 15:45Alastair Campbell?

  And Donald Trump. Tusk for winning the election in Poland, for surviving a truly horrible campaign against him. Then, after he won the election, for surviving all sorts of Trumpian attempts to stop him taking office. And hopefully, I I hope, being a sign of the possible reversal of the tide of populism. And I guess we're both going to agree on the worst, aren't we? It's got to be Trump.

• 16:16Rory Stewart?

  We are going to agree on the worst. And I think it's, you know, we're talking at a very interesting moment where there's going to be an appeal up from this judgment in Colorado about whether Donald Trump can run. But having been quite lighthearted so far, I think next year is basically defined, we've said, as the year of elections, but above all, as the year of the election in which Donald Trump could be running and could become President-elect of the United States. And that would change almost everything. The whole story of a disintegrating world order, of the rise of a very nasty form of authoritarian populism, of lack of international cooperation on climate, on AI, of Putin dominating in Ukraine,

• 16:56Rory Stewart?

  all of this, as well as the collapse of many of the most fundamental bits of the fabric of the democracy of the wealthiest country on earth, is going to come out of what would happen if this evil man won the election in the United States. So for the rest of his politics, and I think we'll be going to the States together next year, that is probably the biggest issue dominating not just the US but the world.

• 17:19Alastair Campbell?

  I just before I joined you, I had a meeting today with a guy called Tucker Eskew, who I worked with during the Iraq War. And you'll be pleased to know, Roy, that even though he worked for me in number 10, seconded by George W. Bush, he is, he's ended up a bit closer to your view of Iraq than than mine. But the point, he he's a lifelong Republican. He's been a, he's a Republican to his bones. Worked very closely with Bush. He worked for Reagan. He worked for Sarah Palin. You know, you meet the guy and you know he's a Republican. And he voted Democrat for the first time in his life. And he said he hoped it would be the last

• 18:04Alastair Campbell?

  time he had to vote for Democrat, but he voted to stop Trump. And he's genuinely worried. He's genuinely worried that Trump will stand, that Trump can win. He shares your view that he thinks that Biden has to step aside. And he says that's a widespread view now in American politics. But it was interesting to talk to him about just how far removed the Trump Republicanism feels from somebody like him, who, as I say, is absolutely as Republican as they come. And like you, he shares your view that it's a real and present danger to the very future of democracy. And of course, if it's a danger to democracy in the United States, that has an impact right around the world.

• 18:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. Well, let's give a little, I'd like to give a shout out to an American politician from Democratic Party as my best politician, best foreign politician. And that is Rosa Deloro. So Rosa Deloro is an absolute veteran politician from Connecticut. She represents, she's a Congresswoman from New Haven. Some people who follow American politics closely will recognize her as, because she occasionally turns her hair bright pink or electric green. She was chairman of the Appropriations Committee in the first two years of the Biden administration. It's a very, very serious job in Congress. And she has been the most astonishing. I mean, she's what we would call a really

• 19:32Rory Stewart?

  passionate local constituency MP. I mean, she is absolutely into volunteering with the groups, working with asylum seekers in Connecticut, supporting outreach and literacy programs to disadvantaged communities. She's just a real community champion. But she also introduced child tax credits for the first time in the United States, delivering three and a half thousand dollars per child to low income families in the United States, and transformed poverty, lifted millions of people in the United States out of poverty at the end of a career that lasted many, many decades. And, you know, heartbreakingly for her, unfortunately, those policies on child tax credits were then reversed, and

• 20:14Rory Stewart?

  she's now fighting very hard to get it back on the Democratic Party manifesto for the next election. But shouts out to Rosa Loro as a sign of things that can still work in the United States.

• 20:24Alastair Campbell?

  Well, that's good. That's excellent. Let's take a quick break and then back with more categories in a minute.

• 20:30Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  It could be chronic migraine, fifteen or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those who have fourteen or fewer headache days a month. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis, or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 21:23Speaker 03

  Why wait? Ask your doctor. Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more.

• 21:30Speaker 05

  A payday candy bar is miles and miles of peanuts. Salty, crunchy peanuts, sweet, sweet caramel, raving you up with every bite. Enjoy the tasty journey, my friend. Payday Peanut Caramel Bar.

• 21:46Speaker 06

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• 22:20Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to our, what I want to call our holiday special. What did you think about the fact that the rest of this politics has apparently gone into what I believe is called merch? We managed to sell T-shirts with sort of slightly strange, I mean, they looked, you're more of a kind of music connoisseur. But looking at those black T-shirts with the images, what kind of band would you associate with those kind of T-shirts?

• 22:40Alastair Campbell?

  I'd say I looked like 80s country.

• 22:43Rory Stewart?

  Right, lovely.

• 22:44Alastair Campbell?

  And you looked like wannabe punk rock.

• 22:48Rory Stewart?

  Wannabe punk rock, good, good, good.

• 22:50Alastair Campbell?

  Not quite make it, kind of Oxbridge punk.

• 22:54Alastair Campbell?

  Doesn't quite go full Johnny Rotten.

• 22:57Rory Stewart?

  In a tribute to Johnny Rotten, though, I mean, as our next category, I'm proposing speech of the year. And in true tribute to the Sex Pistols, I want to, of course, to nominate the King for his speech at COP.

• 23:09Alastair Campbell?

  How did I, how did I guess you were going to do that?

• 23:12Rory Stewart?

  So this has been, I think, a year which, along with many, many challenges, has probably been a positive year, I would say, for King Charles. Very difficult transition from his incredibly much loved mother, who had been in, obviously, for many, many decades. And I think the end of the year, that speech at COP, where he opened it, really drew the world's attention. A time when people were being very muddled and complacent to just how extreme this crisis is. And the amounts of international respect that he got out of it. And also a sense that he was able to do that in a way that perhaps other world leaders were not able to do in quite the same way.

• 23:54Rory Stewart?

  He was given the space and the respect to put a British voice forward. And clearly, I think most of the climate delegates respected it. And I think he really delivered a beautiful speech, which may be worth reading. Anyway, over to you on speech of the year.

• 24:07Alastair Campbell?

  I think it was an important speech and especially given that a year ago, Rishi Sunak, who I think... Is becoming more and more petulant the longer he stays in office, but one of his early acts of petulance was to say that Charles couldn't go to to cop. And yet I think you're right that his voice was heard. You saw that in the responses from some of the other, because the fact that he was there at the start meant that a lot of the kind of really big players in the world were there at that time. So they were all responding very, very positively to it. So one, I was not surprised that you chose that as your speech of the year. But two, I think it's a it's a fair choice. I am, again, sorry if you please don't sound too tribal, but I am going to go for the speech

• 24:51Alastair Campbell?

  that Harriet Harman made in the debate on the privileges committee report and to Boris Johnson. Why? Because Harriet Harman had been put in this position, Chris Bryant had recused himself. She was chairing the committee. She was subject to some pretty unpleasant attack by the lots of conservatives and by the right wing press, but I think showed real political integrity and courage. But what I liked about her speech was that she caught she didn't just talk about herself. She actually singled out the conservatives on that committee for the praise that she was doling around. She said they'd had to be resilient. They've had to withstand threats, intimidation and harassment designed to

• 25:33Alastair Campbell?

  challenge the legitimacy of the inquiry, to drive them off the committee and thereby frustrate the attention of this house that the inquiry should be carried out.

• 25:40Rory Stewart?

  So so so honestly, you're talking about people like Alberto Costa, who I think did some very good questioning of of Boris Johnson. And then I think you also

• 25:50Alastair Campbell?

  Charles Walker.

• 25:51Rory Stewart?

  Charles Walker.

• 25:52Alastair Campbell?

  And Bernard Jenkin, who I I think would he have been defined as a friend of Boris Johnson? I think he was sort of in that wing of the party.

• 25:58Rory Stewart?

  I think Ben Jenkin is an interesting figure, very interesting figure. He's the son of a member of parliament, like some other people like Andrew Mitchell. He's somebody who has been on the right of the party, very much on the eurosceptic side. But he's also somebody who has been very serious about standards in public life. So when I was in Parliament as a backbencher, he was chairing the committee that spent a lot of time looking at the way in which the values and structures of government and the civil service worked and has done, I think, good work on that and serious work on that.

• 26:26Alastair Campbell?

  Well, so well done to that committee and the right honourable Harriet Harman. But I also think she she genuinely understood, and this is something that you and I talked about a lot. She said this, because he was Prime Minister, Johnson's dishonesty, if left unchecked, would have contaminated the whole of government, allowing misleading to become commonplace and thus erode the standards which are essential for the health of our democracy. Far from undermining ministers, this report does precisely the opposite.

• 26:58Rory Stewart?

  And can I come, can I pay tribute to her on this? I mean, I think, I think she's absolutely put her finger on it. And I think it's the sense of this word undermining or the kind of coarsening of democracy that that is very difficult to trace. But if we're looking at the ways in which our democracies feel less healthy than they did, maybe in the early 1990s or mid 1990s, or even maybe in the early 2000s, and the rise of populism and the way in which, you wanted to talk a little bit about the astonishingly sort of shocking results the AFD got in Germany, the Alternative für Deutschland, this right wing party in Germany. A lot of this is about the way in which democracy is undermined, not necessarily always by dramatic military coups, but by a gradual loosening of standards, a gradual

• 27:43Rory Stewart?

  degradation, or in the case of Donald Trump, you know, an accelerating degradation, till you normalize, I think it's a word you often use, you kind of normalize non-democratic behaviour. Anyway, back to you.

• 27:53Alastair Campbell?

  No, I think that's absolutely right. And that's why I, you know, I think I bumped into a Tory MP on the, on the train the other day. And he said, God, you do go on about Boris an awful lot. And, you know, I mean, the guy's gone now, forget it. And I think that really misunderstands why, and I think you're in the same place, why it's important not to stop, keep going on about it. Because one of the points that this friend of mine, Takareski, was making was that our parliament is what is, what has managed to put a stake through Johnson's career in a way that in America, they've not been able to do that with Trump, even though he's also a liar and a cheat and a charlatan. And I

• 28:34Alastair Campbell?

  think if we sort of just say, oh, let's sort of move it on, let's forget about it, let's draw a line, before you know it, the normalization will include people saying, ah, well, was he really as bad as that? Shouldn't we sort of give him another go kind of thing. So we should not give up on that. But I thought Harriet, she didn't make it about herself. She made it about principles of democracy. I think doing that report was a very, very difficult thing to do. The fact she could hold that committee together in the way that she did. And I thought her speech was very, very well judged. And in the spirit of not just being tribal, I thought Penny Mordaunt's response to Harriet was very good as well.

• 29:08Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Well, this brings us to a big question. What do you think the biggest political moment of 2023 was?

• 29:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm going for October the 7th. I think if you're looking for a moment that defined reshaped the political debate in most countries of the world, or many countries of the world, that was it. The fact that it was one of those moments that we felt straight away, this really, really matters, a bit like September the 11th, you felt straight away, this really, really matters. Now, I didn't, with September the 11th, I felt it matters, and I felt the significance of this is going to be felt for decades, which it has. And I think October the 7th is in that, in that category. And the fact that it's caused such difficulties for, for Joe Biden, the fact that it's caused, it's caused difficulties,

• 29:58Alastair Campbell?

  particularly actually for Labour in the UK context, for Macron in France, it's, it's, and, and of course, it's also, it's brought to a head. And I think one of the best things we've done this year have been these interviews that we've done with people who really know and understand the Middle East. I think it's, it's underlined just how difficult it is to address multifaceted, complex problems in this polarized post-truth world.

• 30:24Rory Stewart?

  And, and also that there's nothing sort of international anymore, that everything becomes domestic, that it's the sense of the world shrinking. I was very struck, even when I went into Parliament first in 2010, how colleagues would say to me, you know, what's your position on Cyprus? You know, are you pro Turk or pro Greek? Or what's your position on Azad Kashmir, India, Pakistan? And I remember thinking, this is really weird.

• 30:54Rory Stewart?

  Right, these are colleagues who haven't really visited those parts of the world. I've probably spent more time in those parts of the world than they have. But it's all domestic for them. I mean, it's and it's very worrying when you begin to realise that the foreign policy of a country like Britain isn't really, as you might imagine, Britain's standing back, looking at the world, trying to balance its sense of history, moral obligations, its own national interest. But instead being sucked immediately, like, I don't know, down a water slide of acceleration into taking sides on things because it's all exploding on Twitter, because marginal seats are suddenly being defined by it, because party donors are coming in and hammering in messages, because marches are exploding on the streets.

• 31:38Rory Stewart?

  The international becomes domestic very quickly in the modern world.

• 31:41Speaker 07

  Okay, most under discussed, under appreciated moment of the year.

• 31:46Rory Stewart?

  Okay, now let me, let me try this one. So I think that domestically, I'd make a shout out for Rishi Sunak's AI summit. I think we often, in the day to day fight, miss the big picture. And because we've said it so often over the last few months, people are getting bored of it, but it still remains true that the transformations in artificial intelligence, and in particular, the next generation of the large language models that are coming along, are going to completely transform not just technology, productivity, but humanity itself, and do it very, very quickly. And there is an extraordinary story around both potential, but also threats, risks of proliferation that we haven't begun to get our heads around.

• 32:29Rory Stewart?

  I mean, I was talking again to some actually really impressive people who the UK government's now employing. I've been really impressed in my talks with some of the key figures within the British government, and we've got some really smart people now working internally. But what they're of course talking about is the billions that are now being spent, not just in, in places like China, but now in the Middle East, delivering large language models, which, yes, they won't be the cutting edge models which Microsoft is able to finance or Google's able to get behind, but they will be pretty close behind. They will be taking over the equivalents of ChatGPT four pretty quickly. And that is going to be a very strange world. So shout out to Rishi Sunak for gripping that. It's something that was very much, I think, to use the American expression, in his wheelhouse.

• 33:13Rory Stewart?

  He clearly is interested in technology. He got a pretty impressive collection of people together. And a shout out also to a man you admire a lot, Joe Biden, for getting an executive order together very quickly. On AI and trying to think hard on what he can do to work with the big US technology companies to stress test some of those threats. So that was my domestic one. On my international, Nagorno-Karabakh, really very, very little discussed, but was a seismic change from the 1990s. That was one of those frozen conflicts where the movement of the Azerbaijanis, Aliyev, holding on their father and son for more than 20 years, waiting to get their hands on that territory again, very much echoing Putin's

• 33:58Rory Stewart?

  move in Ukraine and very much beginning to inspire other people. As we discussed last week, Vucic in Serbia now taking some ideas, whether he couldn't do stuff in Kosovo or in Republika Srpska off the back of this. So that I think is my underappreciated moment. Over to you.

• 34:13Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. On the AI, I think it was possibly underappreciated, but certainly wasn't under discussed. I think partly because Elon Musk was there and he's become one of the kind of figures that seems to be able to sort of make waves and make news, whatever he does and however he does it. But I agree with you. I think it was it was an important event. My overseas one, I think would be Sudan. I think what's happening in Sudan at the moment is off the scale horrific and it is dropped right off the international agenda in a way that is frankly shameful and terrifying. My domestic one, my runner up is something that actually we did discuss and it did get quite a lot of attention, which was the Resolution Foundation report on the economy.

• 34:58Rory Stewart?

  Which was brilliant. Everybody must read it. Anyone interested in the future of the UK economy, brilliant report.

• 35:02Alastair Campbell?

  But my other, my winner is actually a National Audit Office report, which got next to no coverage that I can remember, but it was published in March and it was about something similar to the theme you were talking about earlier. It was this kind of creeping corruption in our public services, in the use of public money, and I think we've really, really got to watch this. I think there is a sense that corruption, we've just, you know, we talked last week about the whole Michel Monet thing, but there have been so many cases related to COVID and related to other aspects of, of public procurement in particular, where situations have been normalized and accepted that I think a few years ago would have been creating front page news and panorama specials.

• 35:45Rory Stewart?

  And this is something I was talking to a friend of mine who's very heavily involved in Nigerian politics about, and this is a difficult thing to say, so I don't want to get this wrong, but there is a relationship between corruption and a sense of government being frozen. So one of the reasons that corruption happens is of course greed, but another reason that corruption can be facilitated is people frustrated at being blocked by the system, trying to find workarounds, which then unscrupulous businessmen will exploit. So what do I mean by that? The, the reason why the Michel Monet thing was able to happen is of course because the government was desperate to try to get in PPE equipment very, very quickly, and they didn't want to have to go through the normal procurement rules. And there is a sense, it's something we've talked about, that one of the challenges in Britain

• 36:30Rory Stewart?

  is things are unbelievably slow. For, for good reasons, we've built up incredibly careful legal protections and checks on every single stage of doing anything, which is why, you know, as you keep pointing out, they were discussing a third runway at Heathrow when you were in office. We've been discussing new signalling on the Piccadilly line since the 1970s, et cetera, et cetera. And therefore, the pressure builds to think, screw the system, all these people are just putting barriers in my way, I'm going to find a cut around. I'm going to get on the phone to someone who's going to sort this out, get it built, get it done. And that's where the corruption comes from. And so one way of addressing corruption is of course to tighten the legal protection. Another thing is also to work

• 37:12Rory Stewart?

  out how do we do good, clean, quick, efficient and honest government policy and procurement, which doesn't tempt people to try to bend the rules.

• 37:20Alastair Campbell?

  Well, and, and I think, but if you, if you put it alongside a period of government where with chances like Johnson, the rule of law has been undermined, where it has become fairly commonplace for people to stand up in parliament and say things that, that aren't true, and nobody seems to bat an eyelid anymore. I think that all contributes to this sense of It's what you can get away with that counts. And look, I don't think many people will have any sympathy for Michelle Moan. But what you can see from the way she's trying to defend herself is her defence seems to be, well, kind of everybody knew and everybody was at it. And once that is the defining culture, then I think your politics is rotten when that happens.

• 38:03Rory Stewart?

  But again, you will have experienced this in government, and I experienced it again and again. It is also true that it can be very, very frustrating having to watch months go by following unbelievably complicated procedures, processes, legal things, and the temptation for governments that are trying to get stuff done to find some way around. I mean, I remember when I was trying to get scanners into prisons to search prison officers and prisoners coming in and out of prison to check they weren't bringing in illegal items, weapons, phones, drugs. And I was told first that I couldn't do it because it would be breaking human

• 38:46Rory Stewart?

  rights law. I spent, I think, a month fighting that. Then I was told that it was a health risk, and I spent another month fighting health risk questions about scanners. Then I was told that the unions would oppose it, and I had to, you know, go through a very long process with the unions. Then I was told that it was simply wouldn't work with it. I mean, and on and on and on. And with something like that, you're sitting there thinking, this has to be easy, right? Why can't we search people coming in and out of prison? And that's where the temptation of somebody to come along and say, you know, as a minister, you almost end up after about six months, they're saying, for goodness sake, just do it, right? And of course, the civil servant is saying, no, no, no, no minister, you know, you've got this all that you've got to follow.

• 39:27Alastair Campbell?

  Does that make you think that, for example, when Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, they're making a very, very big thing about streamlining, making much simpler the planning system? That is easier said than done when you've got all the processes that are in place. You have to get rid of processes before you can actually streamline.

• 39:43Rory Stewart?

  Exactly. And of course, one of the biggest ones that they will face is environmental.

• 39:48Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 39:48Rory Stewart?

  Because remember that one of the things the Conservatives tried to do to speed up planning was to try to get rid of some of the water assessments, which of course produced a huge backlash. And you would have heard jokes about the fact that you have to check for newts before you do stuff. But a lot of these things are put in for very good reasons, but they're part of the reasons why infrastructure takes 10 times as long to get done in Britain than it does in China. So, and just following up on that, one of the things that was central to what you did when you came in with New Labour was this whole concept of Deliverology, wasn't it? Have I got that wrong? Deliverology? That was your delivery unit?

• 40:29Alastair Campbell?

  Who said Deliverology? Is that the title of a book or something?

• 40:32Rory Stewart?

  Wasn't that by your friend, Sir Michael?

• 40:34Alastair Campbell?

  Michael Barber. I think that, well, certainly delivery and the fact you want policies and then you want to be able to deliver them. And that's why you have to be pretty clear about what the big policies are going to be, because you do need that parliamentary mandate to be able to get stuff through the Lords, to be able to...

• 40:49Rory Stewart?

  And one of the things that excited me at the Albert Hall, which I really was liking, is you were saying that one of the big strategic calls for Kier Sama should be around ethics and around cleaning up government. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about that? And also tell us a little bit about how you might make that retail? How would you communicate that as part of a manifesto, get people excited about it? Give us the idea and then sell it.

• 41:09Alastair Campbell?

  Okay. Well, I was pleased that I'd already rehearsed it once or twice on you. I've discussed it with a few Labour people. I think that Labour are going to need what I call cost-neutral campaigns, which then morph into something meaningful and significant in government. And I think this thing about standards in public life, some of the things we've been talking about, creeping corruption, normalisation of lying, all the stuff that's been going on, particularly since Brexit and Johnson. And I, the suggestion I made at the Albert Hall was that Keir Starmer pays tribute to John Major for at least attempting to address these issues with the Nolan Principles, points out that one of the things that's really rotted our body politic in recent

• 41:53Alastair Campbell?

  years has been a government, a series of governments which have not adhered to those principles, and then makes absolutely clear, if any of his ministers offend any of them, honesty, openness, objectivity, selfless integrity, accountability, and leadership, they're out. And I think that would play to his strengths as somebody who fundamentally believes in public service and the rule of law, play to his strengths as somebody who's kind of laying down a pretty strong disciplinary message, which is, I think, getting disciplined back in the Labour Party has been a big part of his story as Labour leader. And it also allows, this is the campaigning bit, it gives you justification for reminding the public

• 42:35Alastair Campbell?

  going into the election campaign of all these terrible things that we've actually forgotten about. There's so many scandals, there'd be so many scandals, it's like Trump, that we forget.

• 42:44Rory Stewart?

  And just give us the sales pitch. What's, so, I mean, if, let's say the Labour campaign team came at you and said, well, that's very, you know, kind of worthy, Alastair, but that's not really going to make any votes. How does that work on a leaflet?

• 42:55Alastair Campbell?

  Well, what you say to that is, first of all, I would say to them, well, you should have been at the Albert Hall, because it went down a storm, because I think the public are crying out for decent standards in public life. I think that the retail bit is actually to say that part of the job of being a leader is to show that where things have gone wrong, you have methods, you have plans to fix them. If we continue down this road of creeping corruption, we lose our standing in the world, we cease to be a place where people trust us, trust us as a place to do business. But more importantly, you're back to the whole thing about, you know, politics is nothing unless it's a crusade. And so I would sell it as politics being absolutely fundamental to the success of

• 43:39Alastair Campbell?

  a country. And if we don't fix our politics, we're not going to be able to fix the fundamentals in our country. So you make, you make it. You basically have to do a better job of explaining why politics matters.

• 43:50Rory Stewart?

  Briefly, before we end this holiday session.

• 43:54Alastair Campbell?

  Part one, Rory, it's only part one.

• 43:56Rory Stewart?

  Part one, before we end part one of holiday session. Little shout out also to one of your very skillful things you managed to do at the Royal Albert Hall, which was to ask me whether I would be prepared to serve in a Starmer cabinet.

• 44:07Alastair Campbell?

  Yes.

• 44:08Rory Stewart?

  I said yes.

• 44:09Alastair Campbell?

  Did you think I was Elizabeth Day or something?

• 44:10Rory Stewart?

  It was quite Elizabeth Day like, and I could see your face. And sure enough, there was eyes sort of making a relatively lighthearted response to you. And then found myself in the middle of extraordinary sort of a mini little media storm where unbelievable sort of things erupted. I learnt some lessons from that. I mean, obviously, one lesson is that you can't really be lighthearted about something as fundamental as that in politics.

• 44:36Alastair Campbell?

  Were you being lighthearted?

• 44:38Rory Stewart?

  Well, let me try to talk through my response. So you asked me whether I'd be prepared to serve in a Keir Starmer cabinet and I said, yes. And then as I went through the sort of furore that followed, I learnt first see that, of course, you cannot be lighthearted about political parties. These are things which are deeply, deeply important to people. And I felt a lot of my Conservative colleagues understandably very, very hurt. This is a party they've devoted their entire adult working life to, and they find it very, very difficult to contemplate that somebody would ever consider, you know, working for Labour Government. They see that as real treachery, kind of betrayal, and a real revelation that there's something wrong with me, that I'm a kind of traitor.

• 45:22Rory Stewart?

  And I think I learnt through it too, that it's one of the ways in which maybe I'm not a proper politician. I didn't grow up within the party system. I started as a civil servant. And I think one of my weaknesses probably as a politician, I continue to think like a civil servant. And so what I meant when I said that is that I'm always very, very proud to serve any British government, really, provided I don't think they're evil. I drew the line at being, you know, I think there are governments which, where I so profoundly disagree, I would not be prepared to serve as a civil servant or as a minister. But I do want to be useful and it's pretty frustrating sitting around not being useful.

• 46:07Alastair Campbell?

  So the podcast, when you were interviewed by Elizabeth Day, was trivial and now it's not useful.

• 46:14Rory Stewart?

  It's very useful, but I still think that there are very few things which are ultimately you have as much, and I think you feel as too, as opportunity to make a difference as to be a government minister.

• 46:26Alastair Campbell?

  I would just say a couple of things to that. The first is, I asked you a straight question, you gave a straight answer, which people like, okay. And I could be wrong, but I think if Keir Starmer were Prime Minister and he phoned you up and said, look, I'm really serious about prison reform, and I'd like you to do it for me, I think you would say yes, whether you were a minister or you weren't a minister.

• 46:47Rory Stewart?

  Correct.

• 46:47Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I think you would take that on. You might take it on as an outsider from government.

• 46:51Rory Stewart?

  And actually, to be fair, some of your former Labour colleagues did do commissions for the Conservatives, didn't they?

• 46:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 46:57Rory Stewart?

  So Andrew Donoghue came in to do Transport, Patricia Hewitt came in, yeah, yeah, there's the stuff that you can do to help a government.

• 47:03Alastair Campbell?

  And the second thing I would say to that is that I didn't know you were getting lots of grief from Tories. I saw quite a lot of stuff, people saying, who the hell does he think he is, thinks he can just sort of, you know, stand on a stage with Alistair Campbell and suddenly it means he's entitled to be a Labour minister. You weren't saying that at all. So you were actually being attacked from both sides.

• 47:23Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, that's always a good position to be in.

• 47:25Alastair Campbell?

  I don't, I'm not sure about that, Rory. But anyway, the truth, let's just, let's just understand, the audience thought it was a very good idea. I think we can safely say that.

• 47:37Rory Stewart?

  So David Campbell Banhamon, who was a sort of right wing former MEP.

• 47:42Alastair Campbell?

  Johnson Stooch.

• 47:43Rory Stewart?

  Amish you tweeted out, said it confirms what we all thought. Stuart's really lefty in Labour, not a Tory. Then Patrick O'Flynn, Stuart was never anchored in conservatism. He's another UKIP person. So I mean, it's, it's, there's a lot of that sort of stuff going on. Anyway.

• 47:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, it's not that bad. It's not that bad.

• 47:59Rory Stewart?

  Not that bad. Anyway, really looking forward to our next one of these sessions. I like these because it's a good chance to talk about bigger issues. And in fact, I almost think if you want to recommend, if people listen to nothing else all year and rest is politics, I quite like these as a way of doing an overview. So look forward to speaking again soon for the next episode of our annual review.

• 48:17Alastair Campbell?

  Part two tomorrow.

• 48:19Rory Stewart?

  Great.

• 48:20Alastair Campbell?

  See you soon.

• 48:20Rory Stewart?

  See you soon.

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