195. Question Time: Is Sunak's Rwanda plan doomed to fail?

Why was Sam Altman fired from OpenAI? Would a secret ballot have saved a soft Brexit? What options are left for Rishi Sunak after supreme court’s Rwanda ruling? Join Alastair and Rory as they answer all these questions and more on this week’s Question Time. 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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

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• 1:13Speaker 03

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• 1:58Speaker 02

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• 2:05Speaker 04

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• 2:28Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome to the Rest is Politics Question Time with me, Azd Campbell.

• 2:31Rory Stewart?

  And with me, Rory Stewart.

• 2:33Alastair Campbell?

  Now Rory, let's kick off with something that we're both quite fascinated by, but you're sort of mildly obsessed with, and that's OpenAI's Sam Altman. Redacted, good name for a listener. Following OpenAI's tumultuous weekend, it's raised concerns about the stability and alignment of artificial general intelligence with human values. In light of this, what measures can governments take to ensure that the development and implementation of AGI not only aligns with, but also enhances human welfare and global interests? I mean, what the hell is going on?

• 3:09Rory Stewart?

  Well, so that's the first thing. Nobody knows. It's really amazing. The New York Times has written five articles, has thrown every journalist they've got in their, certainly their tech pages at it. And they've basically managed to find out nothing. Sam Altman won't comment, the chair won't comment. Just take it back for a bit for listeners, I think most people will understand, but OpenAI is the absolute centre of the artificial intelligence revolution. That's the company that produced ChatGPT 3 and ChatGPT 4. And Sam Altman was the CEO of OpenAI. He created this thing and is therefore one of the most significant tech entrepreneurs, businessmen in the world. And the end of last week, he was, without any warning,

• 3:55Rory Stewart?

  fired by his board.

• 3:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 3:57Rory Stewart?

  Which didn't include the chairman of the board, who also walked out in protest. So the CEO is gone. Chairman of the board is gone. And they didn't bother, it seems to tell Microsoft, that had just invested $13 billion in OpenAI, which is, you know, it's $13,000 million, but didn't bother to inform them.

• 4:14Alastair Campbell?

  So Microsoft now hired him?

• 4:17Rory Stewart?

  So Microsoft has now Satya Nadella, who's the head of Microsoft, has now hired him in to run an independent research institute for him. The phrase that keeps being repeated by OpenAI is that he's been fired for lack of transparency in interactions with the board, effectively undermining their decisions. So the idea is that he was getting on with a agenda as the CEO that the board didn't endorse, but it's an unbelievable decision. And the story that people seem to be circling around, whether it's true or not, is that Ilya Sutskever, who is one of the other founders and he's on the board, is worried that he wasn't taking seriously enough the ethical risks around AI, that Sam Altman was beginning

• 5:00Rory Stewart?

  to lean more and more heavily into the commercial opportunities. And this, of course, has been a criticism of Elon Musk, who we were talking about in the last podcast. Elon Musk helped to get OpenAI off the ground when it was a charity and has been in a boiling rage ever since, now that it's gone partly commercial with the money coming in from Microsoft. And of course, there's also on the side of the fact that AI is a potential risk. So a lot of this is caught up, it seems, although we can't get to the bottom of it yet, in a frantic disagreement within the community about whether there are moral risks of it.

• 5:33Alastair Campbell?

  Ilya Sutskever has put out a short statement. "I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions. I never intended to harm OpenAI. I love everything we built together and will do everything I can to reunite the company." And obviously, this guy, Altman, who I've never met, is clearly very, very popular. There was a sort of massive walkout. This is something that we talked about with Mustafa Suleyman and Reid Hoffman. And essentially, there's this argument between people who think that the whole thing is going to be a catastrophe and who really, really worry that what they're actually doing with the stuff that they're creating. And those who feel that they're more realist, which is that this is new technology, but

• 6:18Alastair Campbell?

  it doesn't pose massive existential threats. And that's where Altman was. But it does seem extraordinary that they can, despite them being massive, incredibly powerful, wealthy companies, still sort of really behaving like startups.

• 6:34Rory Stewart?

  They're behaving like startups, and there's also a sense of how tiny this world is. I mean, absolutely tiny this world is. I mean, a lot of the people we've been interviewing. Are on the boards of various of these companies or the major investors of various of these companies, these are all their friends. So it's it's got much more of a feeling of, well, I guess of what it felt like with you when you were coming into office in ninety seven of a very close group of people who've known each other for fifteen, twenty years, who basically, many of them were at Stanford together. Sam Altman ran the big venture capital firm, the most famous sort of tech startup investing firm in California before he he went on to launch OpenAI. Many of these people we talked about were PayPal, so Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, all these people, Peter Thiel, all knew each other when they

• 7:19Rory Stewart?

  were setting up PayPal. So, no, it's it's a tiny world. I think the other thing, just just quickly, I was having dinner with some very, very interesting international CEOs, so heads of big international companies, Americans, Swedish, Spanish, et cetera, and how quickly AI is changing the way they think. They were saying that nothing in forty years of business they ever seen is having an impact as quickly as AI is. It's changing the way they think about tools, it's changing the way they think about whole functions in their company. Do we even need to have a call center anymore? Do we even need software engineers? And it's also beginning to generate completely different ideas about what a business model

• 8:01Rory Stewart?

  can be. And in fact, I think if you were Labour coming in to run the British economy, the great hope would be that AI might actually lead to a real productivity revolution and that that might be the thing that would get growth off the ground again. And I think this is something Tony Blair has been trying to say, isn't it?

• 8:16Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely. Well, that's why I think we were both quite pleased that Keir Starmer gave Peter Kyle this job that is sort of technology and innovation, which is clearly, you know, right, this is this is right at the heart of it. So I think a government that that really did have a strategy for that would, you know, it could be, it could be the future of growth, we don't know.

• 8:35Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I think, I mean, it could be amazing. I mean, the the problem is, of course, people are very skeptical because there's this great cliche from an economist who said we see computers everywhere except in the economic statistics, that technology was supposed to thirty, forty years ago bring these incredible productivity gains that it never quite seemed to bring. One of the the jokes is that you get ever better versions of PowerPoint, but instead of improving your productivity, you just make ever fancier PowerPoint decks. So the question, question is, is AI finally going to produce what you want, which is getting more out of the same number of people?

• 9:11Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, yeah. Now, your turn.

• 9:14Rory Stewart?

  All right, here's a question for you. Paragraph films, why do news reporters scream the most ridiculous and unprofessional comments and questions at politicians going in and out of buildings? And is there any strategy of answering these without becoming a story? Should the news be able to use these clips? It really grinds my gears. Can you give us an example of some of these questions that they show? What's the kind of things annoy them?

• 9:39Alastair Campbell?

  Are you going to resign Home Secretary?

• 9:41Rory Stewart?

  Right, exactly.

• 9:44Rory Stewart?

  And then the more the Home Secretary, it avoids the question, the more the question comes, are you going to resign Home Secretary? And sometimes the question's like, are you a liar?

• 9:56Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know. There was a guy who sadly sadly died recently, but his nickname was Gobby. And he was the BBC doorstep guy. And he used to stand outside Downing Street and literally just shout those questions. But every now and again, somebody answers, is the truth. Or they react in a way that kind of make, they do something interesting.

• 10:17Rory Stewart?

  But what would be your advice to a Cabinet Minister walking out of Downing Street facing Gobby?

• 10:21Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, oh, smile and move on. But if you think about it, that woman that Johnson made a dame, Andrea Jenkins. I mean, the only thing that she's really known for is basically giving the middle finger to a bunch of photographers. I bet you that was in response to a shouting question.

• 10:39Rory Stewart?

  Right. So produced the great photograph.

• 10:43Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly. So you might get a reaction. Most of the time, it's a complete waste of time. I mean, when I, the only time that I've really had intense sort of personal media scrutiny was in the build up to the Iraq inquiry. And we had them outside the house the whole time. And I just decided, day one, I'm not going to say a single word at any point outside my house. And I'm not going to look at them, react at them, nothing.

• 11:10Rory Stewart?

  And was it not a bit weird? Because presumably you knew them all. Some of these people would have been friends standing out there shouting at you.

• 11:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 11:15Rory Stewart?

  And how does it feel to suddenly find that your friends are now turned into a sort of baying crowd of lunatics on your front door?

• 11:22Alastair Campbell?

  The really friendly ones probably wouldn't be baying, but they'd be there. But you just have to go into a mindset that says they're not here. It's funny, when I, when I actually went to the Iraq inquiry itself. I think I might have told you this before, there were dozens and dozens of media and there were protesters and the police said to me, the security people said to me, do you want to go in the back? And I said, no, there's no way I'm going in the back. So I walked through and I was so in the zone that I wasn't even aware that things were being thrown at me. I was just, I just decided I'm going to walk from A to B, I'm going to get to that door, I'm going to go in. Nobody's going to be able to say that I sort of sculpted in the back. And I got there and one of the people who was working for

• 12:05Alastair Campbell?

  me, she was in tears because she'd seen this and I hadn't even, I wasn't even aware of it because I'd just said to myself, I'm going to walk through this now and nothing matters. You've just got to get in a mindset that says they're not there. But you'd be amazed how often Gobby would get a response.

• 12:23Rory Stewart?

  Some kind of reaction with a daft question. Now, Dutch elections.

• 12:26Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 12:27Rory Stewart?

  Biz Ponte, the growth of anti-politics politicians shown in the Dutch new social contract currently topping the polls, could you discuss the upcoming general election in the Netherlands? Johannes, Dutch elections coming up, PM Mark Rutte, not up for reelection. How important is seniority in international relations? Oli McGlashan, do you think a new party in the UK could ever have the same sudden and rapid growth in popularity that Pieter Omtzigt's NSC party in the Netherlands has had, such that they could pose a challenge to two main UK political parties? Now, Alison, after you brought this up nobly last week and did a bit of Dutch, I, like you, got a few messages from friends in Holland, including a friend who was actually having dinner with Pieter Omtzigt at the time and sent a photograph.

• 13:11Rory Stewart?

  And I think that might mean that if we wanted to interview him on the show, he might be up for it. But one of the things was, they said that we hadn't properly covered how he came to prominence. And this was an amazing thing called the childcare benefit scandal.

• 13:26Alastair Campbell?

  Ters lachen a fera.

• 13:29Rory Stewart?

  Oh, very good.

• 13:30Alastair Campbell?

  How's about that?

• 13:31Rory Stewart?

  Very good. That was very impressive.

• 13:32Alastair Campbell?

  It was a child benefit scandal.

• 13:34Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. So a bit like, you can see this a bit with what Jeremy Hunt's doing at the moment, where he's saying that he's going to get tough on benefits. So basically, the Dutch government seems to have gone very, very hard on parents claiming child benefits, suggested that they were fraudulent, demanded that they paid back a lot of money, particularly targeted immigrants, ended up driving a lot of families into hardship. And if I'm right, Peter Omsik was the first person to really come out clearly and call this out, and this brought down the government.

• 14:05Alastair Campbell?

  No, I was, it was very interesting because we did our bit and we chatted away and I got lots of emails from people saying, very nice to hear you talk about the Netherlands. I think that you sort of got it right, but you really, there was a big, big, big hole in what you were saying because they were saying, as you say, that this guy Omsik, he's been around for a long time, basically a kind of, you know, you'd have said a kind of lifetime backbencher really, and he, on the right, and a sort of Labour-ish MP, they basically exposed this scandal. And it led to, I hadn't, I didn't even know about this to my shame, but it led to lots of people killing themselves. It reminded me, when I read into it, it reminded me a little bit of that post office scandal here, where postmasters

• 14:49Alastair Campbell?

  were being frankly persecuted over things that they hadn't done. So it was an absolute sort of, you know, let's get tough on benefit fraud, let's go after them, they went after them. This supposed fraud hunt pursued ten, between 30 and 40,000 people. And of course, then what happened, and this is an email I got from a guy called Paul Bali, and he said that essentially the government tried to cover it up, they were aided in that by lots of what he calls the media oligarchy, and Omsik gained huge support because he refused to let the government sweep it under the carpet. And he was essentially sacked, but

• 15:28Alastair Campbell?

  he kept going as an independent MP, and it really gave him a prominence and a popularity. And so he's now set up this new party, the NSC, which was literally just a few weeks old. But interestingly, I then caught another very long email from somebody who said, you're absolutely right that he's gone to the top in no time at all, but it's really weird because he, he says he doesn't want to be prime minister, he's given no clarity on who he wants to form a coalition with. And the other thing that's happened is Wilders... The very right wing guy has actually risen in the polls. So the latest polls show this guy Omsik in the lead, Wilder's not far behind, and France Timmerman, who's

• 16:12Alastair Campbell?

  leading the Labour Green Coalition, he's a little bit behind them.

• 16:16Rory Stewart?

  Now, question from Connor for you. What big policy are all the major parties missing out on? Where is a win being missed?

• 16:24Alastair Campbell?

  Europe.

• 16:25Rory Stewart?

  It's the big one, isn't it? I mean, I'd want to go for, I'd want to reopen at least the idea of customs union. And that's a huge gap in the market. Now, it's something presumably, could Keir Starmer do it courageously after coming in if he didn't put it in the manifesto? Or would he be in trouble if he didn't put it in the manifesto?

• 16:43Alastair Campbell?

  I think what you could put in the manifesto is that, you know, the Brexit deal was a disaster. Boris Johnson, who led it, has been exposed as a complete liar and a charlatan. It's doing enormous damage to the country and we'll have to review our arrangements with the European Union.

• 16:57Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 16:58Alastair Campbell?

  That's all I would do. But I just, I just don't think they're in the, I don't think they're in the same place. But also, if you're serious about growth, then you're gonna have to do something about our relations with our closest neighbour. I was telling you last week about the guys that we were talking to in Ireland. I mean, how many of them were saying that, you know, it's just been, it's been a disaster for them as well as for us. But at least they've now got, they can still trade with the rest of the single market.

• 17:25Rory Stewart?

  So here's my big policy that I love and that everyone thinks I'm barking on. I think a huge citizens' assembly, which could almost be a third branch, a government advisory. So it wouldn't, wouldn't be able to pass laws. But I've got a very interesting friend who's an Australian academic who suggested that what it might be able to do is if the citizens' assembly, and it'd be like a jury, so it would be people around the United Kingdom, demographically representative, randomly selected, sitting in this assembly for a period. If the government passed a law that the citizens' assembly thought was really bad, they could push it back for a second vote and maybe even a second vote under a secret ballot.

• 18:09Rory Stewart?

  So, so let's imagine, I don't know, that Congress and the Senate had all, all the Republicans had voted sort of not to impeach Trump. Maybe if you pushed it back under a secret ballot, maybe they'd vote differently. Maybe the same would have been true with getting a soft Brexit through, that if you pushed it back and people could vote under a secret ballot, you might have been able to get a soft Brexit through. Yeah.

• 18:31Alastair Campbell?

  And also, although there would be, there would be some cost to that, it, they wouldn't be huge because it's not a big spending thing. There's a question, actually, sort of same theme, you know, quality of democracy. Unlock Democracy wants to ask this question. One in seven UK citizens are currently not registered to vote. That's eight million potential voters in the forthcoming election who exist outside of the UK's democratic processes. Should all parties commit to bringing in automatic voter registration in their manifestos?

• 18:57Rory Stewart?

  Yes, I'd also like compulsory voting. I like compulsory voting.

• 19:01Alastair Campbell?

  And where are you on lowering the voting age?

• 19:03Rory Stewart?

  Uh, no, no, I'm against you on that. Partly because I think it's a bit, I mean, I don't, we don't want to get drawn down into that, but it's a bit weird because so many bits of our society are about increasing ages from 16 to 18.

• 19:14Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 19:15Rory Stewart?

  For example, about your ability to deploy to fight and things like that.

• 19:19Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm. Well, I go to loads of schools, you know, and I think most kids in most schools know a lot more about politics than an awful lot of 50, 60, 70 year olds.

• 19:27Rory Stewart?

  It's definitely something I picked up when I was an MP, is if you wanted to be popular in schools, you definitely set, you want to drop the voting age to 14 and everyone loves it.

• 19:35Alastair Campbell?

  The other thing I would do, again, pretty cost neutral, I would take John Major's Nolan Principles and I would make them somehow applicable with an outside judge to every single member of parliament.

• 19:50Rory Stewart?

  Ooh, interesting.

• 19:51Alastair Campbell?

  How about that?

• 19:52Rory Stewart?

  Gosh, you'd have to set quite a high bar. You wouldn't want the judge interfering every second.

• 19:56Alastair Campbell?

  No, exactly. But, you know, but it, just the fact of doing it, I think, would improve.

• 20:00Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, it'd be interesting. But you'd probably want to set it up with the hope that they would do it once or twice in a parliament.

• 20:05Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 20:06Rory Stewart?

  For a really egregious thing. Yeah.

• 20:07Alastair Campbell?

  Exactly. Okay, Roy, lots more questions to get through. Let's take a quick break.

• 20:13Speaker 02

  I get so many headaches every month. It could be chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 20:21Speaker 03

  Botox, onabotulinum 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.

• 21:06Speaker 02

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

• 21:13Speaker 04

  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.

• 21:29Speaker 05

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• 22:01Alastair Campbell?

  Here's another one, Sam Dyson. And it relates to the behavior of MPs. Two questions in one. One, should MPs be allowed to have second jobs that earn more than the standard MP salary? B, should MPs be allowed to work for companies with links to people under UK economic sanctions? And this is about Brandon Lewis, who was not long ago in the cabinet and now is picking up a very large six-figure slab for his relationship with some company that's under sanctions. What do we think of that, Rory Stewart?

• 22:27Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think the key question always with this is conflict of interest. And I think that's what you really need to focus on above all. It's not the amount that you earn, it's whether the company you're working for conflicts with your public role. So that's why the most dangerous bit is the lobbying, getting involved in contracts that touch companies that you've been involved in, all that kind. That's where the real corruption starts.

• 22:52Alastair Campbell?

  But he was part of a cabinet which imposed sanctions post the invasion of Ukraine.

• 22:58Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, I mean, that does seem a bit bizarre. I agree, that does seem a bit bizarre. Now, one of the big questions we haven't really done, and there's a lot of questions about, is Rwanda. So we've got three questions on Rwanda, and they come from Totsi Flack, Andrew Watt, and Andrew Hosen. Totsi Flack, would someone discuss the actual cost benefit of the Rwanda plan? So aside from the legal moral injustice of it, I believe it's been incredibly expensive so far.

• 23:22Alastair Campbell?

  Hundred and forty million.

• 23:24Rory Stewart?

  There we are. Andrew Watt, if Sunak goes ahead with the law which purports to assert definitively that Rwanda is a safe country, what are the implications to credibility of the King and the monarchy? Who has formed to give royal assent to a nonsense IMO? And Andrew Hosen, Rishi Sunak's been telling people he won't let a foreign court block flights to Rwanda. The Supreme Court is a UK court. How can the Prime Minister get away with lying to people? How does this align with his commitment to integrity, professionalism, and accountability? So there we are. So very quickly on the Rwanda thing, and again, this is maybe for people who've not been following it very closely. The broad idea from the government was that people arriving on boats, and in fact, they suggested at some point, all asylum claimants in the UK would be shipped off to Rwanda,

• 24:09Rory Stewart?

  and their asylum claim would be processed in Rwanda. And the British government gave a significant sum of money to the Rwanda government, for the Rwanda government to agree to do this. And the Rwanda government built some quite upscale accommodation, certainly by Rwandans' standards. And when I was in Rwanda, a lot of people were going to visit it, and I'm sure the Rwanda government was serious about trying to provide decent accommodation for people. The Supreme Court, though, knocked down the government's appeal to try to push ahead of this plan on the ground of something called refoulement. And refoulement is if you believe a country is likely to send the asylum seekers back to their home country.

• 24:50Rory Stewart?

  And they believe that Rwanda had a record of refoulement. So this is important because Supreme Court was not saying that the idea shipping people somewhere is illegal. And that's important because this may be very, very relevant for migrants crossing the Mediterranean. There's a very interesting article by Matthew Said in The Times, basically saying the asylum system is fundamentally broken because when it was designed, it was not anticipating hundreds of millions of people to have a legitimate claim to asylum.

• 25:19Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody sent that to me. Is that the one where he says that he wants us to talk about Libya?

• 25:23Rory Stewart?

  Hmm, maybe. I mean, he mentions Libya in it.

• 25:25Alastair Campbell?

  Um, listen, I, I, I, just how crazy this debate has got. I read that Rishi Sunak doesn't like the word refoulement.

• 25:35Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 25:36Alastair Campbell?

  Because it's a bit French.

• 25:37Rory Stewart?

  Does sound a bit French, doesn't it?

• 25:38Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, la foule means the crowds. It's sort of re-crowding is what it means. Um, this is why I think Sunak's in trouble because when he stood outside Number 10 and said integrity, accountability, all that professionalism, integrity, accountability, you've got to deliver on that. And what essentially this whole thing is saying is that we don't like the judgment and therefore we're going to legislate to say that the judgment is wrong by signing a treaty with the country that they say isn't safe for them to say that they're safe. And then we'll say to Parliament that we're saying they're safe as well. And that's the law.

• 26:12Rory Stewart?

  This is something that Jonathan Sumption, who you're not always a big fan of, partly because he, he stood for the restored trust, um, for the National Trust elections, which you've been grumbling about a lot.

• 26:21Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but I'm mainly a fan.

• 26:23Rory Stewart?

  Mainly a fan. I mean, Jonathan Sumption wrote a very good piece on this, saying that he has written, calling into question the European Court and Supreme Courts. And he's got a lot of sympathy with the government claiming that Parliament is sovereign. But what Parliament cannot do, and what it seems to be suggesting that they might try to do, is to rule on a matter of fact, right? They can pass laws, but it's up to the courts to determine whether a country is or is not safe. You can't just rule that a country's safe. Fortunately, I, I don't think it's going to happen because we have a very good Attorney General in the form of Victoria Prentice, who's very serious about these things. And I don't think that Victoria Apprentice would allow this to happen.

• 27:03Alastair Campbell?

  Related to this, Rory, Norma Spark, why is it not in the public interest to publish the full costs of the Bibby Stockholm? This is the floating barge in Dorset, which I saw, by the way, when I was down at the Britport Book Festival that you don't like me talking about. Rental costs, running costs, staff costs and cost per head.

• 27:23Rory Stewart?

  I just huge shout out Britport. I mean, honestly, you've done more for the Britport Book Festival than any man on earth. It's amazing.

• 27:29Alastair Campbell?

  Are you going next year? They want you to go, do you have to go?

• 27:31Rory Stewart?

  I think I'll have to go now that I know that you've.

• 27:33Alastair Campbell?

  But then you can go and see the Bibby Stockholm. But why you with the prisons minister, what do you reckon roughly, what do you reckon it would be costing?

• 27:41Rory Stewart?

  A huge amount of money. I mean, it'd be costing many hundreds of thousands of pounds a week to run this thing.

• 27:46Alastair Campbell?

  Why do they think that they shouldn't? It's public money. Why shouldn't they publish how much it's costing? I think it'll be in the hundreds of millions by now.

• 27:53Rory Stewart?

  They'll have to eventually, won't they? I mean, the.

• 27:55Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know.

• 27:56Rory Stewart?

  Well, the public audit office will, the National Audit Office will require it. I mean, you can't get away with not publishing your figures. I can't, I can't really understand what this not in the public interest stuff's about. It sounds to me like the government's embarrassed by how much it's spending and trying to.

• 28:08Alastair Campbell?

  Sure. And the other question that was there in your, the three questions, we had loads of questions about Rwanda, but the other one that you read out there was about, you know, the cost benefit analysis. I mean, they've, let's just remember, not a single person has been flown. We're already into the 100 million plus territory. It is, God knows what it'll be up to when the legal bills come in. And then they're still determined to go ahead with it. So the costs are only going to rise. And meanwhile, if we do get to an election without it having happened, what a total waste of time and money.

• 28:46Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Right now, we've got a final question, which is Max, what books would you recommend to understand the UK political system? Now, there are lots of classics out there, depending on how serious you want to be. So the, one of the great classics is a book by Peter Hennessy called Whitehall, which goes back many, many years, but is the great sort of investigation of how, how Whitehall worked. I would be tempted to say Catch 22 is a good insight into it. There's some great books out by obviously James O'Brien, Ian Dunst. Raphael Baer, who of course I recommended last year and then got told off by you because he managed to put on the front of his book that it'd been our book of the year. Little plug though for an amazing book, which is quite a serious book, but I think

• 29:28Rory Stewart?

  a very, very well observed, wry inventive book, which is just about to be published, called Late Soviet Britain by Abby Innis. And Abby basically argues that neoliberal economics has become as mad as Soviet economics under Brezhnev, as rigid, as defended in an insane way, and that the way to understand Britain is this, what she calls an isomorphism. In other words, a weird echo between late Soviet bureaucracy and British economic policy from Major through Blair to David Cameron and now Rishi Sunak.

• 30:07Alastair Campbell?

  Very good, very good. Have I told you about my new book that I've just finished?

• 30:13Rory Stewart?

  What? You've just written another book?

• 30:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 30:15Rory Stewart?

  No wonder you're never doing enough work on the podcast. Well, you've been writing a book.

• 30:18Alastair Campbell?

  Get off, honestly. How many hours' research have you done today?

• 30:21Rory Stewart?

  No, not as much as you probably, although I don't know how much time you spent writing this book. What is this book?

• 30:26Alastair Campbell?

  It's a guide to politics for primary schools.

• 30:29Rory Stewart?

  Oh.

• 30:30Alastair Campbell?

  So that's going to be a classic.

• 30:32Rory Stewart?

  You see, look at that. As usual, you've beaten me to it. I was approached by a publisher to write exactly that thing.

• 30:37Alastair Campbell?

  Were you?

• 30:38Rory Stewart?

  And you've already written it. No point in my even starting.

• 30:40Alastair Campbell?

  Do you know what? I've really enjoyed it though, because it's actually, I mean, obviously my journalistic background is on tabloids, where you have to try and keep to as few words as possible to say quite complicated things. But it's really quite tough to do the history of Parliament in like five paragraphs and that sort of thing. But I've really enjoyed it. And now it's going to the illustrators. It's going to be one of those, lots of nice illustrations and stuff.

• 31:05Rory Stewart?

  What a beautiful idea. Now, okay, that allows me to get in a little plug. So I have been involved in making a documentary called Julius Caesar, The Making of a Dictator.

• 31:15Alastair Campbell?

  I read about it and that's the first I knew about you. And even though I asked you last week, how often do you talk about the Roman Empire? You didn't even mention it.

• 31:24Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's going to be out next Monday on BBC Two at nine o'clock. I've done it with Tom Holland. The great star of the rest is history.

• 31:32Alastair Campbell?

  Is this why you've been angling to get Tom Holland on the podcast? I mean, Rory, you've got to declare these interests. You just don't need to worry about all this.

• 31:37Rory Stewart?

  It's not me that's angling for that. So this show is my trying to make the case that Julius Caesar was what we mean today by a populist. He is an early play of Donald Trump or Bolsonaro or the figue mille that's now emerging in Argentina. He's somebody who pretends to be on the side of the people in order to take power and wrecks the entire constitution of Rome.

• 32:02Alastair Campbell?

  And what does Tom Holland think?

• 32:03Rory Stewart?

  Tom Holland thinks that Caesar is witty, glamorous, bold, inventive, and that the whole thing is mesmerizing watching. Then maybe that's being a bit unfair to Tom.

• 32:15Alastair Campbell?

  He did deliver, or is said to have delivered, or has had delivered through history, the greatest soundbite of all time.

• 32:22Rory Stewart?

  Yes, Gong, give us, give us your soundbite.

• 32:24Alastair Campbell?

  Veni vidi vici.

• 32:26Rory Stewart?

  It's good, isn't it? It's good, good, good.

• 32:28Alastair Campbell?

  Brilliant.

• 32:28Rory Stewart?

  He also did a lot. He also, you know, put the word July into the, into our calendar. That's from old Julius.

• 32:34Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 32:34Rory Stewart?

  Reshaped the whole calendar. And we're going to have the same debate, of course, around Napoleon.

• 32:38Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 32:39Rory Stewart?

  We're going to Andrew Roberts and people are saying, you know, much underrated, did wonderful things for France. And people like me are trying to line up and say he's a grisly old dictator.

• 32:46Alastair Campbell?

  Ridley Scott film is, is getting rave reviews in Britain and getting sort of slammed in France.

• 32:53Rory Stewart?

  No.

• 32:54Alastair Campbell?

  How did you resolve the argument? Do you, do we have a public vote? Did you have a duel? What did you do?

• 32:59Rory Stewart?

  Well, no, I mean, you, you just watched the documentary and it's, it's rather beautifully done. The parts of Caesar and Cato are acted out and we voiceover what they were trying to do and what they were trying to achieve and what they thought. I, I really enjoyed it. I think so. Do you want documentary on ancient Rome next Monday, nine o'clock?

• 33:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, all those people who sent me a message last week saying, does he really think about Rome? How many times did you say 12 a day or something? I now understand it. That's been a more recent thing, but not all the time. Yeah?

• 33:28Rory Stewart?

  Not all the time. No, no. And congratulations on the book, Alistair, and have a great day.

• 33:32Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.

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